Alice Next Door Read online

  ‘Engrossing story with a real insight into the world of pre-teen girls.’ Publishing News

  ‘Rising star Judi Curtin’s Alice books celebrate friendship, humour and loyalty.’

  Sunday Independent

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Dedication

  For Mum and Dad.

  Acknowledgements

  Big thanks, as usual, to Dan, Annie, Ellen and Brian. Thanks to David, Sarah, Eoin and Alison for being great nieces and nephews. To everyone at The O’Brien Press, thanks for all your hard work.

  Extra-special thanks to the children from Limerick School Project, and Milford NS, who listened to this story, and laughed in all the right places.

  Chapter one

  Sheila Sheehan says that I’m the most beautiful girl in the world. She says my eyes are the prettiest shade of blue she’s ever seen. Sometimes she combs my hair for me and she says it’s the silkiest hair she’s ever touched in all her life.

  She has to say all that stuff though. She’s my mum. It’s her job.

  My mum has a lot to say on every subject. Sometimes I tell her to lighten up, but she only gives me her exasperated look, and continues anyway.

  Mum says that my best friend Alice’s mum is an evil, selfish cow.

  But she only says that when she thinks I’m not listening.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. Alice and her mum have gone to live in Dublin. Her dad still lives next door to us, but that’s not much good to me, is it? He won’t want to take basketball shots with me, or to play Monopoly, or to lie on the floor of my room listening to music, and laughing at nothing.

  At first, when Alice told me she was leaving, I hoped that she’d be down to see her dad at weekends. We could still be friends. That’s the way it works in books anyway. Or in films – as long as they’re rated PG. Real life wasn’t turning out like that though. Alice’s mum pulled what my mum calls her master-stroke. She enrolled Alice and her brother, Jamie, in piano classes on Saturday afternoons. That means that they can’t come to Limerick at all, except at holiday time, and for long weekends. If Alice’s dad wants to see her any other time, he’ll have to go all the way to Dublin. It’s September now, and the next long weekend isn’t for weeks and weeks and weeks.Mum says not to get my hopes up too much because Veronica, (that’s Alice’s mum) will probably find some reason not to send the kids to see their dad. But I have to hope. What else can I do?

  And I have to face into school tomorrow. It’ll be the first time ever without Alice in my class. We started together in junior infants, and have been together ever since. We were together when Alice spilt milk on her trousers and had to change into the horrible brown scratchy ones the teacher kept in the cupboard under the nature table. And everyone else thought she’d wet her knickers.

  Alice never laughed at me when my mum gave me carrot sticks and broccoli for school lunch. With a bottle of water to wash it all down.

  Alice was the only one who didn’t tease me when I had to go to school in darned tights because Mum said it was a waste to throw them out just because of one small hole. (I said I’d skip on the organic porridge for a week and spend the savings on new tights, but Mum didn’t think that was funny.)

  I never laughed at Alice when her mum forgot to pack any lunch at all for her, and the teacher had to ask all the kids to share and everyone offered the worst, soggy, squashed thing in their lunchboxes. Once she had to take an egg sandwich from Tom, who hadn’t washed his hands in about five hundred years. Luckily I was able to distract him while she threw it into the bin. That’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

  * * *

  Alice and her mum left yesterday. It had been planned for weeks though. Alice’s mum said she was leaving Alice’s dad because they just couldn’t get on. ‘Irreconcilable differences’, was what she said.

  My mum said that if Alice’s dad got the big promotion and the new silver BMW she’d been hoping for, they’d have got on just fine. She said Alice’s mum was a social climber of the highest order. She’d never be happy living in a three-bedroomed semi, and driving around in a four-year-old car.

  Of course, Mum didn’t think I was listening when she said all of this on the phone to my aunt Linda. She should be more careful.

  Anyway, it was awful when Alice left. If it was a film, I suppose I’d have cried and hugged her and we would have promised to be friends forever. I couldn’t though. Alice and I weren’t huggy kind of girls. I just felt very sad.

  ‘Bye, Al,’ I said.

  ‘Bye, Meg,’ she said.

  Usually there wasn’t enough time to say all the things I wanted to say to Alice. Right then though, I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  She looked sad too. ‘Don’t forget to send me lots of e-mails.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I will. I mean I won’t forget. I promise. I’ll send lots of e-mails. Every day.’

  Alice smiled a funny, stiff kind of smile.

  ‘And don’t forget to say “hi” to Melissa for me.’

  I groaned. Melissa is the meanest girl in the world. Alice and I have both hated her since forever. Now I’d have to hate her all on my own. And that’s no fun.

  Alice’s mum put her fancy light brown designer handbag on the front seat of the car and then she sat into the driver’s seat. She turned the driving mirror towards herself and fixed her hair. Then she put on some lipstick. Imagine, putting on lipstick for a drive to Dublin. Did she think it would show up on the speed cameras?

  ‘Come on, Alice. If we don’t go soon we’ll be stuck in traffic all afternoon. It’ll be teatime before we get through Castletroy.’

  It was Saturday, so that was a stupid thing to say. Even I knew there were never traffic jams on Saturdays. Alice didn’t argue though. She just got into the car, and helped Jamie with his seat belt. Then her mum started the engine, and they drove off.

  I waved until they were out of sight. That didn’t take long. They live right at the top of the road and they were gone in about three and a half seconds.

  Mum hugged me as we went inside, and offered to make me a fruit smoothie. As if that would help. Even a huge Coke wouldn’t have made me feel better, and there was fat chance of getting one of those.

  Later Mum took me shopping. We went to O’Mahony’s bookshop and she bought me two new books. Then she bought me a new T-shirt, a spotty scrunchie and a comic. When she bought the comic I knew she must be feeling really sorry for me. Last time she bought me a comic was when my goldfish died. (The fish had gone a really revolting black colour, and had big warty lumps all down its back. I was glad it was dead. But luckily Mum didn’t know that. And the comic more than made up for the loss of the fish.) This was different though. A year’s supply of comics wouldn’t have helped. No point in reading a comic on my own. Reading comics was only fun when Alice was around. She made everything more fun. Even stupid things that shouldn’t have been fun at all.

  When we got home, my little sister Rosie asked if she could read the comic. She�
��s only three, and can’t read anyway, but I let her. She tore two pages and I didn’t even care.

  Chapter two

  First day in sixth class over. My last year in National School. My eighth and last time to walk into that ugly grey building at the beginning of a new school year. My first time to walk in without Alice by my side.

  It was awful. There were the usual awful things – like being the only one whose books were covered in old wallpaper instead of shiny coloured contact. And being the only one who didn’t have new markers or colouring pencils. Mum made me root through our big box of colouring stuff for a set of pencils. I ended up with one of every colour, but none of them matched, and all of them were dirty-looking.

  Mum didn’t care. ‘Everyone’s pencils will be dirty in a week. And at least you won’t be contributing to the piles of rubbish in our city.’

  Mum has a big thing about piles of rubbish. Every time I ask for something new she says. ‘You don’t even need it. It’ll only end up in a big pile of rubbish.’

  Anyway, as well as all the usual bad things about school, there was the really, really, really bad thing of Alice not being there.

  Our new teacher, Miss O’Herlihy, said we could sit wherever we liked for the first day. That was the worst part, I think. Melissa and all her buddies grabbed the seats at the back and sat there like big grinning hyenas. The boys all sat with each other as usual. The twins Ellen and Emma sat together of course, in their own exclusive little club of two. So that just left me and Jane.

  Jane and I have a lot in common now. We both have no friends. Only difference is, Jane doesn’t deserve them. She still tells tales, even in sixth class. And she thinks everyone except for her is ‘frightfully immature.’ She has her hair cut short like a boy’s, and she wears a helmet when she cycles to school. I know it might save her life some day, but it’s social death to be seen in a cycle helmet, and Jane doesn’t even care.

  We stood at the side of the room and looked at each other. I couldn’t decide which was worse – sitting on my own, or sitting with Jane. In the end it didn’t matter. There were only two seats left anyway, and they were together, right at the front of the class, touching Miss O’Herlihy’s desk.

  As I saw it, I had only two choices. I could run away and cry, or I could sit down. I decided to be brave. I slowly walked to the top of the room, and took one of the empty seats. Jane sat next to me. She took out her Barbie pencil case and began to arrange her pens on the desk. And the pencil case wasn’t even a present from a mad aunt. Jane bought it herself with her pocket money. I was sure I could hear Melissa sniggering somewhere behind me. I didn’t look around.

  I think it’s time to tell you about Melissa.

  She’s beautiful, in a horrible, conceited kind of way. She has shiny blonde hair, which she never ties up. She just lets it sort of float all around her face like the princesses in my old fairy-story books. When I leave my hair loose I look like a cartoon witch.

  All the teachers love Melissa. She’s fooled them you see. They don’t know how mean she is when they aren’t around. They think she’s all sweet and perfect. Considering how much time the teachers spend telling us to not to judge people by their appearance, it’s a bit stupid of them to have fallen for Melissa’s innocent smile, and her exquisite blonde beauty.

  Melissa has a secret club. The club doesn’t have any rules or any passwords or anything. They think they’re too cool for that kind of thing. It’s just a big group of girls who all think that Melissa is the greatest thing since water yo-yos. Mostly all they do is gather around her, and admire her hair and her trendy clothes, and laugh at her jokes.

  Melissa never liked Alice and me. I don’t know why. Alice didn’t care. And when Alice was around, I didn’t care that much either. But without Alice, all the bad things seemed worse. Every time Melissa laughed, I was sure she was laughing at me. And every time one of her friends whispered to another, I was sure they were telling awful secrets about me.

  After school, I walked home on my own, missing Alice more than ever. It wasn’t any fun, and for the first time ever, it felt like a very long walk.

  Mum asked me how my day was, and I just said, ‘fine,’ even though there wasn’t a single fine thing about it.

  I had nothing to do after school. This was time I should have been spending with Alice. I half-wished that I had homework – at least it would have been something to do. I couldn’t tell Mum that I was bored though. Whenever I did that, her reaction was the same. She’d give a huge sigh, and say that she’d love the chance to be bored. Then she’d give me a long list of horrible jobs like tidying the odd-sock drawer or dusting the skirting boards.

  In the end, Mum let me go on the computer, so I checked to see if there was an e-mail from Alice.

  There wasn’t. She was probably too busy having fun with all her fancy new Dublin friends. She was probably planning her first sleepover party. Or drawing up a list of friends to invite to the pictures, or for a pizza. My mum said Alice’s mum was a great one for ‘throwing money at her problems.’ No chance of my mum doing that. It wouldn’t have helped anyway. Even if Mum did have a personality transplant, and gave me fifty euro to take my friends out for a treat, who would I ask? There was no one. No one at all. I’d be the sad girl, all alone in the cinema, with three boxes of popcorn and five cups of Coke and no friends.

  I felt like crying then. I wondered if tears would damage the computer keyboard.

  Mum came in and saw me looking at the blank screen. She rubbed my head and asked if I wanted to watch television. She even let me watch The Simpsons, without sighing and shaking her head every few minutes. I knew then that she must be feeling really sorry for me.

  And that made me feel even worse.

  Chapter three

  Over the next few days, I sent Alice lots of e-mails, but they all came bouncing straight back to me like stupid, unwanted boomerangs. I didn’t know why. Alice was always better with computers than I was. She would have understood. But there wasn’t much point in e-mailing her to ask why my e-mails weren’t getting to her, was there?

  Mum said I could phone Alice instead, but only on Saturday when long-distance calls are cheaper. I wonder how come she always knows that kind of thing?

  School didn’t improve as the week went on. But then, I hadn’t really expected it to. At twelve I was too big to believe in easy solutions.

  Melissa and her buddies loved being in sixth class. They sort of sailed up and down the corridors, flicking their hair and wiggling their bottoms, and all the little kids looked up to them like they were real important.

  In the yard, they sat on the benches, and tossed their hair some more, and tried their best to look cool and sophisticated. Jane spent yard time reading books about boring stuff like ancient history. Ellen and Emma walked around in their own little world, as if no-one else even existed. And all the boys played football. Even the boys who hated PE played football. I suppose it’s their way of being part of the gang.

  Miss O’ Herlihy is nice enough. For a teacher. She smiles a lot, but for some reason even the boldest kids do what she says. She was nice to me, and talked to me in a gentle, interested kind of voice. Like she really cared. I wondered if she was sorry for me because it looked like I had no friends. Sometimes I felt like telling Miss O’Herlihy that I did have a friend, but that she moved away. Then I thought that sounded really silly, so I didn’t say it. Maybe she knew anyway. Maybe the other teachers told her. Maybe not though. I bet they had more interesting stuff to talk about in the staff-room. Like where to buy cheap baked beans, and quick ways to mark maths copies and stuff.

  At last Saturday morning came. At eight o’ clock, I went in to Mum and Dad’s room.

  ‘Can I phone Alice now? Remember you promised?’

  Dad poked his head from under the covers.

  ‘Huh. It’s a bit early, isn’t it? Bet her mum isn’t home yet.’

  Mum kicked him under the duvet, and he didn’t say any more. I knew wh
at he meant though. Dad thinks Alice’s mum goes out every night, and stays out really late going to clubs and things. Still, maybe he’s just jealous, because he never goes anywhere except to work and soccer matches.

  Mum gave Dad a really cross look. She smiled at me.

  ‘No darling, don’t ring just yet. They might still be in bed. Wait until half nine.’

  I went back to my room and waited. It seemed like a very long time. I looked at the picture of Alice and me that I kept next to my bed. It was in a ‘Best Friends’ frame, that we agreed was a bit babyish, but just about cute enough not to matter. Alice had one the same. I felt sure she wasn’t looking at hers. She was probably planning what to wear to a party in a new friend’s house. Or wondering which of her new friends to go shopping with. Maybe she had taken my picture out of the frame and replaced it with a photo of one of her new friends. Alice wasn’t disloyal by nature, but she was smart. I wasn’t much good to her when I lived so far away. I couldn’t blame her for trying to make new friends. The thought of that made me really sad, though.

  At last half past nine came. I took the portable phone into my room, and dialled the number Alice had given me.

  Alice answered after only three rings. Her voice was kind of quiet.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Al. It’s me, Meg. How are you?’

  ‘Meg!’ She said it in a real excited way that made me feel happy and sad at the same time.

  ‘Meg,’ she said again. ‘It’s great to hear from you. How’s school?What’s Miss O’Herlihy like? How is Melissa? How are you?’

  I laughed. Alice was always in a rush to talk. Like she had too many things to say, and not enough time to say them all.

  ‘Well. School’s awful without you. I have to sit next to Jane.’

  ‘Ouch. Poor you.’

  Then I felt a bit mean. ‘Well, Jane’s not so bad. Just kind of boring you know. We don’t have a whole lot in common, you know. Miss O’Herlihy’s nice – for a teacher. Melissa was always awful anyway. And I feel awful.’