The Boy Book - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора The Boy Book (ч. 2)

As my dad sped the Honda along the freeway, I massaged my own hands (a therapy relaxation technique) and reminded myself:

Kim is not the devil. She’s a person.

A person you used to love.

Her whole agenda in life is not to torture you. She probably never even thinks about you.

And please. She’s not going to pour soup on your sleeping bag. This is eleventh grade.

You survived May and June sophomore year and the world didn’t come to an end. The two of you saw each other every day in school. So much time has passed since then that seeing her shouldn’t be any big thing.

So why are you freaking out?

Dear Kaptain,

I am guilty. Because of Jackson and the notes and the hiking up my skirt to show off my legs.

And I know he’s stepping out on her.

And Kaptain, in June of sophomore year I had nothing left to lose.

But now I have Nora and Noel. If they ditch me, all I’ll have is Meghan.

Answer: What’s done is done (with Jackson). What you know about the stepping out is none of your business anyway. And if Noel and Nora are really your friends, you won’t lose them. And if you lose them, then you don’t want that kind of friend anyway.

But Kaptain…

Answer: What now?

Kaptain, I’m just getting more and more freaked out the more I think of all this stuff.

Answer: You’re being completely irrational.

Me: It’s how I feel.

The Kaptain in my head didn’t reply.

I breathed as deeply as I could and watched the buildings fly by outside the car window.

When we arrived, Kim wasn’t there yet. The ferry dock was bustling. The air was damp, and seagulls were wandering around looking for snacks. Kids were saying goodbye to their parents, sleeping bags and suitcases piled around them.

Here’s who was there:

Varsha and Spencer from swim team, plus Spencer’s boyfriend (Imari, captain of the boys’ team),

Nora and Noel,

three senior boys who were very studious and hung around together all the time (Kieran, Mason and Grady),

two quiet senior girls I’d never talked to (Mei and Sierra),

Courtney, a senior who used to go out with Jackson when they were ninth graders, and two of her friends (who were basically interchangeable), a posse of giggling sophomores,

Mrs. Glass,

Mr. Wallace and Hutch.⁴

Ag, Hutch!

He had never told me he was going.

Except Varsha, Wallace, Imari and Mei, everyone was white. Except for Hutch and Noel, everyone was wholesome. They were all wearing jeans and plaid jackets or chambray shirts—typical Tate outdoor activity clothes. They looked like they’d stepped out of some Northwest outerwear catalog. Even Noel had on a dark blue chambray, and Hutch was wearing new-looking hiking boots, though it’s true he sported his usual Iron Maiden biker jacket.

I was wearing a vintage skirt and a beaded sweater, with fishnet stockings and combat boots.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

My dad helped me unload my duffel, plus a sleeping bag we borrowed from a friend of his. I was supernervous and shivering, so I rooted around and found my jacket.

Nora came over (she’s always great with parents) and said, “Hi, Mr. Oliver,” and Noel said hello too. It was the first time he’d met my dad. Hutch held back, but Kevin Oliver was so cranked he leaped over a pile of suitcases and squeezed his shoulders.

“John!” he bellowed. “You’re doing this Canoe Island, then?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought for sure you’d do the greening project at the public school.”

Hutch shrugged. “I wanted to go somewhere.”

My dad nodded knowingly. “Anything to get out of the house at your age. I remember those days.”

“Something like that.”

“Well. Have fun canoeing.”

“We’re not canoeing, Dad,” I reminded him. “We’re reading philosophy.”

“Same difference,” my dad said, laughing loudly at his lame joke. “Okay. I’m gonna motor. Rock on, John! Keep an eye on Ruby for me!”

“Sure, man,” said Hutch, looking at the ground with a smile snaking across his lips.

Having thoroughly humiliated me by making heavy metal devil-horn hand signals at Hutch while the other fathers patted their kids on the back and shook hands with each other, my dad hugged me goodbye, told me he loved me and hoped I would bond productively with my peer group, and left—right as the Yamamotos’ Mercedes pulled up to the dock.

Kim got out, and Nora squealed and ran straight to her.

So that was how it was going to be.

Kim was jumping up and down. She’d had her hair cut into a very short bob. Tokyo chic.

She and Nora were hugging and checking each other out, the way girls do. I could hear them. “You look amazing, I can’t believe your hair!”

Kim was rounder, more filled out, than when I’d seen her at the end of the school year last June. She was wearing her favorite old khaki jacket, but her sneakers looked futuristically Japanese.

“I’m so glad to be back. God, I was so miserable.”

“Did you see Cricket last night? She said she was driving over, but my mom made me have family dinner, so I couldn’t come.”

“Yeah, she came out to Chez Shea with me and Jackson.”

“I’m so jealous.”

“Then we went to the B&O with Katarina and Ariel. We tried to call your cell at like nine-thirty but you didn’t pick up.”

“I forgot to charge it. Did you get my e-mail?”

“No, I never checked.”

“You didn’t get it?”

“No, I told you. Did you bring a swimsuit?”

And blah blah blah.

The Doctors Yamamoto, both of them, were unloading Kim’s stuff from the Mercedes.

“Let’s go buy chocolate,” I said suddenly, thinking Noel was behind me. But it was Hutch, still standing there.

“Okay,” he answered, checking his jacket pocket for his wallet.

So we left the dock and ran across the street to a little general store, where I spent money on caramel bars and jelly candies and mini Toblerones.

Hutch said he wasn’t supposed to have actual chocolate because the dermatologist had told him it was bad for his skin, and he did have very bad skin—he’d had it for years at that point—but it had never occurred to me he was trying to do anything about it.

It had just seemed like part of him.

And, horrible to say, like it was somehow his fault.

Which is obviously wrong when you write it down, but which is still the kind of thought that can lurk in the back of your head when you don’t really know someone.

So Hutch bought red licorice and sour straws and three rolls of hard candy. And we both got pop.

It was nice getting junk food at seven-thirty in the morning with no parents to tell you no.

The ferry was leaving. We all scrambled to get our stuff loaded on, then lined up so Mrs. Glass could check everyone off a list.

When it became absolutely necessary, Kim looked me in the eye and smiled a tight smile. “Hello, Ruby.”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“Good.”

“That’s nice.”

Then she clutched the arm of one of the sophomore girls and started asking her about the crew team. As if I didn’t exist.

Once the boat pulled onto the water, Hutch sat inside on a plastic yellow chair and jacked himself into his iPod. Kim and Nora and the sophomores went out on the deck.

Noel had been adopted by Courtney and her set of senior girls, who clearly judged Kieran, Mason and Grady too geeky to bother with. So I was alone. I pulled out a mystery novel and a Toblerone, found a seat near a window and started to read.

Forty-five minutes later, I went to the bathroom. It was painted yellow and had bits of stray toilet paper all over. Nora was in there, sitting on the gross floor.

She had been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I was still pissed about how she’d ditched me for Kim at the terminal.

“Nothing. It’s fine.”

“Come on.”

Nora wiped her nose.

“Kim didn’t know you were coming. She’s mad at me because I didn’t tell her.”

“I thought you were going to.”

“I couldn’t deal with calling her about it, so I sent her an e-mail. But she never got it.” Nora put her hands over her face. “So now she’s mad, and you know how she gets. She really yelled at me.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah. She made it sound like I had done this horrible thing, being friends with you again without even checking with her or telling her. And she said, like, that I set her up, letting her come.”

“You weren’t setting her up.”

“I know. But I didn’t tell her, either.” She started sobbing.

I didn’t want to act like it was all okay, because it wasn’t.

It just wasn’t.

So I gave Nora some jelly candies and the two of us sat there together, on that nasty floor, until the boat docked.

The island was awesome. Even with all that was going on, I was cranked to see the place. We were staying in a lodge that had rooms full of bunk beds, a big kitchen and a dining room with a view of the water, two saunas and a swimming pool. The teachers let us wander around and get settled, and once I’d dumped my stuff on a bunk bed I went out into the woods. There were broad paths running off in several directions, and I walked a ways on one, by myself.

It was peaceful. So peaceful that I could even imagine the trip would be civil and possibly fun. Kim would smile tightly at me, like she had on line for the boat ride, and we’d essentially ignore each other.

I’d spend the week with my friends, and nothing horrible would happen.

Peace would reign. Life would be sweet and easy.

Of course, I was wrong.

Canoe Island worked like this. In the mornings, we got up and straggled to breakfast and fended for ourselves. Glass cooked up scrambled eggs or pancakes if people got there by eight, but if you slept late you could eat peanut butter toast or something like that. There was a stack of Xeroxes on the breakfast table, and you were supposed to take one and read it before ten a.m. One day it was a section from Plato’s Republic about a cave; another day it was from a book called The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon; and another, a bit from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Different kinds of readings, all chosen to make you think.

Then we’d have a group discussion for an hour and a half, led by Glass and Wallace. I didn’t love the readings, but they were both so cranked over everything that the conversations were pretty interesting. Kim always sat off to one side, away from where I was.

Then we broke for lunch, which was sandwiches, and always un-vegetarian, so I ended up eating peanut butter again most days. Nora and Noel and I hung with Varsha and Spencer and Imari, and Kim stayed mainly with the senior girls. Hutch joined us sometimes, but overall he kept to himself.

After lunch, Glass offered a meditation session for an hour, which I did a couple of times. It was voluntary. You sat cross-legged on a mat in the big dining room and tried to think of nothing.

Which was impossible.

I’d think I was thinking of nothing, and then these thoughts would like attack my brain. About Angelo, and whether there was any hope for us. About Jackson, and how he was stepping out on Kim and she didn’t know it. About Doctor Z, and how I kind of missed her.

Hutch fell asleep once and snored. I gave him a nudge to wake him up, and Courtney and her friends laughed. “Shut up,” I said.

And they did.

In the afternoon, we were free to swim, go in the sauna or explore the landscape. We were supposed to be thinking over the philosophical readings and connecting to the natural world. But mainly we checked each other out in our bathing suits or walked through the woods, talking about TV shows and fashion and stuff.

There turned out to be one other house on the island, I guess belonging to the owners, and it was a pretty big hike up a hill to get to it. Once you got there, though, they had three llamas in a big pen.

Llamas!

Varsha, Spencer and Nora, who were with me when I discovered them, were nervous. But I had dealt with Laverne and Shirley at the zoo, so I went right up and patted the white one on the neck. He nosed my fingers, hoping for treats.

“Are you sure you should pet that thing?” asked Varsha.

“Don’t they spit?” muttered Spencer, hanging back.

“They’re really soft,” I said. “They won’t spit unless you scare them. Come try.”

Nora held out her hand shyly, but she yanked it back when the llama snorted. Varsha and Spencer kept a safe distance.

I scratched the soft fur, and whispered some llama compliments such as what a fine-lookin’ specimen he was, what nice clean hooves he had, and so forth. And I felt, for the first time in a while, like I was good at something.

Something other people weren’t good at.

Those of us on the swim team (Varsha, Spencer, Imari and me) worked out with Mr. Wallace in the later afternoons, though the pool was hardly long enough to build up any speed and it was harsh cold when we got out of the water. I worked on my flip turns, which have always been slow.

Then people were assigned to cook dinner, and other people were given jobs like making the Xeroxes for the next day or tidying up the central living area, and we did that until it was time to eat.

In the evenings, Wallace and Glass put movies on the DVD player. They said they picked films that were meant to spur our thinking on the issues we’d been talking about in the mornings, and also that they felt were just good for us to see, since we all probably watched lots of movies that were complete crap.⁵

We saw Badlands, Brazil, Dr. Strangelove, Citizen Kane, The Piano, Do the Right Thing and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

And you know what? I was the only one who’d seen them all before.

None of the other people had seen any of them, except for Noel, who’d seen Dr. Strangelove, and Grady (one of the senior boys), who’d seen Citizen Kane.

Mr. Wallace got all cranked when I told him I knew the movies already, and started (half jokingly) referring to me as a cinema expert. He’d turn to me, in the discussion, and say something like, “Ruby, have you seen Twelve Monkeys? Do you want to make any connections for us between that and what Gilliam is doing in Brazil?”

And the thing was, I had seen Twelve Monkeys—twice, actually—and I’d seen most of the other movies he asked me about as well, like A Clockwork Orange and The Shining, and The Portrait of a Lady, so I ended up talking quite a bit in those evening discussions.

Maybe people thought I was annoying or show-offy, talking so much in class.

But I found I didn’t care.

Such was the general way things went over the course of the week, but on Wednesday night, when we were discussing Do the Right Thing, Noel looked kind of gray in the face. He was sitting next to me, but he was staring down at his shoes, not saying anything.

While Grady and Courtney were disagreeing with each other over the movie, I wrote Noel a note on a scrap of paper. “Do you want to get up early and go see the llamas?” (He hadn’t seen them yet.)

He took the note absently, read it and folded it into a tiny square. But he didn’t answer.

Halfway through the discussion, he stood up and left the room. Just waved to Mr. Wallace (who was talking)—not even asking to be excused.

Mrs. Glass followed him.

I sat there as Wallace went on about Gilliam’s dystopia in Brazil versus Spike Lee’s in Do the Right Thing, feeling slightly huffy that Noel had ignored my note. Why, after we’d been to Singin’ in the Rain and pizza and all of that, after he’d said to me, “You are my thing,” and signed up for Canoe Island, and told me about his asthma when he didn’t tell anyone else; after we’d been lab partners and formed the Rescue Squad and eaten lunch together lots of times, why were we not on more regular friend-type terms? We didn’t go to each other’s houses, didn’t call each other up, didn’t hang out on weekends except for that one time.

I mean, why couldn’t I pass him a note like a normal friend and get a note back?

Thursday morning, when I went to breakfast, Noel was standing in the dining room. At first, I thought, Oh, we’re going to the llamas after all—but then I saw that he had his suitcase packed and his sleeping bag in a roll at his feet. He was looking out the window at the water, scanning for the charter ferry on the horizon.

“You’re leaving?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Why?”

He cracked a false-looking smile. “The Hooter Rescue Squad needs my expertise.”

“What?”

“I got a telegram. There are Seattle hooters in serious danger. I need to bring on my supply of Fruit Roll-Ups.”

“Noel, really. How come?”

“What, you don’t take the Squad seriously anymore?”

“Noel!”

“I know you’re Mission Director, but this assignment came from headquarters in Los Angeles. Hooter-exploitation central.”

“Are you really not telling me why you’re going?”

He turned away from me. “I just am, okay?”

I backed off. “Okay.”

“Not everything is your business, Ruby.”

“I said okay.” I walked from the dining room into the kitchen, where Mrs. Glass was frying eggs, Mr. Wallace was drinking coffee and Imari was putting strips of bacon onto the grill. I opened a cupboard and pulled out the peanut butter, deliberately starting a conversation about swim team and the meet coming up week after next.

Noel stuck his head in to tell the teachers that the boat was coming into the dock.

“Take care, DuBoise,” said Glass.

“I will.”

“See you back in school.”

And Noel was gone.

At the start of our philosophy discussion, Mr. Wallace announced that someone in Noel’s family was sick, and he’d had to go home. Afterward, I so wanted to call him and apologize, but no one besides teachers had been allowed to bring cell phones to Canoe Island, so there wasn’t a lot I could do.

That evening, before dinner. Me and Nora in the women’s sauna.

Varsha and Spencer had just left. We’d been warming up after swim practice. Nora was sweating out her toxins.

Nora: Poor Noel. Did he tell you what happened?

Me: No. Did he tell you?

Nora: No. I only know what Wallace told us.

Me: I hope it’s not anything serious.

Nora adjusted her boobs in her swimsuit, the one I saw her buying in the U District that spring. She really does have a great body, when she shows it off.

Her: Do you think…

Me: What?

Her: Do you think he’d ever, you know, think of me?

(What?

Oh.

OH.)

Me: You mean, think of you, like a thing?

Her: Uh-huh.

Me: You like him?

Her: Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.

Me: Wow.

Her: No, I definitely do.

Me: Since when?

Her: Kyle’s party.

Me: He’s shorter than you.

Her: And I’m sure I weigh more than him too. But he’s cute, don’t you think?

Me: Sure.

Her: I’m not a size-ist.

I laughed. At five foot eleven, Nora can’t afford to be a size-ist, or there would be hardly any guys for her to date.

But it hadn’t mattered until now, because she hadn’t wanted to go out with anyone.

Her: You guys are such good friends. He hasn’t said anything about me, has he?

Me: No.

Her: Are you sure?

Me: We’re really not that good of friends. I don’t think he’d tell me if he had a thing for you.

Her: He wouldn’t?

Me: No.

It hadn’t occurred to me to think of Noel and Nora. But now it did. She was kind, and funny, and good at sports. She had beautiful dark curls and huge hooters. Plus she could bake.

Every guy’s dream. Who on earth would want a neurotic eyeglass leper-slut when he could have a sporty, mentally stable big-hooter cook?

“He’d be lucky to get you,” I said. And I meant it.

“You really think so?”

“Anyone would be lucky to get you,” I said. “You’re a catch.”

Nora smiled and patted my knee. “I should ask him out, then. Because I really like him. Don’t you think?”

I felt jealous then. And a little dizzy.

Why?

I liked Angelo.

Didn’t I?

I thought, Rules for Dating in a Small School: If your friend has already said she likes a boy, don’t you go liking him too. She’s got dibs.

I didn’t know how I felt.

Or I did, and I couldn’t deal with it.

“I’m getting too hot,” I told Nora. “I’ve gotta go take a shower.”

Why Girls Are Better than Boys

1. We are prettier. There’s no denying it.

2. We smell better, too.

3. We are loyaler. Is that a word? Maybe not. In any case, we’ve been your friends since forever, and we will be your friends forever, and that what’s-his-name is just a momentary obsession we’ll all laugh about when we’re gray-haired ladies knitting on porch swings. (Although Roo states here and now that she refuses to ever, ever knit, not even when she’s eighty.)

4. We will tell you honestly if those jeans make your butt look either weirdly flat or ginormous.

5. We have tampons in our backpacks if you need one.

6. In fact, we also have tissues, gum, lip gloss, nail clippers, combs, extra hair clips, Tylenol and things of that nature, none of which guys ever have. Nora even has Band-Aids.

7. We are more likely to stay alive if we fall off an ocean liner. It’s true! Women are generally shorter and weaker in the upper body, but we have better endurance, we live longer and we float better. So there.

8. We call when we say we will.

—written by Kim and Roo, together, in Kim’s writing. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.

t he next day (Friday) after lunch, I skipped Glass’s meditation and went for a walk by myself, heading up the hill toward the llamas.

Did I suddenly have feelings for Noel just because my psychology was messed up and I liked a boy I wasn’t supposed to like? Or was I even more perverse than that, and liked him now because he was mad at me?

Or had I liked him all along, and liking Angelo was a mere momentary aberration from my true feelings?

I tried thinking of Angelo, and the heart-fluttery, I-like-him-so-much emotion that I’d had before wasn’t there. I mean, I still thought he was hot. But it wasn’t the same.

I tried thinking of Noel, but the whole thing was so confusing. I couldn’t make sense of myself.

When I got to the top of the hill, the llamas were in their pen, eating out of a trough. I couldn’t see anybody in the owners’ house, so I walked up and took some pellets in my hand. The llamas nuzzled their soft noses at me to get the food, and I stroked their hairy necks.

I stood there for a few minutes, thankful not to be thinking of anything but making the animals feel good and watching the way they pushed each other out of the way in hopes of getting some attention.

Then I heard footsteps on the path behind me, and turned.

It was Kim.

“Ruby,” she said. “I was hoping I could talk to you.”

Here is how it had been with Kim, in more detail: we seemed to have an agreement to be civil but to keep out of one another’s way whenever possible. Like when she came into the sauna and I was there, I got up after a couple of minutes and went to take a shower. Or when I saw she’d decided to do the meditation with Glass, I skipped it.

I had noticed that she avoided Courtney ( Jackson’s ex) the same way I did, and that she avoided Nora, too. She was mainly with Mei and Sierra, or with some of the sophomores who had rowed crew team with her in the spring. She never sat near me at meals, and when we’d had to cook together, she’d busied herself with a turkey while I made salad, and we’d barely had to speak.

Standing on the path, Kim looked small and alone. One of her knees was muddy, like she’d fallen on her way up the hill, and her hands were dirty too.

“Did you follow me out here?” I asked.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“You can feed the llamas if you want,” I said. “They’ll eat out of your hands.”

Kim right away scooped up some feed pellets and stretched her muddy palm out to the biggest llama, the white one.

That’s something I had always liked about her. She wasn’t timid. The llama sniffed her hand twice and started to eat.

“I owe you an apology,” she said finally.

“Oh?”

“I should never have made that Xerox last year. You know, the one with your list of boys on it.”

“I know what Xerox you’re talking about,” I answered. “There was only one Xerox.”

“I knew it was private,” Kim went on. “And I knew it wasn’t what people thought it was. I can’t really say what got into me. I was so angry I couldn’t see, like everything had gone black.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then I wrote stuff on the bathroom wall, and made Cricket and Nora take sides with me, and it was like a way of making the blackness disappear. I don’t know if you can understand that.”

“I don’t think I can,” I said. “You ruined my life.”

“I know.” Kim stopped looking at me and reached down for another handful of feed. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it over the summer, but it wasn’t until I was in Tokyo, with no one to talk to, that I really saw how far overboard I went. I should have just yelled at you or something. I mean, we used to be friends.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We used to.”

“Anyhow,” she said, looking at me again. “What I did was completely wrong. And I wish I hadn’t done it. I shouldn’t have put Nora and Cricket in the middle, either.”

“Cricket still isn’t speaking to me.”

“I know.” Kim twisted her hands around each other. “I’m really sorry.”

“All right,” I said. “That’s nice to hear, I guess.”

“Are you going to forgive me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I can forgive you. But I accept the apology. And—” I hesitated, because I didn’t really want to apologize for what happened at Spring Fling, when Jackson and I kissed, because Jackson was part of that too—a big part—and he’d been forgiven such a long time ago, as if it wasn’t even his fault. It didn’t seem fair for me to say I was sorry when he was off the hook, as if he’d had no real agency in the whole thing. “I’m sorry for flirting with Finn,” I said finally. “When you two were together. You were right about that.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”

I knew Kim wasn’t going to apologize for taking Jackson away. Because she felt like he was her true love, and to Kim’s mind, true love trumped everything.

“I need to tell you,” I blurted, not planning to. “I saw Jackson at the zoo with somebody else.”

Kim’s face fell. “What do you mean?”

“He was out with somebody else. I saw them. They had their arms around each other.”

“Why are you telling me?”

I hadn’t expected her to ask me that. “I thought you should know,” I said, after a second. “That he’s stepping out.”

Kim’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t stand it that we’re together, can you?”

“What?”

“You don’t want me and Jackson to be in love the way we are, do you? So you have to try and ruin everything.”

“That’s not it.”

“I thought we were putting it behind us.”

“We are,” I said. “That’s why I’m telling you.”

“I don’t know, Ruby. It sounds to me like you want to split us up.”

“I saw them together, Kim.”

“Look. That girl could have been anyone. You don’t know what you saw.”

“I’m pretty certain.”

“You are? Because you’re messing around where it isn’t your business, and actually, I don’t even believe what you’re saying.”

“No, I–”

“There are all kinds of reasons you’d make something like that up.”

“I’m not making it up.”

“I think you are. God, who knew you could be so spiteful after such a long time?”

“Kim, I–”

“Forget it,” she said. “Let’s just not speak anymore.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Go, then. Before I say something even worse.”

“I’m not going,” I found myself saying. “I was here first. You go.”

“All right, I will.” Kim turned her back on me and ran into the woods. As soon as she was out of sight, I could hear her burst into tears.

I stood there, looking at the llamas, and my heart started hammering and my neck felt sweaty and suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the entire universe to help me breathe. I gasped, and held on to the edge of the pen, and tried to take deep breaths like Doctor Z had taught me.

I told myself, You are not dying. You are just neurotic.

There is plenty of air.

Calm down. It was only an argument. The world isn’t coming to an end.

Calm down.

Breathe.

In the end, I made myself focus on the llamas. The way one of them was lying on the ground, with its legs tucked under itself. The way their legs were furry and fat-looking. The way they walked, slightly awkwardly. How their ears pricked up at any sound in the woods.

“Mr. Wallace, I need to use your cell phone.” I had found him in the kitchen, eating Oreos straight out of the bag with a guilty look on his face. He offered me one, and I took it.

“Is this an emergency?” he asked. “Because this is a retreat, you know, from the outside world.”

“I need to use it, and then I need to get a call back on it, later on,” I said. “Please.”

“How come?” He shoved a cookie in his mouth, whole.

“I just have someone I need to talk to.”

“Can’t it wait?” he asked. “We’re going home on Sunday morning.”

“No,” I answered. “It can’t wait.”

“Is there something I should know? I’m here to help.”

I took a deep breath. “I get panic attacks,” I said. “I haven’t had any in a while, but I just had one, a bad one, and I need to talk to my shrink.”

He took his cell out of his pocket and handed it over. “Give it back when you’re done,” he said. “I have unlimited minutes.”

“This is Doctor Lorraine Zaczkowski. You have reached my answering machine. At the tone, please leave a message with your name and telephone number. You have as long as you need. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.”

Beep.

“Doctor Z, this is Ruby Oliver. I just really, really need to talk to someone who knows what’s going on. I’m on a school retreat, but here’s the number.”

Then I took the phone and went down to the dock where the boats come in. I curled up in a ball under my jacket, waiting for her to ring.

She called back at seven o’clock. It was dinnertime, and I could see the lights glowing from the lodge a hundred yards away.

“Hello, is this Ruby?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor Zaczkowski.”

It was so good to hear her voice that I started to cry into the telephone. But as I calmed down and laid it all out—about Kim and the llamas and the apology and the argument—I could feel my body unwind. I uncurled from my ball and stretched out on the dock.

“Do you know why you told Kim about Jackson stepping out?” Doctor Z asked. “It sounds like you’re saying that was the moment that changed the course of your interaction.”

“Yeah. We were almost getting along before that.”

Doctor Z was silent. I could hear her flick a lighter open, then inhale.

“I didn’t think she’d get mad,” I said. “I thought she’d be grateful for the information.”

“You were doing something kind?”

“She didn’t see it that way, but yes. I think I was.”

“Oh?”

“She thought I was trying to sabotage her and Jackson. Which I can see, I guess. Since I’ve done it before.”

“Back in September you had some complicated feelings about telling Kim that Jackson wrote you notes. Am I right in remembering?”

I thought back. “I wanted to tell because I wanted her to think Jackson still liked me.”

“Yes.”

“So like it wasn’t out of goodness or kindness at all. It was sour and mean.”

“Oh?”

“Because I’m neurotic bitter breakup lady and I was trying to make a power move.”

“But you didn’t end up telling her, did you?” asked Doctor Z.

“No.”

“So why did you tell her something similar now? Was it a power move this time?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “But I guess coming to Canoe Island at all was. I mean, not a manipulative, evil power move so much as me refusing to lose my friends and not go on the retreat when I wanted to go, just because she was going to be there, too.”

“You were standing up for yourself.”

“Yeah. But that’s not what I was doing when I told about Jackson.”

“No?”

“I wasn’t showing Kim that Jackson still liked me. I was showing that he didn’t. That he was with that zoo girl. That in fact, anything between him and me is well and truly over.”

I hadn’t said that out loud yet.

It sounded good.

“What Jackson was doing with that zoo girl was wrong,” I went on. “Plain and simple. And no matter what’s between Kim and me, it’s bad to have your boyfriend cheating on you.”

“You told her out of kindness.”

“Because we pledged to tell each other the truth. To tell each other ‘all relevant data.’ In The Boy Book,” I answered. “And even if we don’t have a friendship anymore, and even if it’s not my business, I don’t think Kim deserves to be powerless and ignorant when her boyfriend’s stepping out.”

Doctor Z inhaled cigarette smoke, audibly, and then said the kind of thing she always says. “Is there any way you could tell her that?”

“Duh,” I answered. “I could just tell her.”

“Um-hm.”

“But she might try to kill me. You know that, don’t you? I’ll be axe-murdered by a venomous exchange-program escapee, and it will be all because of your bad advice.”

“Roo,” announced Doctor Z, “our hour is up. Do you want to make an appointment for next week?”

“Yes,” I answered after a pause. “I do.”

I went through the last day of Canoe Island in a daze. I couldn’t speak to Kim because (1) she was never alone, and (2) I was terrified. But I didn’t have any more panic things, and not much happened in general.

When the boat docked in Seattle on Sunday in the late afternoon, and my mom and dad were there jumping up and down in front of the Honda like absolute lunatics, I felt a flood of relief that Canoe Island was over. But I also felt like I had done something, and been somewhere, and proven myself in ways that I hadn’t before.

We gave Hutch a ride home because no one had come to pick him up. He said his parents were away on vacation. “Then come to our place for dinner!” cried my dad. “Wait, no, let’s go out to Chinese. Judy Fu’s Snappy Dragon? Whaddya say?”

Hutch looked at me sideways. “I don’t want to barge in on your family outing,” he said. “That’s cool.”

“You should come,” I said, making my voice sound warm even though I was actually a little unsure because he’s a leper and he sometimes weirds me out—and because for so long, just in principle, I have been essentially anti–John Hutchinson. “They make these excellent fried wontons,” I added.

“Oh,” Hutch mumbled, in that foggy way of his. “If there are wontons involved, count me in. You didn’t say wontons before.”

“Wontons, wontons, wontons!” yelled my dad.

And I yelled it after him. “Wontons, wontons, wontons!”

So Hutch came to dinner with us.

And it was okay.

If this were a movie of my life, I would go on for a couple of weeks in a state of dejection, after which Noel would appear on my doorstep one day begging forgiveness for being so cranky and hopefully bringing some quality gift. We would kiss somewhere cinematic, like outside in a snowstorm (Bridget Jones) or on an ice rink (Serendipity) or on a fire escape (Pretty Woman). And that would be the end.

But as I have learned, to my disappointment, life is never like the movies. And as I have also learned, thanks to what is now nine months of therapy (with one month-long hiatus): if you don’t want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you. Like Doctor Z says, “We can’t know or say what other people will do. You have to think what you want to do to get the situation where you want it to be.”

Noel wasn’t in school Monday. After swim practice, I got Varsha to drop me in the U District, where I bought a CD of goofy frat-rock songs. Then I caught the bus to Noel’s house, which took an hour. And I rang his bell.

“Ruby!” cried Mrs. DuBoise, wiping her hands on her apron. She was completely covered in tomato sauce and had a blotch of flour on her cheek. “I am attempting to make pizza. Have you ever made pizza? I have this stone that’s supposed to make our regular oven like a pizza oven.”

“Cool.”

“Noel!” she yelled. “Your friend Ruby is here!”

There was no response. “He’s probably gelling his hair,” she said, winking. “Noel!” she yelled again.

“What?”

“Ruby is here! Can she come up?”

“I guess so,” he yelled down.

“I take no responsibility for his manners.” Mrs. DuBoise smiled. “It’s like trying to train a tyrannosaur.”

“That’s okay.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” she asked. “I can’t vouch for the quality of my pizza, because it’s an experiment. But I’m making chicken, too, because Pierre and Mignon will not eat anything that involves tomatoes, even if you bribe them with chocolate.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I have to talk to Noel first. We had an argument.”

Mrs. DuBoise widened her eyes. “Oooooh. That explains a lot,” she said. “All right, then. Up the stairs, second door on the left.”

I started up the stairs, then stopped. “Um, Mrs. DuBoise.”

“Call me Michelle.”

“Is the person okay? The person who was sick in your family, I mean. Who Noel came home for.”

She looked confused, and then answered, “Yes, yes. He’s fine. Thanks for asking, Ruby.”

Noel’s room was messy. Clothes and books and CD cases were all over the floor. Noel was sitting at his desk, feet up. It looked like he’d been reading a music magazine.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“I came to say I’m sorry,” I told him. “For prying into your business.”

“I was an asshole,” he said.

“No, you weren’t. I was being nosy. I do that sometimes. Get into people’s business when they don’t want.”

“Maybe.”

“I completely do. But I have good intentions.”

“Roo.” Noel took his feet off the desk. “I want to tell you something.”

“What?”

“The person who was sick in my family—that’s what they told you, right? That someone in my family was sick?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it was me.”

“What?”

“I’ve been blowing off my asthma meds and smoking and generally not dealing with this fucking annoying situation with my lungs, because it just…” He shrugged. “Anyway. For a couple of years now I’ve been ignoring it. Wishing it would disappear. And there must have been a ton of pollen or dust or something up on Canoe Island, or maybe I was stressed about something, I don’t know, and given that I didn’t even bring my anti-inflammatories and smoked like a hundred cigarettes out on the dock, I was having what they call bronchoconstriction. Asthma attacks.”

“Oh.”

“I couldn’t breathe half the time and I kept having to use the puffer way more than I’m supposed to. I was hiding out in the bathroom to do it. It was completely depressing and lame. Finally, I told Wallace and Glass what was going on, but I asked them not to say anything. Not even to you.”

“How come?”

“I—I’ve been so fucking pissed about having this disease. I didn’t want to be dealing. It was just embarrassing and stupid, and—” He looked down at his hands. “I didn’t handle it well.”

“Oh,” I answered. “I wouldn’t have told anybody.”

“I know.” Noel sighed. “The point is, I’m supposed to tell people. And I’m supposed to take care of it. It’s safer if people know. And still I don’t tell. I’m like a madman.”

I nodded.

“Glass finally called my parents and they made me come home and see the doctor.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m not smoking anymore. They gave me a nicotine patch. And I got a new kind of puffer, so that should help. And I’m taking the stupid pills.”

“That’s good.”

“They made me promise I’d start telling people, too. So they can help me out if there’s a problem.”

“Are you still gonna do cross-country?”

“Yeah. I just have to be not such an angry youth about it. Not taking my meds, et cetera.”

I held out the CD, which was in a plastic bag. “I brought you this.”

Noel pulled it out and smiled. “Roo! This is excellent.” He looked at me, still standing near the door of his room. “Sit down, okay? I promise not to be an angry youth or do any more asthma bitching.”

I sat on the floor.

Because the bed just seemed too bedlike.

Noel got down and sat next to me. He pulled the wrapper off the CD and put the disc in his player. “My Sharona” banged through the speakers.

“Ruby?” asked Noel, putting his hand on my knee.

“Yeah?”

“Um.”

“What?”

“Can I kiss you?”

I wanted him to.

I so wanted him to.

It was like Angelo and Jackson and every other boy I’d ever kissed had flown out of my mind, leaving only Noel.

But I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh,” he said, pulling his hand off my knee and looking down. “Sorry. I kind of thought things were going that way.”

“I thought they were, too,” I said. “They were.”

“But they’re not?”

“No.”

“Is it ’cause you have a boyfriend?”

“What? What boyfriend?”

“I heard it from Jackson.”

“When did you hang out with Jackson?”

“We’re on cross-country together.” Noel shrugged. “I heard him tell Kyle in the locker room.”

“And he said–”

“That you had a boyfriend. Some Garfield guy named Angelo.”

I didn’t want to confess my lie. It was too psycho. “Oh, Angelo. That was just a little nothing thing,” I explained. “It’s over now.”

“Oh.” Noel brushed my lips with his index finger. “So maybe I can kiss you?” He leaned forward. “Because I’ve been wanting to for a really long time.”

I pulled back. “I can’t.”

He stroked my hair. “Why not? If things are going that way, like you said.”

“I get panic attacks,” I said, shifting myself away. “Do you know what those are?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

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

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

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

“Like what?”

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

Noel paused. And then said: “I see.”

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

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

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

“Oh.”

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

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

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

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

Dear Kim,

We were friends once.

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

So I want you to have this book.

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

Anyway.

Here’s The Boy Book.

Brava for Kaptain Kangaroo. May she rest in peace.

—Roo

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

And I felt relieved.

Like that whole era of my life was over.

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

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

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

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

Nancy Drews.

That is, things I am good at. ¹

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

2. Talking. I’m like my mom that way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. I am good at giving presents.

11. And finding clothes in vintage shops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I decided it wasn’t my business to tell.

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

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

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

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

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

And I had to agree.

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

Muffins.

Which was true.

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

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

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

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

And to remind me that they were okay with that.

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

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

“Yeah, only I’m not.”

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

Ag.

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

We went back to being partners in French.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not care.

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

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

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

I can live with it.

And I do.

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

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

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

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

The answer was always obvious: you wouldn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meghan snored softly.

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

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

The water lapped at the sides of our houseboat.

And I felt lucky.

acknowledgments

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

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

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

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

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

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

And the next thing she knows…she is.

Afly.

On the wall of the boys’ locker room.

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

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

f riday. I am eating alone in the lunchroom.

Again.

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

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

Quadriceps. Quadriceps.

Knee.

Calf muscle.

Dull point; must sharpen pencil.

Hell! Pencil dust in fries.

Whatever. They still taste okay.

Calf muscle.

Ankle.

Foot.

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

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

I think I made his butt too small.

Do-over.

I wish I had my pink eraser, I don’t like this white one.

Butt.

Connecting to: leg…and…quadriceps.

There. A finished Spidey outline. I have to add the suit. And some shadowing. And the details of the building. Then fill in the rest of Doc Ock as he hurtles off the edge.

Mmmm. French fries.

Hell again! Ketchup on Spidey.

Lick it off.

Cammie Holmes is staring at me like I’m some lower form of life.

“What are you looking at?” I mutter.

“Nothing.”

“Then. Stop. Staring,” I say, sharpening my pencil again, though it doesn’t need it.

This Cammie is all biscuits. She’s stacked like a character in a comic book. Cantaloupes are strapped to her chest.

Her only redeeming quality.

“Why are you licking your Superman drawing?” Cammie tips her nose up. “That’s so kinky. I mean, I’ve heard of licking a centerfold, but licking Superman?”

“Spider.”

“What?”

“Spider-Man.”

“Whatever. Get a life, Gretchen.”

She’s gone. From across the lunchroom comes her nasal voice: “Taffy, get this: I just caught Gretchen Yee giving oral to some Superman drawing she made.”

Spider. Spider. Spider-Man.

“She would.” Taffy Johnson. Stupid tinkly laugh.

Superman is a big meathead. I’d never draw Superman. Much less give him oral.

I haven’t given anybody oral, anyway.

I hate those girls.

Taffy is doing splits in the middle of the lunchroom floor, which is just gross. Who wants to see her crotch like that? Though of course everybody does, and even if they didn’t, she wouldn’t care because she’s such a unique spirit or whatever.

I hate those girls, and I hate this place: the Manhattan High School for the Arts. Also known as Ma-Ha.

Supposedly, it’s a magnet high school for students talented in drawing, painting, sculpture or photography. You have to submit a portfolio to get in, and when I did mine (which was all filled with inks of comic-book characters I taught myself to draw in junior high) and when I finally got my acceptance letter, my parents were really excited. But once you’re here, it’s nothing but an old, ugly New York public school building, with angry teachers and crap facilities like any other city public school—except I’ve got drawing class every day, painting once a week and art history twice. I’m in the drawing program.

Socially, Ma-Ha is like the terrible opposite of the schools you see on television, where everyone wants to be the same as everyone else. On TV, if you don’t conform and wear what the popular kids are wearing, and talk like they talk, and act like they do—then you’re a pariah.

Here, everyone wants to be different.

People have mohawks and dreadlocks and outrageous thrift-store clothes; no one would be caught dead in ordinary jeans and a T-shirt, because they’re all so into expressing their individuality. A girl from the sculpture program wears a sari every day, even though her family’s Scandinavian. There’s that kid who’s always got that Pink Panther doll sticking out of her jacket pocket; the boy who smokes using a cigarette holder like they did in forties movies; a girl who’s shaved her head and pierced her cheeks; Taffy, who does Martha Graham–technique modern dance and wears her leotard and sweats all day; and Cammie, who squeezes herself into tight goth outfits and paints her lips vampire red.

They all fit in here, or take pride in not fitting in, if that makes any sense—and if you’re an ordinary person you’ve got to do something at least, like dye your hair a strange color, because nothing is scorned so much as normalcy. Everyone’s a budding genius of the art scene; everyone’s on the verge of a breakthrough. If you’re a regular-looking person with regular likes and dislikes and regular clothes, and you can draw so it looks like the art in a comic book, but you can’t “express your interior life on the page,” according to Kensington (my drawing teacher), and if you can’t “draw what you see, rather than imitate what’s in that third-rate trash you like to read” (Kensington again), then you’re nothing at Ma-Ha.

Nothing. That’s me.

Gretchen Kaufman Yee. Ordinary girl.

Two months ago I capitulated to nonconformity-conformity and had my hair bleached white and then dyed stop-sign red. It cost sixty dollars and it pissed off my mother, but it didn’t work.

I’m still ordinary.

i take literature second period with Glazer. I rarely do the reading. I don’t like to admit that about myself; I’d like to be the person who does the reading—but I don’t. It seems like I’ve always got some new comic to read on the subway, and the homework for drawing is more interesting.

In literature, I can’t concentrate because Titus Antonakos sits next to me at the big rectangular table. He’s an Art Rat, meaning he’s one of the boys in the sophomore drawing program, group B. He’s delicious and smart and graceful and hot. White skin, with high cheekbones and messy dark hair. Lips like a Greek statue—a little too full for the rest of his face. He’s got a retro Johnny Rotten look; today he’s wearing a green vinyl jacket, an ironic “I heart New York” T-shirt, jeans and combat boots. He’s thin to the point that he’s off some other girls’ radar, but not mine.

He is absolutely on my radar.

Titus.

Touch my arm by accident like you did yesterday.

Notice me.

“Gretchen?” It’s Glazer.

“Huh?”

“Vermin.” She’s obviously repeating herself. She sounds annoyed. “The word. I asked you to define it.”

“It’s a bug, right?” I say. “Like a cockroach.”

“It can be,” says Glazer, smirking. “Most people do assume that Kafka had his protagonist, Gregor Samsa, turn into a cockroach. That’s the standard interpretation of ‘The Metamorphosis.’ But if you all turn to page five, you’ll see that the word Kafka used in German—and the word in our translation—is not cockroach or bug, but vermin—a ‘monstrous vermin,’ Kafka says—which can be taken to mean any kind of animal, especially those that are noxious or repellent in some way: rats, mice, lice, flies, squirrels.”

No idea what she is talking about. I just know the story is about some guy who turns into a bug.

Whatever.

Titus.

God, he smells good.

“Titus?” Glazer, calling on him. He actually put his hand up.

“Doesn’t it also mean disgusting people?” Titus says. “Like you could say people who—I don’t know—molest kids or steal from their mothers—they’re vermin.”

“Absolutely.” Glazer lights up. “And by extension, you sometimes see the word used as a derogatory term for the masses—for large groups of ordinary people. Or for prisoners. It expresses contempt. Now: why would Kafka use such a word to describe Gregor’s metamorphosis?”

Titus did the reading.

He just seems good, somehow.

Like the core of him is good when the core of other people is dark, or sour. Like he’d do the reading even if no one was checking, because he cares about stuff.

I wish he didn’t hang with those Art Rats. I have class with them every single day, but I can’t figure those guys out.

Because they’re boys, I guess, and because they try so hard to seem slick and sure. They’re nice one minute and cruel the next.

And with Shane around all the time, I can’t talk to Titus.

At least, I can’t talk and make any sense.

Truth: with Shane around I can’t talk to anyone.

The bell. “Finish through page sixty for Monday and enjoy the weekend,” calls Glazer. A rustle of books and backpacks.

“Hey, Titus.” My voice sounds squeaky. (Shane, thank goodness, is out the door.)

“Yeah?” His mouth looks so soft.

“Oh, I—”

Hell. Was I going to say something? Did I have something to say?

Oh hell,

oh hell,

he’s looking right at me, I’ve got nothing to say.

“Do you—”

What?

“—do you remember what the Kensington is?”

Titus bends over to pick his pencil off the floor. There’s a strip of skin between his shirt and the top of his jeans in the back. I can see the top of his boxers. Plain light blue. “Sketch three sculptures of the human body at the Met, remember?”

Of course I remember. If I had a single bone in me I’d ask him to go there on Saturday with me.

I should ask him.

“Oh, right,” I say. “That’s it. Thanks.”

Oh! I am a coward!

Spineless, boneless, vermin girl.

“Sure. See you in gym.” I try to smile at him but it’s too late. He’s gone.

l ater that afternoon, Sanchez the gym teacher makes us play dodgeball, which leaves bruises all over my legs. I’m not that fast, and I get hit a lot. Titus hits me twice.

“Do you think it means something?” I ask Katya after gym, sitting on the locker room bench in a towel.

Katya is naked in the shower like that’s a normal way to have a conversation. She’s washing her hair like she’s just everyday naked in front of people.

Well, we are everyday naked in front of people. Gym is five days a week, shower required. But anyway, Katya is having a naked conversation like it doesn’t even bother her, which it obviously doesn’t—even though she’s not built like a model, just regular.

The locker room is so cramped and tiny that I can feel the warm spray of her shower water on my knee as I’m sitting on the bench.

“It would have meant something if we were sixth graders,” says Katya, scrunching her eyes as she rinses out the shampoo.

“Like what would it mean?”

“You want to hear me say it?” She’s laughing.

“Yes.”

“It would have meant that he liked you back.”

“I didn’t say I liked him,” I mutter.

“Oh please,” Katya says, ignoring my point, “that’s very sixth grade. You know, how boys were always teasing the girls they liked, pulling their hair. But we’re way too old for that crap now. So I don’t think it means anything if he hits you with the dodgeball. Sorry.”

Katya is always such a realist. She’s soaping her underarms like she’s alone. I could never do that.

I make a quick dive out of my towel and into my bra and a T-shirt from the second Spider-Man movie, covered with pastel dust. “I didn’t say I liked him,” I say again.

“Oh, don’t give me that.”

“What? I’m analyzing the cruel and particularly complicated sociodynamics of sophomore dodgeball.”

“No, you’re not.” Katya is drying off now. In the next row over, annoying Taffy is stretching and showing off her dancer’s body while listening to our conversation. I hate this tiny-ass locker room.

“What, it’s that obvious?” I ask.

“It’s all over your face, all the time,” Katya says, grinning. “Titus, Titus, Titus.”

I’m blushing. I can feel it. And my Chinese half makes it so that once my cheeks go pink, they stay that way for hours.

Katya never turns pink. Broad, Russian American face and a lumpy nose and long pale brown hair—you wouldn’t think she’d be pretty if you made a list of her features, but somehow she is. She’s mysterious. You can’t read what she’s thinking.

“Well, he’s better than the others,” I say, conscious of Taffy in the next row, trying to sound less obsessed.

“Whatever.”

“He is. Let’s be objective. He’s cuter than Brat Parker. Nicer than Adrian Ip. More interesting than Malachy.”

“What’s wrong with Malachy?” Katya sounds annoyed.

“He never says anything. Like having his ears pierced makes him so slick he doesn’t have to talk.”

“You don’t have to be so mean about everyone, Gretchen.”

“I’m not being mean. I’m doing an objective comparison of the Art Rats.”

Which isn’t true. I am being mean.

I feel mean. I don’t know why. This school is making me evil, maybe.

“It’s not objective. It’s subjective.” Katya hooks her bra behind her back. “It’s just what you think, not the truth.”

“Don’t bite me, Katya. I’m only talking.”

“Well, you’re talking about people you barely know.”

“I know them. They’ve been in practically every class with me all year. I know Shane.”

“We all know you know Shane. Enough with Shane.” Katya gets into a dress she made herself on her mother’s sewing machine.

“Wanna get a slice?” I try changing the subject.

“Can’t. I’ve got to pick the monsters up at day care.”

I wish she didn’t have three little sisters. Wish she didn’t live an hour-fifteen away from school on the F train, all the way in Brighton Beach.

“You’re always busy these days,” I say, and it comes out pitiful and whiny.

“That’s life, Gretchen,” snaps Katya. “I’ve got responsibilities. I’ll call you later.”

She’s out the door. My only friend, really.

I can’t count Shane, even though we said we’d be friends after last October.

We’re not, obviously.

Not friends.

Just people who groped each other for a few weeks at the start of this year, when he was new and sat in front of me in math. One day, he wrote me a note about this nose picker sitting in the front,

and we wrote notes back and forth about boogers,

which led to notes back and forth about other stuff,

and he ate lunch with me and Katya,

and put funny sketches in my locker,

and we were friends. I thought.

But one day Shane walked out of school with me when classes were over,

and got on the subway with me,

and went home with me, without me even asking him.

He kissed me as soon as we got in the door. We made out on the couch, when my parents weren’t home,

and watched TV on the couch together when they were.

After that, we made out in the hallways of Ma-Ha,

by the boat pond in Central Park,

on the corner by the subway stop, and in the back of a movie theater.

People saw us. And he was my boyfriend. For a little.

Now, he’s just someone whose mouth I stuck my tongue in,

someone whose spit got all over me and I didn’t mind at the time.

Now, he’s an alien being,

just like all the rest of those Art Rat boys—

or even more than the rest.

It goes to show that if you only have two friends in a whole godforsaken poseur high school, you shouldn’t start up kissing one of them, because three weeks later he’ll say he doesn’t feel that way,

whatever way that was,

didn’t feel like drooling on me anymore, I guess is what it meant—

and he’ll say, “Hey, it was fun and all, but let’s cool it now, yeah?”

and “You know we’ll always be friends, right? Excellent. Let’s hang out sometime, Gretchen, that would be great,”

only not with kissing,

and not with it meaning anything,

and then, when it comes down to it, never actually hanging out,

and never being friends again, unless people ask and then we both say:

“Yeah, we had a thing going for a few weeks there, but then we both decided we would just be friends.”

Only he’s the one who decided.

And we’re not friends, not anymore.

Now he’s got the Art Rats and goes out with Jazmin, and little Gretchen Yee isn’t worth his time, like she was when he was new in school and lonely.

Hell.

I’ll get my stupid slice of pizza by myself, then.

ALSO BY e. lockhart

The Boyfriend List

Fly on the Wall

Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc.

New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens

Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition of this work as follows:

Lockhart, E.

The boy book: a study of habits and behaviors, plus techniques for taming them / E. Lockhart.

p. cm.

Companion to the author’s The boyfriend list.

Summary: A high school junior continues her quest for relevant data on the male species, while enjoying her freedom as a newly licensed driver and examining her friendship with a clean-living vegetarian classmate.

eISBN: 978-0-375-84880-3

[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L79757Boy 2006

[Fic]—dc22 2006004601

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v1.0

Table of Contents

E Lockhart The Boy Book (Ruby Oliver 2)

Title Page

Dedication

1. The Care and Ownership of Boobs

2. Rules for Dating in a Small School

3. Your Business is Our Business: A Pledge

4. What to Wear When You Might Be Fooling Around