The Boyfriend List Page 13

  “Right.”

  “You do know that, don’t you? I hope you’re okay with all of this.”

  “And if I’m not okay, what are you gonna do about it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. We were pretty close. It’s hard on me to see you like this.”

  “Poor you.”

  “Listen, we can still go to the Spring Fling, if you want. I’d like that, actually. Can we go to the dance?”

  “You aren’t going with Kim?”

  “She has to go out of town with her family. She left this afternoon.”

  “Won’t she be mad?”

  “No. She thinks it might cheer you up. She’s completely sorry she upset you.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “We’d go as friends,” Jackson added.

  “I understood that, thank you.”

  “Aw, don’t be sarcastic with me. Let me take you out. You can wear your dress. For old times’ sake.”9

  Well, it went on like this for a while longer. The short of it is that I said yes, never even thinking about Angelo, or Kim, or what anyone would say—only thinking about how Jackson still had some feelings for me, would love me again in my silver dress, and how we would stand in the moonlight, looking over the railing at the light playing across the dark water.

  1 “But wait!” you careful readers are saying. Weren’t you talking about Angelo way back on your first visit to Doctor Z? What does he have to do with anything?

  2 Doctor Z adds the following: “Maybe he liked you and wanted to go to the dance with you, but felt too shy to ask?”

  I swear to God I never thought of that.

  3 Stephen King wrote this freaked-out book called Carrie about a loser girl who gets asked to the prom by the most popular guy in school, only to find out it’s a massive prank when they dump a bucket of pig’s blood all over her. It was also a movie.

  4 Why didn’t you ask him?” said Doctor Z.

  “Ag.” I moaned. “I always know what you’re going to say.”

  “Then we’re making progress,” she said.

  5 It was on Wednesday that I found out about Kim and Jackson, so at this point I was in the dark.

  6 I thought maybe heartbreak would make me lose my appetite, like it always does to heroines of books, and then I could waste away tragically to nothing and Jackson would see me and I’d be pale and haunted-looking, and he’d realize that he never should have hurt me like that. But no. It turned out my stomach has no idea what’s going on in my heart and I could eat just like normal, if only there was normal food in my house to eat.

  7 The above paragraph is the product of nearly four months of twice-weekly therapy. Expressing feelings! Yay! Even when saying what you feel makes you sound vindictive and grudge-holding and cranky!

  8 You know what? At the time, I thought he was being sensitive—but now, it pisses me off. Where does Jackson get off acting all sympathetic and trying to comfort me when he’s the entire reason I’m unhappy? What is that about? It actually seems kind of sick. Here’s the entry I would have made in The Boy Book if only I still had friends to write it with: Breaking Up with Someone: A Few Tips for Boys.

  1. If you shatter someone by dumping her, and you’re not going to get back together with her ever, don’t go following her around to act all concerned about her welfare. Unless you’re divorcing and leaving her with three kids. Just leave her alone unless she wants to talk to you. You can’t comfort her. You are the bad guy. Just accept it and try not to be such a jerk with your next girlfriend.

  2. Don’t go wearing the jeans she thinks you look hot in until you’re well sure she’s over you.

  3. Don’t tell her she looks pretty.

  4. Don’t lead her into temptation.

  9 Just what he said about tennis with Heidi! Plus, our “old times” were only six days ago at this point! But I notice these things only in hindsight. At the time, I was oblivious.

  11. Shiv (but it was just one kiss.)

  You could call Shiv Neel my first official boyfriend. He was definitely my first voluntary kiss—and the word “girlfriend” was certainly mentioned by him, in reference to me. But he was my boyfriend for less than twenty-four hours, so although it was common knowledge all over school that we were going out, I’m not sure he counts. Anyway, if he was my boyfriend, it’s pretty pitiful—because just like Jackson, he dumped me and I had no idea it was coming.

  Is this my pattern for life, to be always dumped with no warning?1

  Here’s what happened. Last year in November, Shiv and I were assigned to do a scene in Drama Elective together. We had to work on it for homework, so we met a few times in an empty classroom during lunch to rehearse. Shiv was (and is) an Indian American boy with a big nose and the most enormous black eyes you’ve ever seen. I was fascinated by his eyes. He’s quite popular—friends with Pete (Cricket’s boyfriend, as of Valentine’s Day) and this guy Billy Krespin. He plays rugby and basketball, and this year he’s going out with Ariel Oliveri. I was glad to do a scene with him. I’d always thought he was cute.

  Blah blah blah: All the details of our conversations, and the clever notes about when to schedule rehearsals, and the time we spilled pop all over the teacher’s desk, and the time he put his arm around me at assembly (but in the dark so no one could see)—none of that is important. What’s important is that one day, he stopped reading his lines, threw his script on the floor, looked into my eyes and said, “Roo, let me ask you something. Will you be my girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He kissed me, then. Really put his arms around me and kissed me. It went through my body like he had flipped some electrical switch and lit me up. His skin was so warm, and he was suddenly so beautiful, and I thought, Oh, this is what all the hype is about—because I certainly hadn’t felt anything like this with Michael Malone in the woods in my nightgown. We kissed for the rest of lunch period, leaning against the closed classroom door so no one would be able to interrupt us.

  Girlfriend! I was somebody’s girlfriend! And beautiful, popular, good-kisser Shiv, on top of it all!

  Okay, so I’m completely undignified. As soon as school got out, I ran up to Kim, Nora and Cricket on the quad and told them the news. They were completely surprised and excited: Cricket was even jumping up and down. “Shiv! Ag!” she yelled.

  “He’s fine,” said Nora, giggling.

  “Have you seen him in his rugby uniform? He has some serious legs,” said Kim.

  “How did it happen?” Cricket wanted to know.

  I told all.

  They wanted to know more.

  “What did it feel like?”

  Electricity.

  “What did he smell like?”

  Nutmeg.

  “What did he taste like?”

  I don’t know. Person.

  “Did he lick your ear?”

  No. Gross! (Laughter.)

  “Did you grab his butt?”

  “Cricket!”

  “I would have grabbed his butt.”

  (More laughter.) “I’m not up to butts,” I said. “That’s way too advanced.”

  “Not down the pants!” she yelled. “On top of the pants.”

  “Even so. Butt-grabbing on a first kiss is a bit much.”

  “Oh, I think you can get a nice handful even before the first kiss,” said Cricket. (Raucous laughter.)

  “You’re just going to reach over and squeeze?” I asked.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “Please. You’re all talk.”

  “No. I would completely do it. On top of the pants, mind you.”

  And so on.

  The next day, I got to school wearing like four times as much lip gloss as usual and Shiv was in the hall, standing next to his mail cubby. “Hey, Shiv,” I said to him.

  He turned around and walked away.

  In Poetry, he didn’t look at me.

  At lunch in the refectory, he didn’t talk to me or sit anywhere near me, but Cricket, Kim and Nora ha
d told all the girls about what happened, so I was pretty busy fielding gossipy questions from Heidi, Ariel, Katarina and the like, so I didn’t really have time to think about it much.

  In Drama, Shiv and I had to perform our scene.

  “What did you think?” I said, after.

  “It was okay,” said Shiv, his eyes on the ground. Then he grabbed his backpack and left.

  After school, I saw him heading for the bus. “Shiv, wait up!” I called.

  He kept walking.

  By this point, it was obvious he had changed his mind. I felt like an idiot. Had I been a rotten kisser during our session against the door? (This was certainly possible, as I had so little experience.)

  Maybe I smelled bad?

  Or had there been a booger hanging out of my nose when we stopped kissing?

  What could I have done to make him stop liking me?

  I thought about it all the time, but I never found out. I felt like a complete loser. I liked him so much, and now he seemed to hate me, and there was no way to turn it around. I was completely helpless.

  I never really talked with him again, except to say hi in the halls.

  When I told her about Shiv, Doctor Z thought I should ask him what happened. Well, she never says anything quite that directly. What she really said was “Is there a way you could find out?”

  “No.”

  Silence. She was wearing that poncho again.

  “Well,” I said, after a minute, “I guess I could ask him. But I’d rather die than do that.”

  More silence. It really is a horrible poncho.

  “I don’t care, anyway.”

  Even more silence. Who buys this woman’s clothes?

  “Well, I guess maybe I kind of do,” I went on. “I mean, I do. I liked him, I wanted to kiss him again, we had a good time together. And the whole thing was humiliating. Everyone knowing we were going out, and then with us breaking up so fast after—I felt like people were talking about me.”

  “Can you ask him?”

  I ignored her question. “And this is my life, getting dumped with no warning. Or liking people who don’t like me back, or who don’t like me enough, or not as much as they like someone else. You have the list in front of you: Hutch dumped me for Ariel, Gideon never liked me back, Ben didn’t know I was alive, Sky had another girlfriend.”

  “Story of your life?”

  “Exactly. Why is that? I wish I could fix whatever’s wrong with me.”

  “Just one kiss” is never just one kiss. The one with Shiv changed my whole idea about kissing. And when I went to the dance with Jackson, there was “just one kiss”—but it made everything even worse than it was before.

  You wouldn’t think that was possible, but it was.

  After Jackson asked me to the dance, I had a lot of phone calls to make.

  First, I had to call up Angelo and tell him not to take me. I was super nervous. I had never called him before, and here I was canceling on him. But he was nice about it. “That’s cool,” he said. “If he’s your boyfriend, you should go with him.”

  “I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend,” I said.

  “Whatever. You should do what you gotta do.”

  “Okay.” There was a weird silence. “There’s a party on the dock by my house after,” I said, feeling guilty. “Around eleven. You should swing by if you’re around.”

  “Sure,” said Angelo, though I was sure he was only being polite.

  “You shouldn’t go,” said Cricket when I called her. “It’s way too complicated.”

  “It’s just as friends,” I said.

  “Still.”

  “Kim told him to take me.”

  “But that’s Kim. She feels bad about everything.”

  “Yeah? She doesn’t act like it.”

  “Trust me,” said Cricket. “She does.”

  “I’m still going,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”

  “You shouldn’t go,” said Nora when she called me.

  “I know, but I so want to,” I said. “I have that dress.”

  “You could wear that dress with Angelo,” she said.

  “I want to go with Jackson. I was always supposed to go with Jackson, he asked me a long time ago.”

  “Not exactly,” she reminded me.

  “But still.”

  “It’s your funeral,” she said. “Maybe you should come to dinner with me and Matt, to keep it all under control.”

  Matt added two more onto his reservation, and we all had dinner at the top of the Space Needle, which is this restaurant inside an old World’s Fair building that turns around and around so you get a 360-degree view by the time you finish your dinner. They didn’t have any vegetarian food, so I ate three side dishes: creamed spinach, mashed potatoes and a salad. Then we drove to the pier in two separate cars, and got on the miniyacht just as it was pulling out.

  Here’s what I remember from the dance: Cricket looked beautiful, in a pink dress with her sleek blond hair piled on top of her head. Nora looked sexy, showing off her great boobs in a low-cut black thing. She took pictures of us all with her Instamatic.

  Jackson touched my hand when we were dancing and told me I was pretty. There was hardly anywhere to sit down. When the band played a slow song, Jackson asked me to dance, and put his cheek against mine as we did. Then he suggested we go upstairs and get some air.

  I didn’t have a coat. It was freezing on deck. He put his arm around me to keep me warm. It was the first time we were alone all evening. We were standing in the moonlight, looking over the railing at the lake, watching the light play across the dark water, like I’d imagined. Jackson was talking about some anime movie he’d seen.

  I wasn’t listening.

  I was looking at his mouth and feeling his warm hand against my chilly shoulder.

  It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do what I did: I put my hand on his neck and kissed him.

  He kissed me back.

  I thought: This is right. I forgive everything. He wants me again. We’ll be together.

  Then he pushed me away. “Ruby,” Jackson said in a strange, loud, public voice. “What are you doing? That’s not how it is, now. We’re here as friends. You know I’m with Kim.”

  I looked across the deck. Standing there, looking at us—Heidi Sussman and Finn Murphy. Jackson pushed past them and ran down a set of steps.

  As soon as I was alone on the deck of the boat, I had a panic attack. Heidi and Finn had disappeared, and there was no one out there except Meghan and some seniors, down at the other end, plus one couple who had their tongues down each other’s throats. I felt so dizzy I had to hold on to the railing to stand up, my heart was hammering, my breath was coming in tiny gasps; I felt like there was no oxygen, and I broke out in a sweat, even though it was freezing. Eventually I staggered over to a bench.

  Noel came out and sat next to me. He’s the boy from Painting Elective who sent me that carnation with the goofy rhyme on Valentine’s Day. “How do I love thee? As high as pigs can fly.” He was wearing a tuxedo, which no other boys were doing (they wore suits), and he lit a cigarette with an old-fashioned silver lighter.

  This Noel is one of those not-quite-friends-with-every-body people who never seems like he’s being serious. He’s very ironic about Tate and everything it stands for (preppy white lacrosse players driving BMWs), but he’s got a lot of confidence and no one gives him any crap. His shaggy blond hair sticks out in a ridiculous way that I think probably requires hair gel. His left eyebrow is pierced. That night, his combat boots were sticking out under his tux, big steel toes glinting in the moonlight.

  If Noel has girlfriends, he has them out of school. He came to the dance alone, which almost no one could get away with, but Noel is such a man of ironic distance that he pulled it off and no one thought he was a leper.

  “Hey, Ruby,” he said, sinking down next to me on the bench near the ship’s railing. “I hear there’s a party at your house, and now your boyfriend’s
in a twist over something and you don’t even have a ride to your own fête. Can that be true, or is it a load of Tate gossip?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d let Jackson tell people that party was still on. He’d probably invited half the junior and sophomore classes. “How do you know I don’t have a ride?” I asked. (Would Jackson really leave without me?)

  “Are you kidding?” Noel scrunched up his nose and took a drag off his cigarette. “It’s all over the boat.”

  “Ag. Well, then I’m sure no one’s coming to my house.”

  “You better believe they are. Five people asked me if I was going. Ariel Oliveri. Katarina Dolgen. It’s going to be a scene.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “If I’m invited, I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Of course you’re invited. I—I haven’t had the best week. Jackson told everybody about it. It was his idea.”

  Noel smiled. “That’s okay. I know. I keep up on my Ruby Oliver news.”

  I was so grateful, I felt like Noel was a knight in shining armor. He gave me his jacket to wear and hustled me into his car. We drove back to my house and my parents had set out coolers full of soft drinks down on the end of the dock where the boats are—plus a bunch of folding chairs and some candles in paper bags, which looked so pretty. People were already standing around when I arrived: Matt and Nora (who said she was tired and had her mom pick her up right after I got there)2; Ariel and Shiv; Katarina and Kyle; a bunch of junior friends of Jackson’s; Shep “Cabbie” Cabot and a senior girl with big boobs; some sophomores I knew from lacrosse. Finn and Heidi came a little while later. Cricket3 and Pete never showed.

  It was a beautiful night, I was the hostess of a party full of popular people wearing gorgeous clothes; there was a boy in a tux by my side. It should have been great.

  Instead, I was shattered.

  Someone handed me a beer. I don’t remember who. I’d never really had more than a couple of sips before that, or maybe a little wine at one of my mom’s opening night parties—but I drank the whole can. And I’d like to blame what happened next on that—only I can’t, because as Doctor Z says, I am in charge of myself.