She had a mess of green stuff on her eyelids, and her fingernails looked about two inches long.

The first night Al moved into the building, her mother came to our door. Most of the things Al and I talk about I don’t tell my mother. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I think maybe we can manage.” You,” she said, looking over the top of her glasses at me, “have the makings of a nonconformist.

“I am a nonconformist,” she said, like she was saying she was a television star or Elizabeth Taylor or something. She says things like this all the time but I don’t like to let on I don’t always know what she is talking about. She has a very high I.Q., she says, but she doesn’t work to capacity. She has gone to a lot of different schools. She is a year older than me but we’re both in the seventh grade, on account of she dropped back when she moved here. He has a retainer and all that stuff.Īl is a very interesting person. My brother inherited his teeth from my mother’s side, I guess. I am fortunate, my father says, because I have inherited my teeth from his side of the family. They are very expensive and also a pain in the neck. Her teeth are very nice, though, and she does not wear braces. She does not smile a lot and she wears glasses. Al’s pigtails look like they are starched. My father says I remind him of a sheep dog but I don’t care. Most of the kids have long, straight hair like mine. They would make her stand out even if nothing else did. She is the only girl in the whole entire school, practically, with pigtails. She walks stiff, like a German soldier, and she has pigtails. She might not like me because I’m on the skinny side. She has been to Disneyland about a thousand times.Īl is a little on the fat side, which is why I didn’t like her right at first. What does she see in a dope like that?” Al said. “And that dopey guy who always plays with her. She has been to Hollywood where she saw them making a movie. She said the next time she goes on one she will bring me one of the little plastic dishes of jelly and stuff they give you. She has been on an airplane a lot of times. “Where is that?”Īl explained to me that L.A. She has lived on the Coast, among other places. She has lived in a lot of different places.

She said “Call me Al” and it wasn’t until I saw her report card that I found out her name was Alexandra. There’s a new girl moved down the hall from us.

A Girl Called Al by Constance C. Greene