The Truth About Alice

by Jennifer Mathieu

  “So you’re saying you had information that could have, like, cleared my name and you didn’t…” Her voice trailed off. She broke eye contact with me and stared blankly at the kitchen table. “Not that it would have mattered, I guess.” That last part came out sounding as if she’d forgotten I was even sitting there. Detached. Almost cold.

  “Alice, I just could never figure out the right time to tell you,” I said, surprised that I had the courage to keep trying to explain myself. And somewhat frustrated that I even needed to—that she couldn’t see just a sliver of my side of the story. “I wanted to tell you, but at the same time, we barely knew each other when I started helping you with math. And then as we grew closer, I wasn’t sure how to approach you about it. I almost did, that night I gave you your Christmas present. And the day we had grilled cheese sandwiches at my house. And about a dozen times in between.”

  “And you didn’t because why?” Her voice was almost a whisper.

  “Because the longer time went on without me saying anything, the stupider it seemed that I’d never said anything at all,” I explained. “And I was afraid this might happen.” At the word this, I motioned with my hand at the space between us. I could feel it widening by the moment.

  “Well I guess it is happening,” Alice said, and I crumpled inside as I saw her eyes grow glassy with tears.

  My heart was collapsing.

  “Alice, if you want, I’ll put it out there. I’ll put it online. I’ll take out ads in the paper. I’ll hang banners from the front of the school.”

  “And what are they going to say, ‘Alice Franklin Is Not a Slut’?” She squeezed her eyes shut to keep back the tears and then opened them and looked right at me. Then, in a voice she might have used in her past, she said, “Besides, who would believe you?” A huff escaped from her lips and she crossed her arms in front of her. And then she laughed a little. A cutting, mocking laugh.

  The laugh was what hurt the most.

  I attempted to ignore the sting of it and the obvious implication that the you Alice was referring to—that, of course, would be me—was nothing more than parasitic scum. But it was impossible. I tried to tell myself that Alice’s words were coming from a place of hurt, but I was angry with her. I wanted to shrug off how I felt, but I couldn’t.

  Because for the first time ever when it came to Alice, I felt something I hadn’t felt before.

  Used.

  “How can you say that to me?” I heard myself asking, voice quaking. “How? How could you ever question that I don’t feel terrible about this? That I wouldn’t do anything for you? After all these months? After everything?”

  Alice just sat there at the kitchen table with the chipped yellow Formica and the two cans of Lone Star beer in front of her. She wouldn’t look at me. She wouldn’t acknowledge me at all. All she did was roll her eyes.

  I reached for my bag and my car keys.

  “Alice,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I know that you, of all people, recognize that life isn’t fair. That life can be cruel, arbitrary even. So maybe it’s wrong for me to ask you to recognize the unfairness of this situation. Because this isn’t fair, the way you’re treating me right now. This isn’t right.”

  In a sharp voice she snapped, “Why don’t you get out?”

  “I was already leaving,” I told her.

  And I did.

  Elaine

  Misty has been doing my hair since I was in fifth grade, and she’s only ever screwed up once. And that was technically my fault since I told her to give me bangs and I look absurd with bangs. Anyway, Misty’s been doing my hair since I cared about having my hair done, so when I needed it done for the last dance of the year, of course I booked her early. And of course I expected to have to sit around at the salon because Misty is always running at least thirty minutes behind.

  What I didn’t expect when I showed up on the Saturday of the dance was Alice Franklin sitting in the waiting area of the Curl Up and Dye, flipping through some ancient copy of Teen Vogue.

  I don’t know why. I mean, Alice still had hair after everything that happened. She still needed to get it cut, obviously. But all I could think of when I walked in was, okay, this is random and awkward.

  She looked up when she heard the jangle of the bells hanging off the door handle and then looked back down at the Teen Vogue super fast like she was oblivious to my presence. But her cheeks reddened a little, and she was doing that thing where you act like you’re reading but you’re so clearly not. I could hear Misty in the back room, chatting away with somebody. There wasn’t anyone at the front desk. It was just me and Alice. I picked up a copy of Cosmo and started turning pages.

  After about two minutes I just couldn’t stand the silence anymore. Frankly, it was too weird. Maybe it was all the chemicals Misty uses. Maybe it was the fact that I’d already read that issue of Cosmo which I was holding in my hands. But all of a sudden, I was talking to Alice Franklin. For the very first time since my party almost a year ago.

  “Do you have a one o’clock?” I asked.

  Alice brought her gaze up over the top of the Teen Vogue and I know I saw her eyebrows jump up a bit like she was surprised I’d said anything. To be honest, I was surprised myself. Alice looked back down at the magazine and said, “Try twelve thirty.”

  “Oh my God, seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “God.”

  Total silence.

  I put down my Cosmo and crossed my arms over my chest. Alice still wouldn’t look at me.

  “Who’s back there taking so long anyway?” I asked.

  Alice waited a second before responding. “Ms. Cooper.”

  “Oh God,” I groaned. “We’ll be here all day.” Ms. Cooper was the Healy High secretary, and she was always trying to get us to believe she was a real redhead. She so wasn’t.

  Alice snapped her magazine shut and stared at me. “Why are you talking to me?”

  I shrugged my shoulders a little. Maybe I was talking to her because I knew I could. I could talk to her because I was Elaine O’Dea, and I could decide to talk to anybody I wanted to whenever I wanted to talk to them. But I didn’t say that out loud.

  “In a few weeks we’re going to be seniors,” I told her. “I think maybe we’re getting too old for this shit.”

  As soon as I said it, I realized I believed every word of what I’d just said.

  Alice rolled her eyes and laughed a little, but not a funny ha-ha laugh. More like an I-can’t-believe-you-would-say-that laugh. “Easy for you to say,” she huffed.

  She had a point, and I didn’t say anything for a minute or so. I heard the tock of Misty’s clock and the laughter between her and Ms. Cooper. I stared at the faded pink linoleum under my new strappy sandals.

  We were going to be seniors. And maybe she had texted Brandon while he was driving, but that didn’t mean that Brandon had to answer his phone. And maybe she did have sex with two guys in the same night, but hadn’t Brandon probably had sex with five times that number of girls the summer before junior year alone? And maybe she had made out with him in the coat closet during the eighth grade dance when he and I were totally and completely on again, but hadn’t Brandon been the one to choose to make out in the coat closet in the first place? And wasn’t the eighth grade graduation dance pretty damn far away from senior year?

  “Alice,” I said, and I waited until she made eye contact with me again before I kept going, “look, if you want to start coming around my table at lunch again, you know, just to say hi, it might be a way to start smoothing things over. I mean, if you’re interested.”

  She just stared at me, expressionless.

  “I mean, I know you’ve been hanging out a lot with Kurt Morelli and everything,” I said, although it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the two of them together much these past few weeks. “So maybe you’re not even interested or whatever. But I’m just putting it out there.”

  Alice just kept looking at me. Not in a mad way, I don’t thin
k. But just sort of staring like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I guess if I had been her I wouldn’t have believed it either. I gave it one more shot. “Are you getting your hair done to go to the dance with Kurt?”

  Alice gave me one of her big honking laughs that she was known for and that I hadn’t heard all year, but it was cut with a tone that sounded super bitter. “No, I’m not going to the dance with Kurt Morelli or anyone else. And I don’t hang around with him anymore, anyway,” Alice said. “He’s no different from anyone else in this town.”

  I was surprised by what she said, but I was also sure that Alice couldn’t be more wrong. Kurt Morelli had been different from everyone in Healy since the day he’d moved here back in elementary school, and he’d been proving he was different ever since.

  “Oh, sorry. I thought he was your friend.”

  “Well, I thought a lot of people were my friends,” Alice said. It could have come out sounding a lot icier than it did, but the way Alice said it—like she was just flatly stating the facts we both knew were true—made her words feel like they were hanging right over me. I thought about the Slut Stall. Part of me wanted to tell her I’d only written in it that one time and everything, but I didn’t think Alice would care if it had been one time or twenty.

  “I’m sorry I brought up Kurt,” I answered. “I thought you guys liked hanging out together, but I guess I was wrong. I know he’s sort of freaky deaky or whatever, but you can’t say he’s anything like the rest of us. First off, he hung out with you when no one else would, and it honestly seemed like you guys were having a good time. Plus, he’s, like, a crazy genius. He knows more than the teachers.”

  Alice just looked away, down at the floor. “Yeah, well. I guess I have a way of turning everything around me into shit. Maybe he was my friend. Maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know anymore. Whatever.”

  “Fine. I was just saying.”

  A few more moments of silence passed, but Alice broke it this time.

  “Who are you going to the dance with?”

  “Jacob Saunders,” I said with a shrug. Jacob was a graduating senior and captain of the varsity basketball team, and if you want me to be honest he was about as exciting as a bag of hammers.

  Just then Misty stuck her head out and told us she was so sorry she was running late and did we mind waiting just a few more seconds?

  I rolled my eyes at Alice and she rolled her eyes back at me. Then Alice picked up her copy of Teen Vogue and started reading it again. I figured she was done talking, so I grabbed a magazine and we sat there reading in silence until Ms. Cooper left and Misty called for Alice to come on back.

  Just before she disappeared behind the reception area, Alice turned around and said, “Have a good time at the dance.”

  “Thanks,” I answered.

  I felt pretty good about what I had said, and I hoped Alice was grateful I’d said it. After all, she had to have known that me being nice to her in the cafeteria would be a sign to everybody else that it was time to stop the mess that had been going on all year. She had to know I had that kind of power.

  But the truth is, I knew there was a pretty good chance Alice would never come by my table on Monday or any other day. The truth is, I wouldn’t blame Alice Franklin if she never talked to me or anyone else in this town again.

  There are some things, like your eighth grade boyfriend kissing some other girl at a middle school dance, that are easy to forgive.

  And there are some things that are just unforgivable.

  Alice

  It’s a long walk to get to where I’m going, almost to the other side of town. I think it seems longer than it really is since spring in Texas lasts about two weeks, so essentially it’s already summer, which means it’s ridiculously hot. We have a few weeks left of school and the heat is just all-consuming. Every year it arrives and people act like they can’t believe it’s already here again. Like maybe if they’d been good all year long the 100-degree weather would somehow pass us by just once.

  But it shows up every year, whether we like it or not.

  I guess that’s one of the reasons I’ve chosen to make this walk in the evening. The heat isn’t so bad then, even if there are a few mosquitoes around, and it’s actually sort of peaceful to walk the Healy streets at dusk. Maybe one of the two or three good things about living in this crappy town is it’s small enough that you can walk pretty much anywhere to get there.

  Even if it is hot enough to melt tar.

  Like just the other week, I’d walked to the Curl Up and Dye to get my hair cut.

  On the way there I’d had to walk past the Pizza Hut and the Walmart and the elementary school, and just like I did whenever I had time alone to think, I thought about the rejection.

  The rumors.

  The unending crap on the walls of that bathroom stall that I couldn’t stop reading even though I knew I should and that nobody ever bothered to clean because black Sharpie doesn’t come off so easily. (And I should know because I tried.)

  How much did it hurt?

  It was like a million paper cuts on my heart.

  Because it was slow and not all at once. It wasn’t a complete flip-flop of everything overnight. It was more gradual than that.

  Which was actually worse, to be honest with you. At first, it was so subtle I thought maybe I was imagining it.

  “Oh, Alice, I’m sorry, I forgot to save you a seat.”

  “Oh, Alice, I never got that text. Something is weird with my phone.”

  “Oh, nothing, Alice. We’re just laughing at a stupid joke.”

  Obviously, I wasn’t imagining it.

  But it had to be gradual. So people would get used to it. So it would become easy for them to treat me like shit. So my best friend since freshman year could justify dumping me and telling everyone I had an abortion. So they could have the Slut Stall and enjoy having it.

  So there could be enough time for me to become subhuman in their eyes.

  I really can’t handle talking about this for too long because it just hurts too much, but I do want to say that there is one thing I’ve learned about people: they don’t get that mean and nasty overnight. It’s not human nature.

  But if you give people enough time, eventually they’ll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.

  * * *

  Now I’m taking another walk. Past Memorial Park where families have picnics on the weekends and sometimes kids from Healy High go to smoke pot. Past the lit-up Walgreens sign advertising toilet paper on special. Past the First Methodist Church of Healy and St. Helen’s and Salem Lutheran and Calvary Baptist Church, whose church sign reads “YOU THINK IT’S HOT HERE?”

  They post that message every May. It’s as much like clockwork as the heat itself.

  My legs ache, and the sweat is trickling down my neck. I’m grateful for my short hair. I turn into a neighborhood full of some of the oldest homes in Healy, rambling two-story houses with wraparound porches and big yards. They’re old and hard to keep up, I think. It’s not like it’s the rich people neighborhood. Honestly, I don’t think Healy actually has any people living here who are really rich because if you had a ton of money, why would you choose to live here? But if I had to pick my favorite neighborhood in this pathetic little town, this one would be it.

  Probably not just because of the houses. But because of who lives here.

  I’ve been to this house once before, and as I walk up the steps to the porch, I check the time on my phone. I have a minute or so to wait and as I wait, my heart marches to a tune of nervousness and anticipation.

  Finally, I take a deep breath and knock. I’ve told myself I’ll count to one hundred before walking away. By the time I make it to twelve the door swings open.

  Standing there is Kurt Morelli.

  “Hello, Alice,” he says, and when he sees that I am smiling, he smiles, too.

  Things I Noticed About Kurt Morelli After He Started Tutoring Me

  • We’re just about the sam
e height, but he couldn’t look me in the eye for the first month that he tutored me. Because I made him so nervous.

  • He gave off the vibe of liking me the entire time—from the moment I got that note in my locker, which, by the way, I almost didn’t open because I thought it was going to be some rude, disgusting note complete with a gross cartoon of me. (It happened a couple of times.) But I did read the note, and I knew he liked me, but I also knew that he wouldn’t try anything. At least, I believed that initially. And anyway, I did need the help in math. Then that first night I thought maybe he assumed I was so slutty I would sleep with him in exchange for math help. After all, who else was lining up to sleep with Kurt Morelli? I still smile to myself when I think about his face when I accused him of that. He looked like he wanted to melt into a puddle under the kitchen table just hearing the words sleep with me come out of my mouth. And then when he told me he thought I just deserved someone to be nice to me, I knew that even if he did like me, he wasn’t going to try anything. And he never did.

  • He’s ridiculously smart. Like, ridiculously. I don’t understand probably 20 percent of the words he uses. One time I told him that, and he smiled and said that it came from reading too much. “Is there such a thing as reading too much?” I asked him. “No, I guess not,” he said, and he blushed again. In addition to being ridiculously smart, he is also a ridiculous blusher.

  • When he eats, he chews each bite exactly seven times. I don’t think he’s aware of this. I noticed it the night I bought us pizza and the day he had me over for grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s a little weird, I’ll grant you that. But it’s also sort of reassuring.

  • He is an incredible gift giver. I felt so stupid when I didn’t know what a first edition was, but when he told me, it made the copy of The Outsiders even better than I thought it was when I first opened it. I keep it on my nightstand and when I’m having an especially crappy day, like when I think even the teachers are looking at me weird, I open it up and I read the note Johnny wrote to Ponyboy on his death bed. The one where he tells him to stay gold.