over her shoulder. They formed an unsmiling half circle behind her.
“I don’t carry germs. I’m better,” said Alice.
“We don’t want you here,” said Felicity, coming forward. She had a smear on her cheek and it looked like war paint to Alice. “I’m lucky I didn’t die, being around you, letting you in my house.”
“That’s stupid.” This wasn’t what was supposed to happen at all. Alice’s lower lip began to tremble. She imagined the conversations that had gone on at school these last three weeks. The whispering between Carol and Kathy.
Kathy took a few steps forward. “Go home, Alice. No one wants you around.”
“No.”
“I mean it, go home.” Kathy’s face flushed. She folded her arms across her chest and glared.
“I threw your homework in the garbage,” said Carol, and Alice couldn’t believe how proud of herself she sounded. “As if I’d bring it to your house! My mother said if Mrs. Sergeant wanted you to get your homework she could jolly well bring it to you herself.”
It was strange, and frightening, the way the other girls had gone quiet, as if they were waiting for something to happen, as if they were waiting to pounce. Alice’s heart was a rabbit in her chest, scrunched down and frozen, beating at twelve times normal.
“You’ll fail this year, you’ve missed so much. You’ll get held back and we won’t have to have you in our class again.”
A gust of wind swirled through the trees, and all around them, the golden leaves fluttered and danced. One struck Alice in the face and stuck there. It was cold and a little sharp. She brushed if off while the girls laughed. She would not cry, no matter what they said, she vowed she would not cry. She looked down at her mud-covered shoes. She had stepped into a boggy patch without noticing.
Someone poked her between the shoulder blades. She spun around. Felicity had come up behind her and now pointed her finger. “Scram,” she said.
Alice took a couple of steps back. She hadn’t meant to, she just did, out of shock. Were they actually going to beat her up, like boys? She turned around again, frightened now, of being surrounded. Carol, in her coat as blue as the coldest ice, stepped forward. She pushed Alice in the chest with both hands.
She had been so excited to see them. So pleased. So hopeful.
She’d been such an idiot, thinking they’d be happy to see her. When were they ever truly happy to see her? So smug in their stupid little groups.
Before Alice realized she was going to do it, she grabbed a hank of Carol’s hair. She wrapped it around in her fist and yanked. Carol screamed. The hair felt cool and soft, and so slippery Alice really had to mangle her fingers through it to keep hold. Her stomach churned and her skin was hot with a different sort of fever than the one she’d had before. Carol dug her fingernails into the back of Alice’s hand and yelled for her to let go. It was odd, how quiet the world had gone. Alice was surprised she was doing this. Carol’s fingernails hurt, but it didn’t matter. It made no difference whatsoever. In a detached sort of way, from behind the wall of her fury, she wondered what would happen. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was not going to let go of Carol’s hair until it came out of her head in a hunk. Kathy simply stood there with her mouth open. Carol looked so deeply surprised.
“Hey!” said Felicity, behind her. And then, “whoa!” with something very close to admiration.
In Alice’s head, she heard her father’s words. Fight this thing. Punch it in the nose, kiddo. She tightened her grip. She had never felt stronger.
DIRTY MONEY
It happened last summer, a season I call The Time of the Naked Guys. Of course, I was ten then and didn’t know as much as I do now. It was a real hot summer, and the air around town smelled of baking asphalt during the day and barbeques at night, since none of the mothers wanted to cook much. This one afternoon I was sitting on the porch eating a blue Popsicle, which is my favourite colour Popsicle although it doesn’t really taste like anything blue, but then what does? Blueberries, I guess, but Popsicles don’t taste like that. Anyway, a white van pulled up in front of our driveway and the man driving asked me to come over.
“Hey, kid” he called, as he leaned over and rolled down the passenger side window. “I’m looking for the public swimming pool.” He was alone.
“You’re on the wrong road,” I said, going over to the van. “You got to go back and down Biscayne to Castle road. This is a dead end.”
“You think they’ll mind if I don’t wear a bathing suit?” He moved his hand in his lap.
That was when I realized he had his pants unzipped and his thing was all big and purple-y in his hand. It was as if I’d just dived into cold water.
“You’ll have to ask them,” I said, which at the time I thought was a cool, un-freaked out thing to say. It was the first thing I’d ever seen, since I don’t have any brothers or cousins or anything and I wouldn’t of minded taking a longer look, but it scared me. I hightailed it back in the house to tell my mom.
I came into the kitchen opening and closing my mouth like a fish. When I finally sputtered out what had happened, I figured she’d phone the police or something. Like the week before when the same thing happened to Janet Drury and her father and brother chased the car all the way down the street, her father waving a rake around like a sword.
“What are you talking about?” my Mom said. Her hands were sticky with marshmallows from the Rice Crispy squares she was making, and her permed hair had gone frizzy in the heat.
“Some guy! You know, with his thing out,” I said.
“Sweet Jesus! You shouldn’t be going near strange men,” she said.
I ground a lost kernel of puffed rice under my foot until it was nothing but dust on the black and white linoleum. The way Mom looked at me, I felt like I was the one who’d been out there with my God-givens bouncing around for the whole world to see.
“Why can’t you stay in the playground and play with the other kids? I blame your Aunt for this. The way you run wild in the woods all the time.” I watched the skin under my mother’s arm flap back and forth as she stirred the thickening goo.
“You’re ten years old, Kathy, very nearly a young lady. You’re far too old to be running wild the way you do. You’re just asking for trouble. He didn’t touch you, did he?”
“Course not,” I said.
“Well, good then. And take your hair out of your mouth; you look like a little idiot.”
I have long straight mouse-brown hair and chewing on it is a bad habit I’ve had since I was a little kid. I pulled it out of my mouth.
“I don’t know what the world’s coming to,” Mom said. “It’s not like we live in the city, with all those Eye-talians and J-e-w-s.” Mom always spelled out anything she didn’t think was fit to say outright. I waited for her to say or do something more, but that seemed to be her final word on the subject. She wasn’t a ‘making-a-fuss’ kind of Mom, not one to get into a tizzy, as she called it, about trouble. Although my experience was it was only my trouble she didn’t
