Alice Alone by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

figured Patrick would call later and tell me about the movie, what I’d missed and what everybody did after. But the phone didn’t ring. Just before I went to bed I checked my E-mail. No messages at all.
    Patrick wasn’t on the bus the next morning. Sometimes he has band practice before school, and his dad drives him over. Penny was there, though, talking about the movie and how scary it was.
    Brian guffawed loudly and interrupted. “There was this part where the woman’s in the cave, afraid to come out because the creature with all the tentacles is around somewhere, but she doesn’t knowit’s been cloned, and there’s another one back in the cave, and you see this tentacle sort of oozing, sliding across the rocks behind her …”
    “And then Patrick puts his hands around Penny’s neck!” laughed Mark.
    “You should have heard her scream!” Brian said.
    “Everyone in the theater turned and stared at me!” Penny went on, laughing at herself. “He was horrible!”
    “A hundred-decibel scream,” said Justin.
    “Well, he scared me!” Penny said, laughing some more.
    I slid onto the seat beside Pamela.
    “I think you should have come,” she whispered tentatively.
    “ You went?”
    “Sure. I thought everyone was coming.”
    “I had tons and tons of work to do.”
    She just shrugged. “When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” she said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Just that Patrick was fooling around. He was sitting right beside Penny.”
    “Well, he had to sit somewhere.”
    “I know. I’m just telling you.”
    I felt I was swimming against the tide. I felt as though a big steamroller was coming at me, or an avalanche or something.
    “So … what else happened?” I asked. “Nothing. That I know of.”
    “Meaning … ?”
    “I don’t know, Alice. I can’t watch them every minute.”
    “Well, I can’t, either,” I said. “And what’s more, I shouldn’t have to.”
    “Right,” said Pamela.
    I felt flat all day. Irritated. Anxious. But I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to ask Patrick about it. I wasn’t going to nag and question and put him through the third degree. If you had to do all that to keep a guy, what good was it?
    He called that evening. He told me all about the movie, but he didn’t mention Penny. Didn’t say how he’d slipped his hands around her neck at the critical moment, made her scream. How he happened to be sitting right beside her.
    I was proud of myself that I didn’t ask. “I’m sorry I missed it,” I said.
    “Yeah, it was great,” he said. “You want to stop by the band room after school tomorrow? Levinson’s going to decide between me and another guy as to who gets to do the drum solo at the winter concert. We both have to audition, and I figure it wouldn’t hurt to have my friends there.”
    “What time?”
    “Three.”
    “Oh, Patrick! I’ve got an editorial meeting for the school newspaper! We get our assignments for the next month. Darn!”
    “You can’t skip?”
    “If I do, I’ll get stuck with the assignment nobody else wants. I’ve heard it’s really, really important to be at the first meeting of every month.”
    “Well, that’s the way the ball bounces,” Patrick said.
    “Look. I’ll see if I can’t get my assignment first and come right down to the band room,” I told him.
    “Okay. See you,” he said.
    I loved being one of the two freshmen roving reporters, and looked forward to the weekly meetings. Sam Mayer was only a freshman, too, but he’d moved right up to photographer. He was so good that he was sent to cover the first football game. The roving reporters got the fluff assignments, we call them, the kind you could either put in or leave out and it wouldn’t make much difference. But some assignments were better than others, and they were fun.
    Nick O’Connell, a senior, was editor in chief, and when I got to the meeting, there was a big argument in progress. Sara, the features editor,