Including Alice Read online

  READ WHAT REAL GIRLS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT alice!*

  *“Alice and her friends seem sooooo real!!! They go through all the problems life throws you!! I’m not saying that I like seeing people go through problems, it’s just that it’s great to see you can get over these problems and have a great life too.”

  —dragnfly

  *“I feel like Alice is my next door neighbor and Elizabeth lives across the street from me. Pamela is in most of my classes at school and Patrick is my childhood best friend. Sometimes I wish soooooo badly Alice and everyone in these book were real.”

  —Leslie

  *“I love your alice books, simply because they portray life so much. Alice is your average girl who gets embarrassed on a weekly basis, good and bad things happen, is self conscious and just lives day to day.”

  —a loyal reader

  *“My friends … and I LOVE your Alice books! They are so awesome! We’ve read almost all of them and are trying to get our hands on the rest. We love the Alice books sooooo much we call ourselves Pam, Liz, and Al.”

  —Lauren

  * TAKEN FROM ACTUAL POSTINGS ON THE ALICE WEB SITE.

  TO READ MORE, VISIT ALICE AT WWW.SIMONANDSCHUSTER.COM/ALICE.

  After four years of hoping, wishing, scheming, and waiting, the moment Alice has been yearning for has at long last arrived… . Alice’s dad is finally marrying Sylvia Summers! Alice always knew they were perfect for each other when she set them up back in seventh grade, but she’s relieved that The Big Day is here. She’s never felt so excited, so vindicated, so grown-up, and so … well, so left out. Now that the wedding is really happening, no one has time for Alice anymore, and the situation just gets worse when Sylvia moves into their house. Nothing is the way Alice thought it would be. Her dad and Sylvia have their new life together; Lester has his new apartment; and Alice feels like she’s on her own for the first time in her life.

  She’s also starting to notice that even though Dad and Sylvia are perfectly happy together, not everyone gets along so well. Elizabeth and Ross never see each other; Leslie and Lori are breaking up; Pamela and her mother can’t seem to find a way to even talk to each other; and Alice herself has started to hear some surprising rumors about Patrick …

  As Alice watches her friends sort out their problems and sees her dad and Sylvia navigate their new marriage, she starts to understand all the hard work that goes into relationships and how even when people seem to be meant for each other, it’s not always easy to be together.

  PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR

  writes for both children and adults, and is the author of more than one hundred books, including Starting with Alice; Alice in Blunderland; 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; and Patiently Alice. In 1992 her novel Shiloh won the Newbery Medal. Mrs. Naylor lives with her husband, Rex, in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the mother of two sons, both grown and married, and has several grandchildren.

  JACKET PHOTOGRAPH COPYRIGHT © 2004 BY NICK VACCARO

  JACKET DESIGN BY RUSSELL GORDON

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  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 © 2004 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  The poem on page 260, “Passing By,” was written by Thomas Ford (1580–1648).

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Book design by Ann Sullivan The text for this book is set in Berkeley Old Style.

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3228-9(eBook)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.

  Including Alice / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Fifteen-year-old Alice finds it hard to adjust to the changes in her life when her father gets married and her brother moves to his own apartment.

  ISBN 0-689-82637-0

  [1. Remarriage—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Self-confidence—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction.

  5. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7 .N24In 2004

  [Fic]—dc22 2003018210

  To Catherine Wood,

  my role model, and

  With special thanks to Martin Small

  for his Piano Trio no. 2

  Contents


  Chapter One: Getting Ready

  Chapter Two: Mixed Feelings

  Chapter Three: The Relatives

  Chapter Four: The Jitters

  Chapter Five: Yes!

  Chapter Six: Hearts, Broken and Otherwise

  Chapter Seven: I Could Have Danced All Night

  Chapter Eight: A Bedroom Surprise

  Chapter Nine: Message from Penny

  Chapter Ten: Pretending

  Chapter Eleven: Party

  Chapter Twelve: Tooth Troubles

  Chapter Thirteen: Dinner with the CIA

  Chapter Fourteen: More Changes

  Chapter Fifteen: Truly Disgusting

  Chapter Sixteen: Caring for Sylvia

  Chapter Seventeen: A New Year

  1

  Getting Ready

  I didn’t know you could be excited and scared and happy and sad all at the same time, but that’s how I started my sophomore year.

  Happy because: Dad and Sylvia had set the date and would be married October 18.

  Scared because: ditto. I was getting a stepmom, and I wanted things to be perfect.

  Sad because: Lester had moved out.

  Excited because: ditto. He was now living in a bachelor apartment a couple of miles away with two other guys, and he said I could visit him there.

  Dad was already using Lester’s old bedroom as an office, keeping the twin bed as a couch so Lester could come home for a night if he wanted. I wondered what kind of a bed my brother would buy for his new place—a bed for one person or two?

  “So?” I said when he stopped by to pick up another load of books. “What kind of bed did you buy, Lester? Twin or double?”

  “Oh, I was thinking about one of those king-size circular numbers on a rotating base with a mirrored ceiling and a stereo in the headboard,” he said.

  I punched his arm and laughed. Everything seemed to be changing so fast, though, and all at the same time—Lester’s moving, the start of school, the coming wedding… . We hadn’t even celebrated Lester’s twenty-third birthday properly. I’d just sent him a card with a certificate for a free car wash at the Autoclean.

  I was feeling giddy with the “rush of life,” as Aunt Sally would call it, as though I were being swept downstream by a fast-moving current, ready or not.

  What I was most nervous about was that in a few weeks I’d be living here with Dad and a new mother without Lester around. Always before, I had imagined him cracking jokes at the dinner table and making Sylvia laugh. I imagined how funny it would be if he forgot and came to breakfast some morning in his boxer shorts. I imagined the four of us cooking dinner together or watching a football game on TV—Lester being here for all our celebrations.

  Now, if Dad wasn’t here and Lester was gone, what would I talk about to the woman who used to be my seventh-grade English teacher? What if I said me instead of I or lay instead of lie? Who got to shower first in the morning, and what if I forgot to wipe out the sink after I’d used it?

  Lester was rummaging through the refrigerator at the moment, looking for leftovers he could take back to his apartment for lunch. Suddenly I reached out and circled him with my arms, my head against his back. “I’m going to miss you,” I said, and swallowed.

  “Hey!” he said over his shoulder, patting my hand. “The food will never be as good there as it is here. There’s an umbilical cord that stretches between me and this refrigerator, don’t you worry.”

  Assignments were piling up on me at school, so I couldn’t think about the wedding 24/7. I’d squeaked by with a C- in Algebra I last year, and now I was wrestling with Algebra II. Next year it would be geometry and the year after that, physics. And since Patrick Long, the genius, was my ex-boyfriend, I was counting on Gwen Wheeler to get me through.

  Gwen and Elizabeth and Pamela are my three closest friends, and we’re so different. Like the different things that make up a salad, I guess, we go well together. We’d all been assistant counselors at a camp the summer before, and that had made us closer still.

  Now we were eating lunch out on the school steps, and the September sun felt delicious on my neck and arms. My thighs were toasty inside my jeans.

  “Aren’t you excited about the wedding, Alice?” Elizabeth asked. She looked gorgeous in a cobalt blue top and black pants. Elizabeth, with her dark hair and eyelashes, looks good in practically anything she puts on. “It’s like you brought them together. This wouldn’t be happening if it weren’t for you.”

  “I know,” I said. “But we’ve waited so long for this, I’ll believe it when I hear them say ‘I do.’”

  First we’d waited for Sylvia to decide between Dad and her old boyfriend, Jim Sorringer. Then she was an exchange teacher in England, and then her sister Nancy got sick and the wedding was postponed. Sylvia had gone out west during the summer to be with Nancy. She had even taken a leave of absence from teaching for September and October, in case Nancy grew worse. But her sister was recovering, Sylvia was due to come home on October 1, and all systems were go. I could stop worrying, I told myself.

  Elizabeth, though, looked thoughtful. “Wouldn’t it be dramatic if right before the minister pronounced them man and wife, Jim Sorringer stood up at the back of the church and said he couldn’t live without her?”

  “Don’t even think it!” I warned, hoping that our vice principal back in junior high would stay as far away from the wedding as possible.

  Pamela grinned as she lifted the top half of her bun, removed the pickle, and closed her hamburger up again. “It would be even more dramatic if he announced that he had loved her first and was suing your dad for alienating her affections. You should bar Jim Sorringer from the wedding, Alice.”

  “Stop it, you guys! I’m wired enough as it is!” I said.

  Gwen laughed. Her laugh is like warm syrup, and her skin is the color of Log Cabin maple. “I think you should bar Liz and Pam from the wedding, Alice. They’ll sit there and cry and make a scene.”

  “No, we won’t!” said Elizabeth. “We’ll be looking at Lester. He’ll be gorgeous in a tuxedo.”

  “He and Dad aren’t wearing tuxedos. They’re wearing suits,” I announced.

  “Not wearing tuxedos!” Elizabeth said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Les would be gorgeous without anything at all!” said Pamela. “Especially without anything at all, and you can tell him I said so.”

  Elizabeth Price and Pamela Jones have been crazy about my brother ever since we moved to Silver Spring four years ago. And now that Lester’s in graduate school and in an apartment, they’ve been driving me nuts to go over and see him.

  “I think it’s time we met his roommates,” said Pamela.

  “Yes! Why don’t we surprise them and take over dinner some night?” Elizabeth suggested. “We could cook it ourselves.”

  “You can’t just walk in on a bunch of guys like that,” Gwen said as the bell rang and she gathered up her books.

  “Why not?” I asked, sort of liking the idea. “Lester doesn’t call ahead when he’s dropping by.”

  Gwen rolled her eyes and shrugged. “You just can’t!” she said, and went inside the double doors.

  There’s a new girl in my gym class this year. I remember how awkward it feels to start school in a new place where you don’t know a single person. I know the drill—how you smile to show others you’re friendly and approachable, but you don’t impose yourself on anyone, and you try to make friends one at a time until someone invites you to join the group.

  But Amy Sheldon doesn’t do that. It’s like she looks the whole scene over, decides where she wants to belong, and then walks over and barges in. No subtlety whatsoever. I hate to say it, but maybe if she were cute, we’d think it was funny, I don’t know. Some girls are naturally hot, like Elizabeth, and some girls are naturally not. Amy, unfortunately, is not. She has a long narrow face, with eyes that come too close together, and there’s a wide space between her nose and upper lip. But it’s what happens when Amy opens her mouth that turns u
s off. She keeps coming up with comments that don’t quite fit.

  For example, somebody might say, “I’ve got this itch behind my knee that’s driving me crazy!” and Amy will say, “I had chicken pox when I was five.” And we just look at her, not knowing if Amy responds the way she does because she’s a little slow or because her mind is actually galloping on ahead of us, computing the itch, the rash, the diseases that cause a rash, and all the assorted illnesses of childhood. Sometimes she laughs at things no one else thinks are funny, and other times she doesn’t get it when someone tells a joke. She’s just … well … Amy. And she wants so much to fit in—somewhere!

  “I hear your dad’s getting married,” she commented as we came out of the showers, our towels wrapped around us.

  “Yeah, in a couple of weeks,” I said.

  “Am I invited?” she asked. Just like that.

  “Oh, wow!” I said. “I wish we could invite the whole school, but of course we can’t.”

  That got me thinking, though, that all my friends probably assumed they could come to the wedding. Dad and Sylvia had told me I could invite three friends to the reception, and I’d given them the names of Elizabeth, Pamela, and Gwen. But what about the ceremony at the church on Cedar Lane?

  At dinner that night, just Dad and me and two pork chops, I said, “I know I can only have three friends at the reception, but how many can I invite to the wedding?”

  Dad paused with a forkful of green beans balanced above his plate. “I don’t know that much about wedding etiquette, Al, but I don’t think you can invite people to the ceremony and then not let them come to the reception. And that guest list is out of control.”

  “How many are coming to the reception?” I asked.

  “Sixty and counting,” Dad said.

  “I thought you and Sylvia wanted a small wedding—just family and friends,” I reminded him. “So who are all these people?”

  “Sylvia’s teacher friends at school, plus their spouses or sweethearts; my employees and instructors from the Melody Inn, plus their significant others; a few of my customers; old childhood friends of Sylvia’s; your three friends; and all our relatives. We can’t squeeze in another person.”