Alice on Her Way

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  It should have been a romantic evening, and in a way it was. I’ll have to admit that part of the attraction of getting close to a guy is not knowing just how far the two of you will go. Not knowing if the finger that caresses your back will slip up under your bra as though it got lost and didn’t quite know where it was going, or whether, when you kiss and he presses up against you, you can feel him getting hard. It’s sort of a game of “What Next?” that keeps you excited. Keeps you guessing.

  But I also found myself vaguely irritated at times because he was always there. I didn’t have a chance to miss him because he was never gone. When I got up to my room at last, I felt relief at just being with the girls. Gwen and Molly and Liz had chosen the Dickinson play and were talking about how good the actress had been.

  I kicked off my shoes. “Where’s Pamela?” I asked.

  “She said she was going to get some more stuff from her mom’s room,” said Molly.

  “Lockup’s at midnight tonight,” said Liz. “She’s got twenty-five minutes.”

  “Do you really think a chaperone’s going to sit out in the hall all night watching our doors?” I said. “I’ll bet they check us once and that’s it.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Molly. “I heard they’re going to take shifts.”

  “So who wants to play cards?” said Liz.

  “Naw,” said Gwen. “What’s on TV?”

  “Not much,” I said.

  When a chaperone tapped on the door and did a room check, we passed with ease because Pamela, of course, wasn’t on her list and wasn’t in our room.

  “You can sleep in a bit tomorrow, girls,” she said. “The museum doesn’t open until nine thirty, but we’re scheduling a jog through Central Park at seven. If you want to go, be down in the lobby in your running shoes.”

  “Right! Sure! Absolutely!” said Gwen, and we cheerfully wished the chaperone a good night.

  But after the woman had closed the door and taped it, Liz said, “What are we going to do when Pamela comes back? Who’s going to explain the loose tape on the door after she comes in?”

  “That’s her problem,” said Gwen. “Maybe she’ll find herself spending the night with her mom after all.”

  “It’s been a good day, though,” Molly told us. “Look.” She showed us a printout of a ship’s manifest with her great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name on it. “Henry Franklin Brennan,” she said. “My dad will really go for this!”

  “My ancestors came over on a ship too, but I don’t think you’ll find their names on any passenger list,” Gwen said.

  That was a sobering thought.

  “Don’t you get angry sometimes?” Liz asked her.

  “When I think about it,” said Gwen. “But I don’t think about it all the time. My friend Yolanda does, though. It’s a crusade with her.”

  “How could you not think about it?” I asked. “How could you not be angry?”

  “Because that was then and this is now,” Gwen told us. “If you go around angry all the time, you’re the one it hurts. I react to things that happen today. That’s what I can fix. I can’t fix the past.”

  We put on our flannel pajama bottoms and T-shirts and watched an old Saturday Night Live rerun. When a commercial came on, Liz said, “Do you think we should call Mrs. Jones’s room and see if Pamela’s there?”

  “If she is, they’re either asleep or arguing, and I wouldn’t want to interrupt either one,” I said. “And if she isn’t, Mrs. Jones will flip out.”

  “Why wouldn’t she have called us, though?” Gwen mused. “She knows we’d be wondering about her.”

  “Well, she got off the bus with me, and I saw her come inside, so we know she got that far,” said Molly.

  When the show was over, we turned off the TV. Liz was crawling under the covers when we heard tapping on the door. I ran to the peephole and jumped back when I saw Mr. Corona standing right outside, Pamela beside him!

  “It’s… it’s him!” I whispered. “Corona!”

  “Mr. Corona?” the others gasped.

  “And Pamela!”

  “O’m’God! Open the door!” said Molly.

  I opened the door and heard the tape snap.

  “Hi, guys!” she said, and looked directly at me, her eyebrows going up and down. “Mom said yes, I could spend our last night here with you.” She winked.

  “Well… great!” I said, as she stepped inside.

  “Okay, this is it, girls,” said Mr. Corona. “I’ll tape up after you, but you’re in now for the night.”

  “Thanks,” said Pamela. “Good night, Mr. Corona.”

  I closed the door after him and stared at Pamela. “What’s going on? How did you arrange that?”

  “We thought you were with your mom,” said Gwen.

  “She hasn’t called, has she?” Pamela asked, and without waiting for an answer, she went into the bathroom. We heard the water running in the sink. Heard Pamela brushing her teeth.

  “How did you get Mr. Corona to do that?” I asked her again.

  “Simple,” said Pamela. “When I got off the elevator and saw him, I just walked right up to him and said Mom had given me permission to spend our last night with you guys and that I should let him know.”

  “So he thinks you came up from your mom’s room?” Liz said.

  “Easy as pie,” said Pamela.

  When she took off her clothes and got into bed, Gwen sat facing her. “Okay, girl, where were you, then? We want scoop!”

  “What do you mean?” Pamela said, acting the innocent.

  “Molly said you went to your mom’s room to get more stuff. Where is it?”

  “Oh, I changed my mind. I was just hanging out with Hugh,” Pamela said, a little too casually.

  Elizabeth exchanged looks with Molly.

  “Where?” asked Liz.

  “I’m not sure, exactly. Hugh’s room, I think. His buddies were watching TV.” She giggled. “I told you I was going to have fun on this trip.” She pulled the covers up under her chin as though that was all she had to say. But Gwen wouldn’t let it go.

  “So what happened?” she asked. “What’d you do?”

  “Well, you’re nosy, aren’t you?” Pamela laughed.

  “Yeah,” said Gwen. “I am.” She poked at her through the blanket. “C’mon. Give.”

  “Let’s just say I was making somebody reeeally happy,” said Pamela. “Okay?”

  Not okay.

  “Happy as in… sex?” asked Molly.

  “You could say that,” Pamela said coyly.

  “You did… IT?” I said.

  “Look! We were in his bathroom, okay? So I gave Hugh some head. Now are you satisfied?”

  Gwen and I glanced at each other.

  “A blow job?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yeah, Liz. You get a one hundred. A blow job is head is oral sex.”

  “But… why?” I asked. “You just met him.”

  For a second Pamela seemed thrown by the question. “Because he wanted it! It was fun! It was amazing to see how excited I could get him!”

  I’ll have to admit I was surprised. No, not surprised. I was shocked. I was also curious as anything. It was Liz, though, who asked the next question.

  “Do you swallow it or what?”

  We giggled, but I sure didn’t know the answer.

  “You can, but I didn’t,” Pamela told her.

  Liz recoiled a little. “I can maybe see myself doing that with a guy I really loved, but… you hardly even know him, Pam!”

  “I know him enough to know I like him. I think he’s hot! And he’s a senior.”

  “Yeah, but what are you? Just a body part? A head?” I asked.

  And Gwen put in her two cents. “You’re not a service station. Trust me. I should know what it’s like when a guy just wants quick service. My old ex was a master at it.”

  “So are you going to burn me at the stake or what?” asked Pamela.

  “I just want to make sure you know wh
at you’re doing,” said Gwen. “You can get a venereal disease in your mouth, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and I could get run over by a taxi or get hit by a meteorite,” said Pamela. She closed her eyes.

  “I just want you to be aware!” Gwen told her.

  Pamela’s eyes popped open again. “I’m aware! I’m aware! So I made a really cute guy happy tonight. It’s no big deal.” And then she turned to me. “Hugh and I really hit it off last night, Al, didn’t you notice? Brian’s history. I think Hugh really likes me. After tonight, in fact, I’m sure of it. What would you say if I said he was taking me to the prom?”

  “Really? Did he ask?” Molly wanted to know.

  “Not in so many words, but I think he’s going to.”

  Wow. To tell the truth, I didn’t know what to think. Was what Pamela felt that much different from the feelings I’d had at Ellis Island with Sam running his fingers under the waistband of my pants? Up under the band of my bra? My wanting him to go a little further? Touch me in other places, too?

  “What are you thinking?” Pamela asked me after we’d turned out the light.

  “Lots of things. Wondering if that was such a good idea, I guess.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go gargle,” said Pamela.

  “Go to sleep,” I told her. “I may get up and go jogging tomorrow.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Liz.

  I was all mixed up as I fell asleep that night. Thinking of Pamela. Of Gwen. Of Mrs. Jones. Of Sam. Of everything we’d been talking about in the “Our Whole Lives” classes about respect and dignity and worth and meaning….

  20

  What Happened at School

  I woke early the next morning, and Liz got up with me, leaving Pamela on her side of our bed, head buried deep in her pillow. I hadn’t said anything to Sam about going jogging, so he wasn’t there. Brian and Tony and Hugh weren’t early risers either.

  We loved running in Central Park on that April morning. The air felt cold to me, and I wished I’d brought sweatpants instead of shorts because my legs were covered in goose bumps. But by the time we got to the park, spurred on by Mr. Corona’s “Hut …two, three, four… Hut… two, three, four… ,” the sun was out and we were warm.

  Liz and I didn’t say anything more about Pamela. It’s hard to talk when you’re running, anyway, and I think we both just wanted to clear our heads and our lungs. We tried to fix parts of the skyline surrounding Central Park in our minds to keep our bearings—the Trump Hotel on the west, Essex House on the South…. Only the dog walkers and joggers seemed to be out on Sunday morning. Traffic was light.

  “I could… go for New York… if it was always… like this,” I panted.

  “Not me,” Elizabeth puffed back. “I want to live in a…. Victorian house… in a little… New England town.”

  I just wanted to see more of the world. Feel more sophisticated. Be a little more daring. But I didn’t want to be Pamela.

  I liked the thought of a huge park in the heart of a city—Rock Creek Park in Washington, Central Park here in New York. We jogged past a lake, a boathouse, a carousel, a ballpark, tennis courts, even a zoo. Everything seemed to be sleeping. Even the ducks down on the water still had their heads tucked into their feathers.

  Weird how a city could have such different personalities, I thought. One for night, one for early morning; one for weekdays, one for Sunday. Sort of like Pamela, maybe. Underneath she often seemed to me like she was sad and scared. And last night she was a party animal. No, not even that. A body part. A head.

  Molly and Gwen were still sleeping when we got back, but we could hear Pamela gargling in the bathroom. When she came out, steam came with her. She was freshly showered and her hair was still damp.

  “I wish I could just hang out with you guys today,” I said as I slipped off my shorts and T-shirt and headed for the bathroom. “If I walk out that door and find Sam waiting…”

  “I’ll go get our breakfasts this time and bring them up,” said Pamela.

  I zipped in and out of the shower while she was gone, then turned it over to Liz, while Gwen and Molly, who just woke up, waited their turn.

  When Pamela came back, she said, “Sam was downstairs and asked about you. I said you were sick.”

  “Sick?” I said.

  “Well, you’re sort of temporarily sick of him, aren’t you?” she said.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “He wanted to know what was wrong with you, so I told him you were having bad cramps.”

  “Pamela, I was having bad cramps two weeks ago, and he knew it!” I said.

  “So your periods are highly irregular,” said Gwen, and we burst into laughter.

  When we went out to the buses, Sam was waiting, as usual.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I told him. “Pamela’s off her rocker.”

  “So I’ve been hearing,” Sam said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The usual. Gossip,” he said, and let it ride. That was a conversation I didn’t want to have.

  I loved the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Sam and I were interested in different things, though. He wanted to hurry me along at displays where I wanted to linger. He finally wandered off with another group to see the Arms and Armor exhibit, and I could have spent half the day with the mummies in the Egyptian Art section. But then I would have missed the “seven centuries and five continents of fashionable dress” in the Costume Institute. The “ritual objects and articles of personal adornment” in Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The manuscripts and carpets in Islamic Art.

  Leave it to Brian, of course, to discover the lotus-handed fertility goddess from seventh-century India. When we came around a corner, he and a bunch of guys had gathered around one end of the glass case enclosing her, grinning and trying to get us girls to come over. Pamela had gone with that group, and she was hanging on to Hugh’s arm, trying to be one of the guys. I wondered if her mom noticed how weird she was acting.

  In the cafeteria later I didn’t see Sam right away, so I sat down with Gwen and Liz and Molly.

  “Good! You can eat with us,” said Liz, and we were even happier when Pamela joined us.

  “Uh-oh. Spoke too soon,” said Molly when we saw Sam enter from the other end of the cafeteria.

  Suddenly Liz grabbed her sunglasses and stuck them over my ears. Then Molly picked up her baseball cap and pulled it down over my eyes, and—not to be outdone—Gwen, laughing, wrapped her sweater around my neck and chin. I sat perfectly still, trying not to laugh as Sam passed right by our table looking for me. Finally, though, he came back and figured it out. But he didn’t think it was funny.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Alice,” he said, and walked away.

  Disappointed?

  “He’s disappointed in me?” I croaked. “What am I? Five years old?” We burst out laughing. We couldn’t help it.

  Faith was eating with us, and it was worth listening to Sam spout off just to see her laugh. She’d been having a good time with Chris, from stage crew, all morning, and her smile seemed even brighter than before. But suddenly she turned to Pamela, and this time she looked serious.

  “Pam, you probably should know—the guys have been talking about you,” she said.

  “Me?” said Pamela. “I thought the focus was on Alice here.” Then she added flippantly, “So who don’t they talk about?”

  “You know what they’re saying, then?” Faith asked. “About you and Hugh?”

  “So it was my first time!” Pamela said. “I’m not twelve anymore, you know.”

  Molly shrugged. “So I’m sixteen, and I’ve never even been kissed!” she said simply.

  We all looked at Molly.

  “Never?” said Liz.

  “Unless you count a cousin who kissed me in a closet when we were seven,” said Molly. “I’ve never had a boyfriend, either.”

  “But if you had a choice?” I questioned.

/>   “Sure! I’d take one, if it was somebody great and I had the time and stage crew was over for the year and I didn’t have Spanish Club and piano. It’ll happen when it’ll happen.”

  She meant it too, and I think we all envied her self-assurance. We had no doubt that Molly would have a boyfriend in college, if not before. It must be wonderful to be so content that you didn’t need a “boyfriend badge” to wear everywhere you went, I thought.

  I was beginning to feel a little ashamed of myself, though, for the way I’d been treating Sam. It was as if I wanted him to be around when I wanted company but wanted him gone when I didn’t. We were scheduled for a special showing of a film on photography that afternoon in the museum’s theater, and when I saw Sam stop at a watercooler before we went in, I walked over.

  “Sam, I’m sorry,” I said. “We were just cutting up.”

  But that wasn’t what he’d been referring to. Sam straightened up and wiped his mouth. “You went out with a bunch of guys Friday night and didn’t even tell me?” he said. “Okay, not just guys.” Then he told me that rumors about a lot of kids had been floating around. We evidently weren’t the only ones who went out. I guess that explained the notices under everyone’s door that morning and why Mr. Corona had been sitting on a chair out in the hall all night.

  “I didn’t mention it to you because I thought you’d get upset, Sam,” I said.

  “So why didn’t you try me?”

  “All right, I’m sorry. I should have told you. Yesterday morning I should have said, ‘A bunch of us went out last night and had a fantastic time.’ Would you have felt better?”

  “No.”

  “Hugh called our room and said there was a delivery for us at the front desk, and it would take three or four girls to carry it—that we should come down and pick it up.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “I didn’t know who it was! I didn’t even know Hugh! He has a deep voice! When we got off the elevator, he and Brian and Tony were waiting, and—”