The Truth About Alice (10 page)

“Academics aren't the problem,” I told her. “But, for example, talking to people. About the weather or sports or what have you. I can't do that. I'm not good at just talking.”

Alice's slight frown turned into a smile.

“Well, aren't we talking now?”

I flushed. “Yes, we are. We're talking about talking.”

“Talking about talking,” Alice repeated. Her smile grew a little more. My brain grasped at every corner of my head, searching for something to say, but I couldn't find anything.

After a moment of quiet, Alice said, “Should we get back to work?” Maybe she sensed my discomfort.

“Okay,” I said, grateful to be able to talk about polynomials again.

 

 

Then I got an idea. The holidays were around the corner, and I thought of a gift I wanted to get Alice. I have money to spend. Plenty, actually. My parents had been smart in their financial planning, and I'm well aware that my grandmother has a sizable amount with which to raise me. I could afford to be magnanimous. When I asked my grandmother for the money I'd need to buy the present, she asked me who it was for.

“Alice Franklin,” I said. I can't lie to my grandmother.

“Well,” my grandmother answered, “you never ask for anything, Kurt. So I suppose if you want to spend a hundred dollars on this gift, that's your choice.”

Would Alice think I was trying to purchase her affection? Maybe. But I searched around online and found what I wanted and bought it anyway, hoping for the best possible outcome. Which is to say, I hoped that Alice Franklin would love her present.

I was scheduled to go to Alice's house on a Thursday evening. But I hadn't realized that that particular Thursday was Brandon Fitzsimmons's seventeenth birthday. Rather, it would have been had he lived. And with this birthday, Healy High plummeted into full grieving mode once again. Brandon's locker was covered with balloons in the school colors and girls started crying in class and lessons were suspended so people could talk about their feelings with a grief counselor that the principal brought in specifically for the occasion.

I hadn't seen Alice at all that day, and when I showed up at her house with my gift in hand, she answered the door, and I knew right away she'd been drinking. There was the smell of beer on her breath, her cheeks were red, and her smile was lopsided and generous. If I wasn't mistaken, her eyes looked as if she'd been crying.

“Hey, Kurt,” she said. She sort of slid toward the kitchen where there was no spiral notebook or Algebra II textbook or sharpened yellow pencils. There
was
a can of Lone Star beer on the counter. She took a sip from it with her perfect lips.

“It's what my mother drinks. Isn't it gross? But whatever.”

“Oh,” I said, unsure of what to do or think.

“Do you want one?” Alice asked me.

“Okay,” I said.

I took a fresh can from her and leaned in for a sip, and for a moment my mind sped back to the last time I drank beer. To a warm Saturday night at the very beginning of fall. Then my mind slipped to the thing I wanted to tell Alice Franklin.

 

 

It was a Saturday night in the very early fall, not long into junior year. I was up late, reading in my bedroom. It was around one in the morning. Sometimes I suffer from insomnia, but I've come to embrace it over the years because it gives me time to stay up and read. And I've discovered I can actually get by with four or five hours of sleep. I'm lucky that way.

I had the window open. In Healy, you could do that. It was a hot Texas night, but my grandmother loves to turn off the air conditioning during the evenings and open the windows instead. She says it's good for a body to breathe the fresh night air. I'm assuming it's also good for the electric bill.

“Kurt, hey.
Kurt!”

It was a very loud whisper that actually came out louder than simply speaking in a normal tone of voice. I thought perhaps I'd started to drift off and hear things, but then it came at me again, straight through the open window.

“
Kurt Morelli, do you hear me?
”

I pulled on my sweat pants and headed to the window. Across the way I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons balancing himself on the roof of his house, just outside his bedroom. He was drinking a can of beer and calling my name.

I put my finger to my mouth to shush him and ventured downstairs, creeping as quietly as I could. When I made it outside, I stared up at Brandon from the ground.

“Morelli,” he said, this time not whispering but sort of burping in the middle of uttering my last name. He was drunk. Obviously.

“Fitzsimmons,” I answered. “Knackered again, I see.”

“If knackered is smart boy talk for lit to the tits, then yeah, I am. Morelli, what I love about you is you always shoot straight with me. You don't beat around the bush. You see I'm drunk and you tell me I'm drunk. You see the lights of the moon shining down upon you, and you say hi to the moon.”

“I haven't said hi to the moon. You're simply incredibly intoxicated.”

“Come up man, just come up.”

I shrugged my shoulders and headed toward the back of Brandon's house to get the ladder the Fitzsimmons keep next to the garage. Starting in the eighth or ninth grade, Brandon had had me up on the roof a few times in the late night hours, so I knew where it was. I laughed to myself as I imagined the rest of the Healy High population catching a glimpse of the highest- and lowest-ranked men in the Healy High hierarchy sitting next to one another on a roof, talking. At school, Brandon didn't acknowledge me unless it was to make fun of my size or my grades. Truthfully, he did it so good-naturedly I couldn't really mind. I mean, he called me a poindexter and he grinned when he did it. It was almost quaint.

“Wanna beer?” He slipped his hand inside his bedroom window and handed me one. I opened it.

“Wow, Morelli, I didn't know you had it in you.”

“It's beer, not cyanide.”

“What's cyanide?”

“A poison. Members of the Jonestown cult consumed it in mass quantities on the order of their leader, Jim Jones. They all died immediately after.”

“
Jesus
, Morelli, where do you get this crap?” Brandon said, taking a sip and grinning.

I smiled to myself with satisfaction. Ever since we'd been young children, Brandon had enjoyed exploring my collection of unusual facts and figures. He would always remind me of that time when we were quite young and I convinced his mother that the roof was structurally sound enough to play on by explaining to her the concept of compressive strength. I could tell he was impressed with my intelligence even if he never admitted it out loud.

Now, despite our occasional nighttime conversations and Brandon's interest in the inner-workings of my brain, Brandon wasn't my secret friend or any such nonsense. I knew this, even at the time. He was my neighbor, a person who had been in my life since kindergarten. He was Brandon Fitzsimmons, and I was Kurt Morelli, and for reasons I'm not certain of but could speculate on, he enjoyed talking to me. Perhaps because there was no one else he felt he could tell his secrets and stories to. Perhaps because I humored him. Perhaps because I lived next door.

And I suppose, on some level, I enjoyed speaking to him. Or at least listening to what he had to tell me.

So we talked.

Why did I enjoy listening to him? Brandon was so incredibly different from me in almost every possible way—except for the fact that we were both males living in Healy—that it was almost like anthropological research sitting on the roof next to him, listening to him tell me about his exploits and his adventures and his problems. It provided me insight into a radically different kind of life. I believe I may be the only person in the town of Healy who knows that once during a big game he wet his pants out of anxiety. And that the Geometry teacher passed him even though he turned in every single test and quiz completely blank because his status as Healy High quarterback was simply that important. Or that he often forgot the difference between his right and his left. (One night I showed him a trick to help him remember—that his left hand made the shape of a letter
L
—and for this he was quite grateful.)

And so I admit to having enjoyed these evenings. Evenings like that fall night with Brandon drunk and me just drinking. And I was enjoying that particular evening so much that I even started a second beer.

“So where were you this fine Saturday night?” I asked after listening to Brandon complain about how tired he was from that afternoon's game and how much of a blowhard Coach Hendricks could be at times.

“Hanging out at the Healy High parking lot. It was incredible. Just amazing.” He was being sarcastic, I realized.

“Being fawned on by your adoring public?”

“I don't understand what you're saying, Morelli. Talk slower.” He shoved me with his shoulder.

“I mean, were you getting lots of attention from people in the parking lot? Since you are, after all, Brandon Fitzsimmons.”

Brandon laughed and sucked down the rest of his beer.

“I suppose this is when I should tell you that it's not all that it's cracked up to be, being the most popular junior in the school, right? That I just want to be understood and shit.”

“So, it isn't all it's cracked up to be?” I asked, honestly curious.

Brandon slowly nodded his head in the affirmative, and a sad expression spread on his face. Then he suddenly broke up laughing. “No, man,” he told me. “It's pretty awesome, I have to say. I know that makes me sound like a dick, but it is. People love me. I can do no wrong. Chicks love me. Dudes want to be me. Except maybe for you.”

I thought about the latest rumor just out around the school involving him and the gorgeous Alice Franklin, and I thought otherwise. So, perhaps emboldened by the beer, I said, “Well, what about Alice Franklin? I heard about the two of you and Elaine's party. I wouldn't mind getting to know her, in the Biblical sense.”

Brandon didn't say anything for a moment, then shook his head and chuckled just a bit to himself.

“You mean, you'd like to bang Alice?”

“Well, I don't know if I'd use the phrase
bang
, perhaps, but she's quite a foxy young lady.”

“Morelli, I think you're buzzed,” Brandon said.

“I think I am, too,” I said.

It was quiet for a little while on the roof, and then, out of nowhere, Brandon burped loudly. Then he said, “I didn't do her, you know.”

I'd almost forgotten for a moment what we'd been talking about. Then I remembered. Alice Franklin.

“You mean,” I said, “You … did … I mean, people are saying—”

“People are saying that I screwed her and then Tommy Cray screwed her. Yeah, man, I know what people are saying because I told them in the first place! Come on, Morelli. Catch up here.”

“But you didn't, uh, bang her?”

“Nope,” he said. “Didn't. Bang. Alice.”

“Did Tommy?”

“Nope. Not him either.”

“So why…?” I was confused. At this point, people had already started treating Alice differently at school, in small but obvious ways. Like not sitting with her as often during lunch. Or laughing when she walked into class.

“Morelli, I don't know why the hell I do the things I do sometimes, if you want to know the truth,” Brandon said, and he burped again. “I wanted to get with her that night and she wouldn't get with me. Led me on and then told me she didn't want to fool around. Pissed me off. She should be happy to get with me. Most girls are. Take Maggie Daniels, right? She's a little chunky for my tastes, but Maggie Daniels would give her left arm to be with me. Of course then I wouldn't want to be with her because she wouldn't have both arms, and I'm not some kind of pervert.” Brandon laughed at his own joke, but I didn't.

“Is Alice the first girl to refuse your advances?” I asked, and I felt a bit strange inside, like the house had suddenly tilted a bit.

“Yup,” Brandon said. “That's the truth. I never had a girl say no before. And it made me angry. So I said I did her and Tommy did, too. Sort of to get her to see that she shouldn't have said no.”

“But what about Tommy?” I asked.

“I knew Tommy would be going back to college,” Brandon answered “He wouldn't be around to deny it.”

I thought of how to explain to Brandon in a way he would understand. “But she's getting so much …
shit
for this. You're aware of that, right? I mean, everyone thinks this is true.”

Brandon rolled his eyes. “Elaine O'Dea and her whole crew, spreading it around to everyone in creation. But it'll pass. This stuff always does. Give it a week or a month and everyone will forget about it.”

I simply could not believe what I was hearing. Never did I think Brandon would have lied about something like that. But he had lied. And what was more, I could tell this utterance on the roof wasn't meant as some revelation or even omission of guilt. I don't think that Brandon had that level of depth. In his mind, he was merely entertaining me as he usually did with stories about what it was like to be Brandon Fitzsimmons.

We finished our beers wordlessly, and then Brandon said he needed to go to bed.

“Morelli, you're not going to tell anyone about our little secret, right?” he asked, turning around to slide into his room. “I have a reputation to uphold, you know.” When he said this, he put his hand on his chest like he was saying the pledge and grinned at me widely.

“Who would I tell?” I answered.

 

 

That was the last time I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons alive. The next afternoon as I was helping my grandmother weed her garden, we saw Officer Daniels pull up in front of our house in his official Healy Police Department vehicle.