The Boy Book Read online

  A murmur went up around me. “Harsh,” I heard someone whisper.

  I knew I had gone too far. Given what I’d said, there was no way anyone would ever forget what a famous slut I supposedly was. My life would never go back to normal now.

  “God, Ruby,” said Josh. “Why do you always have to be such a bitch to everyone?”

  “Yeah,” added Darcy. “Why do you have such a stick up your ass?”

  “Leave her alone.” It was Varsha Lakshman. She’d been sitting near the back with a couple of other girls from swim team, seemingly not even paying attention to the conversation. “She was standing up for her friend.” Now she got up and walked over, tall and broad-shouldered.

  “She’s ripping up other people’s private property, is what she’s doing,” said Darcy, collecting the pictures I’d dropped from the floor beneath his desk.

  “You shouldn’t have those pictures anyway,” snapped Varsha.

  Just then, the teacher bustled in, plunking her books down on the desk at the front of the room with a heavy plop. I mouthed “thank you” to Varsha as I went to my seat, but she didn’t say anything back.

  The guys all took their seats, and two seconds later, Nora ran in late and slid into a place near the back. A ripple of laughs went up as she did so.

  “We’re doing graphs today,” the teacher announced, thumbing through her textbook. “Page forty-seven.”

  Darcy Andrews tossed me a note.

  I didn’t want to pick it up, but curiosity got the better of me.

  Slut.

  Nora laid low after class. She left as soon as Precal was over, and she wasn’t in the refectory at lunch. I wondered if she cut for the day when she found out about the photos.

  There’s no Chemistry on Thursdays, so I didn’t see Noel except from afar, but after sixth period there was a note in my cubby.

  Hooter Rescue Squad, Official Memo

  Dear SHAR,

  It has come to our attention that despite your supposed abandonment of Mission Van Deusen, and also despite your neglect of your role as Mission Director, you have nevertheless acted heroically on behalf of the hooters.

  In recognition of your efforts, we hereby grant you the official Rescue Squad medal of honor, which comes in the form of a large slice of pizza with the topping of your choice, to be consumed after swim practice today—or on the day of your choosing.

  It’s true, once you eat the pizza, you will have nothing to display on your mantelpiece, but hey—we are a low-rent organization. It’s the best we can do.

  Vehicular transport will await you outside the pool at 4:30 p.m. (Pacific time), unless you inform us otherwise.

  Sincerely, and with my utmost congratulations,

  SHAN

  I had an appointment with Doctor Z after school. I was supposed to get a ride home with a girl from the team who lives kind of near me, then get the Honda and drive myself.

  But Noel was waiting when I came out. He was sitting on a lime green Vespa, holding an extra helmet. “I went home to pick it up,” he said, handing the helmet to me.

  I put it over my wet hair and got on the scooter. I wrapped my arms around Noel’s waist. His coat was open, and I could feel the muscles of his abdomen through his T-shirt.

  Noel swung the Vespa out of the school parking lot and onto the street.

  I felt like there should be a sound track.

  We went to Pagliacci’s, this pizza place on the Ave in the U District. I got a slice with peppers and olives. Noel got plain. We put hot sprinkles and parmesan and oregano and garlic on our slices and took a booth.

  “Darcy Andrews called me a slut this morning when I ripped up the picture,” I told Noel.

  “What did you call him?”

  “A pig. Oh, and I might have said his dick was too small to locate even with infrared goggles.”

  Noel barked with laughter. “That part of the story is not circulating. Good for you.”

  “I wish I’d responded to the slut thing, though.”

  “What is there to say?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe ‘I prefer tart’?”

  “Tart is nice. It’s a pastry.”

  “Maybe I could reclaim the word slut,” I said. “Like gay people have reclaimed the word queer, so it’s not a whatever.”

  “Epithet.”

  “Yeah. I could run around with signs. ‘Slutty and Proud!’”

  “Sluts of America Unite!”

  “Exactly.” I took a sip of my pop.

  “Your mom could wear a T-shirt: ‘I’m proud of my slutty kid.’” Noel fished around in his backpack for a pen. “Here, I’ll design you a slut logo.” He found a ballpoint and started to draw on a piece of notebook paper. A sketch of a woman wearing a superhero cape, glasses like mine and a strange pointy bra.

  “I don’t think I ever told you that none of the stuff people say about me is true,” I blurted out.

  “About the boyfriend list?”

  “I was never with all those guys.”

  Noel shook his head. “I wouldn’t care if you were.”

  “But I wasn’t.”

  “Okay.” He shoved some pizza in his mouth.

  “Really, I wasn’t.”

  He was being nice, but I couldn’t tell if he believed me.

  “There’s stuff about Nora up in the boys’ bathroom in Main,” Noel said, when he finished chewing.

  “Like what?”

  “How hot she is, and how no one noticed before. Explicit statements pertaining to jugs. And messages to her, not that she’d ever read them.”

  “Such as?”

  “‘Let the puppies out to play, Van Deusen!’ ‘Share the wealth.’ ‘More than a handful is the way to go.’”

  “Oh God. Poor Nora.”

  “Cabbie’s still got his first set of copies.”

  “I know. But I don’t think she wants us to interfere.”

  “You didn’t talk to her about ripping them up?”

  “No.”

  “We should call her.” He pulled his cell phone out of his coat pocket.1 “Do you know the number?”

  I did, but I didn’t want to call it. What if she was mad at me for making a scene? “What am I gonna say? We’ve been e-mailing about your hooters?”

  “No. Just have her come meet us for pizza.”

  The thought of doing that was scary.

  “Come on,” continued Noel. “She’s gonna be completely freaked about today. She needs some cheesy goodness in her life.”

  “She’s probably at Cricket’s.” Cricket’s parents were never home.

  “So if she is, she won’t come. But maybe she’s alone with her hooters.” He laughed.

  “I didn’t even think you liked Nora that much,” I said, stalling.

  “I like anyone who doesn’t play by the rules of the Tate Universe.”

  “And you don’t think she does?”

  He thought. “Maybe she used to. We all used to. But I see her alone a lot, is all.”

  I took the phone and punched in Nora’s cell number. She answered on the second ring. “It’s Roo,” I said.

  “Where are you?” she asked. “Whose phone are you using?”

  “Noel’s,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We’re at Pagliacci’s. You want to come down?”

  She was actually in the University Book Store, a couple of blocks away. Wasting time, looking at photography books. She came in and ordered a slice, then sat down with us.

  We didn’t talk about the hooters, or the pictures, or any of the Rescue Squad activities. There was no way we could get the photos back from Cabbie anyhow.

  “What are you doing for November Week?” Nora asked Noel.

  “I don’t know. I did Be the Ball last year with some cross-country people. Coach pressured us into it. It was complete murder.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Nora said. “Cricket and Katarina and those guys are doing Mount Saint Helens, but so are Cabbie and Darcy. So I’m not that into it, after today.”


  “Enough said.”

  “I’m doing Canoe Island,” I offered.

  “Are you?” said Noel, sounding cranked. “With who?”

  “No one. With myself.”

  “She loves Mr. Wallace with a mad passion,” laughed Nora, sounding a bit like her old self.

  “That’s not it,” I complained. “Well, maybe a little. But it sounds good, too.”

  “All right, then, I’m in.” Noel put his hands on the table in a gesture of finality.

  “You mean you’re doing Canoe Island?”

  “Yeah, sure. If you’re going.”

  “I’ll do it, too,” said Nora, ripping the crust off her pizza. “If you guys are.”

  And that was it.

  We were going to Canoe Island.

  We were a “we.”

  For the first time in months, I didn’t feel like a leper.

  Neanderthals on the Telephone: Or, How to Converse

  It has come to our attention here at The Boy Book that telephone conversations with members of the opposite sex are largely painful and awkward. Samples of this kind of crap can be found on page 14, “Traumatic Phone Calls, E-mails and Instant Messages,” but the problem is so widespread that we have decided to write a new entry in hopes of not just complaining but actually remedying the situation.

  We know what you are thinking. It is not girls who need lessons in how to talk on the telephone.

  We are experts at it.

  Some of us could even medal in it.

  The problem is the boys. And they need to shape up.

  True, true, true.

  However.

  The boys are not going to shape up. They are not going to read magazines or informational textbooks such as this one that tell them how to talk to girls on the telephone. And they are not going to magically figure out how to converse either. It is a demonstrated fact that even bona fide boyfriends such as Finn and Jackson and Kaleb are hit with paralyzing stupidity and boringness on the telephone, and you, my girlfriends, you are the only ones who can do anything about it.

  Some tried-and-true tips:

  1. No feelings. Not if you can possibly avoid it. Feelings in person only.

  2. No long silences. The male of the species hates long silences. If he is silent, say, “I gotta go, I’ll see you later.” And hang up. This is mysterious and alluring. And if it is not, at least you don’t have any more awkwardness.

  3. Some people will tell you that you shouldn’t call guys, you should wait for them to call you. Hello? This is the twenty-first century. We can call them.

  4. But have a reason. Don’t call “just to talk,” because they have nothing to talk about. Have a story to tell them, or ask if they watched some TV show just now, or ask about homework, or make a plan for the weekend.

  —written by me and Kim, in my handwriting. Approximate date: November of sophomore year, following a long and boring phone call with Jackson where I couldn’t believe we were actually going out, we had so little to say to each other, and a conversation Kim had with Finn where she almost decided he was too much of a boring muffin to be her boyfriend anymore. There was a space at the bottom of the page where we’d hoped to add more tips—only we never thought of any.

  when I called Angelo, I reread the instructions from The Boy Book before I did it.

  I was supernervous, because I wanted to see him again. I mean, I wanted to make out with him again, frankly. Nothing beyond friendship seemed to be going on with Noel. And Jackson hadn’t talked to me once.

  I remembered the warm feeling of Angelo’s lips on my neck, and the way he unbuttoned my shirt, and the perfect curve where his bottom lip connected to his chin. But I wasn’t sure we had anything to say to each other.

  I figured I’d ask him if he wanted to go see Cry Baby, this John Waters movie that was showing at the retro film place in the U District, and we could talk about John Waters maybe. Or Johnny Depp, or Iggy Pop, or Ricki Lake, who are all in it.

  Juana answered the phone.

  Ag. I had completely forgot that Juana would answer.

  Now it was like I was broadcasting this thing with Angelo to our parents, which was a patently bad idea.

  “Hi, Juana, it’s Ruby. Is Angelo around?”

  “Roo, no, he’s at his dad’s this week. You want the number there?”

  “Oh, um, no that’s okay. It’s no big deal. I had a question to ask him.”

  “Ring him at Maximilian’s,” she said, giving me the number.

  I wrote it down and hung up.

  But I didn’t call.

  I sat there looking at the phone and thinking how if I called Angelo at his dad’s, it would seem different. Not like just a thing that happened because our worlds collided, but a thing that I was making happen, a thing of more importance, a thing that was full of weight, instead of the light, airy, secrety thing we’d had so far.

  While I was sitting there, the phone rang. “You get it!” yelled my mom from the bathroom, where she was drying off after a shower. My dad was sitting at his computer, printing out mailing labels for his catalog and writing pithy gardening tips for his newsletter. Lost in his world of miniature roses.

  I picked it up. “Ruby, it’s Doctor Z.”

  Oh my God.

  I had blown off my appointment and never called.

  “I’m calling to see if you want to reschedule the hour you missed.”

  “Oh, um.” I was completely embarrassed. “I’m sorry, something came up.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “But you do know I have to charge you for any sessions you miss without twelve hours’ notice.”

  I hadn’t known that.

  My parents pay for the therapy, and Doctor Z doesn’t charge them too much because she works on a sliding scale, meaning people pay what they can afford to pay. But I knew they would not be happy to be shelling out cash for Doctor Z to sit alone in her office while I ate pizza with Noel.

  “I don’t think I can,” I answered. “I have to work at the zoo tomorrow afternoon and Saturday.”

  “Well then,” she said, “I’ll see you next Tuesday. I hope there wasn’t any emergency?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Good. Tuesday it is, then,” she said. “But Ruby?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you miss another appointment, I’m going to have to notify your parents.”

  Friday was all right. Better than before. Nora sat with me and Noel and Meghan at lunch. Meghan hadn’t said any more about her new arrangement with Bick, and she didn’t mention him quite as often as she used to before he started talking about enlightenment and the full college experience. I didn’t feel like I could ask, “Hey, is your boyfriend squeezing it into anyone? Do you know for sure?”

  So I didn’t.

  I spent Friday afternoon doing my penguin orientation at the zoo, learning to read from the script. “Humboldt penguins are endangered. They used to be hunted for meat, skins and the oil that comes from the layer of fat under the skin. Today, they are primarily threatened by commercial fishing.” And “The sound penguins produce resembles the braying of donkeys. They also communicate with head and flipper waving.”

  Saturday I did the Family Farm orientation and helped Lewis put in some more plants. That night, I went to Cry Baby with Meghan, and we drove home swooning about how hot Johnny Depp was before he got old. Sunday, I wrote a paper and did a bunch of Precal homework and bothered my dad and Hutch in the greenhouse.

  Around nine o’clock, the phone rang.

  “My mom told me you called.” It was Angelo.

  “Oh, yeah, I did, a couple days ago.”

  “I was at my dad’s.”

  “She told me.”

  “How was it?”

  “Fine.”

  A long silence. The kind you’re not supposed to have.

  But it wasn’t my fault. He caught me unprepared.

  “So what’s up?” he finally said.

  “Not much. I did
homework all day.”

  “I mean, why’d you call?”

  “I was gonna see if you wanted to see this movie, Cry Baby.”

  “Maybe I do. What is it?”

  “I already saw it,” I said. “I went with my friend Meghan.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So.”

  “It was good.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “It was like a fifties thing. A musical. But by John Waters, the guy who made Pecker and Hairspray.”

  “Oh, yeah. That guy. I think I know who he is.”

  “With the skinny mustache.”

  “What? Maybe I don’t know after all.”

  Another silence.

  Was he hurt that I didn’t call him at his dad’s? Or that I went to the movie without him?

  I didn’t know how to bring it up, and even if I did, discussing feelings with a clear telephone Neanderthal like Angelo was out of the question.

  And did I even want to be making out with a guy who didn’t know who John Waters was?

  “Okay, then,” I said. “Well, thanks for calling me back. I gotta go.”

  “Sure. Bye.”

  We hung up.

  A second later, the phone rang again. “Roo?” It was Angelo, calling back.

  “Yeah?”

  “Lemme give you my cell number. In case you want to call it. I mean, you don’t have to, but if you do—”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let me get a pen.”

  I got one, and I wrote it down. “Okay, now I have it.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Later, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nothing from Angelo.

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  “Okay. Bye.”

  Somehow, the tips from The Boy Book hadn’t helped at all.

  On Monday the gossip about Nora’s hooters seemed to have died down, and Noel told me he covered all the stuff on the bathroom wall with a thick black marker. Tuesday, though, I was sitting on the front steps of the main building, trying to finish The Scarlet Letter for Am Lit, when Jackson plopped down next to me.