Alice in April

April is the cruelest month," said the poet, and Alice McKinley would agree. April is a hard month. Not that she doesn't have some fun. It does begin with a wonderful April Fool's Day joke on her brother, Lester. But it also begins with Aunt Sally reminding her that she will soon be thirteen (as if anyone could forget something so important) and then she will be Woman of the House, since her mother is long dead. It is an awesome responsibility. All her life she had assumed that her father and Lester were there to take care of her; now she is going to have to take care of them. Taking care of Lester, alone, could be a full-time job, she thinks. Being Woman of the House has all sorts of drawbacks. For example: It never occurred to her that when she suggested her father and Lester ought to have physical checkups, her father would insist that she have one too.