Alice Alone Read Online Free Page B

okay by me. I’d have myhands full just making sure the bathroom was clean and the house straightened up, and helping Dad with the food. That, and algebra.
    I was really having trouble with that subject. I worried so much about not understanding it when the teacher wrote things on the board that I concentrated more on the worrying than the problem. But every time I walked in the classroom, my stomach churned. Whenever I had to put a problem on the board, I could feel perspiration trickling down my sides.
    In junior high, I would have leaned my head on Patrick’s shoulder going home and told him how scared I was, and he would have put his arm around me and volunteered to come over and help me with my homework. But now, if Patrick wasn’t staying after school for band practice or something, he was doing extra work in the library for his accelerated program. I missed him.
    “I might as well not even have a boyfriend,” I complained to Gwen, the friend who’d helped me with general math back in eighth grade. She had a boyfriend, too, and his nickname was Legs. He goes out for track every spring with Patrick.
    “Yeah? Tell me about it,” she joked.
    “I never see him! He’s always got fifty other things to do!”
    “He calls, doesn’t he?”
    “It’s not the same as talking to him in person.”
    “Well, you can’t carry a guy around in your pocket,” Gwen said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “You’ve each got to have your own space.”
    “It’s like we’ve each got a ball field of space around us now! What more does he need?” I asked.
    She laughed. “A whole city block. Some boys need a whole block just to themselves.”
    I didn’t think that applied to Patrick. He’d never said anything about needing more space. He was simply too busy with all he had going on in his life. I should be proud of him, I told myself—somebody as smart and motivated as he was. Most of the time I’d let him decide where we should go and what we should do. He always had the best ideas.
    When Gwen and I walked down the hall together, we had the habit of leaning toward each other, our arms touching. I walk that way with Pamela, too, but Elizabeth doesn’t like people leaning on her. Gwen’s chocolate-colored skin against my pinkish-cream made Legs think of candy, he said—the kind his grandma kept in her candy dish.
    “If you need help with algebra, I could come over sometime,” Gwen offered when we reached the stairwell.
    “I don’t just need it sometimes, I need it all the time. Every day,” I told her. “I don’t think I’m going to pass this course.”
    “You said the same thing about general math. Don’t play dumb on me,” Gwen said.
    The fact was, I wasn’t playing. If a textbook says, The widest part of North America is from Labrador to British Columbia , I can see a picture of it in my head. If I read that The clam has gills that hang into the mantle cavity on each side of the foot , I know exactly what the book is telling me. I see pictures in my mind. But if I read that The coefficient is the multiplier of a variable or number, usually written next to the variable , or [5 a +6 a ={5 a - a +7 a }- a ], I might as well be looking at pigeon tracks in the snow. I can almost feel my eyes roll back and my brain go on hold.
    “That’s life, Al. L-I-F-E. Some things are harder than others,” Lester said that evening as we made taco salad for dinner. The Melody Inn stays open late on Thursday nights, but it was Janice Sherman’s turn to stay at the store, and we wanted to have dinner ready for Dad when he got home.
    “Well, life stinks,” I said. “I don’t want to go through four years of high school scared to death I’m going to flunk.”
    “What’s the worst that can happen if you do?”
    “I’d have to take algebra I again next semester,which means I’d have to go to summer school for algebra II.”
    “And … ?”
    “And there are other ways I want to spend my summer!”
    “If