The Truth About Alice (7 page)

As for me, I had a couple of beers—enough that I was buzzed but not wasted, having fun but not totally out of control. I wandered from kitchen to living room to backyard deck, talking to people and getting the latest gossip and going to get another beer, etc. At one point I spotted Alice Franklin in the corner with Brandon. She was sitting on his lap and laughing. I mean, honestly. Sitting on his lap? For a split second I remembered the eighth grade dance when Brandon and I had been
on again
and I'd found out the two of them were fooling around in the coat closet. Tonight she was wearing a tight raspberry T-shirt that made her raspberry lips look brighter and her perfect boobs look bigger. Alice was just as pretty as she had been in eighth grade. Prettier, actually.

I wanted to smack her.

I pushed her and Brandon out of my mind and drank another beer. I followed Maggie out to the porch and took a drag of someone's cigarette. It was getting late when I decided I should try to keep an eye on what was going on upstairs. It was actually turning into a pretty crowded party even if it wasn't approaching teen movie party status, and I was freaking out that people would end up having sex in my parents' bedroom. Before everyone arrived, I'd shut the door and taped a sign on it that said “STAY OUT OR YOU'LL NEVER GET INVITED TO ANOTHER PARTY,” but signs don't always work with drunk people.

Upstairs was cool and quiet compared to the level of noise downstairs. The floorboards squeaked under the new carpet my parents had put in all the bedrooms at the beginning of the summer. The chemical smell was still hanging in the air. I knocked on my parents' bedroom door and then slowly opened it. Empty and dark. Their bed was made up nice and neat, and the hall light shone onto my mom's stack of
O
magazines sitting carefully on her nightstand.

Then I heard voices coming from my room. I headed down the hall and opened it without knocking this time, and I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons sitting on my bed. Standing next to the bed was Alice Franklin. She had this weird, uncomfortable look on her face.

“Hey, Elaine,” she said with this little gasp, like she was wishing I hadn't just walked in on her.

Then I noticed Brandon was holding a notebook open on his lap, and he was reading from it with a smirk on his face.

“When I had to start wearing a bra in fifth grade, my mom told me it was a blessing,” he read out loud in a sing-song voice, like he was trying to sound like a girl. “My butt is pretty round, I know, but I think I look good in clothes.” Then he looked up from the book to my face. “Damn, girl, I know that's true. But you look good without them, too.”

Brandon was reading from my diary—the black-and-white composition book I keep under the mattress. Usually. Only I must have left it out or he found it or something because he was reading from it. Out loud. In front of Alice. In front of me.

My off-again, on-again, off-again guy—the guy I had lost my virginity to—was reading about my fat butt.

Brandon continued, “I've gotten naked in front of the mirror and really looked at myself, and I don't think I look bad that way either.”

Oh my God.

“Give me that!” I screamed, and I reached for it, but Brandon grabbed my wrist and wrestled me to the bed. He was so strong he could hold me down with one hand and still keep the open book in the other.

“I know I have big boobs but so do all the women in our family, including my mom,” he read, his eyebrows popping. “Your mom has big tits? I'll have to look next time!” He was laughing that big, loud, so-sure-of-himself jock laugh that I normally loved but right then made me sick. He tossed the book aside and pinned me down, his hands on my wrists, his knees pressing up along my outer thighs. I couldn't move if I tried. I'd done it with him here, on this very bed, and that had been nice. Sweet even. But this Brandon was scary as hell.

“Let me check out your big tits,” he said, gasping for air. “You know I've seen 'em before.” He was totally, ridiculously drunk. His face was super red, and little drops of sweat were seeping out around his hairline. And Alice Franklin was just standing there next to us like she'd paid to watch a show or something.

Finally she said, “Brandon, let's just go.” Her voice sounded really small and embarrassed.

Brandon looked me in the eyes, and for the tiniest, weirdest second they were just … empty. Like there was nothing there. No emotion, no feeling, nothing. And then a second after that it was like he'd decided I'd bored him or something. He pushed off of me and stood up, the bed bouncing under me once or twice, the coils of my mattress squeaking like mice.

“Come on, Elaine,” he said, his trademark cute football player face returning. “You know I love you, sweetheart.”

“Elaine, I'm sorry,” Alice said, and she leaned over and picked up my notebook which Brandon threw on the floor.

“What is this?” I said, taking the notebook and motioning at the two of them with disgust. “Eighth grade part two?” Brandon stumbled out of the room, taking Alice's hand, and she followed him.

I stayed in my room for what felt like forever, completely and totally too embarrassed to go downstairs. What if Brandon and Alice told everybody what I'd written? I took my diary and jammed it in my closet on the top shelf, hiding it under the box of report cards and school projects my mom had made me keep. I never wanted to see it again.

I kept waiting for someone to come up and find me, but not even any of my best girlfriends did. I must have nodded off or something because suddenly I woke up and looked at the clock: 12:45 a.m. Shit. I said a quick little prayer that the downstairs wasn't trashed.

It was. There were bottles and cans everywhere, and I could see a corner by the television where someone had spilled an entire can of beer and hadn't even tried to clean it up. My head was totally pounding and my entire body felt fuzzy.

I decided I'd never have another party.

“Where were you?” my friend Maggie said from the corner of the couch where she was curled up, her head in Josh Waverly's lap. Josh was fooling around with his phone. There were a few other kids around, most of them sipping what was left of the beer or sleeping or watching MTV on low volume.

I saw Brandon Fitzsimmons sitting on the floor, his back against a wall, his phone in his lap. He was still wasted, his eyes staring out at nothing. Alice wasn't anywhere to be seen.

“I fell asleep,” I said, picking up a few bottles to take to the kitchen. “Y'all are gonna have to leave or help me clean up.”

As I headed for the trash, I heard a yelp from Josh Waverly.

“Are you serious, dude?!”

I carefully placed the bottles on top of the mountain of bottles already in the trash can and headed back into the living room. Josh was looking at his phone and then looked across the room at Brandon, who had half a grin pasted on his face. He shot his eyebrows up twice, real quick.

Josh asked something again about Brandon being serious.

Brandon shot his eyebrows up twice again and grinned all the way this time.

“What the hell?” Maggie said, and she reached up from Josh's lap and grabbed his phone to see what had caught Josh's attention. Then she called Brandon a pervert.

“What are you freaking out about?” I asked, and I glanced over Josh's shoulder at the text that had just arrived from Brandon.

tommy and me banged alice franklin upstairs.

That was all it said. Seven words that would change everything.

I read the text from Brandon again.

tommy and me banged alice franklin upstairs.

“Who went first?” Josh asked with a snort, and for a second I thought Josh was grossed out, but then he grinned at Brandon like Brandon had just thrown him a touchdown pass.

“Dude! Like you even have to ask?” Brandon answered, holding both his arms out wide like he was preparing to accept all the praise he had coming to him.

Maggie rolled her eyes and she pulled out her phone to start texting. All of Healy High would know what was up by sunrise.

 

 

By the time school started a few weeks later, it was all everyone talked about. How Alice Franklin slept with two guys in one night in my guest bedroom. Two guys in one HOUR. The thought of it was enough to make me want to puke. Honestly, what kind of girl does that?

I just kept picturing her at the party, sitting in Brandon's lap and looking all perfect, and I kept picturing her standing there next to Brandon as he read from my diary, her skinny, cute body with the amazing boobs and butt. She was probably totally enjoying making fun of me when Brandon found the notebook. I could picture her making him read it out loud. And then she actually pretended to be sorry when I walked in. She even picked it up off the floor and gave it back to me.

And then she went and did it with two dudes in one night.

Seriously. Here's a girl who messes around with a guy when that guy is
on again
with another girl, and here's a girl who sleeps with two guys in one night, and here's a girl who messes around with random dudes at the pool. I mean, it's like she's just this insult to girls.

And even though she acted like nothing was up, how could she NOT have known everyone was talking about her behind her back? I mean, even the incoming freshmen knew what went down.

Dude, did you hear about that junior girl Alice and the two guys at that party?

That junior girl Alice slept with Brandon Fitzsimmons and that other guy this summer.

OMG that Alice Franklin girl is so slutty!

Even the adults started talking about it. One Saturday when we were on the way home from another Weight Watchers meeting, my mom turned to me when we were at a stoplight and all of a sudden asked, “I keep hearing these stories about Alice Franklin. Are they true?”

“That girl is a total slut,” I said.

My mom gripped the wheel and told me not to use that word, but then she started asking me all these questions, and I told her what I could. I thought my mom was going to be really pissed that all this went down in our house, but you could tell she was way more interested in what everybody was saying about Alice and did Alice's mom know and blah blah blah.

At the Weight Watchers meeting she'd gained two pounds, so maybe she just wanted to take her mind off everything with some super crazy gossip, but I had a feeling my mom would have been interested even if she hadn't gained weight.

And then Brandon Fitzsimmons died.

The news that Brandon died spread faster than the news about Alice, and the news that he crashed his car because Alice was sending him gross texts spread even faster than that. Nobody knew what the texts said exactly, but we figured they were disgusting and they were desperate, and of course they had to be both of those things because they were coming from Alice Franklin, who didn't come to school for a week after the news got out about what she had done.

Healy High freaked out after Brandon died—everyone was crying in the hallways and the English teachers tried to get us to write about our emotions and everyone wore ribbons with the school colors for, I don't know, a week. They brought in grief counselors, and the next game against Dominion was, like, mandatory attendance for the entire town. They hung a banner reading “BRANDON FITZSIMMONS * HEALY HIGH TIGER FOREVER” at the front entrance of the stadium, and Brandon's parents came out onto the field during halftime and announced the Brandon Fitzsimmons Scholarship Fund, and Josh Waverly was in his uniform on the sidelines even though he couldn't play yet. Even the players from Dominion bowed their heads during the moment of silence, and it was almost like they let us win. That they knew how bad it would look if we lost to them.

 

 

Alice came back to school eventually, of course.

It was weird how we were all sort of connected after Brandon died—the ribbons with the school colors, the moment of silence at the all-school assembly, the stories in the paper that people cut out and put up in their lockers. Even after all of that sort of calmed down, people still needed something to hang on to. I mean, things were kinda back to normal—the cafeteria ladies asked us if we wanted a fruit cup or a yogurt, the janitors dumped the pink powder on top of people's puke, the teachers gave out their boring homework assignments and their pop quizzes about nothing we'll ever actually need in real life—but I think people needed something that made them feel, I don't know … like we were all still in it together.

So we picked on Alice Franklin. A nobody, a slut, a killer.

 

 

And then the craziest thing happened this afternoon. Maggie and me and some of our other girlfriends were sitting in the bathroom cutting French class or Chemistry class or whatever class we had that period. I was sort of trying not to think about the fact that I was starving because I'd only had a granola bar for lunch. Kelsie Sanders was with us. Now I could sort of tell that Kelsie was feeling really super tentative about hanging out with us—I mean, she was Alice's best friend. I think she was worried that maybe we wouldn't accept her, but Kelsie's always been cool with me. She's always been super sweet and everything. You could just tell, though, that she was thinking that any second we were going to tell her to get lost. Like the way she hesitated before talking. Or the way she laughed a little too hard at everything I said. It's weird, the feeling of power you get sometimes when you're popular, but I guess I try to use my power for good, not evil. So I've been letting Kelsie Sanders hang out with us.

Anyway, so this afternoon we were all sitting there talking about whatever when Kelsie suddenly said all dramatically, “Okay, so I have to tell you something. About Alice.”

“What, she did it with the entire football team last weekend?” I said, fishing in my purse for my lipstick.

“No, it's way worse. I think she got an … abortion.”