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All but Alice
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Always before … I’d think how stupid it was to try to be a copy of someone else. But suddenly it was happening to me. I was turning into a lemming! If all the girls in junior high suddenly raced to the roof and plunged madly over the edge, I would be sailing off into space with them.
THERE ARE, ALICE DECIDES, 272 HORRIBLE things left to happen to her in her life, based on the number of really horrible things that have happened already.
But, she reasons, if you don’t have a mother, maybe a sister would help. Maybe lots of sisters. A worldwide sisterhood! But sisterhood also comes with a whole new set of problems for Alice. Can she be sisters with all three girls who want to be her brother Lester’s girlfriend? In fact, how do boys fit into Universal Sisterhood at all? And how far should she go when being part of the crowd means doing something she doesn’t want to do?
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COVER DESIGN BY JESSICA HANDELMAN
COVER ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY JULIA DENOS
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK
AGES 10–14 • 0511
Here’s what fans have to say about Alice:*
“I read the books as slowly as I can so they don’t end too soon.”
“I hate to think that Alice isn’t a real person. I love reading about her. I feel I know her, that she is one of my best friends. It’s like growing up is made easier because I have this great friend.”
“i just wanted to thank you so much for writing the alice books. it has made such a big difference in my life. im having problems with almost everything you could imagine, but the alice books were something I could hold onto and escape with. i know it sounds weird but i felt like the books were the only thing I could relate to and the only things that understood me.”
*Taken from actual postings on the Alice website. To read more, visit AliceMcKinley.com.
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.
All But Alice
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 This 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 © 1992 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 Oldstyle Book.
0311 OFF
This Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition May 2011
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds
All but Alice / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. —1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Jean Karl book.”
Summary: Seventh-grader Alice decides that the only way to stave off personal and social disasters is to be part of the crowd, especially the “in” crowd, no matter how boring and, potentially, difficult.
ISBN 978-0-689-31773-6 (hc)
[1. Conduct of life—Fiction. 2. Clubs—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal re
lations—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.N24Aim 1992 [Fic]—dc20
91028722
ISBN 978-1-4424-2756-3 (pbk)
ISBN 978 1-4391-3231-9 (eBook)
To Laura and Rachel,
the newest members of our family,
with love
Contents
Chapter One: Keepsakes
Chapter Two: A Major Operation
Chapter Three: Losing Loretta
Chapter Four: Zombie Girls
Chapter Five: Sex
Chapter Six: Friends
Chapter Seven: The Earring Club
Chapter Eight: Mar-i-lyn
Chapter Nine: Mayday
Chapter Ten: Modern Love
Chapter Eleven: Wonder Woman
Chapter Twelve: Snow
Chapter Thirteen: In Between
Chapter Fourteen: The Test
Chapter Fifteen: All But Alice
1
KEEPSAKES
WHAT I’VE DECIDED ABOUT LIFE IS THIS: If you don’t have a mother, you need a sister. And if you don’t have a sister, you need a bulletin board.
Elizabeth Price, across the street, has a room with twin beds, with white eyelet bedspreads on each, a little dressing table and stool, a lamp with a white eyelet ruffle for a shade, and a bulletin board covered with photos of Elizabeth in her ballet costume, her tap shoes and pants, her gymnastic leotards, and her Camp Fire Girl uniform, which isn’t too surprising, since there’s a huge photograph over the couch in their living room of Elizabeth in her First Communion dress.
Pamela Jones, down the next block, has pictures of movie stars and singers on hers. She also has a dried rose, which Mark Stedmeister gave her once; an autograph by Madonna; a pom-pom, which her cousin in New Jersey sent her; and a photograph of her and Mark, taken from behind, with their arms around each other and their hands in each other’s hip pockets.
I’d seen those bulletin boards dozens of times when I stayed overnight at Pamela’s or Elizabeth’s, but suddenly, in the winter of seventh grade, I wanted one of my own more than anything else I could think of.
What I wanted was to know I was growing up normally—that I was in step with every female person in Montgomery County, that I was a part of the great sisterhood of women. I wanted to see the highlights of my life pinned up on the wall. I wanted to make sure I had a life.
“I’d like a bulletin board for my room,” I told Dad one night when he was cleaning the broiler. “Pamela and Elizabeth both have one, and I want a place where I can pin up things.”
“I’ve got an extra one at the store. I’ll try to remember to bring it home,” he said.
I get a lot of weird things that way. Dad is manager of the Melody Inn, one of a chain of music stores, so he can bring home whatever he wants. Usually it’s stuff that’s defective or doesn’t sell; so far I’ve got two posters of Prince; one of Mozart; a couple of slightly warped drumsticks, which I gave to Patrick, who used to be my boyfriend; a Beethoven bikini from the Melody Inn Gift Shoppe, which says, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEETHOVEN on the seat of the pants, only the print is crooked; and some notepads, with CHOPIN LISZT printed at the top.
The following afternoon, there was a huge bulletin board, a little dusty, with one corner chipped, hanging on the wall above my bureau.
“It’s great!” I told Dad. “Aunt Sally used to have a bulletin board in her kitchen, didn’t she? I remember she used to pin up pictures I drew in kindergarten.”
“That was your mother, Al.” (My name is Alice McKinley—Alice Kathleen McKinley, to be exact—but Dad and Lester call me Al.) “And those were pictures you’d made in nursery school. Don’t you remember how your mother kept photos of you and Lester on it too?”
I always manage to do that. Mom died when I was five, and I always seem to mix her up with Aunt Sally, who took care of us for a while afterward.
“Yeah, I think I do,” I told Dad, but I wasn’t really sure.
I set aside the whole evening to work on my bulletin board, and took a box of keepsakes from my closet to see what was worth pinning up—something as wonderful as an autograph by Madonna or a photo of me in a ballet costume. Carefully I scooped things out of the box and spread them around on my bed.
There was an envelope, yellow around the edges. I looked inside: grass. A handful of dry grass. And then I remembered Donald Sheavers back in fourth grade, when we lived in Takoma Park. We were playing Tarzan out in the backyard, and we had a big piece of cardboard for a raft. At some point he was supposed to kiss me, but every time he tried, I got the giggles and rolled off. For a whole afternoon Donald tried to kiss me, and though I wanted him to, it was just too embarrassing. So after he went home, I pulled up a handful of grass from under the cardboard to remember him by.
Stuffing the grass back into the envelope, I picked up a tag off my first pair of Levi’s. I’d been wearing Sears jeans through most of elementary, and when I got to sixth grade, Lester had taken me to buy some real Levi’s. I studied the label now in my hand and tried to imagine Pamela and Elizabeth looking at it in admiration and awe. I put the label on top of the grass.
I couldn’t figure out what the next thing was. When I unrolled it, I saw that it was a piece of brown wrapping paper with leaves drawn on it. And then I remembered the sixth-grade play, where Pamela had the lead role—the part I’d wanted—and I had to be a bramble bush instead. I put the brown wrapping paper over by the Levi’s label and the grass. It was very discouraging.
Then I felt that sort of thump in the chest you get when you come across something important, and I picked up an envelope with ALICE M. on the front, decorated with drawings of hearts, and airplanes with red stripes on the wings.
Inside was one of those misty-looking photographs of a man and woman walking through the woods holding hands, and you can’t see their faces. At the top, in curly letters, were the words A SPECIAL FEELING WHEN I THINK OF YOU. There weren’t any printed words when you opened it up, but someone had written in blue ink, “I like you a lot.” A valentine from Patrick from sixth grade! I decided I’d put the card up on my bulletin board but not the envelope. I could never explain the airplanes to Pamela and Elizabeth, because I couldn’t understand them myself.
What was left in the box was the wrapper of a 3 Musketeers bar that Patrick had given me; the stub of a train ticket when I’d gone to Chicago to visit Aunt Sally; a ring from my favorite teacher, Mrs. Plotkin; a book of matches from Patrick’s country club; and a program from the Messiah Sing-Along that I had gone to last Christmas, with Dad and my Language Arts teacher.
This was it! This was my life! I turned the box upside down again and shook it hard to see if an autograph from Johnny Depp or something might fall out, but all I got was a dead moth.
I took thumbtacks and put up the valentine from Patrick, the train ticket stub, Mrs. Plotkin’s ring tied to a ribbon, the matchbook, and the program from the Messiah. They hardly filled up one corner.
I clomped downstairs for the Ritz crackers, but Lester had them. He was sitting at the kitchen table over a copy of Rolling Stone.
Dad was drinking some ginger ale. “How’s the bulletin board coming?” he asked.
“I think it’s too big,” I mumbled, flopping down on a chair. “I haven’t had enough great moments in my life, I guess.”
“Well, think about the ones you have had, and see if you can’t come up with something,” he told me.
“My first bra, my first pair of Levi’s,” I said. “I suppose I could put the labels up, but there’s still three-fourths of the board yet to go.”
Lester put a squirt of Cheez Whiz on a cracker and popped it in his mouth. “You could hang your whole bra and jeans on the bulletin board and then you wouldn’t have any space left at all,” he said.
I gave him a look. Lester’s only twenty, but he’s got a mustache, and girls go crazy over him. Don’t ask me why, but they do. Right at that very moment he had a blob of Cheez Whiz in his mustache.
“Remember when Patrick took you to the country club?” Lester said. “When you got home, you discovered you’d stuffed one of their cloth napkins in your purse. That’d be good for a twelve-inch square of space.”
I was desperate. “I can’t have Pamela and Elizabeth over just to see a label off my jeans and a train ticket! I’ve hardly got anything at all.” I threw back my head and wailed: “My life is a blank bulletin board!”
Lester put down his magazine. “Al,” he said, “what you do is you take off all your clothes, drag your bulletin board out in the street, and take an ax to it. By tomorrow morning, you’ll have a policeman’s jacket, a hospital ID bracelet, and a newspaper story to add to your collection. Maybe even a photograph of you in the policeman’s jacket, climbing into the back of a paddy wagon. I guarantee it.”
I stomped back upstairs and sat glaring at the near-empty bulletin board. Chances were, in another year, I wouldn’t even want some of the things that were up there now!
And then it came to me that I would probably have this bulletin board until I was through college. I was twelve, and if I graduated when I was twenty-one, that was nine more years. It wasn’t as though my life was over. It was still being written, and the thing about bulletin boards—the reason for bulletin boards—was you could change things around. Add and subtract. Then I didn’t feel so bad.
The phone rang. It was Pamela.
“Guess what?” she said breathlessly.
“You got a newer, bigger bulletin board,” I guessed.
“No. Mother said I can start wearing different earrings now, Alice! I don’t have to go on wearing these little gold balls I’ve had since third grade. I can wear hoops if I want. Even French hooks! You want to go shopping with us this weekend?”
I knew right then I could not go another year, another month, another week even, without pierced ears. Whatever Pamela did, that’s what I’d do. Whatever Elizabeth had, that’s what I wanted. Always before, Dad and I smiled secretly at the kids who came in the music store all dressed alike, all wearing black, all with an earring in one ear and the same kind of makeup. I’d think how stupid it was to try to be a copy of someone else.