All the books in this post are Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (I don't want to keep repeating myself). "The Summer of the First Boyfriend" as Alice's dad calls it. Alice and Patrick are officially a couple, but what does that mean? Alice kind of misses when they were just friends, without all the added pressures of kissing and going to Patrick's parents' country club for dinner.
Alice is now 13. She and her friends, Pam and Liz, take an overnight train ride to Chicago to visit Alice's Aunt Sally. Pam flirts with an older man and finds herself in a sticky situation she can't get out of, and Alice and Liz come to her rescue. Alice feels very ordinary and not quite special as her friends.
Alice wants to be more exciting, more outrageous. Her father gets angry when she goes to school with her hair dyed green and in spikes, even if it is only for one day. Crystal, Lester's ex-girlfriend, invites her to be a bridesmaid at her wedding and Alice is uncomfortable at the lingerie bridal shower party (good grief, who wouldn't be, at 13? What in the heck was Crystal thinking, inviting her to that, anyway? And why did her dad let her go?). She does have fun at the wedding, though.
Alice is working hard to get Sylvia Summers to marry her dad (spoiler alert: she does!). Poor Liz has to go for a pelvic exam, and she and Pam go along for moral support (and also to find out what happens during an exam). She's still thinking about other guys and wondering if Patrick is the "right" one.
Aunt Sally and cousin Carol are visiting from Chicago, and Alice gets to ask Carol about what sex is really like. I don't remember being this preoccupied with sex as a young teen, but maybe because I didn't have any girlfriends to talk about stuff like this with, who knows? Alice also discovers how easy it is to be prejudiced even when you don't mean to be during Consciousness Raising week at her school. She's devastated when Sylvia announces she's going to England to teach for a year.
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