Alice in Blunderland

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  I drew in my breath. In that moment I knew I just had to find out what it felt like to be kissed with my life in danger. I thought about it when I went to bed that night, and I was still thinking about it the next morning.

  Maybe I was thinking about love and kisses because Aunt Sally had called again to say that Carol and her sailor were back from the honeymoon and that maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad marriage after all. But as much as I wanted to be kissed with my life in danger, I certainly wasn’t going to ask Lester to kiss me. So that afternoon when Donald came over, I said, “You want to be in the movies?”

  “Yes,” said Donald.

  I found this big piece of cardboard that had come with our Sears washing machine, and I told Donald that this would be our raft. Then I explained about Tarzan and Jane and the lightning and the natives. I told him about the kissing, too, and we hung a jump rope over the lowest branch of the box elder tree so he could swing us to safety.

  We figured out where the natives’ village would be and planned our route through the jungle. We ran and screamed and climbed out of quicksand and leaped over alligators. At last we jumped onto the cardboard raft to escape down the river.

  I was lying on my back, just like Jane.

  Donald was resting on one elbow, just like Tarzan.

  “Now?” asked Donald.

  I nodded, but the very second he leaned over me, I got the giggles and rolled off.

  “You fell into the river!” Donald said.

  “Let’s try it again,” I told him.

  So we went back to the natives’ village, and there was this terrible thunderstorm, and just after lightning struck the huts, the natives all came out with their spears and they were yelling and we were running. And then we were on the raft again, and this time I closed my eyes, but I could tell that Donald was getting close to me because I could smell his bubble gum. I started to laugh again, and then, once more, I was in the water.

  Donald was getting disgusted. “Stay on the raft!” he said. “How can I kiss you if you keep falling off into the water?”

  I pressed my hands against my cheeks to squeeze the giggles off my face. “All right,” I said seriously. “This time I will really truly do it.”

  So we went through the whole thing again, but by then the excitement was beginning to wear off. When the natives chased us, we didn’t sound so scared anymore, and when we landed on the raft, I pressed my elbows down hard to make myself stay there.

  As Donald bent over me again, though, I saw him going cross-eyed as he reached my nose, and just as the first giggle escaped from my mouth, I heard the side window open and Dad say, “Donald!” Donald rolled one way and I rolled another, and then a minute later Dad came around the side of the house.

  “I don’t think you should be doing that with Alice,” he said. “You’d better go home, and the next time you come over, think of something else to do.”

  “Okay,” said Donald.

  I should have apologized to Donald. I should have told Dad it was all my idea. But I didn’t. Dad put the cardboard out by the curb for the next day’s trash pickup, and I decided I would stay in the house the whole rest of the summer because I could never face Donald Sheavers again.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Lester asked me later when I heard Donald calling to me from the porch and I went down in the basement to hide.

  “I never want to see Donald Sheavers again,” I told him.

  “Well, you could always walk around with a bag over your head,” he said.

  “I wanted him to kiss me like Tarzan kissed Jane, and every time he tried it, I got the giggles,” I said. “Do you ever get over embarrassing things that happen to you, Lester? Did you ever get over being embarrassed about kindergarten?”

  “Kindergarten? What happened to me in kindergarten?”

  “Dad said that Mom waited till you were six to send you.”

  “Why should that embarrass me?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just thought maybe… because you’re older…”

  “Hey,” said Lester, and he was smiling to himself now, “girls like to hang around with older guys, you know. Best decision Mom ever made.”

  Imagine that! I thought. Now that I’d told those girls he was older, that he had been held back because he was shy, he was more popular than ever. Sometimes I manage to do exactly the right thing!

  Still, I avoided Donald Sheavers whenever I could. It was just too embarrassing. If he came out of his house, I went inside mine. Lester and I, though, were really busy. On the days that Mrs. Nolinstock didn’t come, we tried some of her recipes. So far we had made chili with cheese and crackers, a Jell-O salad with raisins and carrots, a tuna noodle casserole, and deviled eggs. I was also making my bed each morning.

  I scrubbed the kitchen floor once when Oatmeal’s food got squashed into the linoleum, and Lester scrubbed the ring around the tub. We weren’t sure whether or not Dad noticed. But one night when we had made spareribs for dinner, plus corn on the cob and an applesauce cake, Dad came home and said, “Mmm. Smells good!”

  “Lester and I made the whole dinner ourselves,” I said.

  “Really?” said Dad. “I thought maybe this was something Mrs. Nolinstock left for us.”

  “It’s her recipes, but we did the cooking,” I explained.

  “So? What’s the occasion?” asked Dad.

  “No occasion,” Lester told him. “Al and I just thought we could do a little more around here in the culinary department.”

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Cooking,” said Lester.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it,” said Dad, and immediately picked up a sparerib and began to eat.

  Halfway through the meal Lester cleared his throat. “You know, Dad,” he said, “my senior year is coming up, and Alice is ten. I really think you can let Mrs. Nolinstock go. Think of the money you’d be saving.”

  “Oh?” said Dad.

  “Some of the other kids in my class take care of themselves after school, and they don’t even have big brothers!” I said quickly.

  “Who, exactly?” asked Dad.

  “Well… uh… I’m not sure, but I know they do!” I fibbed.

  “Les, what about the times you’d have things to do after school? You’re going to be involved in a lot more activities, and I’m not about to send Alice to Mrs. Sheavers again. Donald’s got no talent whatsoever for the trumpet, and the poor kid shouldn’t have to take lessons just because his mom lets Alice come there. If I let Mrs. Nolinstock go, that means Alice is on her own five afternoons a week and all day on Saturday, with no one to keep an eye on her but you.”

  “Well, I’d rather be stuck with Alice sometimes than face Mrs. Nolinstock three times a week plus Saturdays,” said Lester. “She’s the sphinx that never smiles, the parole officer who never jokes, the prison warden who never blinks.”

  She wasn’t that bad, I thought, but I didn’t dare say it.

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t know… I just don’t know.”

  I began to feel worse and worse. All this trouble over me. I was the one who got trapped in the snow cave, who stuck a vitamin pill up her nose, who got caught waiting for Donald to kiss me. The only good thing that was happening was that the harder Lester and I worked to get rid of Mrs. Nolinstock, the closer we came to being friends again.

  “Dad, I don’t need anyone here!” I said. “I’m going into fifth grade and I have my own key and I’ve been cleaning the toilet and making my bed and I know how to cook and dial 911 and I won’t let any stranger come inside when you’re not here, not ever!”

  “I’m impressed that you both are doing better with the meals, I really am,” said Dad. “And I’ve noticed we have a cleaner tub and toilet. But it’s not the cooking or the house I’m really worried about.” He looked at me. “It’s you… and Donald. And Lester… and…”

  “Dad, Donald and I were playing Tarzan and it was all my idea and I wanted to know what it was like to be kissed
with my life in danger and after the natives were after us we were supposed to jump on this raft except that—”

  “I’m already confused enough, Al, don’t repeat that,” Dad said. He leaned back in his chair and looked first at me, then at Lester. “I’ll tell you what: We’ll try it for the month of September—just the two of you on your own. But if you have a friend over, I want to know about it in advance.”

  “Okay,” said Lester, and stole a quick look at me.

  “Sure!” I said.

  “Al, I want you to come straight home from school each day and call me the minute you walk inside. Don’t stop at anyone’s house, and as soon as you get in, lock the door. You’re not to turn on any stove or oven. Is that a promise?”

  “Promise!” I said, nodding my head.

  “And, Lester, anytime you need to be somewhere else after school, I want you to call Alice, see that she’s okay, and let her know about what time you’ll be home. Deal?”

  “Deal,” said Lester. We’d promise almost anything to get rid of Mrs. Nolinstock.

  “As I said,” Dad went on, “we’ll try it for a month without Mrs. Nolinstock, and if things go reasonably well, we’ll talk about making it permanent.”

  I ate like an adult for the rest of the meal. I wiped my mouth on my napkin, cleared the table, served the dessert, and rinsed off our dishes in the sink. But as soon as Dad left the kitchen, Lester and I grinned and gave each other a high five.

  “Nice going, Alicia Katerina Makinoli,” he said.

  “You too, Dmitri Rachmaninoff Macaroni,” I told him.

  I wondered just how Dad would tell Mrs. Nolinstock the news. I’d never been around anyone being fired before. Would he wait until she had left some crumbs on the counter and then say, Too bad, Mrs. Nolinstock, but I’m letting you go? Would he wait until she got the beans too salty and say, Mrs. Nolinstock, you’re fired?

  I began to feel a little sorry for her. Maybe I would miss her. Was it possible? I know I would miss her cooking—her roast beef and browned potatoes. Lester and I had never tried to cook that! But though we waited and listened, we never heard Dad tell Mrs. Nolinstock he was letting her go. I decided that with the money I had saved for Lisa Shane, I would buy a pot holder for Mrs. Nolinstock, sort of a going-away present. She could use it when she found another family to feed.

  I was almost too embarrassed to stay inside because I knew what was coming and she didn’t. But I was even more embarrassed to go outside because I didn’t want to run into Donald. I was tired of staying in the house all the time, though. I wished he’d get amnesia and forget everything we’d ever done together. That happens to people sometimes, I think, if they get hit on the head or something.

  On the other hand, maybe he had forgotten already. Maybe Donald didn’t remember anything over a week old.

  On Wednesday, Mrs. Nolinstock asked me to take out the garbage. I picked up the sack and went out to the trash cans at the side of the house. There was Mrs. Sheavers coming down her back steps with her garbage at the same time.

  “Hello, Alice!” she called. “I’ll bet Mrs. Nolinstock is making you all her best dishes before she goes, isn’t she?”

  I paused with the lid of the garbage can in one hand. How did Mrs. Sheavers know we were firing Mrs. Nolinstock? How could she know that even before Mrs. Nolinstock knew it herself?

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Know what, dear?”

  “That she was… leaving?” I said.

  Mrs. Sheavers looked at me curiously. “Why, she and her husband are moving to Michigan in September. Your dad knew that before he hired her.”

  What? All this time Lester and I thought she was going to be here for the rest of our lives, and Dad knew she was only here till September? All this time we had been cooking and cleaning and behaving ourselves just to show him we could do it, and all this time he knew?

  Then I had another thought. An awful thought. If Lester and I didn’t do a good job by ourselves, maybe Dad would hire someone worse! A real prison guard who couldn’t cook!

  At that moment Donald Sheavers came out on the steps. I wanted to run back in the house before he saw me. Jump in the garbage can, if I had to. But it was too late.

  He threw back his head, thumped his chest, and gave a Tarzan yell.

  This would go on forever, I thought. I would always do stupid things and people would never forget. And then I remembered that I was now ten years old and I was going to take care of myself after school. Not even Donald did that. Maybe I had stuffed a volleyball down my jumper and a pill up my nose, but I had also burped a baby and was friends again with Lester.

  I looked at Donald Sheavers standing on his steps. I thumped my chest, threw back my head, and gave the loudest Tarzan yell ever. Then I went back in the house to tell Mrs. Nolinstock I liked her pies.

  Find out what happens next for Alice in

  GONE

  MY DAD SAYS THERE ARE GOOD YEARS and bad years for wine. I think there are good years and bad years for kids, too. My fifth-grade year in particular.

  I’ll admit I started out as sort of a grump, first because my brother celebrated his eighteenth birthday and asked for lemon cake, which I hate.

  “Why don’t you really go for it, Lester, and ask for prune cake?” I said. “Crab apple cake with grapefruit frosting?”

  “Nobody’s making you eat it, Al,” he told me. My full name is Alice Kathleen McKinley, but Dad and Lester call me Al.

  The second thing that made me grumpy was that I ripped a pocket on my favorite jeans, and it was hanging by one seam.

  My mother died when I was in kindergarten, and Dad can’t sew very well. He can cook and clean, but it takes him a long time to sew on a button or something. I don’t know how to sew either so I have to walk around with a flapping pocket.

  And the third thing that happened was that one of my very best friends, Sara, moved away. Rosalind, my other best friend, was as surprised as I was.

  “Did you know she was going to move?” I asked Rosalind.

  Rosalind shook her head. “Maybe she didn’t know either. Maybe she just woke up one morning and her dad said, ‘Let’s move.’”

  We were sitting on the school steps waiting for the bell. It was as though one minute Sara was here, and the next she wasn’t. There were other girls we hung around with at school, but we didn’t like them as much as we’d liked Sara.

  Megan was okay, even though she has a bratty little sister. Jody was sometimes okay and sometimes not. Dawn just did whatever Jody did.

  “Bummer!” said Rosalind. “Sara was a lot of fun.”

  We watched Jody and Dawn staggering around the playground with their arms around each other’s shoulders. They were pretending that Jody’s right leg was tied to Dawn’s left one, and they ended up giggling on the ground.

  “We didn’t know how much we’d miss Sara until she was gone,” I said. Just like I didn’t know how much I’d miss my mother until after she died, I guess. I should have enjoyed Sara as much as I could while she was still around. I decided to concentrate on Rosalind. She could make me laugh as much as Sara.

  “Say something funny,” I told her.

  Rosalind wrinkled up her nose. “You can’t just tell someone to be funny,” she said. “It’s only funny when you’re not expecting it.”

  “Okay, I’ll think about something else, and when I’m not expecting it, make me laugh,” I said.

  We were quiet for a moment.

  “Donald Sheavers pulls snot,” said Rosalind.

  “What?” I cried. “Rosalind, that’s not funny, it’s gross!”

  But she went right on. “You know how it is when you’re getting over a cold and the snot gets thick as glue?”

  “Rosalind!” I said again.

  She wouldn’t quit. “I saw him blowing his nose once, and every time he tried to grab the snot, it snapped back in like a rubber band.”

  “Euuuw!” I said.

  Megan came up the walk jus
t then. Everything about Rosalind is round, and everything about Megan is square. She dropped her backpack on the steps and sat down beside us.

  “What were you talking about?” she asked.

  “Snot,” I said, and grinned.

  “Oh!” said Megan, covering her ears.

  “The rubber band kind that snaps back up your nostrils when you try to pull it out,” said Rosalind.

  “Stop it!” said Megan.

  I laughed. “You did it,” I said to Rosalind. “You made me laugh.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Rosalind.

  When I walked home that afternoon with Donald Sheavers, I tried not to look at him. All I could think about was Donald having a cold. Donald blowing his nose.

  We live next door to the Sheaverses, and Donald’s mom used to take care of me on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I don’t have to go there anymore. And Lester doesn’t have to come straight home from high school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays either, to look after me. The good thing about being in fifth grade is that I’m finally old enough to stay at home by myself.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Donald asked me as we turned the corner onto our street.

  “I miss Sara,” I said. “I didn’t know they were going to move.”

  “They got kicked out of their house because they didn’t pay their rent,” Donald said. “If they hadn’t moved quick, the sheriff would have put all their stuff out on the sidewalk.”

  I stopped dead still. “How do you know?”

  “Mom heard some women talking about it at the beauty shop,” he said.

  Mrs. Sheavers works part-time at a hair salon, so she hears all kinds of stuff. But I sure didn’t want to hear this.

  “That’s a lie, Donald,” I said. “They wouldn’t stop paying their rent.”

  “If they didn’t have any money, they would,” said Donald.

  “But where would they go? If they don’t have any money, where will they live?”

  Donald shrugged. “In a tent, probably. Or maybe they just sleep in their car.”