The Truth About Alice (6 page)

“It's such a pleasure to teach you, to talk with you,” he continued. “You have a gifted mind.” He leaned back in his chair, his arms behind his head, and I could see the yellowing stains on his shirt, under his arms. If Mr. Becker knew they were there, he didn't seem to care. Nor did he seem to care that he was almost completely bald and had pockmarks on his cheeks from bad acne, or that he had several unknowable stains on his tie.

I have a gifted mind, all right. I know enough to know that I do not want to turn out like Mr. Becker. And I know enough to know that to ask Mr. Becker about how to talk to Alice would be more complicated than discussing quantum gravity. I get the sense Mr. Becker doesn't know how to talk to girls either.

Girls were still on my mind as I exited Mr. Becker's room after school. Well, truth be told there was only one girl on my mind, and as I stepped out into the hallway magically there she was, as alive and real and beautiful as she is in all of my dreams. Alice Franklin. She was standing in the doorway of Mr. Commons' classroom, her lovely frame covered in that bulky sweatshirt. Only she didn't have the hood pulled up as she often does, and her gamine haircut caught my eye first. Her neck was so amazingly swanlike I had to look away.

I tried to make myself seem preoccupied by leaning down and tying my shoe. Such a predictable move, I realize, but it worked in that I was able to listen as Mr. Commons spoke aggressively with Alice about a paper she was holding in her hand.

“No, there is no extra credit in my class, Alice,” he was saying as I untied my tied shoe and retied it again. “I realize a 63 is going to kill your average, sweetheart, but you need to focus more in class.” Mr. Commons did not say the word
sweetheart
in a comforting, reassuring manner. Rather, the way he said it reminded me of a mob boss in a bad movie. It was condescending.

“Okay, fine,” Alice said, her voice small with only a trace of spunk or life left in it. I waited for Mr. Commons to offer help or tutoring, but I knew that wasn't going to happen. When I took his Algebra II class as a freshman, he thought it was fun to make me get up at the board and teach the subject's basic principles so he could relax at his desk. (I'm certain that piece of information makes it quite clear why I have no friends at Healy High.) I even waited for Mr. Commons to address the possibility that what had happened to Alice this year was having an impact on her grades. That perhaps becoming the Slut Who Killed the Star Quarterback was making it difficult to focus on her studies. But he didn't mention it. I'm sure he knew about it. But I doubt he cared. Maybe he was even glad Alice was failing his class. After all, he is one of the assistants to the football coach.

Alice walked past me. I remained bent over like a deformed hobgoblin maniacally focused on its shoe. I didn't know if she even realized I was there, but that night, sitting in my bedroom, I got an idea. It came to me in such a rush—in as much of a rush as my thoughts about quantum gravity and game theory come to me—but this thought was much more exciting. It was the thought that could change everything.

But I had to ask myself—did I want to change everything? In truth I was quite happy with things the way they were. Perhaps the better word would be satisfied. I had worked out a system of living in Healy that provided me with a relatively calm existence where I was mostly left alone to do as I wished, and I enjoyed that peaceful sense of being. Sure, I had experienced the clichés of high school life that someone of my social standing is usually forced to endure—jocks calling me a nerd in the hallways or making perverted gestures at me when I spoke in class, pretty girls rolling their eyes when I asked too many questions of the teacher—but over time even those elements of my life had faded as the community simply became accustomed to me and I to them. I was Kurt Morelli, space alien from another planet who had been granted temporary residency in their world. I had my routines: my evenings were spent reading or chatting online about science and literature with some of the university students and professors from my coursework, my Saturday afternoons watching history documentaries with my grandmother. And there was even Mr. Becker to chat with at school. In another year and a half I would be gone and in college. Why change anything?

And then I remembered Alice Franklin's tremendous knees and beautiful face and the way she cried on the bleachers after school that day. And I remembered everything I knew about her. I remembered until my comfortable cocoon started to feel slightly claustrophobic, and I knew I simply had to follow through with my idea before I chickened out. So before I lost the little nerve I had, I ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook and spent an hour drafting until I wrote the following:

Alice,

I'm wondering if you would be interested in some tutoring help in Algebra II. I remember helping you with your Geometry homework last year, and I thought perhaps you'd still like the help. If so, just let me know. I'm happy to assist you as math is one of my strongest subjects.

Sincerely,

Kurt Morelli

This morning I folded the paper in half and slid it through the vent in Alice's locker. And I began to wait.

Elaine

I know I'm pretty. I'm not gorgeous like some movie star, but I'm pretty. I'm noticeable. I've got long, dark blonde hair that I don't have to wash every day, and it still turns out nice. (Of course I still wash it every day.) I have green eyes, which makes me stand out in a cool way instead of a weird way. I'm 5
′
5
″
which seems like the perfect height for a girl, because I'm not going to tower over some guy but I'm also not going to be so short that a basketball player feels weird asking me out. And my skin has always been really clear to the point where I'm actually sort of freaked out that I'm going to wake up one morning with fifty enormous zits on my face just because I'm overdue.

The one thing is my body. I'm curvy. I've got sort of big boobs (not crazy big or whatever, but big enough that by fifth grade I definitely needed a bra). My butt is sort of big, too, or I guess you would say it's really round, but in my best moments I don't really think that's such a bad thing. I actually think I have a pretty good body.

I mean, if I didn't, I don't think I would have so many boys always wanting to ask me out or come to my parties. Including The Party.

It was actually sort of a last-minute thing, and months later I still think about how everything that happened this fall happened because of this random party I never even anticipated throwing. Even that afternoon, I wasn't planning on throwing one. I walked downstairs to find something to eat and I found my mother in the kitchen, staring into the refrigerator like she was waiting for the orange juice to talk back.

“Elaine,” she said, pulling out a plastic bag full of grapes (Weight Watchers points
=
0) and digging around for some, “you know what I'm thinking?”

I rolled my eyes because I totally knew what was coming.

“You want to join Weight Watchers again,” I told her.

“How did you guess?” she said, which is so ridiculous because how could I not guess? Every time my mother stares into the refrigerator like a prisoner of war about to be shot, it's time to go back to Weight Watchers. Every time my mother whines about her jeans being too tight, it's time to go back to Weight Watchers. Every time we order a pizza and my mother picks up a third slice and then puts it down and then picks it back up and eats it with a frown on her face, it's time to go back to Weight Watchers.

If my mother goes back to Weight Watchers, I have to go back to Weight Watchers. It's been that way since I was fourteen, and I hate it.

My mother has lost the same twenty pounds so many times I could make an entire extra mom out of all the pounds if you added them up. I've lost the same ten pounds just as many times, and I know from the way my mom is staring at those grapes what's coming. Meetings on Saturday mornings where I have to sit and listen to some old lady talk about her Greek yogurt (Weight Watchers points
=
3) or how she can't find time to work out even though she's totally retired. Weighing in behind a curtain and trying to hold my breath in case it makes me weigh less. Calculating the points of everything I eat so that I can't even look at a Snickers bar without doing high level algebra (Weight Watchers points
=
8).

Then my mom will take all our special Weight Watchers food and use a black Sharpie to label it with point values and store it on one shelf in the fridge and one shelf in the cabinet, and if she's feeling totally nuts, she might even put a Post-it note on the shelves that says “MOM'S AND ELAINE'S SPECIAL FOOD—DON'T TOUCH!” which is totally stupid seeing as the only other person who lives in the house is my dad and he wouldn't touch our SPECIAL FOOD even if it meant the Healy Tigers were guaranteed a winning football season for the rest of his natural life.

“So, honey, will you come with me?” my mother asked. “This time I know I'm gonna keep it off.”

I poured myself a huge bowl of Corn Flakes and then went to the sugar bowl and dumped half of it on top of my cereal (Weight Watchers points
=
Who freaking cares).

“Mom, do I have to?”

“Elaine, it's so much more fun when we go together, you know that. And you want to watch your figure, too, babe. Dance squad is starting up again in the fall, and you don't want to look funny in your uniform in front of everyone.”

Funny as in fat.

“Okay,” I said, and I jammed a spoonful of milk and sugar into my mouth and let all the sugar dissolve, like a real slow goodbye.

Then my mom told me she and my dad were going over to her sister's place in Dove Lake for dinner and they'd just end up spending the night and did I want to come? Which meant she and my dad were probably going to drink too many beers and wouldn't want to drive the twenty miles back to Healy.

“No, I think I'll just stay here. Can I have some people over?”

My mother popped a grape into her mouth and eyed me.

“You mean like a party?”

“No, I mean like people.”

My mom isn't dumb. True, she's given Weight Watchers so much money it probably could have paid for my college education by now, but she's not dumb about most things. She went to Healy High and she knows there isn't anything to do around here except drive to the Healy High parking lot and drink beer, so maybe she figured it would be better if we just drank the beer in our living room.

“Elaine, I just don't want it to get too crazy, okay? And nobody goes into the bedrooms. This is strictly a family room and kitchen affair. And nobody leaves drunk.”

“Okay, fine,” I said, and I knew she knew she owed me one because I was going to do Weight Watchers with her again.

I finished my cereal and went upstairs and texted the usual suspects and told them to come over around 9 o'clock that night and invite whoever, and I figured out who could get alcohol. I talked on the phone with some of my girlfriends about what to wear, I texted Kelsie Sanders back and told her not to worry if she was too sick to make it because it would probably be boring anyway, and I read Brandon Fitzsimmons's texts asking me if I had enough beer lined up. I texted back that we could always use more, then briefly entertained the idea of messing around with him at the party. We were totally off again at that point, but still, sometimes it was just fun to mess around. I really couldn't understand how my mother thought I was too fat when I had a serious history with the hottest and most popular guy in the school. Besides, guys like curvy girls. It always says so in
Glamour
.

 

 

At 9:30 p.m. everyone was there. By everyone I mostly mean the twenty to thirty people in the upcoming junior class and the twenty to thirty people in the upcoming senior class who were cool enough to be invited to my party. There was also a handful of former Healy High students who were heading back to college in a couple of days, so that's why Tommy Cray was there. And, last and certainly least, there were a few token upcoming sophomores who were probably the coolest kids in
their
class, which is why they were invited to my party, and they were sitting around sort of nervously sipping their beers like they couldn't believe they were actually lucky enough to be there.

“Elaine, where do your parents keep the whiskey?” Josh Waverly said to me from the kitchen. I could only hear his voice, not see him.

“They don't drink whiskey,” I said, which is a lie. I'd taken all the hard liquor and hidden it in the attic. If I didn't want my mom to kill me, we had to stick to the cans of Natty Light and Bud Light that people stole from their parents' refrigerators.

“Aw, Elaine, you know you're lying. Where did you hide the whiskey?” Josh whined. “I really need some whiskey.” You could tell he was already kind of drunk.

“You need to get laid,” Brandon Fitzsimmons said from the couch where he was drinking his fourth beer. For a second I remember the first time we did it in my room during winter break of tenth grade. Even now I remember everything cute about him. How he was so cut, clear-skinned, clear-eyed, with that perfect jock attitude that I love. Like he could win the Super Bowl and make out with me for hours in the same day.

“What the hell do you know about getting laid?” some dumb sophomore football player said, walking into the room with no shirt on and fat free Reddi-wip sprayed all over his bare chest in the shape of a penis. I mean he had honest to God squirted on balls and a big dick right there on his chest. (Weight Watchers points for fat free Reddi-wip
=
0!)

“Oh my God,” my friend Maggie said, hiding under a throw pillow, but you could tell she was loving it just like everyone at the party.