The Boy Book Read online

  “I have to see a shrink because I freak out about stuff,” I said. “And I’ve been trying to figure out why I do things, and why I feel like I feel, and how I ended up not having any friends for such a long time.”

  He looked at me as if asking me to go on.

  “And I just last month made up with Nora, and she finally wants to be friends with me after everything that happened, and, well—we have a code.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like we can’t take up with a guy if someone else likes him first.”

  Noel paused. And then said: “I see.”

  “She’s my friend, and I don’t want to lose her like I lost Kim and Cricket, and I’m trying to figure out how to be a good person, and it doesn’t always come naturally to me.”

  “I think you’re a good person,” said Noel.

  “Sometimes I am,” I answered. “And this is one of those times.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I’m really sorry, but I don’t think there’s anything else to do.” I stood up. “I should probably go.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You probably should.”

  It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I turned and walked out the door.

  Tuesday, I went to school with The Boy Book wrapped in some old Santa Claus paper. On it was a note I had written:

  Dear Kim,

  We were friends once.

  I doubt we’ll be friends again. Too much has happened. But maybe we can remember what it used to be like without such a ginormous quantity of bitterness.

  So I want you to have this book.

  I was telling you the truth the other day. I know sometimes I am sour mean bitter breakup lady, but sometimes I am also loyal truth-telling lady who messes in business that’s not her own. But only because she really can’t stand it when bad stuff is going on.

  Anyway.

  Here’s The Boy Book.

  Brava for Kaptain Kangaroo. May she rest in peace.

  —Roo

  I left it in her mail cubby, though I had to squash it in order to get it in. It was easier than giving it to her in person.

  And I felt relieved.

  Like that whole era of my life was over.

  Like The Boy Book and everything it stood for—me, Nora and Cricket and Kim—was done with. And the thoughts inside it too.

  Some of them were worth remembering. The front-close bra and not sunbathing topless and the clever comebacks to catcalls. But most of it was in the past.

  It was a document of how I used to think. When I was, sort of, someone else.

  The Girl Book: A Disorganized Notebook of Thoughts, with No Particular Purpose, Written Purely for the Benefit of Me, Ruby Oliver, and My Mental Health

  Nancy Drews.

  That is, things I am good at.1

  1. The backstroke. Not great, but decent and getting better.

  2. Talking. I’m like my mom that way.

  3. Making lists. I really could medal in this one.

  4. Movies. Remembering trivia and being able to say semi-intelligent stuff about cinema when called upon to do so.

  5. Getting animals to like me. And not being afraid of them.

  6. Reading mystery novels. Which is not that hard. But I do it fast.

  7. Writing stuff down in such a way that it is at least moderately amusing.

  8. School, generally. With the exception of math, which, if I am honest, I just don’t care about at all.

  9. Painting pictures of animals that semi-resemble the actual animal that I am trying to paint. Human bodies still elude me, as proven by multiple attempts in Advanced Painting Elective—and my landscapes suck, as do my pictures of fruit. But when I paint something by myself, from a photo in one of my animal books or just from memory, it comes out pretty good. Not that I do it that often.

  10. I am good at giving presents.

  11. And finding clothes in vintage shops.

  12. And being a good friend. At least, I am getting better.

  —written by me, Ruby Oliver, all by myself. Exact date: November 21, junior year.

  meghan broke up with Bick at Thanksgiving. He cried and begged her not to.

  It was very satisfying to hear about, but Meghan was sad. Because she loves him. But she told him that the long-distance thing, whether they were faithful or taking it one day at a time, was making her insane. And she hated thinking that she had to go to college in Boston, when she might want to go somewhere and study singing, or skip college and train to be a yoga teacher, or go to school somewhere warm by the beach. And she didn’t actually think they’d ever get married, and she didn’t want to think about getting married now anyway, and there wasn’t any point to it anymore.

  She couldn’t live her life in Seattle with her heart and mind at Harvard, she told him.

  Nora and I took her out for espresso milk shakes to make her feel better. Then we went and saw a big cheesy movie with alien invaders, and slept over at the Van Deusens’.2

  Kim said thank you for The Boy Book, and we had a little fake hug, and then went back to pretty much ignoring each other, only now we said hi in the halls and I could go to parties without angsting that something awful would happen. She and Cricket became fully enmeshed in the Katarina-Heidi-Ariel set, and Nora stayed on the fringes, mainly hanging out with me and Meghan.

  Kim and Jackson stayed together. What I heard from Nora (who made up with Kim quickly after Canoe Island) was that Kim confronted him, and there was really quite a scene, but he broke things off with the zoo girl and told Kim he was incredibly sorry and had just been so confused and lonely that he’d made a big mistake. And he wrote her notes and gave her a Hello Kitty lunch box and a cashmere sweater. So she forgave him.

  I never told her about the notes he wrote me, or how he invited me to Kyle’s party.

  I decided it wasn’t my business to tell.

  And besides, Jackson was fully cured of his tendency to flirt with me or try to get me to forgive him, or whatever it was, by the obvious fact that it was I who spilled the beans to his girlfriend about his stepping out with the zoo girl.

  Things were awkward between me and Noel for a few weeks, but after that it got a little better. We stayed Chem lab partners, but he stopped sending me e-mails. We ate lunch together on the Chemistry days, but we always found other people to sit with, too. Sometimes he came out to the movies with me and Meghan and Nora, but we never went anywhere alone, and we never talked on the phone. The Hooter Rescue Squad was officially defunct.

  I never told Nora what happened when I went to his house with the CD.

  Noel didn’t like Nora, not that way. She would sometimes sit next to him on purpose, or look at him for a long time like she wasn’t keeping track of the lunch conversation, and I could tell she still liked him.

  Besides which, she told me she did. She said he was interesting, and funny, and she liked the way his hair stood up.

  And I had to agree.

  She said he was outside the Tate Universe, at least more than everyone else was, and that the guys at Tate were generally too pigheaded and sexist. And even those who weren’t were manly-manly preppy future doctors of America.

  Muffins.

  Which was true.

  But Nora never got the courage to ask Noel out. When I hinted around about it, she kept saying she would. But then she didn’t. A senior from the basketball team tried to scam on her at a party Heidi Sussman had in early December. Nora kissed the guy for a short time in the kitchen, but then she complained she was tired and went home, never to really deal with him again.

  I retrained for penguin-lecture-giving at the zoo and redeemed myself in Anya’s eyes on the next go-round. I started to like the Family Farm part of the job as well. Me and Laverne and Shirley got pretty close. And after a while, I asked to do less gardening and more stuff with the animals, so Anya let me help muck out the farm animal pens instead of gardening. Which was gross, but anyway.

  Of course, all my money went to paying b
ack my parents for Canoe Island, so I was broke until the new year.

  My parents were happy that I was dealing with my issues in therapy with Doctor Z, and continued to speculate on whether I was a lesbian.

  And to remind me that they were okay with that.

  “I’m not a lesbian, you guys,” I’d say.

  “It’s a perfectly normal way to be, sweetie.”

  “Yeah, only I’m not.”

  “It’s normal to be in denial, too. Just be true to yourself,” one of them would say, and then we’d have a long dinner conversation for my benefit about all the gay friends my mother has, and her possibly lesbian relationship with Lisa from high school, and movies they’d seen and liked with gay characters in them, and famous people who were gay. Then my dad would give me some meaningless compliment—how pretty I am or what an interesting person I am—in hopes of boosting my self-esteem. And I would look at my plate and stir my pasta around, waiting for the meal to be over.

  Ag.

  A few days after Canoe Island, Hutch asked Noel if he wanted to go see Aerosmith in concert, and Noel said yes, and they went and did manly bonding things involving rock music. So the two of them started hanging out a bit. And though Hutch’s leper status didn’t improve much beyond that, and his skin didn’t either, he sat with us at lunch now and then. And it was okay, so long as he didn’t quote obscure retro metal lyrics that no one understood.

  We went back to being partners in French.

  Angelo fell in love with his new girlfriend. Her name was Jade. Juana told my mother, and my mother (completely ignorant of my adventures with Angelo) told me. She said Angelo brought Jade home for dinner and she was really charming and smart, and Angelo just looked at her like the sun was shining through her eyes.

  And I didn’t feel a thing when I heard about it. Except glad for him.

  We had to have dinner together sometimes, just like we always had. But we sat on opposite sides of the couch when we were watching TV, and I always wore a back-close bra and a dress, just to stay on the safe side. Because when I looked at the excellence of Angelo’s profile, I did start to remember his proficiency in the boob-groping department and got a little tempted. But then I’d just pet a rottweiler or a shih tzu or something and make some comment about reality TV, and the moment would be over.

  And me. Ruby Oliver. I started The Girl Book. Excerpt at the start of this chapter. It’s like a free-for-all notebook for stuff that I’m thinking. I made a cover for it with a painting of Humboldt penguins, gouache on construction paper, and it doesn’t look half bad. My dad bought a new computer and gave me his old one, so I used that to write down all the things that happened at the start of this school year, which is what you’re reading now.

  I swim. And I go see Doctor Z. And I work my zoo job. And I write stuff. I rent movies with my girlfriends and drink espresso milk shakes at the B&O.

  I don’t think about Jackson at all anymore. I see him in the halls, and my radar is gone. He’s a pod-robot and I don’t care.

  I do not care.

  I do not care.

  I see Kim, and there is still an ache for the kind of friends we used to be. Because I don’t have that with anyone, the way I did with her. And maybe I never will.

  Maybe friendships aren’t like that when we get older.

  But the Kim ache is dull. Not a surge of immediate panicky pain and anger like it used to be. It’s an ache for what happened in the past, not what’s happening now.

  I can live with it.

  And I do.

  If I am sad about anything, and sometimes I am, it is Noel. I talk about him a lot in therapy. Because I think there could have been something, a real thing, between us. And now there is just a low-level friendship that will never get any deeper. At least, I don’t think it will.

  I made the right decision. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any regrets.

  The first night of winter break, I had Meghan and Nora sleep over at my house.

  I almost never have anyone sleep over. I hardly ever did, even before the debacles of sophomore year. Our place is so much smaller than where my friends live, and the walls are thin. Why would you sleep on the floor in the living room of a semibohemian houseboat when you can have hot tubs and swimming pools and bedroom-bathroom suites?

  The answer was always obvious: you wouldn’t.

  But I invited them anyway, because Meghan was going away to visit her grandparents for the holidays, so we wouldn’t see her for two weeks. And they came.

  My parents went to Juana’s for dinner, and Nora made nachos and chocolate chip cookies, and the three of us played Trivial Pursuit, Silver Screen Edition, which I’d bought for myself after spending a horror-filled evening with the four-year-old vomit machine I used to babysit. (I kicked some serious butt at Trivial Pursuit, by the way, even when Meghan and Nora teamed up against me.)

  Then we put mud masks on our faces and Meghan painted her toenails and Nora looked at my dad’s flower photograph books and I cleaned up the kitchen so my parents wouldn’t have a fit when they got home.

  They arrived, and my dad was tipsy and pretended to be terrified at our green-mud faces, and they made a lot of noise going in and out of the bathroom brushing their teeth, and then they left us alone.

  We made a big extended bed on the living room floor with couch cushions, three pillows and sleeping bags Nora and Meghan had brought over, plus my bedclothes and a lot of extra sheets. It was like fifteen feet wide. We washed the mud off our faces, put on pajamas and got in to watch Saturday Night Live.

  The show was kind of boring, and Meghan fell asleep five minutes into it. Nora, on my other side, went out a couple of minutes later.

  I lay there in the blue light from the TV set. Not really watching. Just lying there, between Meghan and Nora.

  Meghan snored softly.

  Nora was breathing through her mouth and drooling onto the pillow.

  The TV went to a commercial and I switched it off with the remote.

  The water lapped at the sides of our houseboat.

  And I felt lucky.

  acknowledgments

  Thank you to Marissa for hacking out the boring footnotes and making the whole thing so much better. And to Beverly, Chip, Kathleen and everyone else at Delacorte Press, especially the sales force, for all their hard work and support of my books. I am always and muchly in debt to Elizabeth for her stellar and unflagging representation.

  I am grateful to the people in my YA novelists newsgroup for their wonderful humor and insight about the publishing and writing process.

  Thank you also to the FOZ (friends of Zoe)—Julia, Anne, Vanessa and Mika—who gamely took the John Belushi pop-reference quiz, thus enabling this book to be (hopefully) full of footnotes and film references that are entertaining and semi-informative, rather than un-. Most of all, my appreciation to Zoe, quiz administrator extraordinaire, who also helped me figure out how to end the book.

  Thanks to Bellamy Pailthorp and Melissa Greeley for helping me get the Seattle details right, though I know I completely reinvented the Woodland Park Zoo for my own literary purposes.

  My love and thanks to my immediate family and felines, although for accuracy’s sake it must be noted that the cat Mercy Randolph caused more problems than she solved.

  Excerpt copyright © 2006 by E. Lockhart Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything is about a girl called Gretchen Kaufman Yee who goes to a wacked-out art school in New York City. Gretchen is a collector of plastic Chinese food and odd figurines, a passionate comic-book artist, and a crazy Spider-Man fanatic. She’s also completely freaked out by the opposite sex—in particular, the Art Rats, a group of guys in her drawing concentration. One day, she wishes she could be a “fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room,” just to find out what the heck guys are really talking about.

  And the next thing she knows…she
is.

  Afly.

  On the wall of the boys’ locker room.

  “I think this might be the best YA novel, as in a book published for young adults and also written for young adults, that I’ve ever read. Because it’s a reworking of Kafka, and it’s this crazy brilliant upending of all the sexual stereotypes we’ve ever had—particularly in YA lit—and it’s hilarious, and it’s so very smart. I mean, I’m serious…. It’s really amazing.”

  —John Green, winner of the Michael L. Printz Award for Looking for Alaska

  friday. I am eating alone in the lunchroom.

  Again.

  Ever since Katya started smoking cigarettes, she’s hanging out back by the garbage cans, lighting up with the Art Rats. She bags her lunch, so she takes it out there and eats potato chips in a haze of nicotine.

  I hate smoking, and the Art Rats make me nervous. So here I am: in my favorite corner of the lunchroom, sitting on the floor with my back against the wall. I’m eating fries off a tray and drawing my own stuff—not anything for class.

  Quadriceps. Quadriceps.

  Knee.

  Calf muscle.

  Dull point; must sharpen pencil.

  Hell! Pencil dust in fries.

  Whatever. They still taste okay.

  Calf muscle.

  Ankle.

  Foot.

  KA-POW! Spider-Man smacks Doctor Octopus off the edge of the building with a swift kick to the jaw. Ock’s face contorts as he falls backward, his metal tentacles flailing with hysterical fear. He has an eighty-story fall beneath him, and—

  Spidey has a great physique. Built, but not too built. Even if I did draw him myself.

  I think I made his butt too small.

  Do-over.