Nick peered over the top of the bush. A kid whizzed past, but he was in a blue jumpsuit like them. Globs of paint exploded toward him from all directions, and he shrieked and covered his head. “I just got a job at a new French restaurant at the King James.”
“Rive Gauche?” Ali asked excitedly. “I love that place! Now I’ll have to come more often.”
“I hope so.” Nick’s eyes gleamed. Then he poked her playfully. “Of course you’d know about Rive Gauche. You’re probably the type of girl who likes to shop, huh?”
“I do like to shop,” Ali said. “But I’m not a type of girl.”
“No?” Nick raised an eyebrow. “At camp you were. You had those girls in your bunk wrapped around your little finger.”
“Maybe I’ve changed,” Ali teased. “You said yourself that I’d really grown up.”
Nick didn’t look convinced. “So you’re not a Miss Popular, gets-everything-she-wants, loves-manicures-and pedicures, has-a-huge-group-of-friends, and is-good-at-everything-she-does kind of girl anymore?”
Ali peered over the bush, but no one was in view. That was absolutely the image she wanted to project, the perfect Alison she needed to be. But suddenly, she wanted Nick to know that she was more than that. Deeper. “For your information, I don’t like mani-pedis,” she admitted.
Nick widened his eyes. “Shocker!” he said in mock horror. “I’ll alert the press.”
Ali edged closer. “And I kind of like watching football,” she whispered. “And eating wings instead of salads.”
“No!”
She giggled. “I love animals, too.”
“Oh, yeah?” He smiled at her. “Do you have any pets?”
Ali shook her head. “Not now. But I used to have a gerbil.”
Nick looked surprised. “You don’t seem like the gerbil type.”
Ali poked him. “There you go making assumptions again.” She hiked the paintball gun higher on her shoulder. “My gerbil’s name was Marshmallow. She was the best—I decorated her fur, painted her nails, and put bows on her head.”
“So you’re okay giving a gerbil a mani-pedi, even if you don’t like them.” Nick clucked his tongue. “Animal cruelty.”
“She didn’t seem to mind,” Ali admitted, suddenly feeling wistful. “For a while, Marshmallow was my only friend.”
Nick snorted. “Yeah, right.”
Ali clapped her mouth shut, realizing she’d said too much. Marshmallow had been her only friend because she’d been her pet at the Radley. It had been a big privilege to be allowed to have her as a pet, and she’d relished the responsibility, giving her lots of cuddles, making sure she got enough exercise on her wheel, putting her cage right next to her bed because hearing the tap-tap-tap of her claws on the side in the middle of the night comforted her.
“Well,” Nick said, moving closer to Ali, “hopefully I can get to know this girl who is definitely not Miss Perfect.”
“I’d like that,” Ali said shyly. “And what about you? Any secrets I should know about?”
Nick fingered the trigger on the gun. “Not really. What you see is what you get,” he said, staring into her eyes.
Tingles shot through Ali’s body. Then suddenly, something red flashed before her eyes. A girl in a red jumpsuit zigzagged through the field. Ali leapt up and aimed at her, firing the paintball gun as if she really had been the paintball master at camp. The girl squealed and ran for cover.
Ali grabbed Nick’s hand. “Come on!” She pulled him into the field toward the flags. Paint flew at them from all directions, and Ali ducked and giggled, managing to avoid every assault. The yellow flags loomed close. She ripped one from the fence and let out a whoop. Nick, who was right behind her, was so excited he picked her up and spun her around.
“You do rock paintball!” he cried, his smile wide. “I guess you haven’t changed completely.”
“I guess not,” Ali said as he gently put her down. Her chest heaved from her sprint across the field. But standing there with Nick, grinning like crazy, she didn’t notice any pain at all. I’m the best Alison ever, she thought.
No one, not even the real Alison, could ever take her place.
12
ALI IN THE ALLEY
A few days later, Ali sat with her friends on a bench in front of Pinkberry, which was on Rosewood’s main thoroughfare a few blocks away from school. Across the street, the neon sign for Ferra’s Cheesesteaks blinked off and on. Women in capri pants and big Chanel sunglasses went in and out of the Aveda salon. The bells on the door of Wordsmith’s Books jingled cheerfully. Aside from the occasionally stinky exhaust from the passing cars, the whole world smelled like spring flowers and hot caramel from Pinkberry’s toppings bar.
“And then, when I looked out my window, one of the workers was staring at me.” Ali was telling her friends about the guys who’d come to dig the hole for the gazebo that morning. “And then he actually whistled! I mean, he was as gross as Toby Cavanaugh used to be. Maybe even grosser. I felt icky all over. What if they took pictures of me?”
Spencer dropped her spoon in her cup. “You should have closed your curtains if you didn’t want them to see you.”
“What does it matter?” Emily jumped in. “Those guys can’t do that! You should tell your parents, Ali.”
Ali made a halting motion with her hand. “It’s okay. I can handle it on my own.”