did anyone deliver homework?” she said.
“You’re such a silly girl. Why would you want to work when you should be working on nothing more than getting better? Besides, you’re so smart, you’ll catch up in no time, when you go back to school.”
That made sense, for she was smart. Alice decided it was perfectly all right to give her energies over to getting better. That should be her focus, as her mother said. So, in between reading and television and snacks, she took naps and lay in bed watching the golden flutter of autumn leaves from the giant oak outside her window. She imagined she was in a glass snow-flake globe, floating in a thick, glossy sea, with gold flakes falling around her.
One night, when he father had carried her up to bed and tucked her in, he said, “Really, Peaches, how are you feeling?”
“Well, I don’t have much strength,” she said.
Her father sighed. He took her hand and held it firmly, patting it over and over. “Listen to me,” he said. “You have to fight, do you understand? You have to fight this thing.”
“It takes weeks,” said Alice.
“Punch it in the nose, kiddo,” said her father, and then he left, closing the door softly behind him.
Alice lay in the dark, wondering what he was talking about. She thought he should be more sympathetic, really.
It was more than three weeks by the end of the illness. Nearly a month, she thought when she woke one morning. I have been a true invalid. Then she thought, well, maybe just a little longer, and called her mother for some toast and tea.
At last, the day came when all the medicine was finished and her glands were down to normal and she was, to tell the truth, just a tiny bit restless. It was a Saturday afternoon and the sun was bright, even if the air was chilly. From the backyards, the voices of her schoolmates rose and fell in the melody of their game. There were no fences around any of the houses and the grassy squares became one long playground. Swing sets behind one house, jungle gym behind another, a tether-ball pole, a basketball net, and in between the rolling, leaf-scattered grass to leap about in, to roll in, to chase each other through. She heard Felicity’s voice, and maybe Carol’s. The sounds were a little foreign, but beckoning, full of resonance.
Alice sat at the kitchen table across from her father. He read the sports section, she read the funnies and did the word games. He lowered the paper and she noticed he hadn’t shaved this morning. “Sounds like a pack of coyotes out there,” he said.
“It’s a terrible noise,” said her mother, who was at the stove browning meat for tonight’s stew. The kitchen smelled of oregano and fat and pepper. “Alice’s friends,” Andrew said.
“Oh, I don’t think that’s her crowd,” said Cynthia.
“I know them. I think that’s Felicity.”
“Why don’t you go see?” said her father. “You’ve been cooped-up in here far too long.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Drew. She’s still convalescing.”
“I, I think I might like to.”
“Don’t feel pressured just because your father says things,”
“Cynthia, she looks like a little ghost. She needs some sun. A good run round will do her the world of good.”
“I’m going to go out. Just for a little while,” said Alice.
“I was going to make you some cinnamon toast,” said her mother. “And some tea.”
The voices were louder now and she could practically smell the sunshine. Her feet tingled. “I won’t be out for long and I can have it when I come back.”
“Well…”
“Please, please?”
“Go on, Alice. Go on,” said her father.
She was up and out of her chair in a flash. Quicker, really, than she’d thought possible. Suddenly she wanted movement, wanted to flex things. She twitched with it.
“Are you sure you’re up to it? Wear your jacket and scarf,” Cynthia called.
Alice rounded the corner of the house and caught sight of them – red and blue and green coats flashing against the dark leaf-tattered tree trunks at the back of the MacKay’s house, where the street, and the yards, dead-ended into forest.
“Hey,” she called, but of course, they couldn’t hear her. “It’s me, Alice.”
She set out at a trot, but in less than a minute she was winded, her legs tired. She wondered if maybe her mother was right, perhaps she wasn’t ready to be out yet, but her heart clenched at the thought of missing Kathy and Carol and even Felicity, whose voice she could clearly hear, louder than the rest, yelling out from between the trees. Things would be different now, she was sure. They would be interested in her since she had suffered this Terrible Illness, and come through it so bravely.
The air was rich with the scent of autumn, of burning leaves and the crisp freshness that foretells oncoming winter. It gave her energy and she walked a little, and ran a little, until she reached the edge of the woods.
“Hey,” she called.
The girls were by the streambed, which was low at this time of year. It was dappled with fallen leaves, gold and red against the slate-gray water and the stones. It was Kathy in the red coat, Carol in the blue. They looked like two painted boulders, hunkered down by the edge of the water. Felicity and the other girls were farther along into the woods, whooping and running, chasing each other with sticks.
“Hi,” said Alice again.
Kathy looked over her shoulder and nudged Carol. “Look who it is,” she said.
“What are you doing out?” said Carol. She brushed her long hair back over her shoulder, tucking it behind her ear.
“I’m all better.”
“No,” said Kathy.
The two girls stood up. Kathy was taller than Carol, but both their noses were perfectly pert and their teeth were straight. Kathy had red hair, as wavy as Carol’s was silken and straight. Even Kathy’s freckles were perfect.
“What are you doing?” said Alice. She smiled with every muscle in her face. She wanted to beam at them, to glow with them. She wondered what she had been doing in the house with her mother all these weeks, when here, right at the end of her street was this magic forest of possibilities. She felt like an elf, maybe, yes – like the three of them, even Felicity and the wild girls, were fairies in this wood, and that anything could happen.
“You can’t be around us,” said Carol, and she linked her arm through Kathy’s.
“What?” The smile on Alice’s face was heavy then, and so she let it droop. “Why?”
“Because you carry germs.” Carol giggled.
“Typhoid Mary, that’s what my mother calls you,” and Kathy giggled
