Alice in the Know Read online

  Bummer Summer

  It’s the summer before junior year, and Alice is looking forward to three months of fun, excitement, and good times with her friends. Instead, she finds herself with a boring job at the mall and more real-life problems than she could have imagined. Lester’s romance with the woman of his dreams ends unhappily, a good friend is battling cancer, and the gang at Mark Stedmaster’s pool is into some stuff that’s more than Alice wants to deal with. It’s certainly not the summer Alice fantasized about, but she learns a lot along the way.

  Here’s what fans write Phyllis Reynolds Naylor about Alice:

  * “Please, please, please, I’m begging,

  never EVER stop writing them!” —Ellie

  * “My family thought I was rather insane because

  I was laughing so hard.” —thesoundofair

  * Taken from actual postings on the Alice website.

  Share the ups and downs in the lives of Alice McKinley and her friends.

  Look inside for a complete list of the Alice books.

  SIMON PULSE

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover photograph copyright © 2007

  by Johnathan Smith/Cordaiy Photo

  Library Ltd/Corbis

  www.SimonSchuster.com

  0907

  Alice in the Know

  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 ln-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

  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

  Roxie and the Hooligans

  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

  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 the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2006 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction

  in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks

  of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

  Designed by Ann Zeak

  The text of this book was set in Berkeley Old Style.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.

  Alice in the know / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Alice fills the summer before her junior year of high school

  with a job at the mall, hanging out with her friends,

  and wishing she had a bigger family.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87092-7 (hc)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-87092-2 (hc)

  (1. Family life—Maryland—Fiction. 2. Stories, Retail—Fiction.

  3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Maryland—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.N39689Ali 2006

  [Fic]—dc22

  2005020514

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87093-4 (pbk)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-87093-0 (pbk)

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-1550-3(eBook)

  To my granddaughter Sophia, with love

  Contents

  Chapter One: Hired

  Chapter Two: Dinner for Three

  Chapter Three: Busted

  Chapter Four: Extreme Mortification

  Chapter Five: Facing Up

  Chapter Six: Planning

  Chapter Seven: What Happened on Wednesday

  Chapter Eight: Utter Humiliation

  Chapter Nine: Talk

  Chapter Ten: Families

  Chapter Eleven: Sad

  Chapter Twelve: Sun and Sand

  Chapter Thirteen: Lost

  Chapter Fourteen: Living Dangerously

  Chapter Fifteen: Songs with Aunt Sally

  Chapter Sixteen: Junior Year

  Chapter Seventeen: Party

  Chapter Eighteen: And Life Goes On

  Alice in the Know

  1

  Hired

  My knees were red from kneeling at my bedroom window, but I was obsessed. Elizabeth’s family was having a reunion, and I couldn’t stop watching.

  For three days there had been a half dozen cars parked across the street. Relatives spilled onto the porch and steps, playing croquet in the side yard and badminton out front. A boy about twelve started a water fight with the hose, and all the cousins joined in, grandparents cheering them on from the porch.
>
  I’d watched one of the uncles swing Liz’s little brother around by his ankles. I’d seen an aunt braiding a new twist in Elizabeth’s hair. Liz whispering to cousins under the linden tree at the curb. And I’d wanted it to be me surrounded by relatives. Me laughing and teasing and sharing secrets.

  My mother’s closest relatives were in Chicago. Dad’s were in Nashville, and Sylvia’s were out west. All over the map, that’s what we were—spread so far apart, we rarely saw each other. How sad is that?

  Look what I’ve been missing, I thought, as Liz hugged everyone good-bye and people packed up to go home. I would have loved to have a gang of cousins to hang out with—more siblings, at the very least.

  “Why couldn’t you have been triplets?” I groused to Les when I finally went downstairs. Les doesn’t live here anymore, but he stops by for dinner whenever he can.

  “What?” said Les. “Can’t get enough of me, huh?”

  We’d had a barbecue out back the day before, and I’d gone with Dad and Sylvia to watch fireworks at the Mall. I’d liked sitting there on the blanket between them, enjoying the July night, the Washington Monument lit with flood lamps against the dark sky. But Liz, I knew, was there in the crowd with several dozen relatives, and I felt a little cheated that the rest of the people I love—my people, I mean—lived so far away

  Grow up, I told myself. Dad and Lester had done their best to raise me, and now I had Sylvia to fill in for the mom I’d lost. I thought of the way Les and Dad and I used to cook dinner together; of Dad and Les teaching me to drive; of Sylvia helping me buy a dress and Dad letting me work for him during the summer. Small family or not, they were always there for me. So when I walked into the kitchen for supper, I said, “I just want to thank you, Dad, for letting me work at the Melody Inn. It sure saves a lot of hassle.”

  Dad smiled at me and stabbed a chunk of melon. “You’re welcome,” he said. “But you know … I’ve been thinking … it would be good for you to work someplace else for the rest of the summer if you can find something.”

  “What?” I choked.

  “March to a different drummer,” he said.

  I could only stare. Dad is manager of the music store over on Georgia Avenue, and I’d been working there part-time ever since we moved to Silver Spring.

  “You mean … I’m being fired?” I cried.

  “Of course not. We could still use you some Saturdays and sale days if you’re free, but it might do you good to work for someone else for a change.”

  “Why? Haven’t I been doing a good job?” I’d been running the little Gift Shoppe there at the store all by myself on Saturdays. It’s the counter under the stairs to the second floor where we sell all kinds of musical stuff—Mozart mugs and Chopin scarves plus jewelry with a musical motif. I knew the merchandise! I could handle the cash register! “Are you hiring somebody new?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Al,” Les cut in. “He’s outsourcing your job. Someone over in India’s going to be running the Gift Shoppe on eBay.”

  “What?” I screeched.

  “He’s kidding,” said Dad. “But you can’t see what the rest of the world is like if you spend your spare time working for me.”

  “If you want me to see what the rest of the world’s like, Dad, send me to Paris!” I said. “Let me work at a sidewalk café! Let me work at a bookstore in London!”

  Dad smiled. “No such luck. But if you can find a job somewhere else this summer, go for it.”

  “Dad, it’s July!” I protested.

  “Yeah, it’s a little late for that,” said Lester. “She should have started looking in March.”

  “I realize that,” said Dad. “If nothing turns up, you still have your job at the Melody Inn. But if you do find something, it won’t be hard to get someone to take your place at the store.”

  “Thanks a lot!” I said, and glared down at the potato salad on my plate. The good jobs were already taken! Pamela was working at Burger King; Liz was helping out at a day camp; Patrick was doing grunt work for a landscaper; and all my other friends had found jobs at Montgomery Doughnuts or Sears or the Autoclean or something.

  It was Gwen who had the choicest job of all, and she wasn’t even getting paid: She was working as a student intern for a new program at NIH—the National Institutes of Health—a one-of-a-kind job due to her grades and her interest in biology. There was no way in the world I could do something like that.

  After dinner I called everyone I could think of and asked if they knew of any job openings where they worked. Zero, zip, zilch. It was turning out to be the Horrible Summer of My Sixteenth Year. Little did I know that: (1) it would be a far worse summer for someone else; (2) there would be two trips coming up—one happy, one sad; and (3) I would come to hate Brian Brewster with every cell of my body.

  Partly because I was angry at Dad for even suggesting I get another job so late in the summer, and partly because I was sort of excited that he had, I got up early that Saturday, put on my best stretch top and chinos and a pair of string sandals, and drove to Wheaton Plaza. Scary as it was, there were sixty or more stores with dozens of possibilities. My new boss could be in his late twenties and single; I could be helping customers select from the latest novels; maybe I’d be working in a jewelry store with a uniformed cop at the door; or I could be dressing mannequins in a store window. Suddenly almost anything seemed more exciting and glamorous than selling underwear with BEETHOVEN printed on the seat of the pants.

  I decided to start at one end of the mall and fill out an application at every store I’d consider working in—twenty, at least. Part of me wanted about twenty rejections to throw in Dad’s face; the other part wanted to get hired and earn a lot more than he’d been paying me. What I really wanted, I guess, was to have enough money to pay for my own car insurance and gas and oil, so I could persuade Dad to buy me a used car for my junior year.

  The first store wouldn’t even give me an application. “Full up,” the manager said. “Sorry.”

  “Come by around April of next year,” a woman at The Limited said. “We won’t be hiring again till spring.”

  “You can fill out an application if you like, but we’re not hiring,” said a third.

  This was such a waste! Dad just comes up with these ideas about what will be good for me without any consideration for what I feel about it. Like that sex education class at church, even though I ended up liking it. But this string of refusals wasn’t just a waste of time; it was an embarrassment.

  How dumb can she be? the managers must have been thinking, my applying in July. I could hear a couple of clerks laughing when I left a store. No way was I going to go through this twenty times. I decided to pick a couple more places and then go home and tell Dad to forget it. You just don’t give an employee one day’s notice to find another job when she hasn’t done anything wrong. I had a notion to demand two weeks’ severance pay and then quit my job. If Dad was going to be my employer, he’d have to act like one. I’d tell him that.

  I took the escalator up to the employment office at Hecht’s and began filling out an application. I’d completed about three fourths of the page when I became conscious of a woman in a gray suit passing through the room and stopping behind me to look over my shoulder. I could feel my cheeks start to redden, sure I must have misspelled a word.

  “When can you start?” I heard her say.

  I turned and saw a Hecht’s name tag on her jacket. “Excuse me?” I said.

  She reached for my application and gave it the once-over. “Are you willing to do rack work?” she asked. “We need someone to free up our salesclerks so they don’t have to spend so much time clearing out the fitting rooms. When are you available?”

  “Uh … anytime, really,” I said.

  “Now?”

  I swallowed. “Well … yes! But I need to call my stepmom first. I’ve got her car.”

  “Will transportation be a problem?” she asked.

  “No. I can always take a bus.”


  “Okay. Finish filling out the form and then meet me in the women’s department. That’s the section downstairs for extra-large sizes,” she said. “They’re having a big sale, and the fitting rooms are piled high with clothes that need to go back on hangers. You’ll be a floater. We’ll use you in whatever department you’re needed. Lauren!” she called to a woman behind a desk. “She needs to call home, then have someone bring her to the women’s department.” She shook my hand, and I read JENNIFER MARTIN on her name tag. “I hope things work out, Alice,” she said.

  “Thank you, Miss Martin,” I said excitedly. “I do too!” I couldn’t believe it! Hecht’s! The biggest store in the mall. I suddenly wasn’t angry at Dad anymore and called Sylvia to tell her what happened.

  “Really?” she said. “That’s wonderful! How long will you be there?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask,” I told her. “Do you need the car?”

  “Not till tomorrow.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take the bus most days. I’m really psyched!” I said.

  I realized when I got to the women’s department that the supervisor in the gray suit would probably have hired anyone who had been filling out an application that morning, because the place was a madhouse—the annual post-Fourth of July sale.

  Miss Martin met me there and introduced me to a woman named Estelle, who led me back to the fitting rooms. A line of women, size fourteen and up, were already waiting to get in, heaps of clothes draped over their arms. Dress hangers tried to snag me as I passed by in the narrow hallway, and I stared as a woman in pants and bra darted out of a fitting room, snatched another shirt off a rack, then hurried back to her cubicle.

  Estelle waved one hand at the rack, almost hidden by clothes. “All of these need to go back in stock, the sooner the better,” she said. “Button the buttons, reattach belts, straighten collars—make them look presentable. I’ll come in from time to time to get the clothes you’ve finished and put them back out on the floor. Every time you get a chance, go into a fitting room between customers and bring out all the items that are piling up in there. Let me know if there’s anything you don’t understand.”

  “Okay,” I said. What’s to understand? I wondered. Anyone could button buttons, fasten belts. I reached for a shirt and began.