City of Lubbock

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Some girls have journals. I talk to my poster.

It's Saturday afternoon and Jewel should be here soon. While I wait for him, I'm talking to the poster over my bed.

"Dove Girl, please help me."

She's a print made by Picasso in the fifties: Le Visage de la Paix. The face of peace. Much wished-upon by me. It's something about how comfortable she seems; calm.

"Please help me with creatures of the male persuasion," I say. "Other than Jewel."

What I want, I tell her, is a boyfriend. Maybe I won't find my soul mate. But I want handholding and kissing and I want someone to go to the Halloween Bloodbath with. Like everyone else.

Not just like everyone else, maybe. But a date. With someone who wants to be there with me. Someone I can slow-dance with, off in the shadows.

I hear the front door open, the chimes above it clinking. "Hello, Davises!" Jewel says.

My parents yell hello. Their voices boom, in a happy way.

I can't tell Jewel that I want to go to the Bath. Of course he'd go with me. But he'd say, "Alice, this is ridiculous," and "Alice, let's go rent a movie instead." And no way would we hold hands or slow-dance. Or kiss. We've been friends since we were three.

He's the only person who knows I have this habit of, like, praying to an inanimate poster. We talked about it just a few days ago. "It's healthy," he said, sharing a bag of popcorn with me in my kitchen. "You need someone to talk to."

"I have you to talk to," I said. But there's plenty that I can't share with him. "Anyway, you don't really talk to anyone else either. What's your version of the Dove Girl?"

He swallowed the last handful of popcorn. His camera was hanging from its shoulder strap. He picked it up, fiddled with the lens, and snapped a photo of me staring at him. "That."



"Hey," I say now. Jewel squeezes me hello.

He's watching my parents as they screen-print T-shirts in their headquarters for saving the world, which used to be our dining room. They're working on a new design. A plastic soda six-pack-holder-together thing is choking a tuna on the front of the shirt; on the back, the rings are being cut by scissors.

Both of my parents are in their fifties, but when I look at them now I can see exactly what they must've been like at my age. Passionate. Excitable.

Good-looking, too. My dad has blue-blue eyes and black hair spiked gray around his temples. My mom has kept her orange hair long, and the only thing that betrays her age is that now she uses those little half-glasses for reading.

Jewel's mom comes in. "Hi, Brenda," I say.

She holds up a grocery bag. "Supplies for the troops!" She's cute, younger than my parents, in a linen jumper and clogs.

Jewel's reddish brown hair matches hers. He raises his thickly lashed eyelids and flashes his hazel eyes at her. Something in Jewel is so vibrant; it's like he's in color when most of the world is sort of sepia-toned.

Mom gives Brenda a hug. "We can use all the hands we can get."

They go into the kitchen.

"Ready?"

Jewel nods.

The parents are laughing about something; Brenda teaches preschool and she usually has stories about the kids. My parents love to relive having toddlers.

I lean through the doorway. "Be back later."

Jewel and I tink the door chimes as we leave.

The sky, our Seattle sky, is gray, like it usually is, and it drips rain onto every part of us, raindrops so tiny that we hardly notice them. We've grown up here, so we're amphibians.

But we wear our hoods up.

We walk to the scone shop with the best lattes. Chunky Glasses is behind the counter; the guy...

 

Liz Gallagher's debut novel nails the angst of high school students navigating the challenging social waters of their years. Narrator Lara Hirner has the voice of bright, articulate Alice, a sophomore trying to find her voice, her talent, and her way through the confusing world of teen friendship and romance. Hirner's voice has the tone of today's teens, with a perkiness and a laugh in it that often hides confusion. Alice, along with her best friend, Jewel, has been satisfied to be invisible and to navigate under the wire. But now football hero Simon, her first crush, has taken an interest in her, giving her entry into the "in group." Will she find her way through her crush to a real relationship with Simon? N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

 

The Opposite of Invisible by Liz Gallagher
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