Outrageously Alice Read Online Free PDF Page B

said sternly. “Somebody she doesn’t even know had his tongue in her mouth!”
    “That’s what I mean!” said Pamela. “A perfect stranger!The Mystery Kisser! Just think, Alice, you’ll go all through eighth grade looking at every boy and wondering, ‘Was it him?’ ‘Was it him?’”
    Pamela should have gone to that bridal shower, not me.
    By the time Mr. Price came to pick us up, I decided I had two lunatics for friends, and when Patrick and I got in the backseat beside Pamela and he put his arm around me, I wondered if he could sense that something was different.
    As soon as I got in the house, Lester said, “Well, she’s back from the dead—Dracula’s daughter.”
    Dad was sitting at his music stand with his flute, trying out some new sheet music. “Have a good time?” he asked, leaning forward to turn a page.
    “I was violated,” I said.
    All the expression went out of Dad’s face, and Lester lowered the sports page. I’ll admit, I enjoyed having something exciting to announce for a change.
    “What happened, Al?” asked Dad.
    I told them about the haunted house and the broom closet and how somebody had given me a French kiss. A couple of them.
    Dad looked relieved when he found out it was only a kiss.
    “Where in the world were the teachers?” he asked.
    “They were all over the place, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once.”
    “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Well, I’m glad it wasn’t anything more than a kiss.”
    That really got me. Didn’t he care ?
    “I was still violated!” I insisted, sounding more like e\Elizabeth by the minute. Something outrageous had happened to me, and nobody was paying attention.
    “Well, you don’t know who it was, so you might as well forget it,” Les said. “Be more careful next time.”
    “Somebody was responsible for that!” I declared.
    “So what do you want Mr. Ormand to do, Al? Apply thumbscrews till one of the eighth-grade boys confesses?” he asked.
    “If it had been you in the closet …,” I began.
    “I keep out of closets,” said Lester. “Besides, the poor guy probably did it out of self-defense. If someone cornered me in a closet wearing black net stockings and a peacock feather headdress and enough makeup to sink a ship, I probably would have grabbed the first thing I could put my hands on, too.”
    “That is so typical !” I shrieked. “It’s always the girl’s fault. If she’s molested or raped, it’s always because she asked for it.”
    Lester tossed his magazine over his shoulder and threw back his head. “Okay, okay! Have Mr. Ormand line up all the boys in eighth grade and shoot every fifth one till somebody comes clean. Will that satisfy you?”
    I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted to be noticed, but not too much. I wanted to be kissed, but not too hard. I wanted to be like everyone else, but at the same time I wanted to be different. I wanted excitement and adventure, but I also wanted protection. Thirteen must be the year of the split personality, that’s all I could figure out.
    The phone rang just then, and I went out in the hallway to answer. It was Elizabeth.
    “Alice, I just called Patrick and told him what happened,” she said.
    “You didn’t !”
    “I thought he should know. I mean, a boy has a right to know that the girl he kisses good night is damaged goods, so to speak.”
    “What?” Elizabeth was worse than Lester.
    “And he said he already knew.”
    “What?” Brian , I told myself. It was Brian, and he was going around bragging to everybody.
    “So who was it?” I asked.
    “Patrick.”
    “What?” It seemed the only word I knew.
    “Listen, I’m going to hang up because he’s going to call you,” Elizabeth said. “But everything’s okay now, because it was only Patrick.”
    Were we all crazy or what?
    I hung up after she did, and sat with my hand on the phone. About five seconds later, it rang.
    “Yes?” I said, in about as cold a voice as I could