Outrageously Alice

  Well, I was getting one thing straight, I decided as I walked to the

  cafeteria. I was getting across the fact that I wasn’t sweet little Alice

  McKinley anymore—a generic type of girl with no imagination or style.

  NOW THAT SHE IS SETTLING INTO EIGHTH grade, the class she used to envy, Alice McKinley is discovering that it isn’t all that exciting. But maybe it’s up to her to make this year as thrilling as she thought it would be. Out with the old, plain-Jane Alice, in with the new, stylish, creative Alice. She’s sick of being boring. It’s time to be outrageous!

  But what if outrageous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? What if Alice finds herself in situations that are more embarrassing than they are wild and fun? Is Alice destined to be the same boring girl forever?

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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 • 0811

  Here’s what fans have to say about Alice:*

  “I love your books! Now, I’m sure everyone says that, but it’s way more when I say it.… Long live Naylor!”—SoccAllis

  “Every one of your books makes me laugh, cry, blush, feel embarrassed and just plain silly at points. They are as real as life is now.… Thanks for writing such great books!! I’m not just saying that. I really mean it!”—Zoey

  “If I have kids when I grow up, I think I’m going to force-feed them Alice (just joking … sorta).”—Tanya

  “I want to say thank you very much. I introduced [my daughter] to Alice years ago, and she became addicted. I was amazed because my daughter wasn’t into reading until she started reading Alice.”—A Happy Mother

  *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.

  Outrageously 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

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  ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

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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 © 1997 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

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

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  Book design by Mike Rosamilia

  The text for this book is set in Berkeley Oldstyle Book.

  0711 OFF

  This Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition August 2011

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

  Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.

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

  p. cm.

  “A Jean Karl book.”

  Summary: Alice is in eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.

  ISBN 978-0-689-80354-3 (hc)

  [1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Identi
ty—Fiction. 3. Single-parent families—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.N24Ou 1997

  [Fic]—dc20

  96007744

  ISBN 978-1-4424-2853-9 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-1-44246-584-8 (eBook)

  To Erinn Lindsay Geyer,

  whose love of books will make them

  her lifelong friends

  Contents

  One: Facing Up

  Two: Getting a Life

  Three: Jungle Fever

  Four: In the Closet

  Five: A Touch of Green

  Six: Shock Wave

  Seven: Outrageous

  Eight: Studies in Forgiveness

  Nine: Religion and Sex

  Ten: Emergency

  Eleven: Rehearsal

  Twelve: The Waltz

  1

  FACING UP

  ABOUT THE THIRD WEEK OF OCTOBER, I decided it was turning out to be one of the weirdest months of my life. Not that there have been that many of them—Octobers, I mean. Thirteen, to be exact. But here’s what had happened so far:

  Lester, my twenty-one-year-old brother, who has been juggling two or more girlfriends for several years, just got word that one of his main girlfriends, Crystal, was engaged to be married at Thanksgiving. And I was to be a bridesmaid. Now that’s weird.

  And of course I was still holding my breath to see whether Miss Summers, my English teacher last year, would marry Dad or our vice principal, Mr. Sorringer, who’s in love with her too.

  Then Elizabeth, my friend who lives across the street, got a baby brother. At last she found out what a boy looks like naked. Is that weird, or what?

  And finally, the student council at our junior high voted to create a haunted house for Halloween in the school gym to raise money for our library. What the school was going to do, see, was charge a buck fifty apiece to scare little kids half out of their minds. Patrick, my boyfriend, who’s vice president of the student council, asked if I wanted to help out.

  Well, why not? I thought. October couldn’t get any crazier than it was already.

  I was wrong. It got even crazier. Crystal Harkins’s maid of honor invited me to a bridal shower—a lingerie shower—and I’d never been to a shower before.

  But you know what? All of these things—the engagement, the bridal shower, the baby brother, the haunted house—were happening to somebody else. I was just on the outside looking in. Not much that is really dramatic, outrageous, and wonderful has ever happened to me— something to remember forever and ever. If there was a prize for the girl with the most boring life, I thought, I’d win it, hands down.

  Here’s where I miss my mom. If Mom were alive, she could have told me how to keep from being ordinary. She’d know what you take to a bridal shower, too. But because she died when I was four, I have to ask Dad and Lester, who don’t know diddly, all my questions, and if I’m really desperate, I call Aunt Sally in Chicago. This time I tried Dad and Lester first.

  “I’ve been invited to a lingerie shower for Crystal,” I said at dinner that night. “Any ideas about what I could get her?”

  “A chastity belt,” Lester mumbled.

  “What?”

  “He’s joking, Al,” said Dad. He and Lester call me Al.

  Lester just glared down at his tuna and noodles. I guess he figured his girlfriends would go on waiting all their lives for him to make up his mind, and it was really a shock that one of them got engaged.

  “What is a chastity belt?” I asked, curious.

  “A metal device that some medieval men bought their wives when the men were going to be gone from their fiefdoms,” said Dad. “Only the husbands had the key. It was to insure that their wives would be faithful while they were away. Now you know how ridiculous this conversation is getting to be.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “You mean it fit around their …?”

  “Exactly,” said Lester. “Now shut up.”

  “But how did they go to the bathroom?” I have to know things like that.

  “With difficulty, I imagine,” Dad said.

  I looked from Dad to Lester. That was so unfair! “What about the men? Did they have to wear chastity belts while they were gone to make sure they weren’t unfaithful?” I demanded.

  Lester winced.

  I was indignant. “What about a metal pipe that fitted over their …?”

  “Okay, okay! Just drop it, will you?” Lester snapped. He’s been pretty touchy these days. Ever since Crystal returned all the things he’d ever given her and told us she was getting married, he’s been a real grouch.

  I’m not sure why I was asked to be one of her bridesmaids, but I think it’s because her fiancé’s younger brother is going to be in the wedding party. He’s seventeen, and Crystal needs someone young to walk back up the aisle with him. Or maybe Crystal’s still mad at Lester and is trying to rub it in. Whatever, I’m prepared to enjoy myself.

  “I don’t see how you can buy Crystal anything without knowing her sizes,” Dad said, trying to be helpful.

  “Big,” said Lester. “Big hips, big boobs—a narrow waist, though.”

  “Do you want to buy it for me, Lester?” I asked.

  He glared daggers at me. “What do you think?”

  I went up to my room after dinner and tried to figure out what would look nice on Crystal Harkins. If she were to step out of the bathroom on her wedding night and present herself to her new husband, what would look best on her? She has short red hair in a feather cut, and I imagined her in a sheer white nightgown with lace over her breasts so you could see her nipples.

  I took the invitation out of the envelope again to see if they gave Crystal’s sizes on the back. They didn’t. But there was a little card enclosed that said the shower was being given jointly by Betsy Hall, Crystal’s maid of honor, and Fantasy Creations, which, it said, for eleven years has been making the kind of lingerie “every woman dreams of possessing, but only a few will dare.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  I went straight to the phone and dialed my cousin Carol in Chicago. She’s Aunt Sally’s daughter, and I always try her first. Carol’s a couple years older than Lester and, having been married once to a sailor, she knows everything there is to know in the sex department. The phone rang eight times at her place, though, and she didn’t answer, so I had to call Aunt Sally.

  “Is Carol there, by chance?” I asked when Uncle Milt answered.

  “Why, Alice, sweetheart! How nice to hear from you!” he said. “No, she’s on a business trip, but your aunt Sally’s right here. Just a minute.”

  “Alice?” said Aunt Sally. “What’s wrong?”

  I come from one of those families where if you call long distance, they figure someone just died.

  “Nothing! I just wanted to ask a question.”

  “Oh! Certainly!” said Aunt Sally, sounding relieved. She’s Mom’s older sister, who took care of us for a while after Mom died, before we moved to Maryland.

  “I’ve been invited to a bridal shower, and I’m wondering what to buy.”

  “Not Pamela or Elizabeth!” Aunt Sally gasped. Pamela’s my other best friend, and we’d all three gone by Amtrak to visit Aunt Sally last June.

  “No. An old girlfriend of Lester’s, actually. She’s marrying someone else.”

  “Good for her!” said Aunt Sally, who thinks it’s time Lester settled down himself. “Now what kind of shower is it to be? Kitchen? Linen?”

  “Lingerie,” I said. “The kind every woman dreams of possessing, but only a few will dare.”

  There was a soft noise at the other end of the line. I think Aunt Sally had just sat down.

  “Pajamas,” she said finally. “Alice, you can’t go wrong with pajamas. If I were you, I’d buy a pretty pair of pink pajamas, and I promise she’ll thank you.”

  Crystal would thank me, all right, but would she wear them? I thought not. So after I’d talked to Aunt Sally, I dialed the maid of honor herself, who told me that I wasn’t supposed to buy anything in
advance.

  “Just come,” Betsy said, “and you can order from the Fantasy Creations catalog when you get here. We’ll have Crystal’s sizes, and she’ll choose the things she likes. You might like to buy something for yourself, too.”

  Now that was the weirdest idea of all, because I don’t have much of a body yet. I suppose that will come. At least I hope so. But what I really want is a life, not a new bra. I want to do things. I want people to notice me.

  Elizabeth Price is beautiful, she takes ballet and piano, and she has a little brother to take care of, even though his poop is yellow and Elizabeth says she’ll never eat mustard again. Gorgeous Pamela Jones, my other best friend, is taking tap and gymnastics, and Patrick’s on the track team, the debate team, the student council, and the school newspaper. He’s also in the band. Me? I’m just not a joiner, I guess.

  When Patrick came over later, we walked to our old elementary school and fooled around on the jungle gym. He chased me over and under the bars but never did tag me, and finally we sat on the swings, turning around and around until the chains wouldn’t wind anymore, and then we’d let go and spin the other way.

  Patrick was talking about how busy he was going to be this year, with track meets and all, and suddenly I said, “Patrick, is it possible to get through life without joining anything?”

  “You mean … like a church or a political party?”

  “A band, a chorus, a club, a group, Girl Scouts, Boy scouts, Triple A, anything?”

  Patrick dug his feet into the ground to stop the swing. “I suppose, but why would you want to? You allergic to people?”

  “No! I like people! I just don’t want to end up being like everybody else. Like a … a piano key, that’s all.” I thought that was pretty original, but Patrick thought I was nuts.

  “Well, I guess you can have a full and interesting life without joining anything, but what do you do for excitement, Alice? Besides me, of course.” He grinned.

  Suddenly it seemed like one of the most embarrassing questions I’d ever been asked.

  “I guess I figured I was busy enough,” I murmured.

  “A college might not think so,” said Patrick.

  “What does college have to do with it?”

  “You have to list all your hobbies and extracurricular activities on your application, Mom says. And if you don’t have any, well …”