Alice Alone by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

running. Pamela, Elizabeth, and I had started running every morning during the summer to tone up before we started high school, and I’d vowed to keep it up after school began. I enjoyed running even when Pamela and Elizabeth weren’t with me. Sort of my own special time to think things over and plan my day.
    But now I realized I’d let too much slip by while I was getting ready for Halloween, and began to panic that even if I stayed up all night I wouldn’t be able to do it all. When I looked at the course outline for English, I discovered that a huge paper I had thought was due November 10 was due November 3, a week sooner.
    “Don’t anyone talk to me!” I bellowed, pushingDad’s stuff to one side of the dining room table and taking over the rest of the space for myself.
    “A pleasure,” said Lester. “Who rattled your cage?”
    “High school is too much work!” I cried in despair. “Every teacher thinks his is the only subject there is—that you’ve got all the time in the world just to work on his assignments. Never mind what anyone else gives you.”
    “And you haven’t even started college, much less grad school,” said Lester, which didn’t make me feel any better.
    I had only done two problems in algebra when the phone rang.
    “Al, it’s Patrick,” Dad called. “Should I say you’ll call him back?”
    “No, I’ll take it,” I mumbled. As I walked to the phone in the hall I wondered if I should ask him to come over and help me with the algebra, but I couldn’t very well let him help and then tell him to go home. If he came, he’d want to stay awhile, and I’d lose an hour or two I just couldn’t afford. “Hi,” I said.
    “Hi. How are the legs this morning?”
    “Wobbly.” I laughed. “It was a fun party, though.”
    “Sure was,” he said. “Hey, today’s the last day for that sci-fi movie at the Cinema. Want to go?”
    Patrick is so smart, he can do his homework in half the time, even with his accelerated program. It’s maddening. “Oh, Patrick, I can’t!” I wailed.“I’m too far behind. Heart attack city! Can’t we rent the video after it comes out?”
    “I want to see it on the big screen, Dolby sound and everything,” he said. “It’s supposed to be really good. Karen and Brian and Penny and a bunch of us are going.”
    I was silent.
    “Alice?” he said.
    Maybe I should just go, I thought. Maybe I should forget the homework for once and go, be spontaneous, but I knew I couldn’t. I should have planned better. I should have checked my assignment due dates. “I can’t,” I said flatly. “Have a good time.”
    “Sure?” he said.
    “I’m positive. I’ve got a billion assignments, Patrick. I’d like to, but I can’t.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Talk to you later.” And I heard him hang up.
    I tried not to think about Patrick at the movies with Penny. There would always be a Penny. No matter what happened in life, there would always be a girl or a woman who was pretty and fun and popular and clever, and I had to get used to it. Patrick and I were an “item,” so why did I worry about it so much?
    I was relieved that I actually got through the first section of the algebra assignment by myself. The remaining problems were so hard and my patienceso thin that I put them off until later to ask Lester. Then I read a chapter in history and started the essay questions at the end.
    Elizabeth called to see if I had gone to the movies with Patrick. She’d stayed home to do her English assignment, too. I told her that I was uneasy about Penny being there with Patrick.
    “It’s broad daylight!” she said. “You never have to worry about a guy and a girl going anywhere in the afternoon, even the movies. That’s so uncool, it doesn’t even count.”
    I felt better, and made myself a peanut butter sandwich with bacon bits. After I was finished with history, around five o’clock, I ate an apple and painted my nails, and then I started the paper for English. I