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Phyllis Reynolds Naylor has written more than 135 books, including the Newbery Award–winning Shiloh and its sequels, the Alice series, Roxie and the Hooligans, and Roxie and the Hooligans at Buzzard’s Roost. She lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. To hear from Phyllis and find out more about Alice, visit AliceMcKinley.com.

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Dangerously Alice

Atheneum

I had to hear it from Pamela. But then, the fact that she told me, and that she wasn't going back, sort of put a seal on our friendship. Ours was the real McCoy. So I couldn't figure out what was bothering me most: that Liz and I hadn't been invited or that our old gang was breaking up.

She told us about it on our ride to school that Monday. And to make things worse, we were riding the bus -- one of the last places you want to be when you're a junior. Seniors would walk to school in snow up to their knees before they'd be seen on a bus. But Pam and Liz and I don't have cars of our own, and there was no one that morning to drive us. We sat close together on the back seat.

"This is the second time they've done it," Pamela went on as we listened uncomfortably. "Very hush-hush. The rule is that no one can speak. You can't move a deck chair or make any kind of noise, but you can do...well...almost anything else in or out of the water." She laughed.

"And everyone's naked?" Liz asked.

"In the pool, yes."

I couldn't help smiling a little -- partly remembering the skinny-dipping we'd done at Camp Overlook two summers ago and partly thinking how Mark Stedmeister's parents were pretty strict about alcohol and drugs at their swimming pool, but completely oblivious to the fact that Mark and some of his friends were having midnight swims in the nude.

It was too painful to ask Pamela outright why Liz and I hadn't been invited, too scary to think that Pamela was being pulled away while we were being left behind. So I took the mature route and said, "Well, it sounds fun to me, Pam. Why do you say you're not going back?"

"For one thing, when you know you weren't invited the first time around, you can't help but feel that your invitation is borderline," she said. "But afterward -- when we put on our clothes and drove to the soccer field so they could smoke and drink and talk -- it was nothing but a big, malicious gossip fest. Boy, Jill and Karen...Brian, too...can rip into somebody faster than a tank of piranhas. Just mention a name -- any name of anyone in the whole school -- and in a matter of seconds, he's totaled. And you get the feeling everyone's expected to take a bite."

"I didn't think guys did that," said Liz. "I always knew that Jill and Karen were into it big-time -- who's in, who's out -- but I'm surprised that the guys are interested."

"Hey, they're interested in Jill -- her body, anyway. And Karen, now that she's practically Jill's twin -- hair, clothes, makeup, nails -- parrots whatever Jill says. Whatever turns girls on turns guys on, you know that," Pamela said.

"So how did you get invited?" Liz asked. "And what did they say about us?"

Pamela just shrugged it off as though it wasn't important, but we weren't letting her off that easily.

"I'd overheard Jill and Karen talking about the 'Silent Party,' or 'SP,' as they call it," Pamela explained. "I was nervy enough to ask what it was, so Karen described it for me -- probably wanting to see if I was shocked. And when I wasn't, she asked if I wanted to come. I said 'Sure,' and asked if you guys were going to be there. She made this sort of face and looked at Jill, and Jill shook her head and said 'No.' And then she added, 'DD.' And they both laughed and walked off."

I tried to think what DD could possibly stand for. Dried dandruff? Dead as a doornail? Liz and I looked at each other, clueless.

"They speak in acronyms these days," Pamela went on. "When Jill and Justin and Mark and Brian and Keeno and Karen and some of Brian's other friends get together, they've got the whole student body divided up into groups, and each group has a label."

"Oh, every school does that," I said. "Walk in any high school, and they'll point out the Geeks, the Goths, the Nerds, the Brains, the Jocks, the -- "

"That's not the kind I'm talking about," said Pamela. "Jill and Company divide the kids into the Studs, the Players, the Sluts, the Clueless Virgins, the Christian Virgins, the Freaks, and even these are broken down into UJ (Ugly Jock), TM (Typhoid Mary -- don't touch), AG (Anything Goes)...you get the picture."

"And DD?" I asked.

Pamela dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

"Tell us!" Liz insisted.

"Dry as Dust," said Pamela. "But don't you believe it. I can only imagine what they'd been saying about me before I went and what they'll say now when I don't go back."

Dry as Dust. I felt my throat drying up just to hear it. This meant that somebody -- some bodies -- found me boring. Uninteresting. Unexciting.

Pamela grabbed my hand. "Who are they to decide who everyone else is?" she said. "And you know what Jill said they'd called me? Before I'd had the guts to come to their party?"

"What?" we asked.

"SS," said Pamela. "Serious Slut. I was mortified, but laughed it off. Yeah, right. Ha ha."

"They actually told you that?" Liz asked.

"Yeah. To see if I could take it, I guess. Boy, make one mistake, and you're labeled for life. After New York last spring, Hugh must have done a lot of talking."

We digested that for a moment or two, remembering what Pam had done in a hotel bathroom with a senior. Then Liz said, "It's hard to imagine Justin going along with all this. When I was going out with him, he seemed too nice to be so petty and malicious."

Pamela shrugged. "He's in love with Jill, and love is blind. Jill just laughs off all this gossip as a hobby of hers -- labeling people, that is. And at some point in the evening, I asked the others what label they'd give Jill. This was at the soccer field later. They'd been drinking, and the guys were cutting up. Brian said BB for Beautiful Bitch. Justin suggested LM for Love Machine. It was sort of like Jill had never considered what others might think of her. I couldn't tell if she was flattered or annoyed, but I knew by the look on her face that she didn't appreciate the question. Didn't appreciate me. I won't be invited back, you can bet, and if I am, I won't go."

I suddenly put my arm around Pamela. "We appreciate you!" I said.

"More than you know," said Liz.

This second week of my junior year, I sure didn't need any more hassles. Every minute of my day was filled with something, but I didn't know what I could give up. All juniors had to take the PSAT in October, ready or not, and I worked for Dad at the Melody Inn music store on Saturdays. I was the roving reporter for the junior class on our school newspaper, The Edge; I still belonged on stage crew in the Drama Club; I got up ridiculously early three mornings a week and ran a couple of miles to keep in shape; I visited Molly, my friend with leukemia, once a week; plus, homework was heavier and harder than it had been last year, and geometry was a killer.

"I feel like I'm going under for the third time," I told Sylvia, my stepmom, when I realized I hadn't called Molly all week. If anyone should be complaining about life, it's Molly.

"I know the feeling," said Sylvia. "I felt it every Friday for the first year I was teaching. But by Monday I'd usually recovered."

"So there's hope?" I asked. "The teachers are merciless! It's like theirs is the only subject we've got. 'Make an outline.' 'Write a paper.' 'Research a topic.' When you multiply that by five...!"

"Well, teachers are hassled too," said Sylvia. "If their students don't do well, it's the teachers...