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Authors: Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

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Outrageously Alice

BOOK: Outrageously Alice
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Well, I was getting one thing straight, I decided as I walked to the
cafeteria. I was getting across the fact that I wasn’t sweet little Alice
McKinley anymore—a generic type of girl with no imagination or style.

 

NOW THAT SHE IS SETTLING INTO EIGHTH
grade, the class she used to envy, Alice McKinley is discovering that it isn’t all that exciting. But maybe it’s up to her to make this year as thrilling as she thought it would be. Out with the old, plain-Jane Alice, in with the new, stylish, creative Alice. She’s sick of being boring. It’s time to be outrageous!

But what if outrageous isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? What if Alice finds herself in situations that are more embarrassing than they are wild and fun? Is Alice destined to be the same boring girl forever?

DON’T MISS

Meet the author,
watch videos, and get extras at
KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

COVER DESIGN BY JESSICA HANDELMAN

COVER ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT © 2011 BY JULIA DENOS

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

SIMON & SCHUSTER • NEW YORK

AGES 10–14 • 0811

Here’s what fans have to say about Alice:*

“I love your books! Now, I’m sure everyone says that, but it’s way more when I say it.… Long live Naylor!”—SoccAllis

“Every one of your books makes me laugh, cry, blush, feel embarrassed and just plain silly at points. They are as real as life is now.… Thanks for writing such great books!! I’m not just saying that. I really mean it!”—Zoey

“If I have kids when I grow up, I think I’m going to force-feed them Alice (just joking … sorta).”—Tanya

“I want to say thank you very much. I introduced [my daughter] to Alice years ago, and she became addicted. I was amazed because my daughter wasn’t into reading until she started reading Alice.”—A Happy Mother

*Taken from actual postings on the Alice website. To read more, visit
AliceMcKinley.com
.

PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR
includes many of her own life experiences in the Alice books. She writes for both children and adults, and is the author of more than one hundred and thirty-five books, including the Alice series, which
Entertainment Weekly
has called “tender” and “wonderful.” In 1992 her novel
Shiloh
won the Newbery Medal. She lives with her husband, Rex, in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and is the mother of two grown sons and the grandmother of Sophia, Tressa, Garrett, and Beckett.

Outrageously Alice

BOOKS BY PHYLLIS REYNOLDS NAYLOR

Shiloh Books

Shiloh

Shiloh Season

Saving Shiloh

The Alice Books

Starting with Alice

Alice in Blunderland

Lovingly Alice

The Agony of Alice

Alice in Rapture, Sort Of

Reluctantly Alice

All But Alice

Alice in April

Alice In-Between

Alice the Brave

Alice in Lace

Outrageously Alice

Achingly Alice

Alice on the Outside

The Grooming of Alice

Alice Alone

Simply Alice

Patiently Alice

Including Alice

Alice on Her Way

Alice in the Know

Dangerously Alice

Almost Alice

Intensely Alice

Alice in Charge

Incredibly Alice

Alice Collections

I Like Him, He Likes Her

It’s Not Like I Planned It This Way

Please Don’t Be True

The Bernie Magruder Books

Bernie Magruder and the Case of the Big Stink

Bernie Magruder and the

Disappearing Bodies

Bernie Magruder and the Haunted Hotel

Bernie Magruder and the Drive-thru Funeral Parlor

Bernie Magruder and the Bus Station Blowup

Bernie Magruder and the Pirate’s Treasure

Bernie Magruder and the Parachute Peril

Bernie Magruder and the Bats in the Belfry

The Cat Pack Books

The Grand Escape

The Healing of Texas Jake

Carlotta’s Kittens

Polo’s Mother

The York Trilogy

Shadows on the Wall

Faces in the Water

Footprints at the Window

The Witch Books

Witch’s Sister

Witch Water

The Witch Herself

The Witch’s Eye

Witch Weed

The Witch Returns

Picture Books

King of the Playground

The Boy with the Helium Head

Old Sadie and the Christmas Bear

Keeping a Christmas Secret

Ducks Disappearing

I Can’t Take You Anywhere

Sweet Strawberries

Please DO Feed the Bears

Books for Young Readers

Josie’s Troubles

How Lazy Can You Get?

All Because I’m older

Maudie in the Middle

One of the Third-Grade Thonkers

Roxie and the Hooligans

Books for Middle Readers

Walking Through the Dark

How I Came to Be a Writer

Eddie, Incorporated

The Solomon System

The Keeper

Beetles, Lightly Toasted

The Fear Place

Being Danny’s Dog

Danny’s Desert Rats

Walker’s Crossing

Books for Older Readers

A String of Chances

Night Cry

The Dark of the Tunnel

The Year of the Gopher

Send No Blessings

Ice

Sang Spell

Jade Green

Blizzard’s Wake

Cricket Man

 

ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

A
THENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.

For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
www.simonspeakers.com
.

Book design by Mike Rosamilia

The text for this book is set in Berkeley Oldstyle Book.

0711 OFF

This Atheneum Books for Young Readers paperback edition August 2011

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds.

Outrageously Alice / Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.—1st ed.

p. cm.

“A Jean Karl book.”

Summary: Alice is in eighth grade, and while she wants her life to be exciting and outrageous, she also wants to feel protected and safe.

ISBN 978-0-689-80354-3 (hc)

[1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Identity—Fiction. 3. Single-parent families—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.N24Ou 1997

[Fic]—dc20

96007744

ISBN 978-1-4424-2853-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-44246-584-8 (eBook)

To Erinn Lindsay Geyer
,

whose love of books will make them

her lifelong friends

 

Contents

One: Facing Up

Two: Getting a Life

Three: Jungle Fever

Four: In the Closet

Five: A Touch of Green

Six: Shock Wave

Seven: Outrageous

Eight: Studies in Forgiveness

Nine: Religion and Sex

Ten: Emergency

Eleven: Rehearsal

Twelve: The Waltz

1
FACING UP

ABOUT THE THIRD WEEK OF OCTOBER
, I decided it was turning out to be one of the weirdest months of my life. Not that there have been that many of them—Octobers, I mean. Thirteen, to be exact. But here’s what had happened so far:

Lester, my twenty-one-year-old brother, who has been juggling two or more girlfriends for several years, just got word that one of his
main
girlfriends, Crystal, was engaged to be married at Thanksgiving. And I was to be a bridesmaid. Now that’s weird.

And of course I was still holding my breath to see whether Miss Summers, my English teacher last year,
would marry Dad or our vice principal, Mr. Sorringer, who’s in love with her too.

Then Elizabeth, my friend who lives across the street, got a baby brother. At last she found out what a boy looks like naked. Is
that
weird, or what?

And finally, the student council at our junior high voted to create a haunted house for Halloween in the school gym to raise money for our library. What the school was going to do, see, was charge a buck fifty apiece to scare little kids half out of their minds. Patrick, my boyfriend, who’s vice president of the student council, asked if I wanted to help out.

Well, why not? I thought. October couldn’t get any crazier than it was already.

I was wrong. It got even crazier. Crystal Harkins’s maid of honor invited me to a bridal shower—a
lingerie
shower—and I’d never been to a shower before.

But you know what? All of these things—the engagement, the bridal shower, the baby brother, the haunted house—were happening to somebody else. I was just on the outside looking in. Not much that is really dramatic, outrageous, and wonderful has ever happened to
me—
something to remember forever and ever. If there was a prize for the girl with the most boring life, I thought, I’d win it, hands down.

BOOK: Outrageously Alice
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