Okay, so I finished off the Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I went back and read "The Agony of Alice". Alice has just moved to Silver Spring and hopes to be in beautiful Miss Cole's 6th grade class, where she is sure Miss Cole can teach her all about how to be the perfect young woman. However, Alice is assigned to dumpy Mrs. Plotkin's class, and she's miserable about it. She and Pam fight, vying for attention, but by the end of the school year Alice learns a valuable lesson in how much the inner person matters.
Alice is determined to be universally liked in 7th grade, but Denise Whitlock has it out for her from the start, until Alice comes up with a way to ease the tensions between them. Her dad and Lester are both having girl problems, though. Alice would love to help out, but somehow whenever she helps she only makes it worse.
Alice feels left out of so many things, so she joins a fan writing club at school and she and Pam and a few other girls get their ears pierced and start an earring club. Alice doesn't enjoy either activity much, but she feels like she has to do *something* to fit in and make friends. The book ends with her refusing to hurt Patrick in order to be part of the popular crowd, a decision that wasn't easy but was the best thing in the long run.
Alice has a terrible secret--she's scared of deep water. She's dreading the summer now and time spent at Mark Stedmiester's pool. Lester steps up and teaches her how to swim. Liz feels guilty about sneaking a copy of "Arabian Nights" out of her parent's room and ready the provocative bits to them, so she confesses to her priest who tells her it's okay to be curious but she ought to tell her folks what she did.
The summer after graduating from high school, Liz, Pam, Alice, and Gwen work for a cruise ship in the Chesapeake Bay. They get to meet some fun guys, but it's hard work. Then, Pam's dad and his girlfriend show up for a cruise with her mother right behind, making a fool out of herself until she gets kicked off the boat and Pam is humiliated. A generator blows, and the ship has to be towed back to port and the cruise line goes belly up, so Alice returns home for the rest of the summer.
And finally, the one we've all been waiting for! (STOP if you don't want it spoiled!)
This is it--the rest of Alice's life.
Alice goes off to college. Her first roommate is a disaster, but she makes some new friends and has some good times. Patrick decides to join the Peace Corps, and they break up. Alice dates, and ultimately gets engaged to Dave, but calls it off when she decides they don't have enough in common to make a marriage work. On her way to visit a friend, Alice runs into Patrick in the airport and they reunite. They start dating again, and get married. They have two kids: a girl and a boy. They live in Spain for a few years. Lester gets married and he and his wife have trouble conceiving until she finally gives birth to triplets. The older folks start dying: Patrick's parents, Ben (I wept like a baby). Liz and Gwen get married and have kids. Pam eventually gets married. The book ends with them returning to dig up the time capsule they buried back in 7th grade, when they are 60. I wept some more. All in all, it was a great run. I was kind of disappointed that Alice and Patrick got married because seriously, who marries the guy they've been dating since they were 11? Not too many people, that's who. But it was sweet and I'm glad Alice had a long and happy life.
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