The Boyfriend List Read online

  Mr. Wallace was organizing us. He had retained his dignity and dressed as Albert Einstein. This involved wearing a suit (he’s usually in khakis), graying out his hair and wearing a sign on his back that said “E=mc2,” in case no one could tell (which no one could, until we read the sign). “You kitty cats,” he said, pointing at me and Finn, shortly after we arrived at the YMCA, “you man the face-painting table.”

  Finn and I sat down at a table filled with odds and ends of makeup heisted from the drama department storage room. “He called me a kitty cat. Can’t you tell I’m a panther?” Finn said to me. “Look at my claws.” He held his hands up.

  “You’ll have to take them off to put makeup on the kids,” I said.

  “Damn. Then I’ll look like a kitty.”

  “What’s wrong with a kitty? I’m a kitty.”

  “No insult to kitties,” said Finn, smiling. “That’s just not what I am. I’m a panther.”

  “I have to tell you,” I said. “You look pretty kittyish to me.”

  “Hey, did you know a panther is really a black leopard?” he asked. “If you look closely, you can actually see the spots underneath the black.”

  “You got that from me,” I said. “From the nature book.”

  “Nuh-uh. I got it from watching the Discovery Channel.”

  “Finn! I told you that in second grade. Don’t you remember, in the library?”

  He changed the subject. “How can I be more panthery?” he mused, sorting through the makeup on the table. “Do you think I need whiskers?”

  “Your face is black. You can’t put whiskers on.” Kim and Nora were across the way from us, setting up a pumpkin-carving table.

  “Red. What about red whiskers? Then I’d be scary.” He took off his gloves and picked up a lipstick. “Where’s the mirror?”

  I handed it over. He opened the lipstick and started drawing fat red lines across his face. He had no idea how to do it. It was a disaster. “You look like Freddy Krueger,”2 I said. “Especially if you put the gloves back on.”

  “Damn! Now I’m some Freddy Krueger kitty cat.” He was laughing. “Maybe I should give up and be a dude in black.”

  “Let me help.” I took a tissue and some cold cream and wiped the makeup off Finn’s cheeks. Then I redid his black greasepaint and used a makeup brush to draw thin red whiskers on his face. “Much better. Now you’re so the panther.”

  I finished with his face and looked up. Kim was staring over at us from the pumpkin table, her eyes narrowed. “Mine,” she mouthed, pointing at Finn.

  I put the makeup brush down and busied myself organizing the greasepaints.

  Finn and I didn’t talk much the rest of the day—or ever again. I pretty much ignored him. It didn’t seem worth it. But even so, on the bus ride back he and Kim got in a whispered argument in the seat behind me and Nora.

  “So thanks a lot,” she hissed at him, as the bus pulled out of the parking lot.

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  “What?”

  “Finn, don’t give me that.”

  “What?”

  “If you don’t know, I’m not telling you.”

  “Kim, please. Whatever it is, I’ll make it up to you.”

  “You were ignoring me all afternoon.”

  “I was not!”

  “Especially after you didn’t come to dinner with my parents last night, I’d think you could bother to hang out with me in school.”

  “I had to work. There wasn’t anything I could do.”

  “You could have got a sub.”

  Finn sighed. “I had to work because I need the money, Kim.”3

  “Fine. So ignore me all day, then. Just ignore me forever.” And then, as we got off the bus and stepped into the Tate parking lot, she really let him have it. When Kim stops beating around the bush and says what she really thinks—look out. She let forth a string of obscenities in English and Japanese, and told him she never wanted to see him again. There was no reasoning with her. Once she’s decided she’s right and someone else is wrong, there’s nothing anyone can do to change her mind. Everyone was standing around in the parking lot, listening and kind of pretending that they weren’t. It was a real scene. Finally, Kim stormed off to the girls’ bathroom and locked herself in a stall. Cricket and Nora and I went in there and tried to make her feel better, but she asked us to leave her alone, so we did.

  The stud-muffin was in the doghouse for days after this—Kim called me that night and told me he had known about her parents’ dinner party for weeks, and had said he would come, and when he didn’t, all these annoying friends of her mother’s had spent the evening asking where her mysterious vanishing boyfriend was, ha ha ha—and then he’d eaten lunch the next day with a bunch of soccer players, and if he wasn’t going to pay attention to her and do stuff with her, why was he her boyfriend anyway and he could just go fuck himself.

  I thought she was wrong, but I didn’t say anything. She was my best friend. And three days later they were cuddling tog ether in the library, so everything was okay.

  When I got home that afternoon, my parents were in a fight. They were going to a costume party, and my mom wanted my dad to be a taco with her. She had spent the day at home, building a giant taco suit out of colored foam rubber, crepe paper and twine. She was going to be the filling, and my dad was supposed to be the shell.

  “Elaine,” he said, “I can’t drive the car in a taco shell.”

  “Juana doesn’t live that far,” my mom countered. “You said you’d wear whatever I came up with.”

  “I didn’t know it would be a taco,” my dad complained.

  “I spent all day on it. If you’d come in once from the deck, you’d have known what it was.”

  “It’ll be too hot. I won’t be able to sit down.”

  “You can put it in the trunk until we get there.”

  “I can’t even move in this thing.” My dad was wearing the foam rubber shell, his arms sticking out on either side. “How will I eat?”

  “I’ll feed you,” said my mother.

  “Very funny.”

  “It’s romantic, Kevin. It’s theatrical. Why can’t you be a good sport about this?”

  “It’s a taco,” he said. “It’s not romantic.”

  “We’d be two parts of the same whole. I’ll nestle in.”

  “Can’t we wear the silly hats from last year?”

  “Those are so boring!” my mom yelled. “Why are you always so conservative? Theater is my life! I’m a creative person! I can’t go to the party in some silly hat. It’s Halloween. All my friends will be there. Roo, you like the taco suit, don’t you?”

  “I’m staying out of this one,” I said, flicking on the TV.

  “Kevin, you’re repressing my creativity!” my mom cried.

  “No. I’m refusing to make a fool of myself and spend an evening sweating on my feet when I worked all afternoon in the garden.”

  “You shouldn’t have spent all afternoon in the garden, then,” my mom said, pouting.

  “What was I supposed to do?” my dad yelled. “There’s a frost predicted any day now!”

  “You knew we were going out tonight.”

  “I’m ready to go out. I’m happy to go out. Just not in a taco shell!”

  Blah blah blah. They went on for at least an hour.

  My dad won.

  My mom went off to take an angry shower. Then they squashed the foam rubber taco suit into two black plastic garbage bags and wore the silly hats to the party.

  I called Jackson, and he came over, and we made out. I was still wearing my kitty-cat suit.

  1 Mae Yamamoto is a brain surgeon. She talks superfast, and she’s always doing six things at once. You go into Kim’s house and her mom is chopping vegetables, washing the cat in the sink, consulting on the results of someone’s biopsy over the phone, cleaning out the fridge, changing out of her work clothes and yelling at Kim for overusing the credit card, all at the same time. Y
ou have to see it to believe it.

  2 Freddy Krueger is the insane serial killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies with knives on the ends of his fingers and a horrible, red-scarred face. He murders people by haunting their dreams, so no one is safe if they fall asleep.

  3 So Finn was probably on scholarship too. I had never realized that. Even though he worked at the B&O, it never really occurred to me that he had to.

  7. Chase (but it was all in his mind.)

  The story of Chase Williams is important because it’s a story about presents. That’s what I figured out, when I talked about him with Doctor Z.

  I don’t see why boys can’t give presents like normal people.1 Kim got me this amazing red vintage jacket for my birthday last August. It fits just right. We all gave Nora a copy of Playgirl on Valentine’s Day, since she wasn’t going to have an actual valentine.2 And last Christmas I got my mother a book by a performance artist called Spalding Gray, which she read in less than a week. And Nora made me cupcakes the day after I won a 100-meter freestyle race (I usually place second or third—or I flat-out lose) and there were five of them, each with a squiggly letter in blue frosting: C-H-A-M-P.

  These are good presents. Thoughtful. Some for special occasions, some just because. Normal, problem-free, everybody’s happy.

  But bring a boy into the picture, and the whole thing goes weird. Jackson and I had present-giving trouble, that’s for sure.

  After Hutch’s gummy bears, the first present I ever got from a boy was an extremely pretty bead necklace from a boy named Chase Williams, who has since transferred to a different school.

  He was an awkward boy. Downy black hair sprouted across his upper lip. His neck was short. Starting in seventh, everyone at Tate has to do a sport, and Chase and I were both swimmers, so I saw him several days a week at practice. But I didn’t really know him. A completely typical conversation between us:

  Him: “You doing freestyle?”

  Me: “Uh-huh.”

  Him: “Me too.”

  Me: “Hundred or two hundred?”

  Him: “Two.”

  Me: “Sounds good.”

  Him: “Yeah.”

  Me: “Well, I gotta get changed.”

  Him: “Okay. Later.”

  Chase mainly hung around with this other swimming guy, Josh, who was big and redheaded and laughed so loud you could hear him all the way inside the girls’ locker room.

  It was early December, almost time for the middle school Christmas dance.3 One day, about an hour after practice, my phone rang. Josh.4

  “What’s up?” I asked. I couldn’t think why he was calling me.5

  “Chase wants to ask you something,” he said.

  I was thoroughly confused. “What?”

  “Chase! Get on the phone!” Josh started giggling. I wanted to hang up, but that seemed rude, and no boy had ever called me on the phone before either, so I was kind of curious.6 “Aw, he’s gone in the other room. Hold on!” Josh put the phone down.

  I sat there. This was so dumb. But I couldn’t hang up, or I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what Chase had to say.7

  “Ruby, are you there?” Josh’s voice sounded breathless.

  “Yeah.”

  “He wants to know—ow, Chase, that hurt!—he wants to know, do you want to go to the Christmas dance?”

  “With him?” I so didn’t. Chase was repulsive to me. I couldn’t quite say why. But if I thought about slow-dancing with him, a creepy feeling went up my spine.

  “She can tell me tomorrow!” yelled Chase in the background.

  “Did you hear that?” asked Josh.

  “She doesn’t have to say right now!”

  “Did you hear?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “All right. I’ll think about it.”

  “She’s thinking about it,” Josh told Chase.

  The next day, Josh came up to me as Kim and I were eating lunch. “This is from Chase,” he said, pulling a bead necklace out of his pocket and scooting it toward me across the table. “For you.”

  The necklace was really pretty—but looking at it almost made me sick. I didn’t want it. Taking it would feel like a promise. Like telling Chase there was a thing between us.

  I didn’t want a thing.

  And why was Josh doing all the talking for him?8

  I looked around the refectory, but I couldn’t see Chase anywhere. “How come he’s giving me this?” I asked.

  Kim rolled her eyes. “Duh. He likes you.”

  “Yeah,” said Josh. “I told you, he wants to know if you’ll go to the dance with him.”

  Was the necklace supposed to convince me? Like, Oh, I didn’t like him before, but now that there’s jewelry involved, I want to go?

  “You could just go as a friend if you want,” said Josh.9 “You could still have the necklace.”10

  If I took the necklace, only horror could result. For instance, I’d have this necklace, and this Christmas dance date—both without even talking to Chase himself. Next time I saw him, I’d have to go up and say thank you, and tell him whether we were going as “just friends” or as—what? What would you even say? As “regular”? As “boyfriend and girlfriend”? There wasn’t even a normal way to say it! And then I’d have to wear the necklace, and people would know about it, and it would be like we were going out, which might be nice since I’d never had a boyfriend—except that he grossed me out.

  The whole situation made me feel like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

  “I can’t go to the dance,” I said. “My family’s going out of town.” (Completely untrue.)

  “Oh. Okay. Wait one sec.” Josh jumped up and ran out of the refectory for a minute, presumably to confer with Chase outside. Then he came back. “You can still have the necklace,” he said. “If you want to go to McDonald’s with him on Friday.”

  “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “You could order fries.”

  I didn’t know what to do. If I said I was busy Friday, it seemed like he’d come up with some other day, or try to get me to keep the necklace anyhow. “I’m not allowed to go out with boys,” I said. “Or take presents from them, or anything. My mom says.” (Again, completely untrue.)

  “Really?” Josh looked skeptical.

  “She’s completely not allowed,” Kim cut in. “Her mom is psycho.”

  “You wouldn’t have to tell,” Josh said.

  “Oh, she’d find out for sure,” I lied. “She finds out everything.”

  For weeks after that, I ducked into doorways and behind bushes to avoid Chase. At swimming, I looked down at the ground and pretty much tried to be invisible. I felt like a jerk for lying, and I knew he probably knew it was a lie, and the whole thing was a horror.

  He didn’t let me off the hook, either, by finding a new girl to go to the Christmas dance with. He went alone, and I went with Kim and Nora, and he asked me to slow-dance, even after everything that happened.

  That time, I actually had the courage to tell him no. Not that I was out of town (which I obviously wasn’t), not that my parents wouldn’t let me, not that I was a vegetarian. Just no.

  Maybe it was because he had had the courage to ask me to my face.

  On TV there are these diamond commercials: men buying women expensive gifts, and the women swooning with delight. Jackson and I used to make fun of those ads; we’d be sitting in the rec room at his house, watching TV, squashed together in one big armchair, and we’d laugh at how excited the ladies would get over a bit of shiny rock that doesn’t even have a function. “Doesn’t she want something more personal?” Jackson said, about one lady who started to cry when her husband gave her the twenty-fifth-anniversary diamond bracelet. “Doesn’t she want something unique? I would never buy you some shiny rock that’s just like a million other shiny rocks, given to a million other girls.”

  “What if I had a shiny rock collection?” I asked. “What if shiny rocks were my thing?”

  “Then I’d go to the beach and fi
nd a rock myself, and shine it up with sandpaper and a chamois cloth,” he said.

  “Cheapskate,” I laughed.

  “It would be special,” he said. “It would be different.”

  We had been going out for five weeks at that point, and the thing I didn’t say was that a rock—even a rock shined up with a chamois cloth—really doesn’t seem as nice to me as a diamond bracelet.

  I mean, it’s a friggin’ rock.

  Jackson didn’t understand how to give me presents. You’d think something like that wouldn’t matter between two people who are having lollipop taste tests and three-hour kissing sessions. But it did. Back in sixth grade, that necklace Chase tried to give me wasn’t just a present. It was more like a bribe, or a plea for me to like him. And with Jackson, the things he gave me weren’t just presents, either. They were apologies. Or halfhearted obligations. Or cover-ups.

  Below, a list of present-giving misdemeanors, perpetrated by Jackson Clarke upon the unsuspecting and inexperienced Ruby Oliver.

  One: In first month of going out, put a tiny ceramic frog in my mail cubby every Monday morning. There were four. I still have them on my desk. Each one is in a different position and has a different expression on its face. Okay, that’s not a misdemeanor. It’s very nice. But then—

  Two: Stopped with the frogs. No explanation. That fifth Monday, I looked in my mail cubby first thing, all frog-ready, and it was empty.

  I looked again after my first class, and it was still empty.

  It was empty all day.

  Why no frog?

  I felt stupid bringing it up because it was just a tiny ceramic frog and not a big deal or anything, but I wondered all day why he hadn’t given me a frog. Then I thought, Maybe he forgot to bring it to school with him and he’ll bring it on Tuesday.