Alice Alone by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

as any of us. We had to take turns watching Elizabeth’s baby brother while her mom sewed the dresses on her machine. We tickled Nathan with our plumes while he crawled around the floor, trying to get away from us and giggling.
    My dress was pale green, Elizabeth’s was red, and Pamela’s was purple, which made the blue streak in her hair stand out all the more. I bought the matching panty hose for all of us, and an hour before the party Saturday night, Pamela and Elizabeth came over to show our costumes to Dad and Lester.
    Lester was getting ready to go down to Georgetown with some friends, where all the college kids gather on Halloween. At the moment, though, he was sitting on the couch reading Newsweek and eating an apple. Pamela had brought overa CD of the Charleston, and I put it on my portable player and set it out in the hall. As soon as the music began, tin-sounding and honky, we danced into the living room, our arms around one another’s shoulders, kicking our legs out like the Rockettes, and then we each cut loose and did our own version of the Charleston.
    Lester lowered his apple and grinned. “You girls dancing or swimming?” he asked, but he not only laughed, he clapped.
    Dad got up from the dining room table, where he was going over mail orders from the Melody Inn, and stood in the doorway smiling at us. “Your mother certainly would have enjoyed this, Al,” he said wistfully. “Let me get my camera.”
    I was delighted that we were making a hit with Dad and Lester. If they liked us, the guys at the party surely would.
    Dad drove us over to Penny’s. Her house was about the same as ours—old and big, with lots of trees around it.
    Both her parents were on hand to meet us at the door, and Penny herself was dressed as a pirate— short black shorts, a red shirt and black sash, gold earrings, a red bandanna, and a patch over one eye. Adorable, was the only way to describe her, but then I felt adorable, too, so it didn’t bother me as much as it might have.
    Not everyone was there, but most of our crowdwas. She hadn’t invited Lori and Leslie, I noticed, or Sam and Jennifer, and she didn’t even know Donald Sheavers, but Gwen and Legs had come, and the usual gang that hangs around Mark Stedmeister’s pool in the summers. I guessed Penny would be a part of it now.
    The guys all came as gangsters, every one of them. Well, all but Legs. He and Gwen came as Twinkies. Karen was a bag of potato chips, and Jill was a French maid. We made quite a picture. In fact, flashbulbs kept going off all evening, and Penny’s folks took a number of group pictures.
    Of course, everyone made us put on the Charleston CD and dance, and soon the whole gang was hoofing it up. The gangsters and the flappers together looked great, and I was having more fun than I’d had at my own party.
    Patrick swung me around, tipped me back, and kissed me in front of everyone; it was just a glorious Halloween. Penny’s dad drove some of the kids home afterward, Pamela’s Dad drove a bunch, too, and Lester came to pick up Elizabeth, Patrick and me. Patrick kissed me again before he got out of the car.
    “All that worry for nothing,” Elizabeth said to me after Patrick got out. “He’s still crazy for you, Alice.”
    “I guess so,” I said. “How about you and Justin?”
    “Oh, he likes all the girls,” she said.
    I couldn’t help but wonder about Elizabeth as I dressed for bed. Justin is one of the best-looking guys in ninth grade. Nice, too, and nuts—or was nuts—about Elizabeth. But just because he made a remark last summer—a joking remark—about her getting chubby, she’s been giving him the cold shoulder. It’s almost as though she looks for reasons not to get too close to a boy. And she sure isn’t chubby now. There are times I feel there will always be a part of Elizabeth I’ll never know. I wonder if anyone feels that way about me.
    I slept late the next morning and had a ton of homework, so I didn’t go