Free Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli Page B

had never known her last name.
    “No,” she sneered. “I’m Goldilocks. I just snuck into Baby Bear’s bed.”
    She reached for the boy. I saw that her hand was bleeding. He dug his fingers into my waist. She kicked him. He howled—and kicked her back. She howled.
    “Stop!” I shrieked, surprising myself. This was a quiet neighborhood.
    I peeled the boy off and made him face me. I growled at Alvina, “Back off.” She glared hatefully at me but backed off. “Is this your brother?”
    “
It’s
the pimple on my butt,” she said.
    “She’s the pimple on
my
butt!” the boy retorted.
    “Enough!” I said. “What’s your name?”
    He said it as if spitting at her: “Thomas!”
    To Alvina: “Where’s your mother?”
    “At the dentist.”
    “So you’re supposed to be watching him?”
    “Watching
it,
” she sneered.
    Alvina’s breath came in hissy snorts. Her teeth were bared like a snarling dog’s. This was vintage Alvina. What surprised me was the little brother. Sure, he was cowering, but only in a pound-for-pound-mismatch sort of way. He was no more afraid of her than Dootsie had been in Margie’s. I thought:
Alvina, when he gets bigger, you’re in trouble.
    “Your brother is a
he,
” I said, “not an
it.
”
    “
It’s
gonna be dead as soon as you get outta here,” she said.
    “Then I’m not going till your mother gets back.”
    Thomas crowed, “Yeah!” He took a step forward and flicked out a bare leg at her. She came for him. I jabbed my finger in her face. I tried to look stern. “Stay!”
    He laughed. “Yeah! Stay, doggie!”
    Before I knew what was happening, he turned around, bent over, pulled down his little black and yellow Batmans and mooned his sister. This was clearly nothing new to Alvina. She showed neither shock nor disgust. She simply reared back and spat on the moon. He screamed bloody murder and pulled up his Batmans and rubbed his hiney. Alvina seemed to sense the advantage. Again she came forward. I put out my hand like a crossing guard. “Alvina—not another step.”
    She stopped, gave me a sneery grin. “Yeah? What’re you gonna do?
Hit
me?”
    What
was
I going to do? I had no idea. Tickle her? We locked eyes for the longest time. Finally she blinked. Her face changed. She jabbed her hand at me. “Look what he did!”
    Her little finger was bleeding, the one with the elegant nail, only now it was an un-elegant stub.
    “What happened?” I said.
    “He chopped it,” she said, whining now, telling me the whole gruesome story. He had gotten hold of his father’s nail clippers. As soon as their mother left, he started clipping himself: fingernails, toenails, eyebrows, eyelashes. Since he was doing this at the breakfast table, Alvina took her cereal down to the basement den. Which is where she was sometime later, nestled in the arms of her father’s super-duper reclining easy chair, watching Comedy Central, except not really watching it, because that easy chair for some reason has the strangest effect on her—whenever she climbs into it she wants to doze off. And that’s what she was doing, not really sleeping but just nodding off in the chair, half hearing the TV sounds, when suddenly she heard a snippy little noise and felt a little tug on her little finger and she opened her eyes and there was Thomas with a mile-wide grin on his face, holding up a full half inch of pink, glittery fingernail that he had just clipped off. Which was bad enough, but that wasn’t all. So shocked was she at the sight of her mutilated fingernail that her hand shot out and knocked her father’s bowling trophy from the side table onto the floor, where it broke in half. Which was bad
enough,
except that her hand hit the sharp edge of the trophy base and came away with a nasty, bleeding cut. Which is when the screaming started.
    I got most of the story as I dragged her into the house, asking her where’s the bathroom, where’s the medicine cabinet, Batman pattering after us—“Is