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Alice on the Outside
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I wondered if I should start making a list—what’s in and what’s out. The thing was, I could see already that in some ways I was out.
ALICE McKINLEY LIKES HER LIFE, BUT SHE senses things are changing. She gets a little bored by her best friends Elizabeth and Pamela’s obsession with clothes and makeup. It’s just not that interesting to Alice. That’s okay, right? And what about her boyfriend, Patrick? She’s interested in him, very interested, but that doesn’t mean she knows how to keep their relationship going. It’s getting difficult for Alice to figure out how she feels about things—and then how that fits into what other people think she should be feeling.
Growing up is even trickier than Alice thought. Is she ready for the challenge?
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COVER DESIGN BY JESSICA HANDELMAN
COVER ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT © 2012 BY JULIA DENOS
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK
AGES 10–14 • 0312
PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR includes many of her own life experiences in the Alice books. She writes for both children and adults, and is the author of more than one hundred and thirty-five books, including the Alice series, which Entertainment Weekly has called “tender” and “wonderful.” In 1992 her novel Shiloh won the Newbery Medal. She lives with her husband, Rex, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and is the mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of Sophia, Tressa, Garrett, and Beckett.
Alice on the Outside
BOOKS BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR
Shiloh Books
Shiloh
Shiloh Season
Saving Shiloh
The Alice Books
Starting with Alice
Alice in Blunderland
Lovingly Alice
The Agony of Alice
Alice in Rapture, Sort Of
Reluctantly Alice
All But Alice
Alice in April
Alice In-Between
Alice the Brave
Alice in Lace
Outrageously Alice
Achingly Alice
Alice on the Outside
The Grooming of Alice
Alice Alone
Simply Alice
Patiently Alice
Including Alice
Alice on Her Way
Alice in the Know
Dangerously Alice
Almost Alice
Intensely Alice
Alice in Charge
Incredibly Alice
Alice Collections
I Like Him, He Likes Her
It’s Not Like I Planned It Way
Please Don’t Be True
The Bernie Magruder Books
Bernie Magruder and the Case of the Big Stink
Bernie Magruder and the
Disappearing Bodies
Bernie Magruder and the Haunted Hotel
Bernie Magruder and the Drive-thru Funeral Parlor
Bernie Magruder and the Bus Station Blowup
Bernie Magruder and the Pirate’s Treasure
Bernie Magruder and the Parachute Peril
Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry
The Cat Pack Books
The Grand Escape
The Healing of Texas Jake
Carlotta’s Kittens
Polo’s Mother
The York Trilogy
Shadows on the Wall
Faces in the Water
Footprints at the Window
The Witch Books
Witch’s Sister
Witch Water
The Witch Herself
The Witch’s Eye
Witch Weed
The Witch Returns
Picture Books
King of the Playground
The Boy with the Helium Head
Old Sadie and the Christmas Bear
Keeping a Christmas Secret
Ducks Disappearing
I Can’t Take You Anywhere
Sweet Strawberries
Please DO Feed the Bears
Books for Young Readers
Josie’s Troubles
How Lazy Can You Get?
All Because I’m Older
Maudie in the Middle
One of the Third-Grade Thonkers
Roxie and the Hooligans
Books for Middle Readers
Walking Through the Dark
How I Came to Be a Writer
Eddie, Incorporated
The Solomon System
The Keeper
Beetles, Lightly Toasted
The Fear Place
Being Danny’s Dog
Danny’s Desert Rats
Walker’s Crossing
Books for Older Readers
A String of Chances
Night Cry
The Dark of the Tunnel
The Year of the Gopher
Send No Blessings
Ice
Sang Spell
Jade Green
Blizzard’s Wake
Cricket Man
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1999 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Book design by Mike Rosamilia
The text for this book is set in Berkeley Old Style Book.
0212 OFF
First Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition March 2012
eISBN: 978-1-4391-1592-3
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.
Alice on the outside/Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Jean Karl book.”
Summary: Eighth-grader Alice has lots of questions about sex, relationships, prejudice, and change.
ISBN 978-0-689-80359-8 (hc)
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Sex—Fiction. 3. Prejudices—Fiction. 4. Single-parent families—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PS7.N24Ald 1999
[Fic]—dc21
98-7992
ISBN 978-1-4424-3495-0 (pbk)
For Isabelle Archibald
Contents
Chapter One: Teasing Sal
Chapter Two: Pillow Talk
Chapter Three: A Startling Announcement
Chapter Four: CRW
Chapter Five: Neck to Knees
Chapter Six: April Showers
Chapter Seven: Lori Haynes
Chapter Eight: A Slight Misunderstanding
Chapter Nine: Comparing Notes
Chapter Ten: Sunrise … Sunset
Chapter Eleven: The Dance
Preview: The Grooming of Alice
1
TEASING SAL
DAD SAYS IT’S THE DUMBEST THING HE
ever saw, but every year the Washington Post comes out with a list of what’s “in” and what’s “out”—movies, songs, food, clothes, TV programs, even people. It’s done sort of tongue in cheek, but I read it anyway.
“Al,” he says (he and Lester call me Al), “are you really going to let somebody else tell you what you should be eating and wearing and talking about? You’re not a zombie, remember. You’re an interesting girl with a brain of her own.”
I like my dad. I know kids who are always knocking their parents, but Dad manages to squeeze in a compliment even when he’s trying to teach me a lesson. I know if Mom were alive I’d love her, too, but she died when I was five.
“Imagine waking up some morning and finding out that everything in your closet and refrigerator was on the ‘out’ list,” said Pamela, when we were discussing the list. She and Elizabeth are two of my very best friends.
“Imagine waking up and finding your name on the ‘out’ list,” I said. “One day you’re part of the ‘in’ crowd, and the next you’re not.”
“Then they weren’t real friends to begin with,” said Elizabeth.
We were walking home from the library, enjoying the first faint feel of spring, a warm breeze that ruffled our hair. We were ready for spring—ready for something new. Elizabeth had a new boyfriend, Justin Collier, the absolutely handsomest guy in eighth grade. Elizabeth was the first one of us who had been invited to the eighth-grade semi-formal in May.
Pamela had already turned fourteen, and she was ready for anything too, especially anything that would take her away from the mess at home—namely, her mom’s running off to be with her NordicTrack instructor.
As for me, it was time to concentrate on where my own life was going. Miss Summers, my gorgeous seventh-grade English teacher whom my dad loves, is going to England for a year as an exchange teacher because she can’t decide between Dad and our assistant principal, Jim Sorringer, who’s in love with her too. After worrying about my dad’s love life for over a year, I decided it was out of my hands and I wasn’t going to waste any more of my life trying to work things out for him.
“Bring on the spring!” I said, lifting my face toward the sun and feeling it full on my cheeks and forehead. “Gwen says you can be a candy striper at the hospital once you’re fourteen. That’s what she’s going to do this summer.”
“Who’s Gwen?” asked Pamela.
“The short black girl in my math class.”
“Do they pay you?” she wanted to know.
“I don’t think so. It’s all volunteer.”
“I won’t be fourteen till December,” said Elizabeth. “I guess that leaves me out.”
“I’m not volunteering at any hospital! Who wants to empty bedpans all day?” said Pamela.
“I think candy stripers deliver magazines and mail and stuff,” I told her. But I could tell it still didn’t appeal much. Pamela was depressed enough without working in a hospital. Was it possible we’d each be doing something different come summer? It would be the first time since we’d known each other that we hadn’t spent the whole summer together, going over to each other’s houses almost every day.
“I’d rather think about the semi-formal,” said Pamela. “Summer’s still a long way off.”
“Who are you going with?” Elizabeth asked her. I was going with my boyfriend, Patrick, of course. A guy named Sam, in Camera Club, had asked me too, but Patrick’s been my boyfriend since sixth grade, so I guess it was Patrick and me for the dance.
“Aren’t you back with Mark?” I asked Pamela. “Aren’t you going with him?”
“I’m going to ask somebody new and different,” Pamela said. “I’m thinking of asking Donald Sheavers.”
“Donald Sheavers?” I gasped. My old boyfriend from Takoma Park, handsome as anything but dumb as a doorknob.
“Going steady is ‘out,’ Alice. Didn’t you know? Everybody goes out with everybody. In a group. And when you do go out with a guy alone, you mix it up. I mean, maybe you’ll go to a party with him and come home with someone else. You and Patrick have been going together so long you’re like an old married couple.”
“Hardly,” I said.
“It’s true! When you only go out with one guy, everyone assumes you’re having sex.”
“What?” Elizabeth cried.
“Oh, Pamela, that’s not true,” I said. Sometimes she really ticks me off. Pamela makes these statements like they’re true for everyone, and they’re not.
“Wait till you get to high school!” she said. “If you’re still going with Patrick then, I’ll bet kids will talk. Besides, how do you know you won’t like other guys better if you never try any of them?”
“I don’t know. I just hate giving up somebody I really like, that’s all,” I told her.
“You don’t give him up, that’s the point, Alice. You share him. And when you choose buffet, you can have something of everything!”
I rolled my eyes.
“How are you going to wear your hair for the dance?” Elizabeth asked me.
“On my head, as usual,” I said.
“I’m going to wear mine piled up on top,” she said.
“Now that’s out!” said Pamela. “Everyone says so. We’re all going together in the same car, aren’t we?”
“Yes! We pile in the car and see how many couples we can squeeze in. That’s ‘in.’ So I’ve heard, anyway,” said Elizabeth.
I wondered if I should start making a list—what’s in and what’s out. The thing was, I could see already that in some ways I was out. Whenever we read magazines together—Pamela, Elizabeth, and I—I want to turn past the articles on “shaping your brows” and “fabrics that flounce” and go to personality quizzes and stuff. Elizabeth and Pamela are sort of fixated on clothes and hair and makeup, I think. I can take about ten minutes of it, and then I’m bored out of my mind. They’ve already made phone calls back and forth about what they’ll wear to the dance and haven’t included me. Then I wonder if they talk about me behind my back—criticize the way I dress and everything. What will happen to us when we get to high school? I wonder. Who will be “in” and who will be “out”?
When I got home, Lester, my twenty-one-year-old brother, was making spaghetti sauce for dinner. I stood in the doorway watching him add the ingredients, and when he started to mash the garlic, I said, “That’s ‘out,’ Lester. Basil’s ‘in.’”
“Really?” said Les, and put it in anyway.
When Dad came to the table in a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, I told him those kinds of shirts were out.
“So?” said Dad. “Then I’ll have my own special look, won’t I?”
It was when I was breaking my breadstick into a dozen different pieces that I realized both Dad and Lester were staring at me.
“Feeding the birds?” asked Dad.
“No… .” I took my index finger and idly flicked each piece across my plate, then flicked them in the other direction. “I’m ready for a big change in my life, but not the kind that’s happening to me.”
“So what’s happening to you? Fangs at the full moon, or what?” asked Lester.
“Be serious,” I said to both of them. “I just realized that good things don’t stay the same. I mean, I can remember when Elizabeth and Pamela and I imagined us all getting summer jobs at the same place and going to the same college and all getting married around the same time and living in the same town. And already we’re thinking about doing entirely different things this summer.”
“Well, you’re not Siamese triplets,” Lester said. “You really will continue breathing on your own, you know.”
“It’s called ‘life,’ Al, and life is change,” Dad said.
“Not all change is good, though,” I told him.
“I know,” he said.
I started in on my spaghetti, but Lester always puts too many mushrooms in it for me. I like chunky spaghetti sauce with lots of meat in it, and Lester’s sort of slides its way down your throat.
/> “Life should be like a Coke machine,” I said. “You drop in your money and get the same drink over and over again. No surprises.”
“You’re absolutely profound,” said Lester. He’s a philosophy major in college, senior year. He switched over from business. “That would be as boring as boiled potatoes.”
“Someday it’s going to happen to you, Les,” I told him. “Marilyn’s not going to wait for you forever, you know. You can’t just go on ringing her number, thinking she’ll always be there. One of these times you’ll call up and find out she’s married.”
“She’s not the only woman in the world, Al,” Lester said, which was about the same thing Pamela had said about Patrick.
Something good happened after dinner. Aunt Sally called from Chicago and said that she and her daughter—my grown-up cousin Carol, who used to be married to a sailor—were coming to stay with us for five days. Carol would be attending a convention in Washington, D.C., so Aunt Sally was coming along, and she’d cook all our favorite dishes.
“That’s great!” I told her. I love having Carol around. She’s sophisticated and funny and knows absolutely everything I need to know about life and stuff. The one question I’ve always wanted to ask her is what it’s really, really like to have sex with a man. I couldn’t think of a single other person I could ask. I’d be too embarrassed to ask Marilyn Rawley, Lester’s girlfriend. Ditto Miss Summers. And I sure wasn’t going to ask Aunt Sally, because if she told me once that getting your period was like a moth becoming a butterfly, she’d probably say that sexual intercourse was like a deer getting antlers or something.
Elizabeth’s mother told her that sex between a husband and wife is beautiful, but “beautiful” doesn’t do anything for me. Pamela read in a magazine article that Niagara Falls, where a lot of couples go on their honeymoon, is a bride’s “second biggest disappointment,” meaning, of course, that intercourse is the first. So what does it feel like? I’ve always wondered. As good as a back rub? A kiss? Or is it more like a sneeze or hiccups?
“You’re sure you have room, now?” Aunt Sally was asking.
“Of course! Carol can sleep with me!” I told her.
“We’ll sleep wherever you put us. It will just be so good to see you all again,” said Aunt Sally.
I told Dad and Lester that they were coming, and Les was happy too, because he and Carol get along real well. She’s a few years older than he is, and they always kid around. Dad, though, didn’t exactly jump for joy, because Aunt Sally is Mom’s older sister, and she’s probably never quite forgiven him for wooing Mom away from a rich boyfriend named Charlie Snow, and all because Dad wrote such wonderful love letters.