Outrageously Alice Read Free Page A

remarkable to happen that would make people sit up and take notice. I’m not particularly superstitious, but if it doesn’t happen in your thirteenth year, I figure it’s not going to happen at all. Well, there was still the Camera Club to look forward to.
    Dad and Lester were already eating dinner when I came in.
    “Where were you?” asked Dad. “I was beginning to worry.”
    I placed my books on the counter and took off my jacket. “The world,” I said, “is my province.”
    Lester rolled his eyes. “God save the queen,” he said.
    That evening I got a call from Crystal Harkins. Lester answered the phone, and it was strange to hear him say, “Al, for you. It’s Crystal.”
    If he was pining away for his old girlfriend, he never let on.
    “Hello?” I said.
    “Hi, Alice. I just wondered if I could drive over some evening and show you the bridesmaid dress I’ve picked. My aunt has already started sewing some of them.”
    “Sure! Come tonight if you want!” I said. It wasn’t outrageous or remarkable, but it was better than another evening of homework and TV.
    Lester’s ears picked up like a dog’s when he heard her car drive up later, and he managed to get up to his room before she rang the bell.
    Crystal looked sparkly and slimmer than when I’d seen her last. I noticed she glanced around, probably looking for Lester, but she didn’t mention him, so neither did I. She dropped her coat on a chair and sat down beside me on the couch. Her perfume was absolutely wonderful.
    “Here’s the dress I like, and I hope you do too,” she said. “I tried to pick one you could wear again; if you go to the eighth-grade dance, maybe you could wear it then.”
    She turned to a page in a magazine that showed a bride attended by her bridesmaids, and the bridesmaids were all wearing jade green dresses, barebacked, with a full filmy net layer for the skirt, slit down the middle, revealing a tighter skirt of jade green satin beneath. The dress was gorgeous on the models, but I wasn’t sure how it would look on me.
    “It’s beautiful, Crystal,” I said. “But how …” I frowned at the picture.
    “Problems?”
    “The bridesmaids … the ones who have breasts, I mean … how do they wear a bra?”
    “Well, Alice, you can get paste-on cups that you stick on under your breasts, and they hold them up.”
    I stared. “You mean, like a Band-Aid?”
    “Something like that. Or you can buy a bra that fastens around the waist and there’s a sort of wire framework that sticks up in front to hold the breasts in place.”
    “Like a chastity belt?” I asked. I don’t know why, I just blurted it out.
    Crystal put down the bride’s magazine and stared at me. “Of course not. Where did you hear about that?”
    “Forget it,” I said. “Anyway, Crystal, it’s gorgeous. Of course I’ll wear the dress. I love it.”
    “Wonderful,” she said. “Since my aunt’s making them, you’ll only have to pay fifty dollars for the material. You’ll need shoes dyed to match, of course. But I’ll let you know about those next week. I’ve brought a tape measure; we need to get your sizes, okay?”
    She measured me there in the living room and after she left, I was still staring after her. Dad came out of the kitchen.
    “Dad!” I cried in dismay. “Did you know we have to pay for the dress and shoes? I thought the bride paid for everything!”
    “Guess we’ve got a lot to learn about weddings, don’t we? Your mother would have known.…”
    “But what am I going to do? I don’t have fifty dollars. I’m lucky to have fifty cents.”
    “I think we can probably handle that. If it’s a dress you can wear later to high school dances, maybe it’s not too bad. Of course, you can’t grow at all between now and your senior year, you understand.” We laughed.
    Crystal had made a copy of that page in the magazine and left it with me, so I called Elizabeth to come over and see the dress. She was only too glad to get out of the