Read Online Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor - Free Book Online

but definitely readable letters.
    I e-mailed the shot to Liz and Pamela and Gwen and also to Lester. For a brief moment I fantasized about forwarding the photo to Patrick, but then I wisely closed my laptop.
    *  *  *
    Abby and I were in Valerie and Claire’s dorm room one rainy night, having just shared a gigantic white pizza, delivered right to us. The driver had looked so wet and miserable, we asked if he wanted a slice. Instead, he gratefully accepted the extra tip we gave him before he took off. We hung a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door to discourage anyone else from dropping by and raiding our dinner. You can’t believe the power of pizza. One whiff, and there’s a mob knocking. Claire had gone to a game, so when we were done, we’d put our leftover slices in their little fridge for her.
    “Ah,” Valerie said, sprawling out on her bed.
    “Ah,” I echoed, lying beside her, head to foot. Abby lay on the other bed, lazily hitting a balloon up in the air and watching it drift down again for another swat. Occasionally the balloon would come over our way, and I’d maybe give it a kick with one foot. There was something about our contentment that reminded me of the way Pamela and Liz and I, and sometimes Gwen, used to hang out in Elizabeth’s bedroom with the twin eyelet bedspreads, the matching curtains, everything that made that bedroom so “Elizabeth.”
    For just a moment I felt a sudden rush of homesickness sweep over me, and then it was gone, but in those few brief seconds I realized how much those friends were like sisters to me, and I wondered if Abby and Valerie could ever mean as much to me as they did. Wondered whether you have to have a history with someone to feel the same closeness.
    We’d been to each other’s homes once or twice over holidays, and I’d met their families—Claire’s in Baltimore, Valerie’s in Frederick, and Abby’s clear over on the Eastern Shore. But it wasn’t the same as driving over to Gwen’s, or walking to Pamela’s, or looking across the street to see if Liz’s light was on. Still, there was something about living together all these months the way we were that had a sisterly feeling, and I was glad the three of us had stayed in that night instead of going to the movies in the rain. It was another tragic Italian classic and, masterpiece or not, I wasn’t in a Fellini mood.
    “What made you decide to major in history?” I asked Valerie, barely raising my head as I bounced the balloon with my knee. This time when it drifted toward the closet, no one went after it.
    “I don’t know. Sort of like following a continued story, I guess.”
    “You plan to teach it?”
    “God, no. What I’d really like is to work in a museum. Acquisitions or something. I’m totally addicted to Antiques Roadshow . Why did you choose counseling?”
    “I haven’t exactly made it official,” I said. “I just like listening to people.”
    “Eavesdropping, she means,” Abby joked.
    “Well, that, too,” I laughed. “I mean, do you ever wonder why someone would become an exterminator?”
    “Oh, please!” said Valerie. “Just the thought!”
    “Or a proctologist,” said Abby. “I mean, of all the parts of the human body, someone chooses—”
    “Uh, we just ate,” said Valerie. “What about you, Abby? You decide on a major yet?”
    “No,” Abby told us, and turned over on her side, propping her head on one hand. “I’ll probably go through four whole years and still not know. ‘Getting away from high school,’ that was my major.”
    “You and me both,” said Val. “I used to think, ‘If these are the best years of my life, shoot me now!’ It wasn’t so bad after I met Colin, though. We hung out together a lot, and the MSG—”
    “Monosodium glutamate?”
    “  ‘Most Snotty Girls’—then they left me alone.”
    “Why did they pick on you?” I asked.
    “There had to be a reason? One of them told me I was too tall and wore the wrong clothes for my