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Chapter One: Teasing Sal

Dad says it's the dumbest thing he ever saw, but every year the Washington Post comes out with a list of what's "in" and what's "out" -- movies, songs, food, clothes, TV programs, even people. It's done sort of tongue in cheek, but I read it anyway.

"Al," he says (he and Lester call me Al), "are you really going to let somebody else tell you what you should be eating and wearing and talking about? You're not a zombie, remember. You're an interesting girl with a brain of her own."

I like my dad. I know kids who are always knocking their parents, but Dad manages to squeeze in a compliment even when he's trying to teach me a lesson. I know if Mom were alive I'd love her too, but she died when I was in kindergarten.

"Imagine waking up some morning and finding out that everything in your closet and refrigerator was on the 'out' list," said Pamela, when we were discussing the list. She and Elizabeth are two of my very best friends.

"Imagine waking up and finding your name on the 'out' list," I said. "One day you're part of the 'in' crowd, and the next you're not."

"Then they weren't real friends to begin with," said Elizabeth.

We were walking home from the library, enjoying the first faint feel of spring, a warm breeze that ruffled our hair. We were ready for spring -- ready for something new. Elizabeth had a new boyfriend, Justin Collier, the absolutely handsomest guy in eighth grade. Elizabeth was the first one of us who had been invited to the eighth-grade semi-formal in May.

Pamela had already turned fourteen, and she was ready for anything too, especially anything that would take her away from themess at home -- namely, her mom's running off to be with her NordicTrack instructor.

As for me, it was time to concentrate on where my own life was going. Miss Summers, my gorgeous seventh-grade English teacher whom my dad loves, is going to England for a year as an exchange teacher because she can't decide between Dad and our assistant principal, Jim Sorringer, who's in love with her too. After worrying about my dad's love life for over a year, I decided it was out of my hands and I wasn't going to waste any more of my life trying to work things out for him.

"Bring on the spring!" I said, lifting my face toward the sun and feeling it full on my cheeks and forehead. "Gwen says you can be a candy striper at the hospital once you're fourteen. That's what she's going to do this summer."

"Who's Gwen?" asked Pamela.

"The short black girl in my math class."

"Do they pay you?" she wanted to know.

"I don't think so. It's all volunteer."

"I won't be fourteen till December," said Elizabeth. "I guess that leaves me out."

"I'm not volunteering at any hospital! Who wants to empty bedpans all day?" said Pamela.

"I think candy stripers deliver magazines and mail and stuff," I told her. But I could tell it still didn't appeal much. Pamela was depressed enough without working in a hospital. Was it possible we'd each be doing something different come summer? It would be the first time since we'd known each other that we hadn't spent the whole summer together, going over to each other's houses almost every day.

"I'd rather think about the semi-formal," said Pamela. "Summer's still a long way off."

"Who are you going with?" Elizabeth asked her. I was going with my boyfriend, Patrick, of course. A guy named Sam, in Camera Club, had asked me too, but Patrick's been my boyfriend since sixth grade, so I guess it was Patrick and me for the dance.

"Aren't you back with Mark?" I asked Pamela. "Aren't you going with him?"

"I'm going to ask somebody new and different," Pamela said. "I'm thinking of asking Donald Sheavers."

"Donald Sheavers?" I gasped. My old boyfriend from Takoma Park, handsome as anything but dumb as a doorknob.

"Going steady is 'out,' Alice. Didn't you know? Everybody goes out with everybody. In a group. And when you do go out with a guy alone, you mix it up. I mean, maybe you'll go to a party with him and come home with someone else. You and Patrick have been going together so long you're like an old married couple."

"Hardly," I said.

"It's true! When you only go out with one guy, everyone assumes you're having sex."

"What?" Elizabeth cried.

"Oh, Pamela, that's not true," I said. Sometimes she really ticks me off. Pamela makes these statements like they're true for everyone, and they're not.

"Wait till you get to high school!" she said. "If you're still going with Patrick then, I'll bet kids will talk. Besides, how do you know you won't like other guys better if you never try any of them?"

"I don'tknow. I just hate giving up somebody I really like, that's all," I told her.

"You don't give him up, that's the point, Alice. You share him. And when you choose buffet, you can have something of everything!"

I rolled my eyes.

"How are you going to wear your hair for the dance?" Elizabeth asked me.

"On my head, as usual," I said.

"I'm going to wear mine piled up on top," she said.

"Now that's out!" said Pamela. "Everyone says so. We're all going together in the same car, aren't we?"

"Yes! We pile in the car and see how many couples we can squeeze in. That's 'in.' So I've heard, anyway," said Elizabeth.

I wondered if I should start making a list -- what's in and what's out. The thing was, I could see already that in some ways I was out. Whenever we read magazines together -- Pamela, Elizabeth, and I -- I want to turn past the articles on "shaping your brows" and "fabrics that flounce" and go to personality quizzes and stuff. Elizabeth and Pamela are sort of fixated on clothes and hair and makeup, I think. I can take about ten minutes of it, and then I'm bored out of my mind. They've already made phone calls back and forth about what they'll wear to the dance and haven't included me. Then I wonder if they talk about me behind my back -- criticize the way I dress and everything. What will happen to us when we get to high school? I wonder. Who will be "in" and who will be "out"?

When I got home, Lester, my twenty-one-year-old brother, was making spaghetti sauce for dinner. I stood in the doorway watching him add the ingredients, and when he started to mash the garlic, I said, "That's 'out,' Lester. Basil's 'in.'"

"Really?" said Les, and put it in anyway.

When Dad came to the table in a blue shirt with white collar and cuffs, I told him those kinds of shirts were out.

"So?" said Dad. "Then I'll have my own special look, won't I?"

It was when I was breaking my breadstick into a dozen different pieces that I realized both Dad and Lester were staring at me.

"Feeding the birds?" asked Dad.

"No...." I took my index finger and idly flicked each piece across my plate, then flicked them in the other direction. "I'm ready for a big change in my life, but not the kind that's happening to me."

"So what's happening to you? Fangs at the full moon, or what?" asked Lester.

"Be serious," I said to both of them. "I just realized that good things don't stay the same. I mean, I can remember when Elizabeth and Pamela and I imagined us all getting summer jobs at the same place and going to the same college and all getting married around the same time and living in the same town. And already we're thinking about doing entirely different things this summer."

"Well, you're not Siamese triplets," Lester said. "You really will continue breathing on your own, you know."

"It's called 'life,' Al, and life is change," Dad said.

"Not all change is good, though," I told him.

"I know," he said.

I started in on my spaghetti, but Lester always puts too many mushrooms in it for me. I like chunky spaghetti sauce with lots of meat in it, and Lester's sort of slides its way down your throat.

"Life sh