The Fall of Alice K. by Jim Heynen Page A

in Lydia’s expression that she was absorbing the misery, maybe from her own memories of this pain, but now her big blue eyes were sending out a steady stream of empathy.
    â€œI’d take half your pain if I could,” she said.
    â€œI know,” said Alice. “I think you already have.”
    They exited for the women’s room.
    â€œHere’s a quarter,” said Lydia.
    Lydia stood outside the booth to wait for Alice. A minute passed and then Lydia asked, “Are you all right in there?”
    â€œI’m all right,” said Alice. “I just want to stay here for a while until the pain lets up a bit. Let’s read some Shakespeare.”
    â€œYou’re kidding.”
    But Alice wasn’t kidding: she opened her Shakespeare book and laid it on the floor. She came to a passage that fit the moment. She pounded on the wall of her stall and read, “‘Thou wall, O wall, O Sweet and lovely wall, / Show me thy chink to blink through with mine eyne!’”
    â€œYou’re amazing,” said Lydia, “Where’s that?”
    â€œPage eighteen.” Alice read another line: “‘O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss.’”
    â€œYou’re funny,” said Lydia. “May I laugh now?”
    â€œLaugh all you want,” said Alice.
    There was a pause on Lydia’s side of the wall as she seemed to be paging through her Shakespeare text. Then a sweet but dramatic version of Lydia’s stage voice floated through the air: “‘Thinks’t thou this pain upon all womanhood befalls?’”
    Alice knew that was a Lydia creation, not Shakespeare’s. She quickly considered some follow-up line that would rhyme with “befalls”: “beach balls, death shawls, overalls, cat calls, bathroom walls”—and then the perfect line leapt into her mind: “Until the voice of motherhood upon us calls.”
    â€œJackpot! Jackpot!” screamed Lydia. “That was a rhymed couplet!”

    Alice stepped smiling from the stall. “‘We’re a rhymed couplet,’ Nancy said identically.”
    They stood and looked at each other the way mutual winners in a big sports event look at each other after the game. Their glee smothered Alice’s pain and they hugged each other tight.
    â€œDo you realize what we just did together?” asked Alice.
    â€œWe made some Nancy Swifties and some other funnies.”
    â€œAnd a rhymed couplet à la Shakespeare.”
    â€œAnd we did it fast.”
    â€œI know. My brain works like a smooth machine when I’m with you.”
    â€œGreased lightning. We inspire each other.”
    â€œI know. We’re both really smart. I couldn’t say that to anyone but you.”
    â€œI wouldn’t put up with it from anyone but you.”
    â€œWe’re the only two in this school who could have done that.”
    â€œI know. Don’t tell anyone.”
    â€œI won’t,” said Alice. “Too big a price to pay.”
    â€œBut there is something else I have to tell you,” said Lydia. “Remember how last year we often started our periods on the same day?”
    â€œIt was a pretty bizarre coincidence,” said Alice. “Sort of a sisterly thing, you think? Are you getting symptoms now? Am I making you start your period?”
    â€œAfraid not,” said Lydia. “I’ll be on a different schedule this month because I’ve gone on the pill.”
    Alice absorbed the announcement. She whispered, as if she was afraid that someone might overhear: “You’re going on the pill?”
    Alice trusted Lydia more than anyone, but she already knew that Lydia had not been totally open with her about the fact that she had been seeing the same guy since July, a twenty-year-old who was attending the vocational college in Shellhorn about twenty miles from Dutch Center.
    â€œYou look shocked,” said Lydia.
    â€œI am