Real Live Boyfriends

It was a little slobbery for my taste, to be honest.

“You have to put the severed hand in the back,” I said after a minute or two. “It’s freaking me out.”

He threw it over his shoulder to the backseat, where it landed with a creepy squish. “I’ll kiss you some more later,” he said. “We’re late for the party.” He turned the key in the ignition.

“I’ve never kissed anyone who talked so much about kissing,” I told him.

Gideon laughed. “I like to be direct.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inscrutable and generally send mixed messages.”

“I doubt it.”

“Human interaction is not my strong point,” I told him.

“Not seriously.”

“Seriously,” I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn’t know.

Gideon put his hand on my leg. “What’s your strong point, then?” he asked.

“Goats,” I told him. “I am excellent with goats.”

The party was a college party.

I was out with a college guy, I suppose I should have known I was going to a college party, but I was so intent on getting away from Dad and his misery that I hadn’t really thought about where Gideon was taking me. It turned out to be a the apartment of this guy Ted Hsaio (pronounced Shaw) who’d been in Gideon’s year at Tate and was now a junior at the University of Washington.

Hsaio lived just off the Ave in the U District, in a studio apartment. As we walked down the hall, I could hear the roar of voices coming from his place, and when Gideon opened the door we saw a wall of people, all in costume, jammed up against each other and smoking, plastic cups of beer clutched in their hands. “Van Deusen!” Hsaio yelled when he saw Gideon. They fake-sparred, the way guys do when they don’t want to hug, and finally Gideon threw his bloody rubber hand at Hsaio. Hsaio was dressed as a fisherman in waders and a hat. He carried a fishing pole and had several plastic fish sticking out of his pockets. “Who’s your new girl?” he yelled at Gideon over the din.

“What?” Gideon yelled back in Hsaio’s ear.

“Who’s your girl?” said Hsaio, even louder.

“This is Ruby.”

I waved.

“Cradle robbing?” Hsaio asked Gideon.

“Shut up.”

“Dude, we’d all do it if we could.”

“Same as ever, huh, Hsaio?”

“Why change what’s working?” Hsaio laughed.

Gideon grabbed my hand and pulled me to the tiny kitchen, where a cadaver and two lady pirates were filling cups from a keg and mixing some kind of drink called a kamikaze. Two girls in slut costumes were sitting on the countertops and a guy in a gorilla suit leaned against the fridge. It smelled of sweat and booze.

Gideon handed me a cup of beer, which I didn’t want, and then grabbed a guy dressed as Jackie Onassis into a bear hug. “DuBoise!” he cried. “What the hell are you doing here?”

DuBoise.

DuBoise? I sloshed half my beer down my dress.

“Van Deusen,” the Jackie O said. He was wearing a pillbox hat and a black bouffant wig with a sweet purple vintage suit and heels.

Noel’s brother, Claude.

“Who knew you were home?” Gideon said.

“Came back last week.”

“Isn’t it the middle of the term?”

Claude nodded. His eye makeup was running and his lipstick smudged down his chin. “New York was …” He shook his head. “I came back for a while is all.”

Claude had been in Gideon’s class at Tate. That was how come I recognized him, even though he’d never been home to Seattle in all the time I’d been friends with Noel.

In high school, Claude had been golden. He’d gone out with several girls. He’d been a soccer player and a rower, a model of Young American Manhood. I knew from Noel that when Claude realized he was gay, freshman year at NYU, some of his old high school friends had been jerks about it—which was why he didn’t usually come home in the summers.

Now here he was, back in town and wearing full drag at a party full of Future Doctors of America and other kinds of prepsters from his past. As if to say, Up yours if you don’t like me. This is who I am.

Which was cool. I mean, Claude clearly wasn’t worried about becoming a roly-poly. He didn’t care what people thought anymore. He was out and proud.

He wouldn’t recognize me, I thought. Though he probably knew my name from Noel. I’d been a freshman when he, Gideon and Hsaio were seniors.

Part of me wanted to meet Claude, talk to him, find out anything I could about Noel—whom I saw at school but never spoke to anymore.

The other part wanted to run, for fear Claude would tell Noel he saw me out with Gideon.

That part won.

I pressed out of the kitchen into the main room of the apartment and squeezed through a mass of sweaty, makeup-covered bodies to a spot near an open window. I leaned my back against it, feeling the cool breeze trickle into the hot room.

Everyone was tipsy, and many people had taken off bits of their costumes in the heat. Hats and bunny ears and capes were piled on an armchair. Everyone was at least three years older than I was and they all knew each other. The guys had broad shoulders and stubble on their faces. A few people were familiar from Tate, years ago, but most were probably Hsaio’s U Dub friends. It seemed—just way more advanced than high school parties. Everyone was smoking; no one had a curfew.

I was standing there, trying to look relaxed and as if I went to college parties every day and oh, yeah, I’m just leaning on this windowsill here because it’s so completely comfortable, I always do this at parties—when I saw Noel. He was dressed as Johnny Rotten, which I could tell because he had a Sex Pistols¹ poster in his room. His blond hair was dyed electric orange and spiked up with even more than his usual amount of gel. He had on tight black cigarette jeans, a heavy black leather jacket, combat boots and an old plaid flannel shirt. He wore a fake earring in one ear and had a mole drawn on the left side of his cheek.

And he was talking to a girl. A pretty, pretty, pretty girl. Taller than me, slim, with short dark hair and makeup that said: Sexy Vampire. A tight black T-shirt, a fringed skirt and high red heels.

She was leaning in to talk to Noel.

He was leaning in to talk to her.

Ag. Ag. Ag.

I thought:

If Noel sees me here with Gideon, he’ll think for sure I cheated on him back in September and we’ll never get back together. I have to hide or leave—or something.

On the other hand, he might have a surge of jealousy and chase after me down the hallway as I’m leaving Hsiao’s. He’ll punch Gideon in the face just for taking me out to a party and declare his love. Then we can live happily ever after.

Then again, what makes me think we could ever get back together? Noel obviously doesn’t love me anymore. He doesn’t even speak to me.

He is probably going out with this sexy college vampire now. I should just forget about him.

On the other hand, if he sees me standing alone by the window, he might witness my deep and tragic loneliness and remember how much he loves me. Maybe I look melancholy and alluring.

Although more likely, he’ll see me alone and think I look pathetic and repulsive.

I should go talk to him.

No. I shouldn’t.

Noel encounters me nearly every day at school and we never say anything more than hello in the most awkward way possible. Why would it be any different here?

There isn’t really anything I can do at a Halloween party to make him love me again! Talking to him is bound to end in angst and misery. I should stay here.

No. I should run away.

As I was dithering and trying to look attractive and wondering whether Gideon would come in looking for me, Noel leaned down and kissed the sexy college vampire girl.

On the lips.

She kissed him back and I felt sick, my heart thrashing, like I was getting a panic attack standing here in Hsaio’s living room. Suddenly the most important thing was to get out of that hot, smoky room and breathe. I didn’t care who saw me or didn’t see me or anything, I just wanted out.

I pushed my way through the crowd and into the kitchen. Gideon was there, and I grabbed him by the arm. “I’m really, really sorry, but can we leave? I need to leave, at least. I can take a bus if you can’t drive me.”

“I’ll drive you.” He raised his eyebrows. “You okay?”

“Not really. Can we just go? You can come back later if you want.”

Without waiting for him, I pushed out the door and down the hall and took the stairs down to the building lobby.

Don’t panic, I told myself. You don’t need to panic.

You’re sad and jealous and embarrassed, but this is not the end of the world.

You’re healthy. You’re not having a heart attack.

There’s enough air here for you to fill your lungs.

Just breathe, Ruby.

Breathe and remember you’re okay.

I put a mint in my mouth and concentrated on the flavor. I breathed.

And breathed.

When Gideon arrived in the lobby I was able to smile at him. “Sorry to drag you out,” I said. “My ex-boyfriend was there and I think I’m allergic to him.”

Gideon laughed. “You said you weren’t direct.”

“Well, I’m direct about some things.”

“I was kind of looking forward to mixed messages and—what did you say? Inscrutability.”

He was so optimistic. That was the key to Gideon. As if now that we’d been out together, we were going out together a whole lot more. Like he had stuff to look forward to, stuff to do with him and me.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.

“You’d have to work really, really hard to do that,” he said, taking my hand.

And just like that, possibly because I’m psychotic, I wanted to kiss him again. He was so hot, in his doctor’s coat with his thick dark eyebrows and his sweet ketchup smell and his ugly Birkenstocks on his feet. And I thought: Noel will never love me.

My mom is leaving us.

My dad is depressed.

All that badness, and yet here, standing in front of me, is something good.

Someone good.

Gideon Van Deusen. Shouldn’t I be thankful for what life brings me instead of wanting what I can’t have?

Yes, I should.

That must be the key to happiness, right?

And couldn’t I—as Doctor Z was always implying—couldn’t I choose happiness?

So it wasn’t psychotic to want to kiss Gideon so soon after mooning over Noel. It was mentally stable and healthy!

As we stepped out onto the street, I reached up and put my hand on Gideon’s neck. I drew his face down to mine. He wrapped his arms around me, and he was wonderfully tall, and when I put my hands on him, his waist was hard and athletic and he just seemed like a man and not a boy.

I thought: This is such a better idea than being with Noel.

And then I thought:

I wonder if Noel will walk out of the party and see me.

Don’t think that, you boy-crazy lunatic. Just kiss Gideon and feel lucky.

Yeah, but what would happen if Noel did walk out of the party and see me?

Brain, shut up. Shut UP!

Noel didn’t walk out of the party.

Gideon and I spent the rest of the evening strolling the Ave and looking at people in costume. Lots of college kids spilling out of bars and on their way to parties, girls in sexy nurse costumes, sexy cowgirl, sexy devil. We got smoothies from a stand, blackberry for me and strawberry-peach for him. We talked about movies, and Gideon’s travels in Egypt.

I told him this stuff I heard at Woodland Park Zoo: how in China they’ve started breeding pandas to save them from extinction and now there are all these baby pandas in a care center. It’s kind of like an orphanage, only they’re not orphans. You can see videos of them on YouTube: a whole pile of baby bears crawling on each other and squinting out of half-opened eyes. “They’re artificially inseminated, though, because pandas are pretty much uninterested in sex, especially when they live in zoos,” I said. “In fact, a few years ago these zoologists made panda porno to get the young male pandas interested and explain to them what to do.”

“What?”

“Other animals, you put a male and a female together and they figure it out—but apparently pandas really cannot get the hang of it without help. So they made dirty movies. It was the audio component that made the most difference, the scientists found. The panda heavy breathing. If they didn’t have the audio on, the pandas just got bored.”

Gideon laughed. I mean, it’s funny. But I couldn’t help thinking how Noel would have riffed on the whole panda thing. He would have on-the-spot made up silly rhymes about the pandas, or sketched some completely risqué panda on a paper napkin, or made up a business plan for renting X-rated videos out to various zoos to help endangered species, probably the only possible career path that would combine porno and ecology. Something.

Gideon asked me serious questions about pandas. Like, did I know how many there were left in the world? And did they eat anything besides bamboo?

I didn’t know the answers. Because I love animals and learning stuff about them, but the truth is, I like amusing and strange animal stories much more than I like factoids about their everyday lives. I like gay egg-stealing penguins better than straight, socially responsible penguins, and I like porn-watching panda bears and piles of itty-bitty pandas in an orphanage better than just regular old pandas doing their thing in the wild.

But I didn’t quite want to admit that to Gideon.

So I kissed him again and he seemed to forget about the questions he was asking.

1 The Sex Pistols: A British retro punk band known for the song “Anarchy in the UK.”

The Mysterious Disappearance of Kevin!

gideon sits on a bench outside his dorm at Evergreen College. He’s wearing a knit cap and a sleeveless parka over a chamois shirt. Birkenstocks and socks.Roo: (behind the camera) What’s your definition of popularity?Gideon: Popularity? Nora said you were making a documentary about friendship and love.Roo: And popularity.Gideon: I haven’t thought about that since maybe ninth grade.Roo: Really?Gideon: Really.Roo: Maybe that’s because you’re popular. You’re so popular you’ve never had to think about it.Gideon: I don’t think so.Roo: Trust me. You were golden in high school.Gideon: (ducking his head) I had friends.Roo: Popular!Gideon: Hardly.Roo: If you had ever been unpopular, you would be concerned with it in one way or another.Gideon: That seems warped.Roo: I mean, even if you rejected the idea of popularity, you’d have at least thought about it.Gideon: If you say so.Roo: Here’s a test: when was the last time you spent a Saturday night home alone?Gideon: I don’t know.Roo: Exactly.Gideon: But that’s not because I’m popular. That’s ’cause if I don’t have something to do, I call someone up and go out.Roo: But you have someone to call up.Gideon: Yeah. Of course.Roo: That’s my point.

When I returned home on Halloween, my mother was still out at Juana’s party. Before I woke up the next morning, she was gone, presumably to Oregon with Juana.

She didn’t leave a note and she didn’t call.

Dad was still lying on the floor when I got up, and he grunted at me when I told him Mom was gone, but didn’t answer any of my questions.

For the next ten days I tried to forget about Noel and the sexy college vampire girl, forget about the disappearance of my mother (who didn’t answer her cell) and forget that my father was eating nothing but Doritos, Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Cheetos and other bright orange cheese-flavored snack foods, sitting on the couch and watching bad television. He even slept there at night, drooling orange drool onto the front of the same sweatshirt he’d been wearing for days.

I pretended everything was normal and excellent. I shot videos for my college application film, did my schoolwork, baked cupcakes for Meghan’s birthday and went out with Gideon.

He took me out to the movies a couple of nights, and to dinner. He was acting like a real live boyfriend right away. Calling me, showing up on time, holding my hand. He was very easy to be around, though I didn’t let him in the house or tell him what was going on with my parents. Instead, I treated being with him like an escape from the realities of my life and the things in my heart.

Gideon almost always had a paperback book in his pocket, philosophy or history, in which he underlined enthusiastically and which he pulled out to read if he ever had to wait for anything. Like if I went to the bathroom at a restaurant, he’d be reading when I came back. He was also studying Spanish and he had this funny instructional CD in his car. He wanted to learn Spanish because he planned to travel to South America with this charity organization to build latrines and help with immunizations and stuff.

So he was basically an awesome human, and yet periodically I’d think: Is there something secretly wrong with him that he wants to go out with a high school girl? And a neurotic high school girl, at that?

Maybe he seems like a normal guy but he’ll turn out to be an absolute psycho like Edward Norton in Primal Fear. Or Edward Norton in Fight Club. Or Edward Norton in The Incredible Hulk.

Then I’d remind myself that I’d flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo, and tell myself I was a smart and pretty person and there was no reason why a hot college guy who wanted to go out with me was automatically a secret lunatic.

Truthfully, the only thing I could find wrong with Gideon was that he wasn’t the greatest kisser. He was slobbery and overly sex-tongue-y about it. And he smelled like patchouli, which isn’t bad per se but reminded me of my boss at the Birkenstock store, which was a very unromantic association.

One Saturday he drove me up to Evergreen for the day to show me around the campus. It was lush and green and had bicycles parked all over and leaflets posted up about open-mike nights and art shows and bands. I had never been on a college campus besides the UW, which is right in the middle of Seattle, and that’s so large and manicured and full of graduate-student future lawyers and stuff that it doesn’t seem like college college.

“I don’t think I realized until now that this time next year I’ll not only be out of the Tate Universe, I’ll be out of my parents’ house,” I told Doctor Z later that week. “I’ll be living alone. In like, New York City or Philadelphia or Los Angeles.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll have to take care of myself.”

She just looked at me.

“What?”

More looking.

“I’m pretty much taking care of myself right now, since Mom left. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“It crossed my mind,” she admitted.

“Well, I just bring home take-out pizza and eat cereal for breakfast. It’s not like I’ve scrubbed the oven or anything.”

She nodded.

“Although I did clean the bathroom yesterday,” I admitted. “And I made Dad change his clothes and take a shower.”

“How did that feel?” Doctor Z asked me.

I hate it when she says shrinky things like that.

“I am trying not to have feelings about it at all,” I said. “And I’m succeeding pretty well.”

“Are you getting support from your friends? From Nora or Meghan?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t said anything.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sick of being Neurotic Ruby whose life is always in a crisis. I’m sick of self-loathing and self-pity. So I’m flushing it down,” I told her. “Crazy dad drooling Cheeto juice. Flush! Disappearing act by Mom. Flush! Dead Grandma. Flush! Noel with someone else. Flush! And then it’s like magic: no feelings!”

Doctor Z leaned forward. “I didn’t mean for you to pretend difficult situations don’t exist,” she said. “There are some things you can’t flush.”

Yeah, well.

“There’s a difference between letting something go,” Doctor Z continued, “releasing yourself of tension or a negative way of thinking—”

“You told me to flush and I flushed!” I protested.

“There’s a difference between stopping an obsessive thought pattern,” she said, “and denying your feelings or stuffing them down.”

Ag again. “You want me to do Reginald,” I said. “But I don’t want to do Reginald. I want to flush it all down and have a lobotomy.”

She smiled. “Those aren’t the same thing,” she said. “Flushing is setting yourself free of negativity, and the lobotomy is denial.”

“Fine.”

“Didn’t you use that word lobotomy about Noel?” Doctor Z asked.

“Probably.”

“Remind me what you said.”

“He was acting like he’d had one. I told him that and he got mad.”

Doctor Z nodded. “So what’s the similarity between Noel’s lobotomy and the lobotomy you want to have?”

I just didn’t want to feel the things I felt. I wanted to go out with Gideon and dream about college and just ignore the badness so completely that it wouldn’t affect me.

Oh.

Could that be what Noel was doing too?

Ignoring some badness so completely he was lobotomized?

“This isn’t making me happy,” he had said. “I came back from New York and I thought you would make me happy but I’m not happy.”

“But is that really a girlfriend’s job?” I asked Doctor Z, out of context. “To make someone happy who’s unhappy to start with?”

She just went with my change of subject. “What do you think?”

I shifted in my seat. “I think maybe it’s impossible to cheer people up when they’re really sad. I think they just have to be sad and all you can do is hang out with them because you love them.”

Doctor Z nodded.

“But then again,” I said, “if they’re drooling Cheeto drool out their mouths and watching daytime television for days and days on end, forgetting to shower, you may stop wanting to hang around them.”

Doctor Z leaned forward. “Are we talking about Noel or your father?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I honestly don’t know.”

Dad wasn’t there when I came home from therapy on the bus.

He didn’t come back at dinnertime—not that there was dinner, really, but I did order pizza.

I got worried around ten o’clock and called his cell.

It rang on his desk. He didn’t have it with him.

At one in the morning, when he still wasn’t home, I called Mom’s cell, but she didn’t pick up. I hadn’t talked to her in the ten days since she left, but I’d been too mad to call more than twice.

In the morning, I called her again. No answer.

So I called Meghan.

“You’re calling early,” she chirped.

“My dad’s gone missing,” I told her. “And he took the car.”

“What?”

As soon as I heard the concern in her voice, it all spilled out. How Mom left in a huff for an extended vacation. Dad drooling on the couch and sleeping on the floor, depression over Grandma Suzette and more depression over Mom leaving.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Meghan said.

“You were busy with Finn,” I said. “And I was trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.”

“I’m coming over,” said Meghan.

When she saw the state of our houseboat, she cringed. Old pizza boxes, dog food spilled on the floor, empty cans of pop piled on top of the fridge. Kitchen sink stacked with dishes, garbage cans overflowing. “Denial isn’t working for you, sweetie,” she said. “I’m calling Nora and we’re going to clean this place up.”

“We have to find my dad first,” I said. “He might be dead.”

Meghan laughed. Until she realized I was serious. “Let’s check his e-mail.”

So we did. It was already downloaded and the program open on his computer. We didn’t have to enter a password or anything.

He had been reading his mail, apparently, despite appearances to the contrary. Nearly every message was open, and a few had reply marks next to them.

“There are notes from your mom here,” Meghan said.

“Really?” As far as I knew, Dad hadn’t heard from her since Halloween.

“Yeah.” Meghan opened the most recent one.

Kevin,

The coast is gorgeous.

Miss you.

I have an idea for a new show that Juana is helping me outline. It’s been almost a year and a half since I’ve been onstage, and I think that’s why I’ve been miserable.

You know I hate copyediting, and if I don’t perform anymore, my whole life will be copyediting when Ruby goes off to college. Do you see?

The women’s retreat has got me writing again.

Also, I bought a red negligee. I’ll show it to you when I get back.

Love,

Elaine

“Ag,” I said. “I did not need to read that last bit.”

“Your parents are so cute together,” Meghan said. “They’re in love.”

“They’re insane and neglectful,” I said.

“But in a cute way.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s on the seashore. She’s finding herself,” said Meghan. “She needed a break from him, but now she misses him.”

“At least they’re not getting divorced,” I said. “I thought they were probably getting divorced.”

“They’re not getting divorced if she wants to show him her red negligee.”

I shook my head to get the bad image out. “We need to find my dad,” I reminded Meghan.

“He’s probably not dead,” she said consolingly. “He’d stay alive for the negligee.”

We looked at the e-mails again. Lots of questions about container gardening, a note from Hutch about working again when he returned in December, more container gardening. Then there was one from Greg, Dad’s neurotic friend with the panic disorder, dated yesterday. He said he’d sprained his ankle in the shower and was in the “slough of despond.”

I called Greg, even though it was eight a.m. He picked up on the third ring.

“Hi. Um. Sorry to call so early. It’s Ruby, Kevin’s daughter.”

“Hello, Ruby.”

“Dad never came home last night and I’m wondering if maybe he came to visit you?”

“He’s passed out on the couch,” said Greg.

Meghan and I drove to Greg’s place. We banged on the door for ten minutes before I heard Greg shuffling behind it. “Who’s there?” he said. He’s so messed up with the panic attacks he’s afraid to open the door.

“It’s Ruby!” I called.

Greg’s voice was defensive. “I don’t receive until after noon.”

“I know you’re up. I just talked to you on the phone,” I told him.

Greg cracked the door, then walked back into the apartment without greeting us. Meghan and I followed him. He was limping.

There were stacks and stacks of old newspapers and magazines lining the walls, and huge windows filled with plants. The desk was buried under old food cartons and paper, but out of it surged a large computer monitor Greg used for writing software. In one corner was an enormous flat-screen TV. In another was a Habitrail filled with wood chips and gerbils.

“This is my friend Meghan,” I told Greg.

He flinched but held out his hand to her.

Dad was asleep in his boxer shorts on Greg’s hairy brown couch. Greg shook him awake.

“Hey, Ruby,” Dad said, groggy.

“Are you okay?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m fine. It just got late, so I crashed.” He sat up and pulled an afghan over his lap.

“You’re really okay?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Then I am so mad at you, Dad!” I yelled. “How could you not call? Or leave a note, or anything? I was all alone in the house! I couldn’t reach Mom. I had no idea what had happened to you! I thought you jumped off a bridge!”

“I know, I know,” he said.

“You don’t know,” I grouched. “You don’t know I thought you jumped off a bridge. You don’t know I called Mom.”

He shook his head. “I would never jump off a bridge.”

“How am I supposed to know that when you lie on the floor all the time drooling Cheeto juice like a complete madman?”

Dad smiled. “Wow, you paint a pretty picture.”

“Seriously!”

Dad stood up and put on his pants, looking infuriatingly cheerful and not all that apologetic. “I know I was wrong not to call, Ruby,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you?”

“Three little words.”

“What words?”

“Guitar. Hero. Metallica.” Dad pointed at the Wii on the coffee table. “We stayed up till four in the morning.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” I said flatly. “I thought you were dead and you were having Dude Time playing Guitar Hero.”

“He kicked my butt,” Greg chirped. “But he made up for it by running out for Chinese and an Ace bandage. I messed my ankle up the other day,” he explained.

“Doesn’t he know he has a kid?” I barked at Greg. “Doesn’t he know I’ve been worrying about him all night? What kind of father forgets to come home?”

“The game really cheered him up,” Greg explained. “I bought it for him back in September, but I never had a chance to give it to him.”

“I was processing a lot after my mom died,” Dad said to Meghan by way of explanation. “I didn’t return his calls.”

“He’s been depressed to the point of neglecting personal hygiene,” I said to Greg.

Dad ran his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, I guess I was,” he said. As if it were far in the past. As if he hadn’t been lying on the floor yesterday. “Then Greg hurt his ankle, so, you know, I had to get up.”

“Your wife leaving you isn’t enough to get you up?” I said.

“She didn’t leave me. She took a break to go to Oregon with Juana.”

“That’s leaving.”

He shook his head. “That’s marriage. It’s complicated.”

“She acted like she was leaving. She hasn’t called.”

“Well, she left in a huff. But you know your mother. She loves to get into a huff over things.”

That was true.

“I know it’s hard to understand,” Dad continued patronizingly, “but Mom felt helpless and disempowered.”

“You know Elaine hates being disempowered,” laughed Greg.

My dad continued: “She was fighting with you all the time, fighting with me; the stress was too much for her, so she took a break. I thought you understood that.”

“No.”

“You acted so chipper, going out with your new boyfriend and everything. I thought for once I didn’t have to worry about you.”

“It’s called denial, Dad!” I yelled. “It’s not exactly healthy!”

Dad stood up. “Greg,” he said. “I’m sorry to bring an argument into your place. It’s not good repayment for the rockin’ evening of Metallica.”

“That’s all right,” said Greg.

“Meghan and I have to get to school,” I said. “Dad, will you be home for dinner tonight? I’m ordering it at seven and you’re in charge of dessert.”

“Yes, Ruby,” he said resignedly. “I’ll be home.”

Getting behind the wheel of her Jeep, Meghan sighed. “That poor Greg,” she said. “He really never leaves the house?”

“That’s totally what I’ll be like if I can’t head-shrink myself into some kind of mental stability,” I said.

“A shut-in with a Habitrail?” Meghan crinkled her nose. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, just you wait. I’ll have, like Great Danes and pygmy goats and maybe even a baby panda living with me. That’s what panic does to people if the attacks get bad enough.”

“You would never have a paisley bathrobe, though.”

“Seriously. Sometimes I don’t want to go places because I’m scared I’ll panic.”

“Like where?”

“Like school. Like CAP Workshop.”

“But you go to school.”

“Yeah, and I go to the stupid workshop, but my point is: I almost don’t. I can completely see how Greg got to be shut in like he is. I look at him and see my future sometimes.”

“Roo.”

“What? I’m being honest.”

“When was the last time you had a panic thing?” Meghan asked. “ ’Cause I haven’t seen or heard you talk about one since, like, the start of the summer.”

“I have them—” I was about to say I had them all the time. But she was right.

I hadn’t had one.

Not when Noel and I fought.

Not when he fell down the stairs.

Not when he ignored me at school.

Or kissed that girl.

Not when Dad lay on the floor. And Mom left.

I had not panicked.

Sometimes I had to sing retro metal in my head and breathe deep, or take off my glasses and be semi-blind, or cut class and take a shower—but I hadn’t had a panic thing in a very long time.

Shocking Disclosure in the Zoological Gardens!

Dear Robespierre,

Happy Thanksgiving.

I wonder if goats feel neurotic on holidays, like people do. When I was little, Thanksgiving and Christmas were just parties and pretty dresses and desserts. Then last year, I realized what a drunk Uncle Hanson is, and how stressed Dad and Grandma Suzette were. Suddenly, it wasn’t a party. It was an ordeal.

This year, I’m worried Dad will melt down again and start talking about his dead mother, just when he’s started to get up in the mornings and work on his newsletter. Also Uncle Hanson will be there and no Grandma Suzette to make jokes and encourage him to act normal. Plus Mom is making a turducken¹, and there’s nothing like a big meat-eating holiday to make her mad that I don’t eat what she cooks. So it’ll be a miracle if we make it through Thanksgiving without a descent into seriously bad family dynamics.

Wish me luck.

Love,

Ruby Oliver

—written on zoo stationery with a ballpoint pen and folded into a small rectangle.

my mother came home with gifts. A T-shirt for my dad that said DOG IS MY COPILOT and a vintage dress for me.

It fit, too.

I was angry at her for leaving, but I also had to admit that it had been good to have her gone. Good for me and Dad to just take care of ourselves, even if we did it badly. Good for us to hang around together without her giant personality heaving itself between us. She came back full of ideas for the new show she wanted to do, plans for the holiday season, stories about her adventures with Juana and the women’s empowerment group. She was less on the attack, somehow.

I worked at the zoo the weekend before Thanksgiving, mucking out stalls in the Family Farm area early on Sunday morning. When I finished that, I went to help Lewis the plant guy trim some hedges. Perversely, though I complain about helping Dad in the greenhouse, I like trimming hedges. The clippers are really big. I feel tough hacking stray bits of greenery into submission.

I was chopping away and not thinking about anything when suddenly two sets of round arms wrapped themselves around my waist: Sydonie and Marie. “We’re at the zoo! We saw the elephant already,” cried Marie.

“Claude didn’t know where the bathrooms were,” said Sydonie. “I had to show him.”

“Is Noel with you?” I asked, nervous.

“No, Claude! Didn’t you hear me? Of course Noelie knows where the bathrooms are.”

I looked up and there was Claude, looking like Noel, only with dark hair and broad shoulders. Same delicate profile, same pale eyes. He was dressed in blue striped pants and a red cashmere sweater—vaguely nautical and a touch flamboyant. “They know you, apparently,” he said.

“Um. Yes.”

“It’s Ruby!” shouted Marie.

“Noelie’s girlfriend!” shouted Sydonie.

Claude’s eyes widened. “You’re Ruby?”

I felt like I must be a disappointment. I was wearing an ugly zoo uniform and no makeup.

“I’m not Noel’s girlfriend,” I told Sydonie. “Not anymore.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“The picture he drew of you is still up in his room.”

Was it? Was it, really?

“That’s just because he hasn’t bothered to take it down,” I said. “Not because I’m his girlfriend.” I turned to Claude. “It’s good to meet you. I mean, we were at Tate together, but you wouldn’t remember,” I stumbled. “Noel told me a lot about you.”

Claude smiled, but his eyes were serious. “He told me a lot about you, too.”

“It’s always bad when my reputation precedes me,” I said, trying to laugh.

“No, no.”

“Don’t you live in New York?” I asked.

His face contorted. “I couldn’t stay there, in the end. I—ah—I thought I could, but when the term started I couldn’t go to any of my classes. You know? I kept skipping and it was wasting my parents’ money and the whole thing was bad, so I’m taking a semester off.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Um.”

Claude frowned. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Oh. Well.” He looked off into the distance. “I should tell you, then.”

“What?”

He took a deep breath and let it out. Then he said: “My boyfriend died in a bike accident.”

What?

What?

“Your boyfriend?” I said, in shock. “Booth?” The conventional words just came out of my mouth automatically, like the words Nora had said to me in the summer: “I’m so, so sorry,” I said. “For your loss. When did it happen?”

“August.” Sharp lines appeared on either side of Claude’s mouth. “Noel didn’t tell you?”

I shook my head.

Claude looked away as he spoke. His voice was strangled. “Yeah. Booth was on his bike and a car plowed into him.”

Ag.

“Noel was behind him,” said Claude. “He saw the whole thing. They—they told me Booth didn’t suffer.”

A thousand ags.

Noel had seen his friend hit by a car, right in front of him.

In front of him and there’d been nothing he could do.

He’d seen his friend die.

All my problems were minuscule compared with how that would feel. How deeply that must shake a person. Just to have seen that accident, and stood over the body, knowing it was too late.

Not to have been able to save Booth.

Not to have been able to save him for Claude.

Noel wrote me those poems.I miss you

like a limb

like a leg I’ve lost

in a war, maybe

in an accident, maybe

in a tragedy.They hardly move, these clocks.

Watching the hands go round is like

watching someone’s blood drip onto the street

while you wait for an ambulance

and wait

and wait

and the blessed siren does not sound.

The clocks will hardly move

and hardly move

and hardly move

He had told me what happened. In those poems.

And yet he hadn’t told me.

He hadn’t actually told me.

Instead, he had come home from New York wanting to be happy. Wanting me to be the happy girl who would convince him nothing bad had happened. That it didn’t matter about Booth. That he—Noel—was okay.

He kept saying he was fine. He kept wanting me to act like everything was fine.

I put my hand over my mouth. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated to Claude. “I mean, I know I don’t know you, but I’m just so, so sorry. For you and for Booth and for Noel.”

Claude wiped his forehead and took a swig from the water bottle in his hand. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“How odd that he didn’t tell you,” said Claude. “I mean, he was calling you every day.”

“Until he stopped.”

“He’s such a strange guy sometimes, Noelie.”

I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t cooperate.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, Noel didn’t really deal,” continued Claude. “I mean, not that anyone could deal. It was just—I’ve been—” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, Noel can’t stand it if I even mention Booth, or the accident. He hates to have it talked about.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said again.

I couldn’t stand for the conversation to go on any longer, so I turned to Sydonie and Marie, who had been running in circles around the hedge I was cutting. “Did you guys feed the llamas yet?” I said as brightly as I could.

“I want to!” cried Marie. “I’m going to give them food from my hand.”

“If you go to the Family Farm area, you can buy food pellets and feed the animals,” I explained to Claude.

“Come with us, Ruby!” said Sydonie. “Tell Claude the names of all the goats!”

“I can’t, cutie,” I told her. “I have to work.”

We said our goodbyes awkwardly, and Claude led the girls off. I went on clipping the hedge.

Like a regular person.

Like a person who knew what to do with everything she knew, now.

That night Gideon took me bowling. He was down for the weekend from college, and as I laughed and chatted and rolled my orange ball down the lane, deep inside I was thinking: Are these really the only options in terms of romance?

1. Love with a brooding, confusing guy who makes me feel insecure and stops being my real live boyfriend because he is too messed up, or

2. Nonlove with a real live boyfriend who is wholesome and sweet and responsible but just isn’t that exciting and kisses with too much slobber?

In other words, love and pain, or safety and boredom?

In the movies heroines often appear to be confronted with this choice. In actuality, however, their situations get resolved supereasily because the safe boyfriend—the #2, the husband material—turns out to be no good. Maybe he cheats, maybe he’s a shallow idiot who only cares about money, maybe he’s crooked or spineless. Or possibly he just rejects the heroine so she doesn’t have to reject him. Then she’s free to go off with the much hotter brooding guy, who magically doesn’t deliver pain and heartbreak any longer but is mature and available for a serious relationship.²

The movies make the brooding guy the hero—the guy with problems, the guy who carries a gun, the guy with unresolved anger, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the guy who’s a vampire—and they tell you that you can have the mythical happy ending with that same brooding guy.³

But in reality, the brooding guy is cranky. He doesn’t reply to e-mails. He doesn’t call. He’s only half there when you’re talking to him, and he doesn’t chase you when you run. You feel insecure all the time. You get needy and sad and you hate yourself for being needy.

If you don’t know why he’s brooding, you’re shut out.⁴

And if you do know why he’s brooding, you’re still shut out.⁵

Even if he shares his feelings—or overshares his feelings, like my dad—he’s still not really there. He’s off in his own mind, wrangling his Reginald and drooling onto the couch or sobbing into dinner or lying on the floor.

It is really, really, really not as attractive in true life as it seems in the movies.

Gideon wasn’t a jerk. I had tried to find something wrong with him, I really had—but he was neither a shallow idiot nor a crooked, spineless cheater. And he seemed to really like me. What was more, he was incredibly hot and always wanted to go do fun things like bowling or wakeboarding; he was interested in school and questioned authority—and listened when I spoke.

Maybe, I thought, I should be the serious girlfriend of Gideon. Maybe, if I kept pretending to him that my home life was good, that I felt confident about college, that I was experienced in the nether regions and in possession of solid mental health—maybe if I kept pretending, bit by bit, those things would become true.

Gideon thought I was a good person with an easy life.

Maybe with him, I could be that.

In life, I told myself, if not in the movies, the nice guy should finish first. Stick with him and stay away from people who don’t call you and have secrets and weird behaviors. Be with that nice guy because he is good and kind, without angsting about all the ways in which he doesn’t live up to your romantic ideal.

Romantic ideals are stupid anyway.

Fact: I was lucky to have Gideon.

Fact: I was happy with Gideon.

Or almost happy.

Or something that might turn into happy.

If he could just be trained to be a better kisser.

And if I could just tell him what was really going on in my life.

The Ditz said our college application prep materials had to be in the day before Thanksgiving: practice essays, lists of potential colleges, peer and parent questionnaires.

I’d listed swimming, lacrosse, Woodland Park Zoo and the Tate Prep Charity Holiday Bake Sale (CHuBS) for my extracurricular activities. Mom laughed when I told her I’d thrown her parent questionnaire in the toilet, and filled it out again. She actually wrote some nice things about me too. That I had always been a great reader and she was proud of how much feminism I’d absorbed in American History and Politics. That she hoped I would keep studying film because she could tell how much I loved it. That she dreamed of my having a better education than she’d had.

I wrote an essay about my love-hate relationships with gardening and retro metal that was pretty amusing, if not exactly deep. I made a list of colleges with strong cinema studies and film programs, including NYU, Temple and UCLA.

When the paperwork was together, I loaded all my video footage into Dad’s computer and started editing my film submission—at least a first draft of it—so I could turn it in to Dittmar.

There was Meghan, saying love “fills you up and you can’t think about anything but the other person and it all seems like a dream.”

Then Hutch, saying love was a reason people killed themselves.

Finn: “Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.”

Mom, rudely: “That’s what friendship is, Ruby. It’s apologizing when you know you should.”

Nora: “Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it.”

And Noel, saying: “I want your updates. I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.” Even the boring ones, he’d said. Even the mental ones.

Plus that clip of us together when I first got my camera. Laughing. Flirting. Him kissing my neck.

I watched them over and over.

I was so happy back then.

And so was Noel.

I never thought he was the kind to shut down the way he did.

I mean, except about his asthma.

And when he was jealous of Jackson.

What I really mean is, I thought he wouldn’t shut down with me.

Once we were together.

Because I was different.

Someone I had loved—someone I still loved—had gone through something awful. He was shattered. He needed people around. And maybe there was some way I could help.

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and listen to anything he had to say.

I—

I spent three hours editing the video of the two of us to try to show him how I felt. Maybe if he saw us together, I thought, maybe he’d remember. Maybe he’d feel something for me again.

Then I watched what I’d made and thought: If a guy I didn’t like anymore gave this to me, it would make me feel completely creeped out.

I shut down iMovie.

Then I spent another hour writing Noel a long e-mail. I ran into Claude at the zoo, and he told me about Booth and the accident, and if there’s anything I can do to help, if you need an ear, blah blah blah.

When I read it over, though, the note seemed creepy too.

If he wanted to talk to me, he would simply talk. It was useless begging him to confide in me when he hadn’t even done so when we were together.

I deleted the e-mail.

Then I thought: I should make him brownies or some other deliciousness and give it to him with a very short note that says I’m sorry about Booth. That’s what I would do for Nora or Meghan.

I pulled out all the cookbooks and scoured them for a recipe I could make with whatever was in the house—since at this point it was after midnight and my parents had long since gone to bed.

Sugar cookies: no.

Maybe butter lemon?

Cocoa?

What was delicious enough?

What did Noel even like?

I couldn’t remember.

Did I even deserve to have him back if I couldn’t remember what sweets he liked?

This line of thinking was psychotic. I put the books away. It was two in the morning, and as I ate the last of Dad’s stash of spearmint jelly candies, I finally had an idea.

It wouldn’t solve anything, but at least it was a start.

I called Gideon’s cell phone. He picked it up before it went to voice mail and said sleepily: “Ruby? It’s two a.m. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “But I can’t go out with you anymore.”

1 A turducken is a boned chicken stuffed into a boned duck stuffed into a partly boned turkey, all layered in with stuffing and—well, it’s a triple-crown meat extravaganza, that’s all you need to know.2 Movies where the safe responsible guy is revealed as a jerk—thus freeing the heroine to leave him for someone more exciting: Desperately Seeking Susan; The Wedding Singer; The Holiday; Legally Blonde; Sliding Doors; French Kiss; Bring It On; Working Girl; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; George of the Jungle.3 Movies where a brooding, even sulky guy seems like a good idea for a quality boyfriend: Twilight, 10 Things I Hate About You, Edward Scissorhands, Pump Up the Volume, Heathers (until the end), The Breakfast Club, The Bourne Identity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Angel Eyes, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the Beast, Reality Bites, Donnie Darko, Wuthering Heights, Good Will Hunting, The Piano, Rebecca, Rebel Without a Cause.4 Like me, not knowing about Noel’s witnessing that car accident. Not knowing Booth had died, at all.5 Because he’s busy brooding.

Emotional Breakdown in the Parking Lot!

Peer Questionnaire

Please fill out this form by November 22 for the peer or peers who have requested your help with their college admissions process.

Reminder: Please take your responsibilities as a peer commenter seriously. A helpful response can assist someone in finding the right college!

What are your peer’s strengths?

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She gets so stoked about things. A camera. A film she’s seen. An idea in her lit class. She waves her hands and jumps and talks, and no matter how you’re feeling, you can’t help but get excited about it too—whatever it is.

Also, she’s amazing with animals.

Also, she is the wittiest person I know.

Also, she cares. About doing a good job. About how people feel.

What are your peer’s weaknesses?

Self-loathing.

In what career do you imagine your peer excelling?

Ruby could run a bake shop. Ruby could be a zoologist. Ruby could be a swim coach or a charity fund-raiser or a cinema historian or a controversial feminist. But she wants to be a filmmaker.

And what Ruby wants, she usually gets.

I think that’s what she’ll be.

What does your peer do in his or her free time?

She makes films. She makes doughnuts.

She makes people laugh.

She looks after pygmy goats and potbellied pigs.

She makes the world seem shiny and sunlit.

My family survived Thanksgiving by inviting Meghan and Dr. Flack over to eat with us. It’s just the two of them in that big house, and I think usually they go visit a relative, but this year they were going to be home. Meghan said they were planning to eat at a restaurant, which sounded sad to me on Thanksgiving, so I invited them.

Before dinner, we watched Hannah and Her Sisters, because that’s the perfect Thanksgiving movie, in my opinion, and Meghan had never seen it. Dr. Flack let Dad pontificate about bonsai plants and winter blooms as he showed her through the greenhouse. My mother made the turducken, and I made a thing with butternut squash and like six pounds of cheese that I read about in a cookbook, and also a thing with green beans and almonds, so there were actual good-tasting vegetable dishes.

Dad made apple pie and wept about Grandma Suzette and pies she’d made throughout his childhood, but otherwise he kept it together. I ate a small slice of the turducken to make Mom happy.

Hanson drank from a flask and slurred his words before we even got to the dessert—but we all just breathed deeply and tried to be nice to him.

There was nothing else to do, really.

Dad had a long talk with him before he left on Saturday, telling Hanson that the drinking was a serious problem and he needed to get treatment.

Hanson probably wouldn’t go, Dad said.

He hadn’t gone the other times they’d talked.

Sometimes, you just can’t help people. You can only offer to help.

Or say you’re there if they want it.

And you do that. You offer, even if it seems hopeless. Because you can’t give up and do nothing.

Think how you would feel if you didn’t try.

Gideon and I talked again over the holiday weekend. I called him, and when he picked up, his voice was flat. He basically grunted at me while I uttered the following inane remarks:

“I’m really sorry.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“It’s not you, it’s me.”

“I’m just going through a complicated time in my life.”

“Maybe if things were different, it would have worked out between us.”

“I hope we can still be friends.”

“You’ll make some other girl really, really happy.”

I felt like a complete Neanderthal. Because even though Gideon and I hadn’t been going out very long, I knew he deserved better. These were stupid clichés that had been said a hundred thousand times to a hundred thousand people being dumped, and they were completely meaningless.

I just didn’t know what else to say.

I didn’t want to hurt him.

It wasn’t him. It was me.

And I did hope we’d be friends.

Though I could tell from the hard sound of his “goodbye” that we probably wouldn’t be.

When I got back to school on Monday and showed up at CAP Workshop, Dittmar handed back our application packets with comments and suggestions for colleges we might like. As I flipped through my papers, reading his notes in red pen, I came across my peer questionnaire.

She cares, Noel had written. About doing a good job. About how people feel … She makes the world seem shiny and sunlit.

He wrote those things after we broke up.

Dittmar gave us the questionnaire the same day Noel and I had made that awful scene in workshop.

Noel had handed it in recently. The date said November 20.

He had written that I was witty.

That he thought I’d be a filmmaker.

That I made him feel excited and interested in the world.

As the class filed out of Dittmar’s office, I tapped Noel on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Same old, same old.”

“I. Um. I heard about Booth and the accident,” I said. “I ran into Claude at the zoo.”

Noel shrugged as he headed down the stairs. “Yeah, well. That was a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It just happened, okay?” said Noel. “It was an accident. It was awful for my brother, but you know, I moved on. I didn’t let it bother me.”

“How can you say that?” I said, following him as he headed out of the math building and toward whatever class he had next. “You were behind him on your bike, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. I just didn’t dwell on it and fall apart like some people,” he said, still moving fast. “I walked away.”

“Is that what you’re doing now?” I said. “You’re walking away from this conversation?”

“I wanted to be happy,” he nearly barked at me. “Is that such a hard thing to understand?”

“But how could you be happy? Booth died right in front of you!” I cried.

Noel winced. “Why are you bringing all this up, Ruby? It’s history.”

“Because you and I had something,” I said, on the edge of tears. We were walking through the parking lot now. Noel headed toward his Vespa and unlocked his helmet. “We were close,” I went on. “I mean, I thought we were close—but you didn’t tell me this horrible, horrible thing that happened.”

“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to forget,” said Noel. “And I still want to. Can you please just leave it alone?”

He sat on the scooter but he didn’t put the helmet on.

“How can you forget that?” I said. “You can’t forget that. You have to deal with it.”

“Listen,” said Noel. “I came back and I wanted to be with you. It was you who kept being unhappy all the time. You were always complaining that things weren’t right.”

“Because things were obviously not right!” I cried. “How could you not trust me enough to tell me what happened?”

“I didn’t tell anyone, okay, Ruby? I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even talk about it with my parents. Like I said, I wanted to forget.”

“But I’m not a forgetting person,” I said. “I’m not an ignoring person. You should have known it wouldn’t work.”

“What?”

“I can’t forget things, or ignore them—bad things that happen,” I said. “I’m a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.”

“Okay. That’s you,” said Noel, tapping his helmet with his fingers. “That’s not me.”

“Well, if you wanted some forget-about-it girlfriend, you should have stuck with Ariel Olivieri, or found some freshman who would think it was cool you were so emo and would never ask you anything about anything,” I said heatedly. “But you picked me, and I have to understand things. It was like torture to me that you had this huge secret, even though I didn’t know you had it, because somehow I could feel it there, distracting you, hurting you and—” I started crying then, and clapped my hand over my mouth.

“I didn’t mean to torture you.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I went out on the lake with Gideon, I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be there for you—”

Noel interrupted. “I didn’t want anybody there for me.”

“I know it’s so stupid,” I went on, the words gushing out. “But when I saw what you wrote on the peer questionnaire just now, I thought maybe you could love me again. I mean, not love, maybe not love, because we never said love, so that’s not the right word, but—oh crap, all this is coming out wrong—you wrote such nice things, about me caring and about how I was witty. You said I made the world seem shiny—so I thought—I thought maybe you still felt the way I do and—”

My throat closed up and I felt so, so stupid I could barely talk. I rubbed my sleeve across my face and tried to get my breathing under control.

Then, as we stood in silence for just that quick moment, I realized I didn’t have to be there anymore. I didn’t have to humiliate myself this way, begging for Noel to want me again.

I could just end this horrible situation right now.

“I have to go,” I said, and spun around.

“Bye.”

I walked on shaky legs to the trail that led from the parking lot back to the main campus of Tate. My pack felt heavy on my shoulder.

It was only as I started down the path that I heard Noel’s Vespa pull up behind me.

“Ruby,” he called.

“What?” I turned. He had his helmet under his arm still, and his face was extremely pale in the cold November light. We were about six feet apart.

“Love was the right word,” he said.

I stared at him.

“It was definitely the right word,” he said. “For what we used to have.”

Then he drove away.

“It sounds to me as if he’s immature,” said Doctor Z, chewing a piece of Nicorette. “And possibly limited.”

“What do you mean?”

“Has he had a girlfriend before?”

I shook my head. “Not a serious one, anyway.”

“He’s inexperienced.”

“We’re seventeen. Of course we’re inexperienced.”

“Well,” said Doctor Z. “You have more history than a lot of teenagers do in terms of having a romantic relationship that lasts more than a couple weeks.”

Oh. “What do you mean, Noel is limited?”

“It sounds like there are limits to what he’s willing to risk. To where he’s willing to go, emotionally,” said Doctor Z.

“The whole parking lot debacle was completely humiliating,” I told her. “When we started talking, I meant to be sympathetic about Booth and thank him for the nice things he wrote in the peer questionnaire. But as soon as I got near him and we were talking, all these feelings started spilling out uncontrollably.”

“The thing to consider,” said Doctor Z, “is whether a relationship with a limited person of this type is something you want to pursue.”

“The thing to consider,” I said, “is why I don’t seem to be able to keep my mouth shut when it would really, really be to my advantage to do so.”

“The thing to consider,” said Meghan, the next day at the B&O, “is who else you can go out with.”

“What? I don’t want to go out with anyone else. If I did, I wouldn’t have broken up with Gideon.”

“Gideon obviously wasn’t doing it for you,” said Meghan, licking her coffee spoon provocatively.

“Gideon is a great guy.”

“Yawn. I’m sure he is. But you need to fall in love with someone other than Noel, and obviously you couldn’t fall in love with Gideon.”

“I think I need to be Noboyfriend if I can’t be with Noel.”

“How much fun is that?” said Meghan.

“It’s not fun. It’s just—” I broke off.

“He’s the one you want,” said Meghan. Suddenly understanding.

I nodded.

Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said.

“Don’t you want it?”

“Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.”

“Why?”

Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?”

“Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said.

“So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.”

“The thing to consider,” said Nora, “is that boys are not the most important things in life.” She was running the bake sale this year. Varsha from swim team and I were sitting in her kitchen, helping her make “magic cookies” for the recruiting table.

“I mean, I’m sad for Gideon that you don’t want to go out with him anymore,” Nora went on, “but let’s face it. He’ll recover. He always has one girlfriend or another.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And now you’re free to concentrate on what’s really important.”

“Like what?”

“Roo!” Varsha rolled her eyes at me.

“Seriously. Like what?”

“It’s senior year. Hello. College apps?” said Varsha.

“Or the bake sale—raising money for Happy Paws,” said Nora.

“And sports,” said Varsha. “You are like this close to being a serious contender. If you worked out more, you could get your time down.”

Nora added: “Plus you’ll probably make varsity goalie in lacrosse this year if you go back on the team.”

I knew I was supposed to care about these things. I did actually care about them.

I just couldn’t concentrate on them.

I still had a broken heart, I guess.

It wasn’t healing, and the fact that Noel had said he loved me—all right, used to love me—I couldn’t get it out of my head.

“I broke up with Happy, by the way,” said Nora. “In case you are doubting whether I practice what I preach.”

“By the way?” I squealed. “How can you just mention that as a ‘by the way’? That’s a serious thing.”

Nora shrugged. “He’s too much of a party boy. He’s going to get to college and join a frat. You know he is.”

I nodded. Fraternities were in Happy’s future. There was no denying it.

“Now you have time to run the bake sale,” I said to Nora. “Which, according to you and Varsha, is more fulfilling than having a boyfriend.”

Nora laughed and ate a spoonful of cookie dough. “More filling, at least.”

I said earlier that Hutch and I never spoke about Noel and me. Only now: I wrote him an e-mail explaining the whole debacle. The sordid details of the breakup, the Halloween party, the argument in the parking lot. Plus everything Claude had told me: the accident, Booth, Noel’s wanting to forget.

Because Hutch is my friend.

And he’s my only friend who’s really and truly Noel’s friend.

I needed my friends just then.

I thought maybe Hutch would freak out at the excess emotion and hysteria in my note, and do a typical guy thing and ignore it. But he didn’t. He wrote back three days later.

The thing to consider, said Hutch, is that Noel is one of the most outstanding people on the planet.

Then, after several paragraphs about his Parisian adventures, he wrote:P.S. After I got your note, I e-mailed DuBoise. Didn’t mention Booth or Claude or you, but said (among many other things) that I heard a rumor he was going out with a sexy college vampire girl.His reply, pasted in: Nah. Am single.True, did kiss a vampire at that guy Hsaio’s Halloween party.It was okay, but no repeat was necessary.Confession: I did it to make Ruby jealous.She was staring at me across the room and it was a doltish move but the situation was tense and I couldn’t deal so I macked on the vampire.I don’t think it worked. Ruby left with Van Deusen.I know you’re going to forward this to her, so I’ll just give you my permission to do it and relieve your guilt in advance.Noel

A Nighttime Escapade!

Noel,

It may have come to your attention that while I have abdicated the dubious throne of the bake sale and let Nora take the damn thing over, I am still yoked into trying to recruit the masculine contingent of Tate Prep to bake stuff for December 20.

Your chocolate croissants, though shockingly late in their delivery last year, were nevertheless enjoyed by both humans and Great Danes alike. Can you repeat the performance? Or pledge some alternate French pastry–type item?

Ruby

the above e-mail may not look like it, but it was a love letter.

Noel had made me the chocolate croissants last June—he had pledged them under serious pressure for the springtime edition of the sale, but then hadn’t delivered them because we weren’t speaking to each other. When he finally did bake them, it was to show me that he wanted me the way I wanted him.

Reminding him of the croissants—asking him to make them again—was asking him to start over with me.

I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to send that e-mail.

Last time we’d spoken, he and I had been yelling at each other in the parking lot.

And if Noel was immature and in denial, like Doctor Z thought, did I really want that kind of boyfriend? Shouldn’t I find someone new, like Meghan said? Or just focus on my backstroke and my college apps, like Varsha and Nora advised?

No.

It might be deranged, but I still wanted Noel. Now that I knew he wasn’t going out with the vampire and in fact had only kissed her to get my attention, there seemed like there might be some hope that he wanted me. Going after him might not be the smart choice, the logical choice—but it was how I felt, and Doctor Z always encouraged me to try to get what I wanted.

To feel I deserved to get what I wanted.

“If I don’t have panic attacks and I’ve flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo,” I said to Doctor Z, “then who am I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve thought of myself as the girl with serious mental health issues for, like, more than a year now,” I said. “So if I don’t have them, what girl am I now?”

“You wonder who you are,” she said.

“My point is that I think I’m over my self-loathing,” I said. “I think I might actually be a functioning human at this point.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve let go of this idea of yourself as mentally ill.”

“Um. Yes. I mean, I’m not saying I’ve handled things well or anything, but I don’t think I handled them like a deranged person.”

“Because you’re not deranged, Ruby.”

“I know,” I said. “I think I actually know that. Do you know what Noel said to me once? He said: ‘You’re not mental. You think you’re mental. That’s a different thing.’ ”

“Interesting.”

“I didn’t know what he meant then. I thought, What’s the difference? But I get it now.”

Doctor Z smiled.

“It feels weird,” I went on.

“How so?”

“Like I don’t know what to wear if I’m sane,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like I’ve been warped, I’ve been certifiable, I’ve been a madman—but if those don’t labels apply to me anymore, I don’t know which ones do. It’s like I’ve worn my neurotic outfit every day for so long, and if I can’t wear it anymore now—I don’t know what to put on.”

“What’s wrong with being naked?” asked Doctor Z.

I fine-tuned the croissant e-mail and hit Send on a Friday night after dinner in early December. I didn’t want to have to look at Noel during Monday’s CAP Workshop or feel his presence in the refectory, wondering if he’d read my note yet and if he’d respond. By sending it Friday night, I could be certain he’d read it over the weekend.

Turns out I didn’t have to angst. Five minutes later, he wrote back:

Ruby,

I was going to say: You overestimate my baking skills.

I was going to say: I still have a scar on my hand from the last time I made croissants.

I was going to say: I’m busy trying to figure out how to get Columbia to accept me despite bad score on History AP.

I was going to say: Coach has me doing extra workouts for my knee.

I was going to say: I haven’t got time.

I was going to say: Maybe I could just donate money straight to Happy Paws, instead of baking.

I was going to say: I only made those croissants to impress you, anyway, back in the day.

And then I realized: I should just say yes.

Yes. I will make chocolate croissants.

Noel

I thought about not answering him until a couple days had gone by, just to show that it didn’t matter to me. Pretending that we were just talking about a bake sale contribution and nothing more.

But I don’t really want to be that girl. The girl who squashes her feelings down. If there is anything I learned in therapy, it’s that squashing is an excellent way to give yourself panic attacks.

So I wrote back:

I was going to act like it didn’t matter much.

I was going to say, Thanks for contributing to Happy Paws.

I was going to say, Good luck with the Columbia app and the knee exercises, like we were acquaintances and I felt a mild interest in your well-being.

But I don’t want to lie.

I am really, really glad you’re making croissants.

Polka-dot is too.

Noel wrote:

List of things to do:

Ask Mom for recipe.

Shop for butter. (Croissants involve lots of butter.)

Shop for chocolate. (You want the chocolate kind.)

Apologize to Ruby for acting like a dolt and kissing the vampire girl in front of her. No matter how long we’d been broken up, that was a warped move and the kind of manipulative crap I usually associate with guys other than myself.

Sorry.

Mom was in the kitchen doing unspeakable things to slabs of dead pig involving the Cuisinart, a lot of garlic and pieces of washed intestine. Dad was puttering in the greenhouse listening to REO Speedwagon. Polka was thumping his tail quietly on the carpet, looking at me expectantly, hoping for his before-bed walk.

Everything was just as it had been ten minutes ago.

And everything was different.

Noel was making me croissants.

Noel had said sorry.

I wrote back:

Flour. You will need flour.

Also, I suspect, a small amount of salt.

Seconds later, his reply:

Maybe I will need help.

And I wrote:

What?

And he wrote:

Your help.

And I wrote:

My help with the croissants?

And he wrote:

Help me.

I didn’t write back, because I was putting on my coat and brushing my teeth and putting on lip gloss and deodorant and grabbing the keys to the Honda and shouting to Mom that I’d be back by curfew and pushing Polka back in the front door with my foot because he wanted to go out so bad and there was no way I was taking him. Then I was in the car driving to Madrona in the chilly night.

The lights were on in Noel’s kitchen. Through the windows I could see his mom and stepdad doing dishes and wiping down the countertops. The little girls’ rooms in the front of the upstairs were dark, though, and Noel’s lights were out as well, except for the glow from his computer monitor.

I couldn’t ring the bell. Couldn’t just make small talk with his parents and ask if I could come in after all this time without seeing them.

And I couldn’t call. No cell.

So I scootched my bag underneath the porch and climbed the rose trellis on the side of the house up to the porch roof. I edged along it until Noel’s window was in front of me, and then, feeling kind of stalkerish and dumb but also like a girl in a movie about love, I felt around for a pebble to toss at the glass.

No pebbles. I was on the roof.

I felt in the rain gutter.

Nothing but some truly disgusting sludge.

What was I thinking? Of course there were no pebbles on the roof.

I picked at the shingles, hoping a bit of one would come off in my hand.

No luck.

Aha! Tums.

I had a small roll of antacid tablets in the front pocket of my jeans, left over from the misguided ingestion of two cappuccinos in a fifteen-minute period.

I took out a Tum and threw it at Noel’s window.

He didn’t answer.

I threw another Tum.

And another.

And another.

Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum.

Ag. I suddenly got worried that maybe Tums were toxic to birds or squirrels and I was inadvertently poisoning the small-animal population of Madrona.

I collected as many as Tums as I could find from where they’d fallen on the roof, then knocked on Noel’s window.

Looking in, I saw he wasn’t answering because he had headphones on. He was clicking back and forth between his e-mail and iTunes, tapping his fingers on the edge of his keyboard now and then.

He was wearing pajamas.

I had never seen Noel in pajamas.

Actually, they were blue and white striped pajama pants and a white T-shirt so thin and faded you could practically see through it.

I knocked harder, and he turned around.

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

He bolted out of his room.

Where had he gone?

Was he going to tell his parents I was on the roof?

No, he would never do that.

Was he angry I had come?

Was I being a stalker?

Had he left because he couldn’t deal with seeing me?

Should I just go home?

Would I die trying to climb down the rose trellis?

I was turning to attempt it when Noel came back.

He was wearing jeans and waving something at me.

A toothbrush.

He opened the window, leaned out, and before I could even speak—he kissed me. His mouth was cold and minty. I kissed him back and felt dizzy and clutched the edge of the windowsill. He kept kissing me, and I kept kissing him and I was so happy. Then he climbed out the window and we sat on the porch roof with our backs against the house and he waved his toothbrush again.

“You went to brush your teeth,” I said. “You kept me waiting on your roof in the cold so you could brush your teeth.”

“We had scallions at dinner,” Noel said.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” I told him.

“I was!” he protested. “I just—I wanted to kiss you so bad as soon as I saw you, and then I thought about the scallions and I panicked. I thought, She’s come all the way here and she’s going to run away as soon as she smells my breath.”

“I wouldn’t run away from scallion breath.”

“Oh, you might. This was serious.”

I kissed him again. And this time I think we both felt the cold outside and how precarious it was where we were sitting. We held on to each other like we were holding on for our lives on the edge of this precipice

of the roof, of the end of high school,

of college,

of love,

of scary, complicated, adult-type relationships—

and I felt Noel shaking and I realized he was crying. Not sobbing, but crying gently, like his eyes were leaking and he just couldn’t help it.

“What’s wrong?”

He swallowed. “Booth died,” he said. “My friend Booth was riding ahead of me down Seventh Avenue. We were crossing Twenty-third Street and this car was making a left and I saw it coming, this blue car, and it was like slow motion, Booth crossing the path of the car and it swerving and then the bike hurtling through the air with Booth still clinging to it.” Noel wiped his eyes and went on. “I threw my bike on the sidewalk and ran over. People were standing around and I suddenly realized maybe no one had called the ambulance, so I called, and I had to tell them what happened, and then it took so long for them to come.”

I put my arms around him.

“He was riding ahead of me,” choked Noel. “Because I asked him to. The traffic there is crazy. I just felt better with him up front, leading. But then—”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I had to call Claude,” Noel went on. “I had to tell him what happened. He kept saying ‘What?’ as if he hadn’t understood me. So I had to say it again and again. ‘There was an accident. Booth didn’t make it. There was an accident. Booth didn’t make it.’

“Finally I told him he had to leave work and come home. Like giving him an order. He couldn’t think clearly and it was up to me to tell him what to do. My brother walked out of the restaurant without telling anyone, still wearing his apron. Leaving his tables without their food.

“For a couple days,” Noel went on, “everything was black and choked and we didn’t sleep and people kept coming by. Claude kept saying, ‘Where’s Booth?’ as if he really didn’t know. I couldn’t answer him. I mean, what do you say when someone asks you that?”

I shook my head.

“My mom flew out and even my dad came, our biological dad, and they tried to make me and Claude come home to Seattle, but Claude wouldn’t go, so I stayed too. I mean, he’s my brother and I wanted to be there for him. But once I was alone with him and all the parents left, I just shut down. It was like Claude was feeling everything and I was feeling nothing. I wanted to feel nothing.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So I kept feeling nothing and kept feeling nothing,” said Noel.

“You can’t feel nothing,” I said. “People can’t. Not really.”

He leaned his head on my shoulder and wiped his face on the hem of his T-shirt. He wasn’t crying any longer.

I squeezed his hand.

Then he kissed my eyelids. Kind of licked them. And if you’ve never had someone lick your eyelids, you should know that it’s not exactly romantic and it’s even a tiny bit gross, but it feels like the other person really likes you and accepts you somehow.

Like he wants your updates. Even your boring ones. Even your mental ones.

“I don’t feel nothing anymore,” he said.

We sat there together for a long while. Holding hands. Thinking about Booth and Claude and everything that had happened.

“Let’s go inside,” I told him finally.

“Yes,” said Noel. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.”

We crawled in the window. I went first and scraped my arm.

Noel went second and said, “Why are there—what are these? Are there antacids on my windowsill? Why would there be antacids on my windowsill?” And I laughed so hard I couldn’t explain properly.

Then we shut the screen.

Then we closed Noel’s door.

And the rest of what happened is nobody’s business but ours.

A Final List!

Well, not really a final list. I can’t imagine I’ll ever stop making lists. But a final list in this long chronicle of my therapy process, romantic debacles and friendship dramas. A list of Stuff That Happened After.

Mom’s latest performance-art monologue—Elaine Oliver: Meat to the Beat!—had a three-night workshop production at the Empty Space Theatre in January.

Even after it opened, she continued to explore charcuterie—in other words, she continued to perpetrate creative horrors on the bodies of dead animals and then eat them—until I lost five pounds from lack of edible deliciousness at breakfast and dinner and she got reworried I was anorexic; meanwhile, Dad gained ten pounds and she new-worried he would have a coronary.

At this point she agreed we could have pasta or burritos or something else normal for dinner.

My five pounds came back, but Dad’s ten stayed on.

Varsha and Spencer became regulars at the B&O Espresso. We’d go and meet Nora and Meghan there after swim practice. Yes, they were Future Doctors of America, but they were also seriously nice people. It was good to have a group to eat cake and try to figure out the Calc homework with.

It was nice to have Nora there, especially. After everything. Despite everything.

Robespierre got Imelda the pygmy goat pregnant. In the spring, if all goes well, two little Robespierres will be cavorting around the Family Farm. He seems exceedingly proud of his accomplishment and walks with quite a jaunty step.

First lacrosse team meeting: I rejoined the team. I’ll be playing varsity goalie this spring.

Hutch returned from Paris with DVD recordings of himself fronting a retro metal cover band called Les Hommes Métallique (Metal Men). The other guys were all French high school students he hung around with.

It turns out that Hutch can sing—if by “sing” you mean wail and thrash around and occasionally switch into a high falsetto that makes him sound like an angry girlie opera star.

It is good to have him back.

Though now he considers himself an expert on French film and insists he is going to take my cinematic education in hand with a festival of his own devising entitled Les Sous-entendus des Sous-titres (The Implications of Subtitles).

I sent off the last of my college applications January 4. The movie, the essays, the exam scores, the transcripts, the lists of activities—it was all done.

Which means that next year, I will be living in some other city, learning how to make movies.

Though I will miss Polka-dot (a lot),

And I will miss my parents (a little),

I won’t have to deal with the wenchery of Cricket and Kim.

And my roly-poly-slut reputation will be left behind, along with most of my self-loathing.

I won’t have to be in the Tate Universe. Ever again.

And I won’t be in therapy anymore either. Doctor Z says I can stop when I feel ready.

I asked her: What if all the panic badness comes back when I go to college? If it does, can I call you? Can we have phone therapy if I go completely mental?

And she said, “Of course. You can call me even if you’re not having any particular challenges.”

But she also said: “I am not worried about you, Ruby. You have come a long way.”

And I thought: She’s right.

As for Noel and me, part of me would like to tell you it was ride-off-into-the-sunset easy—but that wouldn’t be true. He is jealous, I am needy. He is silent, I am talky. But we see each other for who we really are, I think. He picks up the phone when I call, and never checks his messages while I’m talking to him. We sit together in the refectory, no worries, no second-guessing. And we kiss. All the time. A lot.

Oh, and we make each other laugh.

And write each other silly notes.

And go on adventures planned by the Mutual Admiration Society.

And make each other laugh some more.

And that is saying a lot.

acknowledgments

The story about the gay penguins stealing eggs is true. It happened in Polar Land in Harbin in northern China. I combined it with a story about some German gay penguins who were given a rejected egg to raise at the Bremerhaven zoo. The panda porn is real too. I couldn’t make this stuff up.

Elizabeth Kaplan represents me. Beverly Horowitz edits me. I would be lost without both of them. Melissa Sarver handles everything. The people at Random House have been spectacular, in particular but not limited to Kathy Dunn, Jessica Shoffel, Rebecca Gudelis, Chip Gibson, Tracy Lerner, Lisa McClatchy, Meg O’Brien, Wendy Louie, Lisa Nadel and Adrienne Waintraub. Diana Finch does foreign rights. Thank you!

Sarah Mlynowski offered invaluable plot advice and made me cut out the boring bits. My mom gave me ideas for Doctor Z’s therapy. Libba Bray, Maureen Johnson, Scott Westerfeld, Robin Wasserman and Cassandra Clare kept me company. Heather Weston solved a major plot problem. Bob did nothing but support, support, support.

Melissa James Gibson and Zoe Jenkin helped me sort through the college application process. Melissa Clark was Seattle consultant. Mrs. Friday Next gave me the idea for the melodramatic chapter headings. My blog readers, Facebook friends and Twitter followers helped me with Roo’s movie lists, swim team lingo and books for Mr. Wallace to assign. Dennis O’Brian dreamed up a meatloafery and let me steal his idea. Most of all, my family bore with me and encouraged me. Thank you.

about the author

Like Roo, e. lockhart spends her free time searching for excellent cake and making home movies. She is the author of three other books about Ruby Oliver: The Boyfriend List, The Boy Book, and The Treasure Map of Boys. She also wrote Fly on the Wall, Dramarama, and How to Be Bad (the last with Sarah Mlynowski and Lauren Myracle). Her novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks was a National Book Award finalist and a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and received a Cybils Award for Best Young Adult Fiction. Visit her at EmilyLockhart.com or check out her blog at TheBoyfriendList.com.

Table of Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Real Live Boyfriends!

The Insanity of My Parents! And Romance!

Panic Attacks and Rabbit Fever!

The Revelation About Gay Chinese Penguins!

Agony and Love Poems!

Distraction Caused by a Bare Chest!

Humiliation at Snappy Dragon!

Surprise Kissing!

The Waketastic Adventure!

An Agonizing Public Scene! With Violence!

The Wenchery of Cricket and Kim!

Secrets of the Panda Bear!

The Mysterious Disappearance of Kevin!

Shocking Disclosure in the Zoological Gardens!

Emotional Breakdown in the Parking Lot!

A Nighttime Escapade!

A Final List!AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author