Free Now I'll Tell You Everything (Alice) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page A

fields?”
    “Sometimes I feel like changing bodies,” I told her. “Dave’s applied to work on a construction job in Pennsylvania this summer. If he gets it, he’ll be gone most of the time. I’ve got applications in to seven different places, and I don’t really wantto work at any of them. I don’t want to go back to temp work, and even Dad doesn’t want me to work at the Melody Inn. Maybe I need a whole new me. Go get a brain transplant or something.”
    Okay, to be perfectly honest, I was probably comparing my life to Patrick’s again, and that was a hopeless cause. Also—I couldn’t help myself—a couple of days ago I’d checked out his Peace Corps blog:
    I thought I picked up languages pretty fast, but these villagers really laugh at my Malagasy, and I like to make them happy. Their language is so unlike any others I know, but I’ve already learned that they randomly add a “y” at the end of English words to make it Malagasy. “Bank,” for example, is “banky.” The volunteer I’m replacing and I biked the 24 kilometers to the village on a beautiful road that sometimes runs along the beach. Stayed at his house that night and the next, which will soon be my house—two little rooms, one public that everybody feels free to walk into, day or night, and the other room just for me. Wood frame, tin roof, and some kind of grass siding.
    People here are more in-your-face and loud. Come right up to me and tell me I’m too tall, like there’s something I’m supposed to do about it. But overall they’re warm and welcoming, and I think I’ve inherited a grandmother. The Peace Corps doesn’t want us to start any big projects right away because all of them depend on volunteers. I’m just supposed to go around making friends and improving my language skills.
    I should have stopped reading then, because the next paragraph read:
    The only other volunteer I know from our training group is Jessica—from my year abroad in Barcelona—but she’s in another village, so I’m pretty much on my own.
    What’s she like? I wondered. Do they bike to each other’s villages? What is he like now—all these new adventures so far from home?
    But it wasn’t just Patrick. Liz was staying in Vermont for the summer because she got a job in a bookstore there, and Pamela had applied for a summer theater program in London. Worst of all, Dave would be working up near Harrisburg.
    “And I’ve got another internship this summer, so you’re feeling left out. Is that it?” Gwen asked.
    “Exactly,” I said. “Big waaaah.”
    *  *  *
    We were relating all this to Claire and Abby that evening as the four of us came back from an impromptu volleyball game. As we climbed the steps to our dorm, Abby said, “I’m going to Oregon for the summer to work for my aunt in her catering business. She needs someone to do the baking. Why don’t you come too, Alice?”
    “As what? Chief taster?”
    “You said you like to bake.”
    “I said I like to make my dad pineapple upside-down cake for his birthday, courtesy of Duncan and Dole,” I told her.
    “That’s all you’ve ever baked?”
    “Chocolate chip cookies. A devil’s food cake once. Blueberry muffins.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “Of course!”
    “Then come! We’ll stay with my aunt. There’s room.”
    I stopped walking and stared at her. “Are you serious? Where in Oregon?”
    “Eugene. Of course I’m serious! She lets me keep half the profits. We bake twice as much, that’s twice the profits.”
    Two weeks later we were flying United to Portland, Portland to Eugene, and then we were sitting in the back of Aunt Jayne’s minivan chattering away while her springer spaniel in the passenger seat rested his paws on the open window and lolled his tongue at the passing cars.

5
THE OREGON EPISODE
    Eugene, Oregon, is a lot like Maryland in that it’s hilly in places and there are loads of trees. What’s different is that in Maryland, most of the houses are brick.