So she was my best friend for over two years. So how come I can’t believe her? I mean, isn’t that what a best friend does?
Well, partly it’s because I’m too afraid I’ll become some sort of nobody again if I do. I’ll never be popular again if I do. Like I’ve said, I’m owning that.
And partly it’s because one of the guys she (may have) slept with at Elaine’s party was Tommy Cray.
And partly it’s because of last summer—the summer of The Really Awful Stuff—and because of something Alice did when she was a lifeguard at Healy Pool North.
Alice always made her own money. She babysat, walked dogs, anything. Once she even cleaned Mrs. Montgomery’s house for a month while Mrs. Montgomery was recovering from back surgery. Alice always has to have her own money for clothes or magazines or makeup or whatever because her mother doesn’t give her anything. Alice’s mom is always complaining there isn’t enough to go around with her being a single mom and all, but it doesn’t seem to stop her from going out almost every night and leaving Alice to sort of fend for herself.
So the pool was like her first real job. One where she got a check she had to take to the bank instead of just a wad of rolled-up bills.
One of the perks of Alice’s pool job was the free snacks Alice would sneak me. She didn’t take total advantage or anything, but there’d be a Popsicle here or a candy bar there. I would sit on a stool outside the snack bar in the blue-and-white-striped bikini Alice had helped me pick out, and we would gossip and watch the boys swim, and I would help Alice make change when she got confused with the math.
The best perk, however, was the two high school seniors who worked there as lifeguards. Tommy Cray and Mark Lopez. They had just graduated from Healy High, and they were both so gorgeous. So totally gorgeous. The boys in our class still seemed like boys, but Tommy and Mark were men. At least that’s what Alice was always saying.
“Why waste our time with boys when there are men right here at Healy Pool North?” she would say, admiring Mark’s muscles or Tommy’s grin.
I figured if any of my friends knew about men, it was Alice. She wasn’t a virgin at that point and I still was. She’d lost her virginity freshman year to this junior named Tucker Bowles and then they’d broken up two months later, and this made Alice the expert in my eyes when it came to stuff like sex and boys. Or men.
I thought Tommy was gorgeous and had spent most of the summer secretly staring at him whenever I hung out at the pool, but I thought Tommy and Mark both sort of had crushes on Alice. I just didn’t think either boy was interested in me. My problem basically was (and is) that I don’t know how to relax around guys. I can’t make that easy small talk with boys that some girls can. Girls like Elaine O’Dea and Maggie Daniels can do that weird, amazing thing where it looks like they’re making fun of a boy on the surface, but somehow the boy always takes it as one big compliment.
Alice used to be good at that, too.
One night toward the end of that summer before tenth grade, Alice called me after the pool had closed and asked if I wanted to come down for a party. I told my mom I was going to go to Alice’s to sleep over, but I had to convince her to let me go because she wasn’t crazy about Alice (because Alice didn’t have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ) and also because we had to go to the 8:00 a.m. service the next morning. (When I whined, she told me, “As for me and my house, Kelsie, I will serve the Lord.”)
I don’t know what I was thinking would be going on, but when I hopped off my ten speed and walked into the guard house, I found Alice and Tommy and Mark. That was the party. They had some beers, and they smelled of bleach from bleaching out the bathrooms. Even though I’d been hanging out at the pool most of the summer, I still wasn’t as tan as the three of them. I remember Tommy had little pockets on his shoulders that were peeling, and the skin underneath was as pink as a brand new eraser.
Alice was sort of drunk, I could tell, and she was sort of hanging onto Mark, cutting into his side with her elbow and laughing with him at some private joke.
“Let’s swim,” Tommy said. I think he sensed Alice and Mark wanted to be by themselves. I was glad I’d worn my bikini underneath my clothes.
The pool felt so different at night without the shrieks of middle school kids screaming Marco! Polo! or the tweets of the lifeguard whistle. After a beer, I dove in without making a splash and sunk down to the bottom, letting my fingertips slide over the slippery black lane line markers. I broke through the water and dove down again immediately, wanting to stay there forever, enjoying the feeling of being slightly buzzed and underwater. Anyway, if I got out, I would have to talk to the heart-stopping Tommy. That seemed basically impossible.
“Where’s Alice?” I asked, when I’d finally resurfaced. Tommy was sitting on the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. He was sipping on a beer. He arched his eyebrows. He was gorgeous. Even now, after everything, I can still admit that.
“Where do you think?” he said, like I was slow.
I ducked back down under the water, wondering how long I should stay there or what I should say when I came back up. I loved Alice when we were alone together, eating ice cream or raw cookie dough or painting our toenails green or telling stupid jokes, but sometimes I felt left out whenever Alice was around a boy she liked.
Like I wasn’t sure where I fit in.
And like I knew I’d never get a boy to like me in the same way.
When I resurfaced, I heard someone saying, “Hey, Kelsie, are you ready to go home?”
It was Alice, coming out of the girls’ locker room, followed by Mark Lopez. Mark’s face was a little red. Tommy gave him a look, and the two of them laughed. Alice tucked her fingers under the bottom of her wet green bikini and tugged on it, like she was straightening it back out. When she let go, it made a smacking sound on her rear end. Her body was perfect, and that wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that fact with a lot of envy inside.
“Something happened with Mark, right?” I asked that night, the two of us alone in the dark of her bedroom, sharing her double bed. We’d been too tired to shower, and the sheets and the air and everything smelled of chlorine. I’d gathered up the courage to ask Alice that question because I knew I was going to be jealous of the answer. It was like I didn’t want to hear it, but I couldn’t help myself.
But Alice just laughed that loud honking Alice laugh.