Free Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales by Ali Wentworth Page A

and swiftly as one would break twigs for kindling. The bird went limp and fell to the ground. I was right behind it.
    I felt like Hannibal Lecter that night, sopping up the chicken stew with hunks of crusty bread. But I was starving; it had been forty-five minutes since my last meal. You’d think that afternoon massacre would have prompted a conversion to veganism, but one taste of the spicy sausage in the paella shackled my compassion. To this day I have repeated nightmares in which the souls of all of the animals I’ve eaten gather to gnaw me to death. Yet I always wake up with a yen for bacon.
    I spent the rest of the summer cutting slits in the elastic waistbands of my skirts. I had gained thirty-five pounds, most of which went right to my face. It was as if someone had put a bicycle pump up my mouth and inflated until the brink of explosion. After almost three months of asking, “Quien disparo JR?” and scarfing tortillas de patatas , I decided to meet my best friend, Holly, in Paris before returning to the land of Ann Taylor, Skittles, and MTV. Holly was having her own teenage summer abroad, just more luxe. She lived with a French family on avenue Foch, in the chicest arrondissement of Paris. She was smoking Gitanes and being courted by French boys with silk ascots and tailored shirts. The only chicken she choked belonged to a French banker’s son, in the garden maze of their weekend chateau.
    We decided to travel to Brittany and stay in a bed-and-breakfast. It was the first time we had traveled unchaperoned; this was before AMBER Alerts, and children on milk cartons were just getting started. The notion of anything Law & Order SVU happening to us never crossed our minds, perhaps because we were more predator than prey. Today I am so paranoid, I tried to find a GPS-tracking chip to implant in my daughter’s scalp so if she were ever abducted, I could track her down like a missing Honda. I still may buy the patent.
    The first order of business in the majestic northeast part of France was to ignore the ravishing countryside with the misty moors, and lose pounds. We were both pudgy (read: fat), and needed to slim down before we went back to Paris, a city where women look like walking wind chimes with blunt haircuts and poppy red lipstick. So we created our own diet, a cleanse of sorts. We drank only black tea with heaps of sugar and triple cream. Take that, South Beach diet! After two days we became weak and light-headed insomniacs and back in Paris decided to trade in our weight-loss pact for a platter of profiteroles and that cheese at Café Lipp that smells like feet.
    I didn’t think it possible for me to tip the scales at 140 pounds, but when I arrived at Dulles International Airport, I was pushing 153 pounds. I had become the “before” in the Jenny Craig posters. As I collected my luggage at baggage claim (I had left the tennis racquet in Zamora; Jose begged to have it to play Hit the Cowpatty Over the House), I scanned the crowds. And then I spotted her. My mother was wheeling an airport cart in my direction. She was statuesque and tan and gracefully pushed the cart before her like a stewardess offering the warm cookies in first class.
    I smiled. I was ecstatic to see her—and the Burger King sign just beyond. She got closer and closer. She smiled, I smiled; my steps turned to a light trot, my arms outstretched. And then . . . she walked right past me.
    I paused for a Whopper and then set off to find her.

Chapter Eight
     
    Happy and Preppy and Bursting with Love
     
    L osing my virginity was about as romantic as a flu shot. The problem with having a sheltered and protected upbringing is, you’re not prepared for anything alien and outlandish, like the penis. We never discussed sex at home. Everything I learned about sex was from deodorant commercials and slasher films. The lesson—if you were slutty you’d be the first bludgeoned.
    In the summer of my sixteenth year, I was given the choice of going