Saving Alice by David Lewis Read Free Book Online

started over, but with renewed determination to be even craftier in my elimination of those details Alycia would think juicy but I would label “too painful.”
    Alycia gave me another good-natured squint and flexed her pinchers. I proceeded to describe the day I’d first glimpsed Alice, at the beginning of my junior year.
    Alice was on stage performing a solo vocal recital, ranging from highbrow Schubert and Mozart to the show tunes of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. She projected an amazing command of the stage, dancing and gesturing like a professional, acting out the themes from the musicals.
    I happened to be sitting next to fellow classmate Donna, a pretty, blond literature major I’d met in “American Novels of the Twentieth Century,” which was a casual humanities elective for me but a required course for her. Without Donna I would have failed the course. We’d become friends three months earlier and had even gone on a few casual dates, though as busy as we both were, I can’t imagine where we’d found the time.
    Alycia interrupted me. “You’re talking Mom, right?”
    “How many Donnas do you know?”
    “Just checking.”
    Halfway through the first song, Donna leaned over. “That’s my roommate I was telling you about.”
    I nearly fell off my seat. “That’s your roommate?”
    Afterward, as Alice signed programs, Donna pulled me through the crowd, introduced us, and I proceeded to lose my voice.
    Later, this would become a never-ending source of amusement for Alice. “You literally squeaked,” she would giggle, squeezing my hand with reassurance while I blushed, taking her word for it, because to this day I can’t remember what I’d actually said.
    Of course, I adored her New England accent, which seemed exotic to me. And yet, strangely enough, during our first date, Alice interrupted one of my nervous ramblings. “Stephen … where you from?” Which, to me, sounded like, Wahuh yohuh frawm?
    “Pardon me?”
    “Your accent!” she exclaimed. ( Yohuh ahccint! )
    Imagine that—Alice considered me exotic.
    Eventually, the three of us became inseparable, and while we attended musicals, museums, and fine restaurants, the Soda Straw became our weekly ritual, a celebration of the end of another grueling week of classes. It was here, the place of so many lively discussions and laughter, that Alice’s regard for me finally evolved into romance.
    Most fittingly, Donna witnessed it, the matchmaker becoming the overseer. While she refused to become a hindrance to our developing romance, we sincerely enjoyed her company and refused to let her simply wander off into the sunset. Sometimes we even succeeded in roping her into attending special events.
    Unfortunately, and for someone so schooled in romantic literature, personal romance didn’t seem to interest her. Devoted to her studies, she preferred to study the revisionary progression of Fitzgerald’s tragedy The Great Gatsby, rather than attend a movie with a casual acquaintance. Much to our dismay, she regularly turned down dating opportunities, although occasionally Alice and I engaged in a little humorous matchmaking of our own … usually to disastrous results.
    Of course, Fridays were set aside for the three of us. Alice and I insisted. Comfortable with our friendly humor, Donna preferred the backstage, more at ease as an observer than a participator. We often referred to her as “Scout” after her favorite novel, To Kill a Mockingbird; other times we called her “Dorothy” and inquired of her “pet Toto.”
    Although Donna met my family only once, my mother adored Donna. Raised in the church, and fervent in her faith, Donna had been born and bred in a small town in Kansas. And while our commonalities—hers and mine—were enough to build a good friendship, Donna reminded me of the life I’d so eagerly left behind, as if “Aberdeen” were still nipping at my heels.
    During her junior year, Alice was accepted into