Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) Read Online Free PDF

I was feeling as we sat around over dessert, laughing at my roommate stories (a lot funnier now that they were in the past), was that it was the first time I felt like an adult with my family. I was more than just the kid sister now. And I liked that feeling. Liked it a lot.
    *  *  *
    I got a call from Patrick later and ran upstairs to take it in my room.
    “I was hoping you’d pick up,” he said.
    “Where are you?” I asked, curling up on my bed, the phone tucked under my ear.
    “Well, at the moment I’m sitting on a bench near theentrance of the Plaza de Cataluña in the early evening, wishing you were here.”
    “There in Barcelona?”
    “Yeah. And I’m looking up at a statue of a guy on a . . . Wait a minute, correction: a woman on a horse—a naked woman on a horse—holding a small sailing ship above her head.”
    “I don’t get it. Why is she on a horse?”
    “I don’t get it either, but a bunch of us are exploring the city, and the others have gone in search of a restroom. You home?”
    “Yes. And it’s so great. The whole gang’s getting together tomorrow. I really miss you, Patrick. Seven more months till you’re home again.”
    “Where are you going to meet tomorrow? It would have been at the Stedmeisters’ . . .”
    “I know. That’s on everyone’s mind. So I’ve invited everybody here. Les is home too, and he has a new girlfriend.”
    “That’s a surprise?”
    I laughed. “ She is. And they’re obviously crazy about each other.”
    “Uh-oh,” Patrick said. “I see the gang moving off . . . they didn’t know I was over here. Gotta hustle.”
    “Happy Thanksgiving, Patrick,” I said, “even though you’re not celebrating it.” I didn’t want to carry on about how much I longed for him, because it was depressing, for one thing, and because, technically, we weren’t in an exclusive relationship. We usually kept our remarks to the I-miss-you variety. This time, though, I said, “I love you.”
    He could still make me laugh, even four thousand miles away.
    “I’m sending you a kiss by proxy,” he said.
    I was smiling already. “And how does that work?”
    “Well, there’s a mail truck parked at the corner . . . and I’m walking over”—I could tell he was moving because his words were fading in and out—“and I’m putting my arms around the back of the truck, which is a little hard to do because I’m still trying to talk into the cell phone . . .”
    “I’m not as wide as a truck, Patrick.”
    “I know, but partway will have to do. And now I’m pressing my lips against the door, a long, slow kiss . . .”
    “Mmmmm,” I said, pretending to moan with pleasure.
    “. . . and a pedestrian is looking at me like I’m loco and is probably going to call the policia right this minute,” Patrick finished. “Adios, querido!”
    The local language of Barcelona, Patrick had told me, was Catalan, not Spanish, and I was bummed because I’d wanted to practice my high school Spanish with him. But the tourists all came with their Spanish dictionaries, Patrick said, and the locals humored them, so he occasionally threw in a Spanish phrase when he called.
    I was glad that his last words to me were funny and affectionate, the way I wanted him to remember me. Then I looked up querido in my Spanish dictionary and was pleased that it meant “sweetheart.”
    *  *  *
    Liz, Pam, Gwen, and I agreed to spend the night at Elizabeth’s after our other friends had left. It was fun seeing everyone again. Tim, Pamela’s ex, had that movie-star unshaven look, while Keeno—now at the Naval Academy in Annapolis—had just the opposite: a buzz cut. Karen was home from Penn State; Lori and Leslie were still together, we heard, but had decided to move west and were headed to Washington State. Penny and her folks had moved to Delaware, and no one knew where Brian was at the moment. We’d just lost touch.
    All we did was talk. It sounded like a zoo, everyone trading