chapter 1

“If I was pretty, with gorgeous long legs and big bosoms and tawny hair and all that junk,” Al said, “Al might be OK. But with my equipment, Al stinks.”

All morning we’d been trying to think of another nickname for Al. She’s hitting the big one-four, fourteen, that is, next week, and she says she’s too old to go on being called Al. It’s a baby name, she says.

“I never knew a baby called Al,” I told her. “Did you?”

“You know what I mean. I need something with pizzazz. I’m standing where the brook and the river meet, kid, and I want to tell you”—Al shot me a piercer—“it’s a cold and lonely place.”

“Yeah, and plenty wet, too,” I said.

Oblivious to my sparkling wit, Al plunged on.

“How about Sandy? I think Sandy’s kind of a cute name.”

“Nope,” I said firmly. “Sandy’s out. People would only get you mixed up with Little Orphan Annie’s dog.”

“You’re right.” Al sighed. “Except he’s much cuter’n me.”

Oh, boy. Here we go again. Al was headed straight for the pits, a place she’s quite familiar with.

“Besides,” I said, “who has all that stuff, the legs, the bosoms, the hair, when they’re fourteen? Nobody. Name me one person.”

“Brooke Shields!” Al shouted. “Elizabeth Taylor! Plenty of people!”

“Brooke Shields hasn’t got big bosoms,” I said, remaining calm. Sometimes I act older’n Al, although she’s a year older’n me. One of us has to remain calm in a crisis. Hardly a day passes without at least one.

“And furthermore,” I said, “I read that Elizabeth Taylor has short, stubby legs.”

“On her, who notices?” Al snapped, then got back to the matter at hand.

“I still think Alex has the most class.” Al let her eyelids droop, which she always does when she imitates Greta Garbo. “Alex, Alex, my darling,” she murmured in a deep voice. Then her eyes widened and she said, “Imagine anyone saying, ‘Al, Al, my darling?’ Absurd, mes enfants.”

“I bet right at this moment Brian is practicing saying, ‘Al, Al, my darling,’” I told her. Brian is a boy Al likes who lives near Al’s father and stepmother in Ohio. He writes Al postcards. Well, actually, he’s written her one postcard. It just seems like more.

“Don’t be weird,” Al said, but she perked up considerably at the mention of Brian’s name.

“Stand over there,” I directed. “And let me see if you could pass as an Alex.”

Al did as she was told. She had on the red shoes she bought to wear to her father’s wedding. She loves those shoes to death, even though they give her humongous blisters.

Al posed with one hand on her hip, knees bent in that asinine way models have. She pushed out her lips and dragged a strand of hair across her face so she’d look seductive and sexy. Like an Alex.

I circled her slowly, studying her, pretending I was a world-famous photographer lining her up for a glossy magazine spread.

“Snap it up. I haven’t got all day,” Al said.

“Tough. Neither do I.” I narrowed my eyes at her. “Do you realize how much time we’ve spent trying to figure out a new name for you? Anyway, I think you’re stuck with Al. It’s you in a nutshell.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Al oozed out of her model’s pose and looked dejected.

“I’ve got it!” Inspiration had struck me. “How about Zandra? If that isn’t classy and loaded with pizzazz, I don’t know what is.”

“Zandra? What kind of a weirdo name is that?”

“I read about a dress designer called Zandra,” I told Al. “She makes outrageously expensive clothes for the very rich. That’s what it said. If the dress she’s wearing is pink, she dyes her hair pink. If the dress is green, the hair is also green. I call that classy. And you’ve got to admit that Zandra would make you stand out in any crowd, n’est-ce-pas?”

“Zandra.” Al tried it on for size, rolling the name around on her tongue to see if it fit. “Zandra, Zandra.” Al grinned. “My mother would have a cow.”

“You might get to like it,” I said. I wasn’t going to say anything, but at the moment, Al did not look like a Zandra. In addition to her red shoes, which have big clunky heels and make her walk sort of like Frankenstein, she had on a pair of ratty old jeans and her AL(exandra) the Great T-shirt. Her father and stepmother had sent it to her when Al’s mother got pneumonia and had to go to the hospital. Al stuck by her mother instead of going to the barn dance in Ohio, which she so longed to do. Al wears that T-shirt almost every day. Sometimes she sleeps in it. If she was in a burning building and had to choose between it and her red shoes, Al says she’d take ’em both and Devil take the hindmost. Whatever that means.

“On second thought,” I said, “maybe you’re not a Zandra. That’s a pretty fancy name.”

“Yeah.” Al flicked her eyelashes at me. “And I’m pretty plain. Just plain Al, they call me.”

“I didn’t mean that,” I said.

“Listen,” she told me.

“I’m listening.”

“I read a book about shoes. It says that red shoes are a weapon. That red shoes make men perspire and stammer and pull at their neckties. Did you ever hear that?”

I shook my head.

“Well, if I ever get to the farm, I’ll wear these beauties.” Al stuck out a foot and we both stared at it. “And Brian will stammer and perspire and tug at his necktie, he’ll be so crazy about me.”

Al stopped talking. I knew she expected me to say something significant.

I thought a minute.

“You think Brian owns a necktie?” I said at last.