The Treasure Map of Boys

The Treasure Map of Boys (A Ruby Oliver Novel)

E. Lockhart

For Sarah and Lauren, who made this book so much better than it was

1.

I Am Not Always a Good Friend

Ruby,

In laboratories dim

We bend to Fleischman's whim

And suffer twice a week

Horrors terrible to speak.

Will you deign

To ease my pain?

Or will I slowly

Go insane?

Say you'll be my partner true In Chemistry, it's me and you.

--written on yellow legal paper in Noel's cramped, somewhat illegible scrawl; found in my mail cubby, folded eight thousand times and with a bit of coffee spilled on one corner.

8

the first day back from winter break, junior year, I walked into Chem to find a head of red cabbage on every lab table. Also a juicer. Tate Prep is the kind of school where the chemistry teacher has a budget to buy fourteen juicers. I go there on scholarship.

Mr. Fleischman started the class yelling, "Happy New Year, people! Wash your hands and juice your cabbages! No fingers in the machinery!"

He was a small white man, only five foot two, with a pug nose and a large bald spot ill concealed by a comb-over. He jumped up and down more than most fifty-year-olds do and dyed what little hair he had left a shiny black. "Kitchen science!" cried Fleischman. "That's our new unit, people. Everyday chemical reactions that happen in your very own home."

I washed my hands and juiced my cabbage. Sadly, I was familiar with the procedures for juicing vegetables because my mother had started the new year by embarking on a raw food diet. Her new idea of breakfast was celery juice.

The cabbage was my cabbage and my cabbage alone because Noel was late. I'd gotten his note that morning in my mail cubby, but I hadn't seen him since before the holiday.

"Say you'll be my partner true/In Chemistry, it's me and you," he'd written.

Only now he wasn't here.

"Come to the front and get six plastic cups, protective gloves, baking soda, orange juice, liquid Drano, ammonia

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and vinegar," announced Fleischman. Katarina and Ariel, golden girls of the junior class, were squealing at the semi-disgusting purple glop that had formed in our juicers.

"I think I'm gonna puke from the smell," said Ariel.

"Don't puke," called Fleischman. "There's no puking allowed in chemistry. Scientists never puke."

"You smell it," said Ariel. "See how you feel."

Fleischman ignored her. "Be careful with the ammonia, people. And the Drano. I'm not seeing the gloves on your hands. The gloves go on your hands. Is that too much to expect you to figure out?"

I had to make three trips to the front to get everything. The third time, Ariel was there too. She held a little dish of orange juice. "Hello, Ruby," she said to me. "How was your break?"

"Good," I answered. Since the debacles of sophomore year had died down, Ariel, Katarina and Heidi all spoke to me if they had to. But I knew what they really thought of me.

"We skied Mount Baker over New Year's," Ariel said.

"Cool." I shrugged. Skiing is not in my budget. I spent winter break helping my dad repair cracks in his greenhouse off the side of the houseboat we live in and watching way too many movies. Dad runs an obscure and deeply earnest gardening newsletter entitled Container Gardening for the Rare Bloom Lover.

Why was Ariel making conversation with me, anyhow?

"Yeah," she went on. "Me, Katarina and Heidi were all about Sneaky Pete and Blueberry Cat Track."

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I had no idea what she was talking about. Possibly ski trails. Possibly coffee drinks. Video games? Sexual positions?

"But Cricket skied the Chute and Kim owned Gunners Bowl," Ariel went on. "Jackson, Kyle and those guys came for New Year's. Such an excellent party."

Oh.

That was why she was telling me this.

Kim and Cricket are my ex-friends. Ariel was making sure I knew they'd all spent New Year's skiing together, which meant that Kim and Cricket were now firmly in the Katarina set.

"Spankin'," I said. Because of course it hurt that she had Kim and Cricket now. She meant it to hurt. There was nothing I could say in retaliation except something that would confuse her.¹

"Whatever," Ariel answered, wrinkling her nose.

I went back to my table and put spoonfuls of baking soda in my cups of cabbage juice.

The cabbage juice turned blue.

"I see it's turning blue, people!" Fleischman cried, jumping. "That's good. Now add precise dropperfuls of your various other substances to the blue cabbage juice, and make a record of how many droppers it takes to return the fluid to reddish purple. Then come to conclusions about the acidic and basic contents of your ingredients."

***

¹ Spankin': My new favorite word. As in, "That's a spankin' pair of lederhosen you're wearing, where did you get those?" Not as in, "Stop your whinin' or you'll get a spankin', you little brat."

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I added ammonia to one of the cups. The juice turned green. Did that mean it was acidic or basic?

What were we supposed to be writing down, again?

As my lab partner, Noel was usually Captain of the Pen, while I was usually Captain of the Beaker.

Where was Noel? Was he really going to ask to be my lab partner and then ditch class?

And why had he asked to be my lab partner, anyway? We had been lab partners last term. We were obviously going to be lab partners this term too. There was no need to write a note about it.

The Drano turned my cabbage juice blue.

"Later in the term we're doing the science of baking!" Fleischman continued. "Did you people know that chemical reactions are taking place constantly in your home ovens? In your very own blenders? It's fascinating, I promise you."

The plastic gloves felt hot on my hands and I was starting to sweat in the warm lab. I was nervous about seeing Noel.

Because Noel liked me. Or at least, he once liked me.

And I liked him back, if liking someone means you want to touch him whenever he's sitting next to you and he makes you laugh and you find yourself thinking about him, like, when you're alone in the shower with the door locked. If liking someone means that whenever he's in a room with you, even an auditorium or the refectory, you know exactly where he is and what he's doing, like you've got Noel radar.

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Yeah.

Last fall, Noel had asked if he could kiss me. I wanted to say yes and throw myself on top of him like a kissing lunatic--but there were a thousand reasons not to. It was very complicated. So I told him no.

After that incident of extreme awkwardness, we had settled into being lab partners and occasionally eating lunch together with other people; a semi-friendship that didn't involve e-mailing, calling, writing each other notes or hanging out after school. So far, it had worked out okay. I mean, I just tried not to think about him-and most of the time I managed it.

But now, he had left me this note. And if you're like me (which hopefully you're not, because that would mean you're so neurotic you need professional help), you've read it over four times. "Say you'll be my partner true," he wrote. "In Chemistry, it's me and you."

It's verging on romantic, am I right?

"Will you deign/To ease my pain?/Or will I slowly/ Go insane?"

I felt an unreasonably happy glow every time I thought of it. A glow, followed by a wave of agonizing guilt. Glow. Guilt. Glow. Guilt. Glow. Guilt.

That was how my morning had been, leading up to fourth-period Chem.

Then Noel ditched class. I turned my cabbage juice a variety of shades of bluish purple, made the best notes I could and left without speaking another word to anyone.

13

The Thousand Reasons Not to Kiss Noel

1. Nora likes him. She told me so. True, she hasn't done anything about it except giggle when he's around and touch his shoulder too much. But she is my best friend, the only one of my old crowd who came back after the debacles of sophomore year--and she liked him first.

2. Nearly the entire population of Tate Prep thinks I am a megaslut, even though I've kissed a total of six guys in sixteen years and have never even reached the nether regions. Given my shattered reputation, I should swear off guys for a while. Like forever.

3. I am still mentally unstable thanks to said sophomore-year debacles and have to see Doctor Z to keep some semblance of sanity. I am obviously in no shape to have an actual boyfriend.

4. I have two whole friends, Meghan and Nora. If I went for Noel, and Nora hated me for it, Meghan would probably hate me too. I cannot afford to be friendless. I have been there before, thank you very much, and have no intentions of returning to complete leprosy.²

--entry in The Girl Book, my sort-of, only-sometimes-updated journal, written December of junior year.

Okay, so those are only four reasons, not a thousand. But they might as well have been a thousand, as they still resulted in me not kissing Noel and Noel not kissing me.

***

² Leprosy: It's a metaphor. Leprosy is a horrible bacterial disease that disfigures your face and rots your hands and feet. They used to send all the lepers into isolation hospitals or make them wear bells so people would hear them coming and stay clear.

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I knew I shouldn't write him back when he didn't show up for Chem. Pretend you have some complete muffin for a lab partner, I told myself. If Noel were a muffin, you wouldn't write him a note just because he missed Chem.³

Don't write him.

You don't have to write him.

It's better not to write him.

You owe it to Nora not to write him.

Here's what I wrote:

Captain of the Pen,

Cabbages red

Became cabbage juice blue

Became substances vile

And of many a hue.

I juiced and I poured;

I measured stuff too.

But naught came out right,

For 'twas done without you.

--Captain of the Beaker

***

³Muffin:Not exactly an insult. A muffin is pleasant. It's just nothing to get cranked about. You never think, Oh, I'm going to drive out of my way so I can get that unbelievably scrumptious muffin they have at the bakery. No, you think, Unbelievably scrumptious brownie. Unbelievably scrumptious white chocolate cookie. You wouldn't go out of your way for something as ordinary as a muffin, that's what I'm explaining here.

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Maybe Nora's feelings for Noel had just been a passing attraction and she hadn't really meant it.

Maybe she got over him during winter break while her family was on Grand Cayman.

Maybe Nora would fall madly in love with that guy on the basketball team who kissed her in December, or maybe she had already started seeing some hot college boyfriend she met through her brother, Gideon.

If so, it was okay to write this note.

I folded it into an origami balloon, blew it up and shoved it deep into Noel's cubby.

16

2.

I Give Instructions for Ruining Your Life

How to Ruin Your Life in Nine Easy Steps:

You too can ruin your life. It isn't hard. Are you ready? Here's how.

1. Lose your first-ever boyfriend (Jackson) to your then-best friend (Kim).

2. In the process, lose your best friend. Suffer a broken heart.

3. Kiss your ex-boyfriend (Jackson).

4. Get caught kissing him. Congratulations! Now you've lost all your friends, because you're obviously a wench who runs around making out with other people's boyfriends.

5. Suffer panic attacks.

6. See a shrink.

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7. Write a list of all the boys you ever crushed on, going back to nursery school. Because your shrink tells you to. It's for your mental health.

8. Accidentally leave a copy of said boyfriend list where people who hate you can find it.

9. Do nothing. The people who hate you find the list. Misunderstand it. And xerox it.

Voila! You are not only a leper, but also a famous slut. Life successfully ruined.

--entry in The Girl Book, written December of junior year. the panic things have gotten better since I started going to see Doctor Z, my shrink. And the leprosy has abated some since Nora started being friends with me again. But my reputation still sucks.

I showed Doctor Z what I wrote a couple of days before school started in January. She was asking me to think about why things happened to me. Whether any part of the debacle of my life was under my control. She read "How to Ruin Your Life" carefully, then asked: "What might you do to cause the situation to be different this year?"

"Nothing," I told her.

"Nothing?" That's not the kind of answer she likes to hear.

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"I can't do anything but try to stay out of trouble."

"Then how will you stay out of trouble, Ruby?" she asked me. "There must be something you can articulate."

I thought for a moment. "I can keep away from boys," I answered.

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3.

I Exist in the State of Noboyfriend

The state of Noboyfriend is not a state like New Jersey is a state. It's a state like catatonia is a state. Or depression. Or ennui.¹

A person in the state of Noboyfriend is in stasis. Nothing is happening on the boy front. So little happened last month, and so little is expected to happen next month--or ever--that she is immobile in terms of romance. She is also afflicted with mild depression and ennui due to a lack of affection, excitement and horizontal action.

She knows, of course, that Gloria Steinem, her favorite feminist from American History and Politics last year, would tell her that "a

***

¹ Ennui: Another one of my new words. It means "listlessness, boredom." As in, "I would save the world, but I suffer from ennui, which forces me to lie on the couch and eat spearmint jelly candies instead."

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woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle," and she firmly believes this is true.

But maybe, depending on who she is, she wants a boyfriend anyway. Maybe the fish wants a bicycle.

The state of Noboyfriend is hard to leave, once you're well and firmly in. The longer you are there, the more entrenched you are. Doctors and shrinks won't be of any help. There are no pills for the state of Noboyfriend, no psychoanalytic diagnoses, no miracle cures.

--written by me, with help from Meghan and Nora, on a latte-stained B&O Espresso napkin, before winter break, junior year.

thankfully, I didn't have to brave the refectory alone at fifth period that first day. Meghan was already sitting at our usual lunch table. She was wearing Birkenstocks with red woolly socks, white carpenter pants and a gray hooded sweatshirt. Despite this tragic outfit, she was easily the sexiest girl in the room.

That's why she isn't popular. Girls don't actually like a person who licks her lips like a porn star in history class or distracts their boyfriends at parties by wearing a bikini in the hot tub. And Meghan has no self-awareness whatsoever, despite being the only other teenager I know who sees a shrink, so she doesn't understand how irritating some of the stuff she does is.

She doesn't bug me anymore, though. There's a lot to be said for a girl who sticks by you when hardly anyone else at school will, and the two of us secretly sing ridiculous

21

pop songs at the top of our lungs when she carpools me to school.

"I'm over this Noboyfriend thing," Meghan announced as I sat down. "I decided that during Choir."

"Already?" I cracked open my peach iced tea. "Way over it."

"Hello? You've been Noboyfriend for what, a month?"

"Seven weeks!" Meghan said, her mouth full of taco. "Please don't tell me you're counting."

"Yes, I'm counting."

"Well, don't make me count or I may have to slit my wrists."²

"Roo. Suicide threats are not funny."

"Then don't make me count."

"Okay, I won't make you count..."

"Thanks."

"... but only because I'm wearing white pants. The bloodstains would never come out. Ooh, there's Nora." Meghan jumped up and wrapped her arms around Nora's five-foot-eleven-inch frame. "Come sit, come sit! I need your advice!"

Nora folded herself onto the bench next to me and lifted the top piece of bread off her sandwich. "This ham doesn't smell right," she said. "Here." She shoved it toward my face. "Tell me, does that smell right?"

"No ham smells right," I told her. "It's a hunk of dead pig."

"Veggie." She laughed. "Here, Meghan, smell it."

² I had been Noboyfriend for thirty-nine weeks at that point.

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Meghan smelled and shook her head. "Don't eat it. I need both of you alive to help me leave the state of Noboyfriend."

"What about me?" Nora asked. "I want to leave it too."³

"Of course. This should be the end of Noboyfriend for all of us. Especially because it's never too early to think about Spring Fling."

I moaned. "It is too too early."

"Fine. Only I think it would be great to have a boyfriend for Spring Fling. Not just a date, but like a real boyfriend to be in love with."

This is a perfect example of how Meghan's brain works. She can think that she'd like to work toward being in love by the time a particular dance comes around, even though she doesn't have so much as a crush on any particular boy at school. And she wants to be in love not really to be in love, but to maximize romance on the mini-yacht dance Tate Prep throws every April. I mean, what kind of person has that for a goal, anyhow, instead of, I don't know, making varsity lacrosse or a 2100 on the SAT?

"And who is this real boyfriend going to be?" I asked Meghan.

***

³ Nora is in a state of perpetual Noboyfriend--only pretty much without catatonia, depression or ennui. It has been sixteen and a half years of Noboyfriend for Nora, though she does appear to like boys rather than, you know, girls. She is possessed of a good heart, beautiful dark curls, the ability to bake and talk basketball simultaneously, plus enormous hooters and stable mental health-- really, everything a guy could want. But still: Noboyfriend.

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"I don't know. That's what I need help with. Who would be good for me?"

"Meghan!"

"What?"

"Who do you like?"

She shrugged. "I'm ruling out seniors," she said. "The last thing I need is another guy who's going off to college. But I'm having trouble when I look at the juniors, too." She reached into her backpack and pulled out the school directory, which contained everyone's name, address and school photo from the previous year. She flipped it open to the junior class page and handed it to me. "I've known these guys since kindergarten. We all have. It might be biologically impossible for me to go out with any of them. Unless you see something I haven't."

Nora looked over my shoulder. "Look at Noel's hair," she said, pointing to his photo.

I laughed. He was wearing a ridiculous amount of hair gel.

I scanned the photos. Tate Prep is a small school with a serious dearth of decent guys: it was all Neanderthals, sporty muffins and Future Doctors of America, or guys in the gaming club and guys who hadn't hit puberty yet, ineligible for reasons I think must be obvious. That was pretty much it.

"How about Hutch?" I said.

John Hutchinson (aka Hutch) has been at Tate since kindergarten. He's a leper due to tragic skin and a marked tendency to quote retro heavy-metal lyrics in place of making sane conversation, but now that I got to know him

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this past fall, I don't think he's so bad. He became my dad's gardening assistant last year. They work together in the greenhouse on the southern side of our houseboat, and even though Hutch is even more lacking in human relationship skills than I am, he's a nice guy. Noel likes him too.

Meghan wrinkled her nose. "I like a guy more athletic than Hutch," she said diplomatically. Because Hutch is not an attractive physical specimen.

"This is bad news," said Nora, shaking her head over the directory. "You may have to look at sophomores."

"We are allowed to go out with guys outside of Tate, you know," I said. "There's no law against it."

Meghan sniffed. "When would I even meet such a guy? I have tennis team starting soon; I have therapy. College visits on weekends. The most important thing in life, and I don't even have time for it, really."

"Boyfriends are not the most important thing in life," said Nora. "They can't be."

"Not boyfriends. Love."

I shook my head. "You are a warped little bunny, my friend."

"Seriously," Meghan persisted. "What's more important than love? Because it's not tennis team, I'm telling you that right now."

"So you have to look at the sophomores," Nora said.

I groaned.

"Why not?" Nora went on. "Boys do it all the time. I don't want to think about how many junior and senior

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guys are going out with sophomore girls right now. It might as well be the other way around."

Meghan shot a glance over to a sophomore table, where two six-foot boys were leaning back in their chairs. One threw a raisin at the other, who fell out of his chair. Knocked spineless by a raisin.

"They're taller than they used to be," she said thoughtfully.

"Operation Sophomore Love," I said. "That's your project, right there."

***

Normally after school I have sports practice or therapy or I go to my internship at the Woodland Park Zoo, where I work in the penguin exhibit and the Family Farm area. But I was sitting out lacrosse this term since there was no way I'd make varsity goalie, and the internship hadn't started again yet.

These circumstances meant I was free after school to go shopping with my mother. I needed a coat and a couple of sweaters. The weather was colder than usual that winter, and I'd gained a few inches since sophomore year. She picked me up in the Honda.

My mother is more bohemian than the other mothers at Tate Prep. Other mothers tend to be brain surgeons, lawyers or homemakers, while Elaine Oliver is a semisuccessful performance artist and part-time copy editor who could easily earn a merit badge for annoying babble. Despite her artsy lifestyle and minimal income, she would still like to dress me as the kind of child she wishes she had.

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That is, wholesome and well-adjusted.

Mom took me to the BP department of Nordstrom because Grandma Suzette gave her a gift certificate there for Christmas. Also, I suspect, because Nordstrom is safely in the mall, where there are no vintage shops for me to wander into.

We strolled through the aisles of fresh, brightly colored sweaters and stacks of jeans. Mom waved an aqua turtleneck at me. It was decorated with an appliqué of a poodle. "This is your style, isn't it, Roo?"

"It's aqua. Have you ever seen me wear aqua?"

"It would bring out your eyes."

"And have you ever seen me wear a turtleneck?"

"No," she admitted. "But my neck is always cold in the middle of winter. Isn't yours?"

"No."

"I thought you'd like it because it's vintage-y. See, with the poodle? People used to wear skirts with poodles on them in the fifties."

I took hold of the foul turtleneck. Next, she showed me a white wool coat decorated with brown anchors and curlicues of nautical rope.

"This is very you," she said, smiling proudly at her find. "Isn't it?"

Anchors?

"It has a sense of irony," she continued. "I know you like irony. Plus it'll be warm around your neck. Try it on."

It didn't have a sense of irony. Those were completely unironic anchors.

While Mom was grabbing fuzzy pullovers in colors

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that radiated solid mental health, I picked up a navy blue hoodie and a plain black cardigan, in case she was going to insist we complete our shopping here.

She shoved herself into the dressing room with me, her mane of frizzy dark hair so close that when I took off my shirt I actually brushed against it with my bare body. She clucked her tongue upon seeing me in the poodle turtleneck. "You look beautiful!" she told me. "Oh, it clings to all the right places."

Ag.

"I don't know why you're always covering your body with bowling shirts that used to belong to some old plumber," my mother went on. "It's self-sabotage, don't you think?"

"No."

"You should talk to Doctor Z about it."

"About how I like vintage clothes?"

"Old things, things other people have discarded. Stuff that's shapeless and falling apart."

"And that shows what?" I prodded.

"That you feel discarded! That you don't feel light and sunny. You never wear pink or yellow, Ruby."

"Mom."

"What?"

"Look in the mirror."

She looked. "I'm wearing all black, so what? That's not the point. I'm forty-five years old."

"You're forty-seven."

She harrumphed. "Whatever age I am, it's an age where black looks good on me. And besides, all black is

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very stylish. You, you buy these old dresses that have practically no shape and the buttons falling off them, when you could spend the same money on this poodle sweater that shows off your breasts so nicely." Did she have to say breasts?

"You get your breasts from my side the family," my mother said. "I have nice breasts."

She owned a book called Empower Your Girl Child, which I had secretly read. It told her that as the parent of a teenager she should role-model bodily self-confidence. "Grandma Suzette has no breasts to speak of," Mom continued. "She's flat as a table. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It can be very attractive. Now try this coral angora one with the cute bow. Look, it says 'fresh' on the collar in rhinestones. Isn't that similar to those beaded sweaters you like?"

I pulled off the turtleneck and my mom reached out a clammy hand and grabbed my naked arm.

"What?"

She stood to examine my shoulder. "Do you know you have some pimples on your back?" She ran her hand over the area.

Did she have to say pimples? Couldn't she just say I was breaking out or having some skin trouble?

Pimples. Breasts. Pimples. Breasts. It was like the woman was walking around with a vocab list and consulting it regularly: Uncomfortable Words Relating to the Physical Changes of Adolescence.

"You don't need to fondle them," I told her.

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She removed her hand and sat back down. "It's normal to have pimples when you're sixteen."

"Thanks for the tidbit. And you wonder why I have to go the shrink."

She barked with laughter. "It's not because of me, you can be sure of that."

"Right." I pulled the coral angora rhinestone thing over my head so as not to be standing there in my bra anymore, giving her an eyeful of my bad skin.

"Really. It's your father. He's inconsistent with you. I'm sure you've noticed that. And I love him, but he does have quite a few inhibitions of his own. There's no denying it. Ooh, look at yourself in the mirror!"

I resembled a tulip with bling.

"Try it with the anchor coat," she commanded.

Fine. I put on the anchor coat.

"Roo, you have no idea how beautiful you are," Mom gushed. "Now, did you see they have this same angora in lime? It says 'Charmant' on the collar, though."

Ag, ag and more ag.

"Run out and it get it, why don't you?" she said. "I want to see how it looks with your eyes."

"Why don't you go?" I whined.

She had her cell phone out. "I'm calling Dad, that's why. I have to tell him to check the raw peanuts that are soaking in the fridge. Did you know my recipe actually says to take them out when they're the size of border collie testicles? I swear to you, I'm not making that up. It's straight out of the peanut goulash recipe."

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If she wanted me to go away, discussion of peanut goulash and border collie testicles was a good way to make it happen. I went to look for the "charmant" angora, tags from the unironic anchor coat flapping behind me.

I had just found the table where the lime green excrescence was folded neatly in a stack and was searching for my size when a voice murmured my name, near my ear.

"Hey there, Roo."

My ex-boyfriend. Jackson Clarke.

Here in the BP section of Nordstrom. Wearing the jacket I bought him for Christmas a year ago.

We generally avoided each other as much as possible.

"That's Ms. Roo to you," I said.

Why, oh, why did I have to be blinged-up-angora-tulip-unironic-anchor person just when Jackson was wandering the BP? Because even if a girl is completely over her ex-boyfriend, and even if he has a girlfriend he's been with for ten months, and even if he's not even the person she thought he was, back when they were together-even if all those things are true, she still wants to be gorgeous and desirable every time she sees him.

She still wants him to look at her and think, Oh, man, I messed that up. She is unbelievably hot.

Jackson looked me up and down. "Shopping?"

"For superhero disguises," I said, to explain my outfit.

He raised his eyebrows.

"You know," I went on, "how superheroes need to have nerdy alter egos that help them go through life with no one suspecting their secret awesomeness?"

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He nodded. "Like Meimi in Saint Tail." Jackson had a thing for anime.⁴

"Like Superman," I said. "So what do you think? Will this outfit delude the average men and women of America into thinking I couldn't possibly wield superpowers?"

He laughed. "You do look funny," he said.

Ouch.

Jackson leaned in to read my rhinestone collar. "Or should I say, you look fresh?'"

"Why are you here, anyway?" I asked him.

But before he could answer, I realized what the answer had to be.

He was here with Kim. She was probably changing in the dressing room next to mine, listening to my mother talk about my breasts and my pimples and my psychological problems and also border collie testicles.

"Oh, I'm looking for a coat with anchors," he told me. "Do you know where I could find something like that? Something nautical, with maybe some curly rope on it?"

"Shut up."

"Don't be fresh with me."

"That's not even funny."

"Is too." He turned his grin on me. I shook my head. "You've lost your touch. Is Kim in the changing room?"

***

⁴Anime: Japanese animation. Jackson is obsessed with it, but me--not so much. Boring, boring, boring. Still, I've seen a lot of anime movies, because when Jackson and I were together, he always, always got to pick the film.

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"I'm here with Dempsey. She has a gift certificate. I'm playing chauffeur."

I exhaled. Dempsey is his sister. She's an eighth grader. The Tate middle school has a different campus from the upper school, so I hadn't seen her since Jackson and I were going out-but suddenly, there she was next to me, looking at the lime angora "charmant" sweater in my hand and saying, "Hi, Ruby, wow, do you like that sweater? It's way sweet. Ooh, you have the coral one on already, that looks so cute on you, are you gonna buy it? Because if you're not, do you mind if I try it on? I have a gift certificate, did doofus-head tell you that?"

"Hi, Dempsey," I said.

"I haven't seen you like, wow, since I was a seventh grader," Dempsey babbled. "I love your hair. Do you think I should get bangs? I don't think I can work bangs. It takes a face like yours to work the bangs." She grabbed the front of her hair and pulled it up so that the ends hung down over her eyebrows. "What do you think?"

"You could work the bangs," I said. "And I'm not getting either of these angoras. They're all yours."

But she had already lost interest in the angoras and was touching an argyle sweater vest. "Is argyle out yet?" she asked me.

I shrugged.

"And what do you think about Jackson being single again?" Dempsey asked.

I looked at Jackson. He was staring at his feet with his hands shoved in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

33

He wasn't single before winter break. He was with Kim. He'd been with Kim since last spring.

"News to me," I said, my heart thudding.

"He and Kim broke up at lunch today," Dempsey explained. "I thought you'd know."

Why would she think I'd know? Did Dempsey think people like Cricket and Kim still talked to me?

"'Goodbye, Dempsey." This from Jackson, with a threat in his voice.

"I was hoping you might tell me details," she went on, ignoring him. "He wouldn't explain what happened. I know it has to be his fault, though. No offense, but I don't know why anyone would go out with him in the first place." Dempsey fingered a rayon shirt. "He's not even cute and his room is disgusting."

That was untrue. Jackson was desperately cute. Dark brown hair curling at his neck. Soft freckles. Tall. Raspy voice. Narrow hips.

"She really likes you," I said to Jackson, deadpan. "You must be a great big brother."

"Don't listen to anything she says," he told me.

"I'm telling the truth!" cried Dempsey. "You told me yourself it was over with Kim!"

"My mom is waiting for me," I said, grabbing a stack of heinous sweaters off the table. "I gotta go."

***

I could hear my mother long before I reached the changing room, where she was still sitting. Elaine Oliver is one of those people who thinks she needs to yell into a cell

34

phone and cannot imagine that anyone else might hear her conversation. "I'm stiff from that yoga class Juana made me go to!" she was shouting, presumably to Dad. "I did something to my groin area.... Sure, you can massage it later."

I opened the door to the dressing room.

"I gotta go, Kevin, Roo is back. Oh, will you get her some benzoyl peroxide at the drugstore when you pick up the paper towels? She's got some pimples that look like they could use some treatment.... Love you too. Bye."

I tried on ugly sweater after ugly sweater, not listening to my mother's commentary, not looking at myself in the mirror, thinking: Jackson and Kim broke up.

Just today at lunch.

While I was eating salad with fried Chinese noodles.

While I was talking to Meghan about whether I should play lacrosse this spring.

Ten months ago, he had left me for her.

Ten months ago, she had left me for him.

Eight gazillion therapy sessions later, I finally didn't care. They were together. That was how the world was.

I could handle the world that way.

And now, it wasn't that way anymore. Everything had changed while I was drinking peach iced tea in the refectory.

***

Though I managed to avoid the poodle turtleneck in favor of the navy hoodie, I was too weakened by the situation to stop my mother from buying me the coat with anchors.

35

4.

I Become a Baby CHuB

Oliver,

Welcome back from break.

The Senior Committee wants to have an extra CHuBS this year!!! Since the winter one was so successful. During the week-long sale, we raised more than $2,000 for the shelter. If we have a new one on Parents' Day, we can do some good business. But here's the deal: none of the seniors has time, what with prom and graduation planning, so we want the juniors to run it.

We thought of such a cute name for you guys: Baby CHuBS. It could have an Easter theme.

What do you think??? Come find me after class and we can chat.

--Gwen Archer

--written on white notebook paper with ballpoint, in round handwriting; folded in thirds like a business letter and passed to me under the table during French V.

36

the reason a popular senior girl like Gwen Archer was writing me a note in first period French V was this: due to circumstances semi-beyond my control, I was the member of the junior class with the most bake-sale experience. Every year before the winter holidays, the Tate Prep upper-classmen organize this Charity Holiday Bake Sale (CHuBS) to benefit a homeless shelter in downtown Seattle; every year all students are also required to log a certain number of community service hours. I joined CHuBS when I was a sophomore, shockingly behind on service and deluded by romantic fantasies of baking for Jackson. I had this idea that I would secure his undying love by means of chocolate-cream-cheese goodness. Not so much.

Anyway, I did well in CHuBS even though I'm completely unskilled in the kitchen. I had good ideas for cupcakes, which was important because despite its charitable mission, the sale is really a competition: whose adorable creation can best attract the gluttons of the Tate Prep Universe? Girls bring in reindeer cookies with pretzels for horns. Seven-layer ultimate fudge. Santa Claus cupcakes. Sugar cookies baked onto Popsicle sticks.

December of junior year, Gwen Archer-now head of CHuBS and one of those hearty Future Doctors of America so prevalent at Tate Prep-corralled me into a second season of bake-sale insanity. Volunteers were scarce, and Gwen asked me to recruit. She must have been so blinkered into her world of Senior Committee, tennis team and community service perkiness that she didn't bother to read the things written on the walls of the girls'

37

bathrooms or notice the blue-green spots of leprosy¹ that covered my body.

Meghan hadn't done a single service hour all year, and we're required to do forty, so she was on board. Nora, although she is completely the person who volunteers for all kinds of do-good projects through her church without even trying to snag school credit for them, agreed to help too. She likes to bake. So the three of us had worked the December bake sale together junior year.

Archer's idea of CHuBS was all about marshmallow sculptures. She forced us to make them. Did you know that with a pair of kitchen scissors, some white frosting, an assortment of adorably small candies and many, many hours of labor, ordinary marshmallows can be transformed into miniature snowmen who sit atop cupcakes, wearing jolly gummy hats, M&M buttons and maniacal licorice smiles?

They can.

I myself have made them in Archer's enormous yellow kitchen. I have also bought one, eaten half of it and thrown the rest in the garbage. Because marshmallows, unless heavily toasted in s'mores, are not as good as I thought they were in first grade.

In fact, they're gross.

***

¹ More on leprosy: I finally Googled it. Turns out that despite its reputation, leprosy is not really that contagious, as far as diseases go. And the blue-green spots I keep talking about? They're not actually blue-green. In other words, leper is actually a sucky metaphor for a social pariah like myself. I will have to think of a new word.

38

Go on, see for yourself. Eat a raw marshmallow and tell me you actually want to eat another one.

There were a lot of snowmen in the garbage can near the bake sale table at the end of the first day, actually, but Archer was not discouraged. They had sold well, after all, and since the sale lasted a week, her next project involved handmade marshmallows shaped like stars. Then marsh-mallow Santas and cupcakes shaped like turkeys.

The whole December CHuBS experience had been like shopping with my mother. I put in all this time and energy and ended up with something other people thought was adorable but made me want to chunder. So when I got Archer's note in January of junior year, at first I thought: No way.

1. I'm actually not a good baker.

2. I've done all my service already.

3. If I run Baby CHuBS now, I'll be expected to run Big CHuBS when I'm a senior. No way can a roly-poly² like me manage to recruit a whole gaggle of underclassmen to do the grunt work of the weeklong December sale.

4.I am not a person who wants anything to do with marshmallow sculpture projects. 5. And-

***

² Roly-poly. The derogatory term formerly known as leper. Technically, a bug called a wood louse. You have the same response to a roly-poly as to a leper: "Ugh, there's a roly-poly here [on my plate, on my arm, on this bench, whatever]--let's move away." Only, it's nicer, because roly-polies are actually a tiny bit cute, plus they have a good name, so while the Tate Universe may not rate

39

I interrupted my own thoughts. Because this was a chance, actually. A chance to reject the dominant Tate Prep aesthetic of marshmallow sculpture in favor of my own roly-poly agenda.

What exactly that agenda was, I didn't know.

Something different.

Something uncute.

Something delicious, maybe.

I told Archer yes.

***

them, a few discerning roly-poly lovers will see their true merits and refuse to shun them.

P.S. There is also a kind of dessert called a roly-poly made with jam. That is not what I am talking about.

40

5.

I Fixate on a Poncho

tuesday, Noel turned up in my Art History elective. Ms. Harada was showing slides, and he slid into the seat next to me shortly after the lecture started.

He was wearing steel-toed combat boots and a Daffy Duck T-shirt over a black thermal.¹ His blond hair was free of gel (unusual for him) and flopped across his forehead.

I reminded myself to look at the art.

His profile, lit by the glow from the projector, seemed so pure, so clean. Like the delicate lines of his face had been cut from marble.

***

¹ Also pants, of course, lest your imagination get away with you. He was wearing pants.

41

I've missed him, I thought. Even though we hadn't spent much time together before the break.

Even though I hadn't known I was missing him.

Noel flipped open his yellow legal pad and scrawled something across the top: "My hair looks weird, I know."

He had noticed me staring at him. And yes, actually, his hair did look weird, but the rest of him was ... well, he was Noel. I was cranked to see him; what did hair matter?

I turned to a new page in my notebook and wrote: Do you bake?

Noel: Why do you want to know?

Me: Well, do you?

Noel: I reserve the right to remain silent until you answer my question.

Me: I am accidentally in charge of a bake sale.

Noel: Bake sale like the thing in December with marshmallow snowmen?

Me: We had snow women, too. With pink frosting bikini tops.

Noel: Excuse me while I retch.

Me: We also had snow dogs.

Noel: If by "bake" you mean do I construct marshmallow snow dogs, then no. I do not. My talents lie elsewhere.

Me: Not so fast! My policy is anti-marshmallow.

Noel: You seriously want me to make something for your sale?

I had written the first thing that popped into my head that wasn't about Noel's hair, since that didn't seem to be a good direction for the conversation to go.

But yes. I wanted him to.

42

Me: Do you know how to bake? Lots of boys don't.

Noel: lam not lots of boys.

Me: Actually, I don't know how to bake, either. Nora helps me.

Noel: What do you mean, "either"? I didn't say I couldn't bake.

Me: Can you?

Noel: Talk later. I want to hear what Harada is saying about Greek sculpture. This could be educational!

Me: Ha ha.

He grinned and flipped his legal pad shut, then remembered he was supposed to be taking notes and flipped it open again to a fresh page.

He spent the rest of the class period writing down facts about Greek sculpture. Afterward, he said he had a meeting with his college counselor and disappeared.

I felt bereft.

How could he write me that Chem class note and then brush me off? What was up?

***

"It was not a pretty situation in Twentieth-Century Am Lit today," I told Doctor Z after school.² We sat in her office, which is housed in a large, unfriendly compound full of dermatologists and orthodontists and probably even philatelists3 and atheists on the upper floors. I hate the

***

² Just in case you're confused, we don't have the same classes every day at Tate.

³Philatelists: Big word for stamp collectors. I only know it because my dad's crazy friend Greg is an amateur philatelist. He has a panic disorder and never

43

building, with its medical, astringent smell, but once you're inside her door, she's made it cozy. There's a red couch for me and a brown upholstered chair for Doctor Z. Some masks and landscape paintings on the walls. A box of tissues on the coffee table.

Doctor Z was wearing a new poncho. It must have been a Christmas gift-or Hanukkah, or whatever holiday she celebrated. I saw the woman every week and had no idea what religion she was. I didn't know if she was married, either, though I wondered about it all the time.

What was her real life like? What did she do in her spare time? Her last name is Zaczkowski, which I think is Polish, and her skin is medium-brown African American. She's gently plump and has a penchant for handmade crafty-type sweaters and hippie sandals.

This poncho was a step out, even for her. It was made of velvety bright orange yarn and had sparkle fringe at the bottom.

It was very distracting.

How was I supposed to concentrate on my mental health when my therapist was encased in orange sparkle madness?

I felt a nearly uncontrollable urge to ask her if there was a reason for her poncho, though I knew doing so would cause nothing but problems. Plus, I've been in

***

leaves the house. That's what will happen to me if my panic attacks get too bad. I'll get scared to leave the house and I'll stop functioning and people who want to visit me will have to come over and bring me Chinese food. I'll probably even start thinking stamps are actually interesting--which is the kind of thing that happens to you when you never, ever go anywhere.

44

therapy long enough to be able to figure out on my own that I had this desire to talk about her poncho because: 1. I wanted to make myself feel superior to someone, anyone, after a crap day at school. Or

2.I was uncomfortable in therapy again after two weeks of winter break and felt the need to get the upper hand in the situation. Or

3. I was angry at Doctor Z just for existing and asking me personal questions, and being obnoxious about her poncho would be a form of retaliation. Or

4. I'd like to know more about Doctor Z and who the heck she is in real life, only I'm not supposed to ask, and the poncho had become a symbol of that forbidden curiosity. Or

5. Something was bothering me that I was scared to talk about, so my mind was repressing it massively and just thinking: Poncho! Poncho! Poncho! all the time. Or

6. All of the above.

"You seem distracted, Ruby," Doctor Z said, popping a piece of Nicorette gum.4 "What?"

"You started talking about your American Lit class, but then you drifted off." Poncho! Poncho! Poncho!

"Oh, it's not important," I told her. "I'm doing some

***

⁴ That is the one thing I know for certain about her life outside therapy. Doctor Z must smoke like a Mend, because she's never without the Nicorette.

45

Reginald today. 5 Even though I should be over the whole thing already."

"There's no 'should' about something like that," Doctor Z said patiently. "Whatever you feel is valid. We all grieve on our own schedules."

"Reginald."

She smiled. "We all Reginald on our own schedules. Do you have a sense of what might have triggered your Reginald?"

Poncho! Poncho! Poncho!

"Ruby?"

Poncho! "Oh. Um. Yeah. Going back to school is hard. Because I managed to kind of forget the existence of certain people over break, and now they're in my Am Lit class."

"What certain people?" Doctor Z leaned forward.

"I was expecting it to be my favorite class," I went on. "Because it's taught by Mr. Wallace and I'm going to like Edith Wharton.⁶ But when I walked into the room, there they were."

"Who?"

***

⁵Reginald: Not a normal therapeutic term, just in case you're wondering. Reginald is what Doctor Z and I have agreed to call the grieving process, meaning me grieving over losing all my friends and the other debacles of last year. Only, the phrase grieving process gives me hives. So we call it Reginald.

⁶ Edith Wharton. Mr. Wallace had told me The House of Mirth would be on the syllabus second term, and I knew from watching the movie that it's about the social downfall of a popular woman whose friends and boyfriends all desert her and she ends up a roly-poly pauper and eventually dead.

So basically, story of my life. Except the dead part, hopefully.

46

"Cricket McCall, Ariel Olivieri, Katarina Dolgen. Kim Yamamoto. And Nora. Sitting together."

Doctor Z nodded understandingly. "Did you want to join them?"

"No."

Silence.

"I didn't," I protested. "Why would I want to sit with people who don't like me? I mean, some of them tolerate me, but that's about it, and I may be insane but I'm way over wanting to hang out with people who would write stuff about me on bathroom walls."''

"I thought you said Nora was with them."

"She was."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Nora is peaceful," I explained. "Nora is a good person. She never takes sides. So Nora is still friends with Kim and Cricket."

"Uh-huh."

"I mean, she didn't know I had Am Lit third period

***

⁷ Yeah. They did. It's still there, in stall number three of the main building girls' bathroom:

Ruby Oliver is a_. (fill in the blank)

Lousy friend.

Fantasist.

Slut...

Trollop.

Hussy.

Tart.

Chippie.

I know Kim's and Cricket's writing as well as I know my own.

47

Tuesdays, so she was perfectly entitled to sit by them. She had no way of knowing I'd be left out."

"I'm hearing that you don't want to blame her."

Ag. I hate it when Doctor Z does that shrinky thing of repeating back to me what she hears. Poncho! Poncho! Poncho!

"Anyway," I said. "We're not fifteen anymore. No one was going to openly shun me. They all mumbled 'hello' or whatever and I slunk over to the geeky spot right next to Mr. Wallace."

"Did you have any feelings about that?"

"No."

"Anything you hoped or wished would happen?"

"No."

We sat in silence.

"What else?" Doctor Z finally asked.

"I talked to Wallace," I said. "About how Chelsea Lefferts was still going to be varsity goalie so I'm sitting out lacrosse this year. About my internship at the zoo and how I'm cranked to see the llamas and the goats on Friday. He asked questions about what I do in the Family Farm area. Small talk, really. I was actually trying to hear what Kim was saying across the table."⁸

***

⁸ What I didn't tell Doctor Z: I am obviously certifiable, because all through this conversation with Mr. Wallace about lacrosse and the zoo internship, and while I was trying to listen to what Kim saying at the other end of the table, I was also secretly trying to look down the open collar of my teacher's shirt to see chest hair.

Because I am hormonally deranged, that's why.

Wallace is nearly thirty. Plus, he's married.

Plus, he's my teacher. Gross.

Except, I still looked.

48

How come?"

"It sounded like she was explaining about her breakup with Jackson."

"Ahh." A small smile played around Doctor Z's mouth. "So that's what this is about."

"What?" Poncho! Poncho! Poncho!

"You were diverting my attention."

"From what?"

"We spent a bunch of our session today talking about Nora. But really, we were talking about Jackson. Weren't we?"

She looked so pleased.

I hate it when she's right.

***

Nora called me that evening around seven. She didn't have lunch the same time as me on Tuesdays, so I had barely seen her since Am Lit.

"Please don't be mad at me for sitting with those guys in class," she said as soon as I answered.

I wasn't mad exactly. I just-I had wanted her to sit with me.

Only, how can you ask without sounding like a pathetic roly-poly? Please will you sit with me, Nora, instead of them? Pretty please?

Ag.

"I'll sit with you from now on," Nora told me. Without me asking.

And that's why I love Nora. She understands the fragility of other human beings and wants to make them feel better. She really does.

49

"Come over and we can get in the hot tub," she said. "I'll call Meghan."

It was too early in the term to have any homework besides Pre-Cal, so Meghan picked me up in her Jeep. Half an hour later we were in the Van Deusens' hot tub on the back deck of their huge but still-cluttered house, drinking pop and looking at each other through the steam that rose from the wooden tub into the cold night air.

I looked at Meghan, sitting on the edge in her bikini with her hair knotted on top of her head, and Nora in a tank top and boxer shorts, submerged in the hot water with only her head and her big feet sticking out, and I thought, I have a good life.

If only I can manage not to ruin it.

Which meant, I have a good life. If only I can manage to forget about boys.

Noel. Jackson. Pretty much all boys.

If I remain in the state of Noboyfriend forever, everything will be okay. Nora will still love me.

"Did you see that note from Archer I put in your mail cubby?" I asked.

Nora groaned. "Baby CHuBS? That's the stupidest name I ever heard."

"I know," I told her. "But Meghan's doing it with me."

"Didn't we just do a bake sale in December?" asked Nora, wiggling her toes.

"Yes, but we need you," coaxed Meghan. "You're the only one who knows how to bake. Plus, we can call ourselves cochairs now. It will look good for college applications."

50

"It's hardly baking," snorted Nora. "It's snipping marshmallows and bits of Fruit Roll-Up into shapes."

"But don't you think we could do something better now that I'm in charge?" I said. "I mean, don't you think the student body of Tate Prep could be collectively convinced to eschew cute but disgusting marshmallow confections in favor of true deliciousness?"

"Speak English, Roo," said Meghan.

I splashed her.

"Fine," said Nora. "You talked me into it with your ridiculous vocabulary."

"Spankin'," I said. "See, Meghan? Nora appreciates me."

"You promise no marshmallows?" Nora asked. "I promise. Deliciousness only."

"All right, then."

Meghan changed the subject. "Nora, tell us all about the whole Kim-Jackson breakup thing," she said, leaning forward.

I held my breath, waiting to hear what Nora would say.

"Kim's shattered." Nora took a sip of her ginger ale.

"Really? What did Jackson do?" I asked, trying to sound like it didn't matter to me, he'd never been my boyfriend.

Nora heaved herself onto the edge of the hot tub. "I can't get into the details," she said, and sighed. "I promised her I wouldn't. She doesn't want everyone knowing all about it."

"Oh."

My intense curiosity must have showed on my face,

51

because Nora added: "It's not that I don't trust you guys, it's just-it's not my secret. It's Kim's."

I ached to know. After seeing them holding hands in the hallway. After watching him stroke her hair the way he used to stroke mine. After feeling like a blade was going through my chest every time I saw them together, for so many months-I almost felt I deserved to know what had happened.

"All you really need to know is, she's better off without him," Nora continued. "He made her feel insecure all the time. Like something else was always more important than she was."

I remembered that feeling. I used to dread being invited to parties because if I went, I'd be miserable while Jackson chatted in a dark corner with some girl from another school-but if I didn't go, it seemed like maybe he'd end up doing something more in that dark corner, and then I'd hate myself for even thinking such a thing and feel like I must be insane possessive untrusting jealous girl. It was a cycle.

But I always figured Kim was different. Jackson left me for her because she was the one he loved.

"She was so sure he was 'the one,' " I couldn't help saying.

"Well, he's turned out not to be," said Nora. "He broke up with her at school. Can you believe it? And then he told her, 'No hard feelings.' "

"What did she say to that?" Meghan asked.

"She said, 'You're breaking up with me. I'm allowed to have hard feelings, you fuckhead.' "

52

Meghan laughed.

Nora plunged back into the tub. When her head came back up, she said, "That's it, we have to change the subject now."

Meghan started talking about her ex-boyfriend Bick, who was now at Harvard smoking pot and being pretentious, and I appreciated Nora's loyalty, so I didn't ask anything else about Jackson and Kim. But I couldn't concentrate on the conversation.

One part of me felt sympathy. Poor Kim. Even though Jackson had chosen her over me, still she was someone I used to love, and I felt sorry for her, knowing she was shattered.

One part of me felt shock. Because the idea that Jackson had made Kim feel insecure just like he'd made me feel insecure-I couldn't quite believe it. He had given her a cashmere sweater. He had begged her forgiveness when she came back from Tokyo. He had written her romantic letters. I knew these things were true, and yet... she had felt just like I had. Like she hadn't really mattered to him.

Then one tiny, shameful part of me thought: He doesn't love her. He never loved her. Yay.

"I can't believe she called him a fuckhead," I finally said.

53

6.

I Am a Reluctant Bodyguard

Here's a true confession, I skipped Chemistry first day back for a reason. A reason involving Ariel Olivieri. On the rebound from her breakup with Shiv. A reason involving a chance encounter at Bailey/Coy Books the last day of winter break.

Her giving me a ride home in the rain.

And physical contact that now I shudder to recall.

My advance spies tell me AO may be up for a repeat.

No repeat is going to be happening.

I am filled with remorse and a general sense of yuckiness

54

at the memory of what I did under the influence of an atmospheric rainstorm, random hormones and a general sense of being alone on the planet.

I could not face Chem first day back. But I also can't ditch class for the rest of the term without incurring the wrath of Fleischman, so I have a proposition for you. I need your protection from the undesired advances of AO.

I wish to employ your services as bodyguard, and will pay you gladly in Fruit Roll-lips.

I leave this note unsigned, as it is highly incriminating. I suggest you eat it when the contents have been memorized.

--written in Noel's scribble on yellow legal paper, folded in quarters, with the word "Top-secret" across the outside. in all the years we've been at school together, Ariel Olivieri's mail cubby has always been directly next to mine-Ruby Oliver. More than one painful situation has occurred due to this proximity. Someone with my history knows better than to leave such an explosive note in a public mail cubby-not even taking into account it's being a public mail cubby directly next to the mail cubby of the person being discussed in the note-but Noel was untraumatized by the dramas of the Tate Universe and therefore fairly stupid in this regard.

I ripped the note into tiny shreds and flushed the pieces down the toilet, thinking how Noel was the third guy who had liked me and then liked Ariel instead. Sure, one was in

55

fourth grade and one was freshman year. But still. Three guys.¹

Were Ariel and I similar? Aside from being average height with a muscular build and brown hair--no. Ariel was pretty in a warm, dimpled, blue-jean way, whereas on a good day I was pretty in a sharp, eyeglasses, fishnet-stocking way. As for social status, she was golden and I was a roly-poly; and as for personality, she was a vacant shell decorated with charming mannerisms and occasional mild bitchiness, while I was-I don't know what I was.

Neurotic.

Maybe I ought to highlight my hair, I thought. Maybe I should wear jeans that cling to my butt. Maybe if I didn't come to school in torn fishnets and clunky Mary Janes people wouldn't always be choosing Ariel over me.²

Ag. No.

Thoughts like this are exactly why I'm too neurotic to have a boyfriend.

Anyway, Noel had kissed Ariel. At the very least. There had been "physical contact." And even though he said he shuddered to recall it and there would be no

***

¹ For the record, the two boys were Hutch (fourth grade) and Shiv (freshman year).

Yes, Hutch. Certified retro-metal roly-poly and my dad's gardening assistant.

No, I don't want to talk about it.

² Movies in which a makeover facilitates love: Grease; Pretty Woman; Sabrina (both versions); Working Girl; Clueless; The Breakfast Club; My Fair Lady; She's All That; The Mirror Has Two Faces; Cinderella; Now, Voyager; Strictly Ballroom; Miss Congeniality; Moonstruck; The Princess Diaries; Never Been Kissed.

56

repeats, I still couldn't help thinking of his bony pale hands touching her small but attractive boobs and stroking her glamorously dark curls.

Who else was he kissing while he wasn't kissing me? Those sophomores he sometimes ate lunch with? Girls from the cross-country team? Seniors he knew from the November Week retreat? He could be kissing girls all over the Tate Universe without me knowing anything about it.

I came out of the bathroom stall where I'd flushed the note, splashed some water on my face and put on red lipstick.

Then I wiped it off again.

Noel had been kissing Ariel Olivieri.

Kissing.

Ariel.

Ag.

I felt shattered.

Except, how could I be shattered? We weren't together. We would never be together, because of Nora liking him. We had barely spoken to one another since the term started.

Get over it, I told myself. You're not allowed to be shattered.

He's your Chem partner. You're his bodyguard. Nothing more.

***

Noel was waiting for me outside the lab. "Did you get my note?" he asked. I nodded. "Did you eat it?"

57

I nodded.

"You did not."

I patted my stomach.

"Tell me you did not. Now I'm getting worried."

"I needed a snack to tide me over till lunch," I told him. "My mother made me drink kale-apple juice for breakfast. She said I'd feel invigorated and my electrolytes would be balanced."

"Did it work?"

I shrugged. "Well, I followed that with a venti vanilla latte. Meghan and I got drive-through Starbucks."

Noel wrinkled his forehead. "That can't be a good mix."

"No. So thanks for the piece of paper. It helped settle my stomach."

We went into the classroom and took seats at our usual lab table. Ariel and Katarina were next to us. Neanderthals Josh and Darcy on the other side. Noel leaned in and whispered: "Stay close. The enemy is at hand."

I liked the feeling of his breath in my ear. "That Fruit Roll-Up better be apricot," I told him sharply. "I'm not dealing with this situation for anything less than apricot."

Fleischman clapped his hands loudly. His comb-over flopped endearingly in the wrong direction. "Emulsions!" he yelled. "An emulsion is a stable mixture of two things that do not normally mix. Oil and vinegar are usually separate, yes? Put them both in ajar, and the oil stays on top and the vinegar on the bottom. Mix them together, and they will separate themselves. But it's possible to add an emulsifier, perhaps a little mustard or egg yolk, mix

58

vigorously, and create a stable mixture: salad dressing! Now, name me another emulsion you encounter in your kitchen."

No one raised their hands.

"Emulsions? People?"

No response.

"Okay, then I'll call on someone. Oliver! Name an emulsion."

I hadn't done the reading. "Um. There's emulsion on film?"

"In your kitchen, Oliver!" boomed Fleischman. "Do you have film in your kitchen?"

"Actually, we do keep film in the fridge," I said. "My dad has yet to cross over to digital."

Noel laughed. "Pudding," he said, distracting Fleischman from his attack.

Fleischman jumped with happiness. "Pudding! Exactly! A pudding is a stiffened emulsion! And how about mayonnaise?"

He went on for a long time about droplets of oil, agitation and protein molecules. He also revealed himself to be a mayonnaise enthusiast, waxing on about hollandaise, aioli and other sauces that are basically glorified mayo.

"Wait," Katarina interrupted. "Go back one step. There's egg in mayonnaise?"

"Duh," said Noel.

"Yes," said Fleischman. "It was in the reading. And it's on the ingredient list." He bounded over to the table at the front of the room, secured ajar of Hellmann's and handed it to Katarina.

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"Ugh!" she said, shaking her head. "I don't like eggs."

"Do you like mayonnaise?" asked Fleischman. "I thought I did."

"Then you like eggs! Now, I want each of you to choose a whisk, two eggs, some vinegar, a timer and a beaker of olive oil. Bowls, measuring cups and salt shakers are already on your tables."

Ariel stood to go get her ingredients, but instead of heading directly to the front of the room she walked over to Noel and stood six inches closer to him than was necessary.

"Some of our whisks have many strands," Fleischman announced. "Some have few. I want you to count the strands on your whisks, people, then compare with your neighbors the length of time it takes to create your emulsions. The recipe is on the board!"

Ariel tossed her hair. "Hi, Ruby. Hi, Noel. How's it going?"

"Spankin'," I told her. "Spankin' with a side of ennui."

"Fine," said Noel.

"Did you make any New Year's resolutions, Ruby?" she asked, staring at Noel. Yeah, I thought.

I resolved to keep my hands off Noel. But I didn't know that doing so would mean he'd take up with you.

"I canceled all my catalog subscriptions and gave up bottled water," I said instead.3

***

³Canceling catalogs and giving up bottled water: Actually, kind of true. My mother made those environmental resolutions for our entire family and forced Dad and me to promise we wouldn't secretly buy water or resubscribe to the

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"Oh, wow. What a good person you turned out to be," Ariel said.

"Thanks," I muttered.⁴

She adjusted the hem of her T-shirt. "I resolved to broaden my musical horizons."

"That's cool," I said. Noel was slouching in his chair and staring at our salt shaker.

"Like I'm getting into punk and indie rock now," Ariel went on. "Not just listening to what comes on the radio. Hey, do either of you know anything about music? I could use some help knowing what to buy that's, you know, off the beaten track."

She didn't mean me.

"All my friends are useless on the subject," she continued.

Noel raised his eyebrows at me, as if to say, Will you get her out of here?

I stood. "Come on, Ariel," I said, as cheerily as possible, linking my arm through hers. She jerked in surprise but didn't pull away. "Let's get our eggs."

Ariel was compliant. "Bye, Noel!" she called as we walked to the front of the room.

He didn't answer.

***

Abercrombie catalog, tempting as that might be. And lest you wonder about my heavy Starbucks consumption, Mom bought me and Meghan venti-size reusable thermos cups.

⁴ What a good person I turned out to be? Turned out to be? It sounds like a compliment on the surface, but actually what Ariel meant was: "All your life you've been a selfish person, and more recently you've been a roly-poly slut, so it never occurred to me you might do anything of value in the world."

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We got our eggs, mixed them with olive oil, lemon juice and salt. Made emulsions. Generated hypotheses about whisks. Listened to Fleischman talk about emulsifiers and what they did and how they did it.

All through class, whenever Ariel said anything to Noel, I answered.

It happened a lot.

Ariel and I had a number of awkward, cheerful conversations.

She didn't like me, though, so eventually she gave up. Score one for the bodyguard.

At the end of class, Fleischman offered us all Tupper-ware so we could take our mayonnaise home and eat it on sandwiches. "It's an edible experiment, people!" he called as one hundred percent of us left the room without mayo. "Think about it. Now you know the chemical process behind some of your favorite everyday foods!"

In the hallway, Noel grabbed my hand as we strolled toward the refectory. "Thanks," he said. "You were completely excellent back there."

His hand was warm, and part of me wanted nothing more than to hold it, but I shook it off. "I'm not cut out for bodyguarding," I said.

"Don't sell yourself short. You did brilliantly."

"Maybe," I said. "But it makes me ill."

"Talking to Ariel? Come on, she's not that bad."

"It makes me ill that I'm helping you be a jerk to her," I told Noel. "Can't you see she likes you?"

His mouth hardened into a thin line. "That's what you're upset about?"

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"Yes," I lied. I mean, I was upset about helping him be a jerk, but I was upset about a lot more than that. "If you kissed Ariel, or whatever, you should be nice to her."

He shook his head. "You want me to be nice to Ariel?"

I couldn't tell him how I actually felt, because how I actually felt was a ginormous mess.

1. I was mad at Noel for kissing Ariel.

2. I was mad at myself for being mad. Because I had no right to be mad.

3. I was mad he'd even told me about kissing Ariel, like I was a girl he had never been romantically interested in. Like I was only a friend and wouldn't care in the slightest.

4. If he did have to tell me about kissing Ariel, I was mad he didn't tell me what exactly happened. "Physical contact" is vague. No girl would ever just say "physical contact."

5. He probably did do more than kiss Ariel. Because if it was just a kiss, he would have said just a kiss. And more than a kiss on a first encounter? That meant he must have been really into it-even if now he's saying he wasn't.

6. I was mad that Noel asked me to bodyguard him from Ariel, because I didn't like her and she didn't like me and I had to talk to her all through Chem.

7. I was mad he asked me because he shouldn't have put me in the middle when I had nothing to do with his scamming adventures.

8. I was mad because he was being a jerk to her and now I was a part of it.

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9. I was mad at myself that I didn't say no when he asked me to be a bodyguard.

10. I was mad at Ariel for moving in on Noel.

11. I was mad at myself for being mad at Ariel, who had a perfect right to express interest in a single guy who after all had been making out with her only a few days ago.

All this was going on in my head as we walked toward the refectory, and I was trying to figure out what to say, because of course I actually wanted Noel to have nothing to do with Ariel ever again-but that would have been a ridiculous thing to say because that was what he was proposing to do in the first place-and so if I said that, it would make no sense whatsoever that I was mad.

Then Jackson Clarke walked by, jeans low on his hips, ratty red sweater with the holes in the elbows, hair scrunched down by a knit cap-he walked by and hip-checked me. "Hey there, Ruby, nice anchor coat."

And I couldn't answer Jackson, and I couldn't answer Noel, and I started to feel that panicky feeling, the feeling like I couldn't breathe and was going to die and my heart was ratcheting around in my chest like it wanted to burst out of my puny rib cage and maybe I would just keel over right now and die in the middle of the path, and then Noel and /or Jackson and preferably both of them would realize my tragic beauty and complete excellence and go on to be better men because inspired by my memory.5

***

⁵ Movies in which the woman dies and thereby helps the hero to realize his full manly potential in the world, only, of course, bad luck for her because she's

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Ag. No air. Pain.

Beating chest.

This awful panic feeling was the whole reason I had to start going to the shrink in the first place, but I'd thought that now these attack things were over and I'd never have to feel this way again--but this was my stupid life, so apparently not.

"I gotta sit down," I said to Noel.

There was nowhere to sit.

I plonked down in the middle of the path.

The muddy path, in my white coat with brown anchors.

There was no air anywhere. My chest hurt.

I tried to remember what Doctor Z said. Picture a meadow full of flowers. Breathe slowly. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

You are outdoors, Ruby, I told myself. There is enough air here for you to breathe.

You are young and healthy. You are not having a heart attack.

***

dead:Moulin Rouge; Braveheart; City of Angels/Wings of Desire (same plot, different films); Dangerous Liaisons; Sweeney Todd (well, he only thinks she's dead and he becomes a total psycho, but still); A Walk to Remember; The Prestige; Casino Royale (the Daniel Craig one, not the Woody Allen one); Harold and Maude; Love Story; and Finding Neverland. So you see where I got this idea. It's everywhere! Despite being kinda sick.

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"Roo, what are you doing?" Noel asked. He knew I had the panic things. He'd just never seen me have one.

"I'm sitting down," I said. The brick pathway was cold.

"Because you want me to be nice to Ariel?" Noel asked.

I shook my head.

"Are you sick?"

I shook my head again.

Jackson had stopped on his way to class. Now he bent over me. "You don't look good," he told me. Thanks a lot.

"She's all gray and clammy," Jackson said to Noel. "She looks awful, don't you think?"

If I had to be neurotic, couldn't I turn glamorously pale and faint into someone's arms and make him want to rescue me? Did I have to hyperventilate in an ugly coat and sit in the mud?

In through the nose. Out though the mouth.

There is enough air here for you to breathe.

You are not having a heart attack.

"What's happening?" It was Nora's voice. I saw her tartan sneakers in front of me.

"Roo looks really bad," Jackson repeated.

"She sat down on the path," said Noel.

"Leave her with me, you guys," Nora said, ever practical.

They didn't go.

"I'm serious. She'll be okay. The two of you go on to class. Nothing to see here," Nora told them.

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"All right, if you're sure," said Jackson. "I should get to English," said Noel. "Roo, are you gonna be okay?" I couldn't answer.

"She's going to be fine," said Nora. "Please, leave."

And so they did. Noel's steel-toed combat boots and Jackson's blue and orange Pumas walked off in the direction of the main building.

Nora, wonderful Nora, rummaged in her backpack and pulled out a Tate Prep hoodie. "Lift up your butt," she said.

I did, and she scooted the hoodie under me, then sat down next to me on the little that was left of it, patting my arm.

We just existed there for a minute or two, not saying anything. I started to feel like I had enough air. "Don't you have class?" I asked finally.

"I have fifth-period lunch with you, silly."

Oh, yeah.

I pulled a bit of soggy grass out from between the bricks. 'Jackson kept saying I looked awful."

"What do you care?"

"I don't. But I'd still rather I looked gorgeous."

"You are gorgeous," Nora said. "He's a poohead."

"I know."

"I know you know."

"What happened just now?" she asked me. "Oh, you know. Mental breakdown. Panic thing. My usual insanity," I told her.

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"I mean, what happened that made you panic?" she pushed.

I shook my head. She was a wonderful friend. She was sitting on the path with me. She liked Noel. I couldn't tell her.

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7.

I Receive a Frog Laden with Meaning

Hi, Roo,

You okay? I was concerned your anchor coat might be stained.

Here is a frog for ya, to cheer you up.

--Jackson

--on his signature pale green narrow-ruled paper, folded in quarters, with a funny drawing of a frog on the outside; found in my mail cubby, end of the day Wednesday.

back when we started going out, Jackson used to leave little ceramic frogs in my mail cubby each week. Long story.

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After those stopped, he still used to leave notes almost every day, funny things about nothing much-what he'd had for dinner, a stupid thing Dempsey had said, how he'd thought of me when something came on the television. But I used to wish for more frogs. They were a symbol of how happy we were together, and as things got complicated, as things got ugly, I hated all the frogless days and wished the frogs would return.

Now here was another frog, after all that time. Sitting in my mail cubby when I swung by after History of Europe.

Was it an innocuous frog? As in, Ruby likes frogs, Ruby was upset today, I'll cheer her up with a completely innocent and free-from-connotations frog?

Or was is a Frog Laden with Meaning?

And if it was a Frog Laden with Meaning, what did it mean?

1. I love you again, take me back.

2. I feel nostalgia for when I loved you, but I don't love you.

3. I want to see if I can make you love me again, because I like to be adored, but not because I love you.

4. I want Kim to look in your mail cubby and see that I gave you a frog and go wild with jealousy.

5. I like jerking you around because you're such a sucker and you can't seem to quit me.

I knew I should throw it in the trash and never think about it again, but I couldn't.

***

During lunch on Thursday, Operation Sophomore Love was swinging as Nora and I came out of the serving

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line with our trays. There was Meghan, lip gloss shining, gray chamois shirt unbuttoned to show cleavage, standing at the head of a table full of sophomore boys and balancing her lunch tray against her hip.

"You do not!" she was saying.

"True story," said a tall one with braces on his teeth.

"Then maybe I should go out for crew this year instead of tennis," Meghan said. "Do you think I should?"

"Without a doubt." A different sophomore, Italian-looking, with pale brown skin and thick eyelashes, was trying to get her attention.

"You'd be great at it," said the one with braces.

Meghan touched her hair. "There are my friends," she said. "See you boys later!"

"See you boys later?" I muttered to Nora before Meghan reached us. "Who on earth says 'See you boys later'? She sounds like a film from 1954."

"Only to you," said Nora. "No one else watches films from 1954. The rest of us are watching movies in first run."

I threw a raisin at her.

"How's the Operation going?" I asked Meghan as she sat down with her tray.

She shrugged. "They're hard to tell apart, that's my biggest obstacle," she said. "One is Mark, one is Mike, one is Dave and one is Dan. If any of them turns out to have a two-syllable name, that's the one I'll have to pick."

I looked over. "Which is the one with the eyelashes?"

"Mike or Mark, but I don't know which."

"He's pretty cute."

"Yeah, but there's another guy who looks a lot like

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him who just left. So this guy could be Dan, maybe. Oh, there's one of them called Don as well."

"I know that guy. Don who's on the basketball team?" Nora said. "Didn't we used to recognize these people from playing in the yard in elementary school?"

Meghan giggled. "I'm sure we did, but that was before puberty. They look different now."

"Ugh," I said. "I hate that word."

"What word, puberty?" Meghan said.

"My health is delicate," I told her. "Please don't say it again or I may chunder."

"What am I supposed to say, then?" said Meghan.

"Adolescence?" put in Nora.

"That's hardly better," I told them. "Say ... um ... mocha latte."

"Mocha latte?" Nora cracked up. "What are you talking about?"

"Mocha latte sounds nice, doesn't it? Mocha latte does not conjure images of acne and body odor and pubic hair that we don't need to be thinking about any more than necessary. Mocha latte sounds tasty."

"Okay," said Meghan. "So they look a lot different after mocha latte than they did in elementary."

"I love it!" said Nora. "Mocha latte has come upon the sophomore boys and they're starting to look good to us."

"Hooray for mocha latte!" cried Meghan.

"Listen," said Nora. "If I asked Noel to go skiing this weekend, to this house party at my family's mountain place, would you guys go? You know, to make it like a group thing?" She twisted a piece of her hair. "I'm allowed to

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invite friends, and this way it won't be so obvious I really want him to go."

"I'm there," said Meghan. "You'll be out of Noboyfriend by Monday."

"No thanks," I said.

"Why?" Nora looked at me, surprised.

"I don't ski. You know that." I hadn't even seen Noel since the whole bodyguarding panic attack debacle yesterday. I didn't think I could stand to spend the weekend watching Nora flirt with him on the ski lift.

"You can use my old Dynastars," said Nora. "The ones I used back when I was your height."

"I still won't be able to actually ski."

"Oh, come anyway. You can learn!" said Nora. "You can go on the bunny hill."

"I don't have a ski jacket."

"Oh, I have three," said Meghan. "I have goggles, I have everything. We'll set you up."

"My parents hired a chef for the weekend," said Nora, "so the food'll be good."

"Can I explain something?" I said. "One: I hate being cold. Two: I don't ski. Three: I hate sports with lots of gear. Four: I don't even know what a bunny hill is. Five: People die skiing. Six: I don't want to be one of them."

"You play goalie," said Nora. "You're not really scared of gear."

"And you're not going to die on the bunny hill," said Meghan. "Three-year-olds can ski the bunny hill."

"Seven: I do not want to spend the day with a bunch of three-year-olds who ski better than me."

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"There's a shelf full of mystery novels people have left at our house over the years," said Nora. "You can hang out by the fireplace."

She knew me very well.

"There's a flat-screen TV with DVD, plus a minifridge in the den," Nora coaxed.

"I have to work at the zoo," I told her. "The penguins and the pygmy goats won't know what to do without me." I took a deep breath and tried to be a good friend. "But it's great you're inviting Noel," I lied. "And you know what you should do in the mornings?"

"What?"

"You should bake those cinnamon buns," I said. "Really?"

"Yes. Because even though the way to a guy's heart is through his-"

"Nether regions!" cried Nora. This was an old joke.

"-there is no way romancing the stomach can hurt."

"Hm," she said. "I would never have thought of that."

"Those buns are some serious deliciousness," I told her. "And Noel is the kind of guy who would appreciate them."

Nora hugged me. "Thanks, Roo."

I felt slightly sick, but I smiled.

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8.

I Correspond with a Pygmy Goat

Dear Robespierre,

I often wonder if you mind being a pygmy goat. Does it make you feel inadequate next to the larger goats? Or do you feel supercute and adorable?

Also, do you understand English?

And do you, as a boy pygmy goat, ever worry about the girl pygmy goats? Do you feel conflicted and wonder whether you're most fond of Imelda or Mata Hari? Or do you, perhaps, feel goatly affection for some full-size specimen like Anne Boleyn, and wish she would notice your pygmy charms?

Please reply as soon as possible.

Fondly,

Ruby Oliver

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(the one with zebra-stripe glasses who scratches your ears the way you like)

--written by me on Woodland Park Zoo stationery and placed in a bright blue box labeled "Write to Our Farm Animals!" after school the next day Meghan dropped me at the Woodland Park Zoo. My internship there had started first term junior year, and now I was scheduled for Friday afternoons and Saturday days. It didn't pay much, but I liked it. Plus, I needed the money. My parents made me pay for a percentage of the gas we used in the Honda, and I owed them for a school retreat I went on in November.

At the zoo, my job was to give a short lecture during the Humboldt penguin feeding and help out in the Family Farm. I had gotten quite friendly with the goats and llamas. I fed them little food pellets and stroked their soft, hairy necks and told them how good-looking they were. I didn't mind if they chewed my sleeves or slobbered on me. I was always glad to see them.

Sometimes my job was to muck out stalls (only for farm animals, not for anything wild), and sometimes I wore a stupid-looking button that said "Ask me." Then school groups and inquiring kids could pump me for information about the names of the llamas (Laverne and Shirley) or the way to work the food dispensers so you could feed the goats.

Doctor Z thought all this was good for my mental

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health. Working with animals got my mind off the badness of life in the Tate Universe and prevented me from using all my free time fixating on things like

1. Why Noel made out with Ariel if he didn't like her, or

2. Whether Noel would start liking Nora on the ski weekend, or

3. Whether it was wrong to encourage Nora to win Noel's heart with cinnamon buns when I didn't really mean it, or

4. Why the suddenly single Jackson was telling me I looked bad and then drawing me a Frog Laden with Meaning, or

5. How insane I must be to scope Mr. Wallace's chest hair when he was trying to talk to me about sports and literature.

When I got to the zoo, Anya, the intern supervisor, waved to me from her office as I signed in. "Hope you had a good vacation, Ruby," she said, shrugging on her coat. "I'll walk you halfway to the Farm, if you don't mind."

Anya was freckled and burly, with braces on her teeth even though she was maybe thirty-five years old. I liked her fine, although she had an air of never, ever leaving the zoo.

As we walked, Anya told me the news about the Family Farm creatures. For example, there was now a box where kids could write notes to the farm animals, plus a box of zoo stationery and minipencils. I was supposed to encourage patrons to write to their favorite goat, pig, llama, whatever. Robespierre, one of the pygmy goats,

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had had a hoof infection that was being treated, so I had to keep an eye out and inform someone if I noticed a limp or anything else unusual. The pig named Lizzie Borden was in a different pen than she used to be.¹ And so on.

I pinned on my "Ask me" button and said goodbye to Anya. The next hour I spent patting the goats and the pig, writing a note to Robespierre and pretty much killing time until a huge after-school group came into the Family Farm yelling and annoying the llamas. The kids were pelting me with questions and then not listening to the answers, and while I was busy with them this dad arrived with a toddler. The dad seemed kinda drunk, but I didn't pay him any attention because the school group was milling around and jostling each other to pet Lizzie Borden.

In the Family Farm area, the animals live in pens. The fences are low-you can reach right over them. While I was at the other end of the enclosure, surrounded by after-schoolers, this drunk dad lifted his two-year-old and stuck her on Robespierre's back for a ride. Robespierre bucked. The little girl fell off.

All that happened in about two seconds. "Excuse me," I said to the crowd of six-year-olds around the pig, and ran over to the goat pen. The toddler stood up, whimpering.

***

¹ Aside from Laverne and Shirley, most of the Family Farm animals are named after criminals, which is a problem when you are asked to explain their origins to a camp group of six-year-olds. Robespierre, I learned in History of Europe, was a leader of the French Revolution who killed ginormous numbers of people during the Reign of Terror. Lizzie Borden was famous for killing her parents with an axe.

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She didn't look hurt. Her dad had forgotten about her because he was distracted trying to get food out of the dispenser, which is kind of hard to use, especially if you're drunk. Robespierre's infected foot must have hurt him, and he must have been scared, because he started chasing the toddler with his little pygmy horns lowered. The girl started running and screaming, and the drunk dad turned around. I leaped the fence, grabbed Robespierre by the neck and yelled at the dad to jump in and get his toddler.

He fell over as he was climbing in, cursing all the while, and stopped to brush the straw off his body before he picked up his crying kid. We all climbed out of the pen, and as we got our feet on the ground, he said, "You should have that thing put down, it's dangerous."

"What?" I couldn't believe what he was saying.

"It's not friendly. You saw that. It was chasing my kid!" he argued.

"Zoo guests aren't supposed to get in with the animals," I told him. "That's common knowledge. And I saw you put your kid on his back. What were you thinking? He's a tiny pygmy goat and his foot is infected. You hurt him."

"You!" The dad stuck his finger in my face and shook it. "You were not doing your job, which is to keep this family area safe and keep control of the animals!"

"I was too doing my job," I cried. "You weren't doing your job. You shouldn't be drunk and failing to watch your daughter. You shouldn't be sticking a little kid inside a pen."

"How old are you?" the man yelled. "How dare you talk to me like that?"

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"You have no respect for the animals that live here," I yelled back. "You have no respect for your own kid and her safety. What kind of person does such a thing?"

"Your job is to watch the kids and keep the area safe!"

"You smell like beer!" I shouted. "I hope you're not driving your kid home."

I turned in disgust away from him--and then I saw Anya angrily striding toward us.

She gave me a harsh glare. "Sir, I'm the supervisor here. Is there any way I can assist you?" Her voice was exceedingly calm and polite.

"This worker is belligerent," he said, scooping up his crying daughter. "I asked for help with the feed machines and she started harassing me and my child."

"That's not true!" I said-but Anya held her hand up to silence me.

"I'm so sorry you had a negative experience here at the Woodland Park Zoo," she said soothingly. "Here." She dug in her pocket and pulled out a red lollipop. "Is it okay for her to have this?"

The man nodded and the toddler stuck out her hand for the candy.

"I apologize for the behavior of our intern here," Anya continued. "Please rest assured we will take the matter seriously."

"I want Mommy," said the toddler, sniffling.

Anya smiled. "Can I help you locate the rest of your family? Are they here at the zoo?"

"Yeah, that would be great, actually," said the man, wiping his forehead. "I have no idea where they got to."

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Anya made an announcement over the zoo loudspeakers, which located the guy's wife, who had been over at the penguin exhibit with their older children.

As soon as they were gone and someone else arrived to wear the "Ask me" button at the Family Farm, Anya walked me back to her office. There, she demanded an explanation, but when I gave one, she didn't seem to listen to it. "You told him he smelled like beer, Ruby," she reprimanded. "There is no situation in which commenting on someone's smell is an appropriate response."

"But he-"

"No situation," she repeated.

Then I had to sit through a long lecture on how to treat zoo guests.

Then more lecture on how it was imperative that I keep an eye on the whole area even when there were school groups present.

Then guilt over how the zoo would now have to deal with news reporters questioning them and writing headlines like "Baby Mauled by Cranky Pygmy Goat."

And after all that, Anya fired me for negligence and abusive behavior toward patrons.

Really, she could have fired me without the lectures. Why remind me how to do my job if I'm not going to be working there, anymore?

Dear Robespierre,

Goodbye, my goaty friend. I was fired from taking care of you because I was trying to take care of you.

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I wonder if goats understand irony.

Please blow kisses to Laverne, Shirley, Kaczynski, Lizzie Borden and all the rest. I will miss you a lot and will come back to visit if they'll let me on the premises. Your affectionate pal, Ruby Oliver

I had a panic attack late that night. After I got out of Anya's office, after I snuck back to Family Farm to write my goodbye note to Robespierre, after I called my dad and asked him to pick me up early, after I made it through a dinner of sprouted-chickpea bread and something Mom called Sea-Veggie Pizza; after I had suffered through my mother saying Anya was an "unsympathetic troll" and my father saying he was sure that if I had another chance I'd "make different choices about how to handle a stressful situation"; after my father criticized my mother for the Anya-troll comment and after my mother yelled, "I'll call anyone a troll who acts like a troll! I say it like it is, Kevin! That's what I'm all about in this world. Saying it like it is, troll or no troll! You used to be able to handle it! You used to love that about me!"

After my mother burst into tears and ran into the bedroom, slamming the door shut, and after my father, without a word, dragged the box of sugary breakfast cereal from its hiding place underneath the kitchen sink and began to eat it, without milk; after Dad had washed the dishes and I had wiped the table, after he'd gone into the bedroom to make it up to my mother, after all that, when

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I went to my room and was thinking, ironically, that I was handling the whole debacle with a reasonable degree of calm-after that, I had the panic attack. I had lost my job.

Anya used to like me and now she thought I sucked. I would miss Robespierre and Laverne and Shirley and the rest.

I would miss the smells of the zoo and the sound of the penguins as they dove into the water.

I would miss being good at something, good at relating to animals and speaking in public for the penguin feedings.

I had no money.

I had to earn money or I couldn't pay for gas.

If I couldn't pay for gas I couldn't use the car.

Also, I was living in the middle of my parents' marriage. No one ever says this about families, and maybe people who aren't only children don't even notice it, but half the time I feel like I'm this extra person watching them have a marriage. They fight, they kiss, they discuss the inlaws, they do projects, they take down the Christmas tree and reminisce about things I don't remember, they fight some more-and it's all this personal stuff that I really have no business witnessing, except I have nowhere else to go because I live here. I'm just trying to eat my dinner and instead I'm in the middle of this grown-up relationship that is complicated and disgustingly mushy and sometimes angry.

I know they're not getting divorced or anything, but when your parents argue it makes the whole universe seem like it's tipping, like everything could change if they

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got mad enough at each other, like the world isn't a safe place.

And of course, that's true, isn't it? The world is not a safe place.

All this I was worrying about on top of the job problem and the boy problems, and suddenly I couldn't breathe. There was no air in my room and my heart was so loud I felt sure my mom was going to pop in and say, "Roo, your father and I are having a serious conversation, could you please keep your heart down?"

No air.

I remembered this trick Doctor Z taught me, where you get a tennis ball and you toss it back and forth from one hand to the other, keeping your eyes on it. The concentration balances the two spazzing-out sides of your brain. Gasping, I left my room and went into my dad's greenhouse. I knew there were a couple of those hand-strengthening squeezy balls in there, because my dad uses them to de-stress.

The greenhouse smelled of dirt and flowers. I don't know what kind. There were some blooms and they weren't roses, that's all I know. I found one of the hand-strengtheners and sat on a plastic crate, tossing it back and forth. Back and forth. Just watching the ball and nothing else, until--after a bit--my breathing became normal and I looked up.

The southern deck of our houseboat looks out on the Hassinblads' northern deck, and I could see George Hassinblad through his window, cooking something in a

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pot on his stove and drinking root beer out of a bottle. The greenhouse felt calm and I could see the stars and there was stuff growing.

My heartbeat slowed. George Hassinblad's sporty little wife came in from a nighttime run and the two of them sat down to eat the soup he'd made. They laughed. George spilled soup on his lap and wiped it off with a dish towel.

My dad's old CD player is filthy with potting soil. On top of it sits a collection of CDs devoted entirely to nostalgic heavy metal. It's Hutch's fault. Ever since he became my dad's garden assistant, he's encouraged Kevin Oliver's musical tastes in directions that other people can only call unpleasant. He and Dad rock out whenever they're working in the greenhouse. I walked over and hit Play without looking at what was in the box.

Na na na NA na na na NA na.

Steven Tyler's demented squeal blasted through the greenhouse.

Na na na NA na na na NA na. Aerosmith's "Walk This Way."

Retro metal isn't my thing, but I stood and danced like a maniac until the song was over.

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9.

I Uncover the Secret Mental Health of Hair Bands

Hello there, Ruby,

You probably don't know this about me, but: my brownies have reached crazy ninja-good level.

Also, I am behind on community service hours.

If you want some help with the chubby thing, whatever it's called, let me know.

Finn

--found in my mail cubby, written on unlined white paper in lines of blue ink that slanted down toward the right corner of the page.

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On Friday, Finn Murphy-soccer-team stud muffin and Kim's ex-boyfriend from before Jackson-Finn Murphy left me a note.

He had never written me a note. He was Kim's ex, but he'd liked me back in elementary school-therefore making him yet another boy I was supposed to stay far away from. Even now, months and months after they'd broken up, by talking to Finn I'd risk spoiling the delicate truce at which Kim and I had finally arrived just before winter break.

But hey, I needed bakers.

I got the note Monday afternoon, so Meghan and I went to the B&O Espresso after school. The B&O is a coffee bar a little ways off Broadway. It has spankin' cake. You can go in there and do your homework and drink lattes or espresso milk shakes and they never kick you out for being there too long. Finn was working the counter, like usual.

"Got your note," I said as Meghan and I walked in and plopped ourselves at the table nearest the register.

Finn blushed. Actually blushed, to the roots of his cropped sandy hair. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a black apron. He had the thin forearms and thick legs of a soccer player, big thoughtful eyes and the general look of someone who is good at skiing.

Why was he blushing?

Wasn't this about the ninja brownies?

It had better be about ninja brownies.

"I'll have a Valencia mocha," said Meghan.

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"Same," I said. "And can I get the chocolate raspberry torte?" I had no business buying myself exotic tortes when I'd just lost my job, but the thing was calling to me in all its chocolaty deliciousness.

Finn wiped the counter in front of us and started making coffee drinks.

* "You're our first boy," said Meghan.

"Don't bring gender into it," I said. "You're our first anyone besides me, Meghan and Nora. If you want, you can be a founding member of the inaugural Baby CHuBS."

Finn chuckled and shook his head. I wasn't sure if it meant yes, or no, or what.

"He's embarrassed!" yelled Meghan. "Finn, why are you embarrassed?"

"I'm not embarrassed," he answered, pouring milk. "I just feel bad because I was about to bail, and now here you guys are calling me a founding member."

"What? You can't bail on us," said Meghan. "We have your brownie pledge in writing."

Finn shrugged. "Well, I-"

I interrupted him: "You also can't describe ninja-good levels of brownies and then fail to follow through. How do we know you can even make ninja brownies?"

"I learned from the guys in the kitchen here," Finn said. "I started working the early-morning shift on weekends, so now I'm around when they're baking. I can do lemon bars too."

He put our lattes on the counter and gave us two extra-large pieces of chocolate raspberry torte. "It's on me, by the way," Finn said, gesturing at the cake.

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"Really? I think I might love you." It was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. Ag.

Cancel. Erase.

Saying things like that to completely inappropriate boys who are not mine to say such things to is one of the reasons I have antagonized most of my former friends and am now a roly-poly.

How could I say that to Finn?

How stupid am I?

And of course, he blushed again.

Stop blushing, Finn! Stop it, stop it! I shoved a bite of torte into my mouth so I wouldn't talk anymore.

Meghan, who flirts with everyone and therefore has no need to go into mental gyrations any time something suggestive comes out of her mouth, saw it all in terms of Operation Sophomore Love. "Hey," she said, "maybe the other guys on the soccer team can bake too. How about some of the underclassmen?"

"Hardly." Finn laughed.

"What?" Meghan looked innocent. "They have a lot of free time. They don't have to worry about the SATs or anything. Don't you think you could get some of the JV players to contribute?"

Finn coughed on purpose. "The soccer team guys are not bakers."

"Why not?" Meghan asked, spooning a bit of foam from her mocha and licking it off in a way that would have

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made me hate her guts a year ago. "A guy who bakes is very attractive."

What the hell. It was all for charity, right? "Me too," I said. "Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me."

Finn stammered. He flushed. By the end of the conversation, he had promised to make ninja brownies and lemon bars, plus he swore he'd recruit the members of the soccer team for the manly baking project by convincing them that it would attract girls.

"This is going to change the whole social order at Tate," I said to Meghan as we left the B&O in the rain.

"It'll get us out of this state of Noboyfriend, if that's what you mean," she answered, unlocking the doors and climbing into the Jeep.

"No, I mean it'll change the antiquated sex roles that go on during bake sales," I said.

"Speak English."

"You know. Every year, girls bake. Boys eat. It's like the nineteenth century."

"I guess."

"That's why I never liked CHuBS that much in the first place. It was all girls in the kitchen. In fact, I bet you no boy has contributed to CHuBS, ever. And like Wallace said in American H and P last year, if you change one part of the pattern in a social system, the rest will have to shift in accordance."

Meghan said, "Finn was blushing the whole time we were in there. Did you notice?"

Yeah. I noticed.

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Being Meghan, she didn't see how complicated it was that he was blushing at me and I'd noticed him blushing; and that I'd looked at his forearms with his shirtsleeves rolled up and that he gave me free cake. It was so, so complicated, because Finn used to be Kim's and I used to be Jackson's but Finn always looked at my legs, and today I'd said "Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me" like a complete slut and he kept blushing--it was all so complicated, my heart started pounding.

I didn't want to have a panic attack. This was the third one in like a week.

Breathe, Ruby, breathe, I said to myself.

It doesn't have to happen. You are in charge of yourself.

But there wasn't any air in the car.

Stop, heart, slow down, I thought. There is nothing to spaz out about.

The only thing that's happening is that a boy you've known since kindergarten is helping with your bake sale.

Breathe.

I reached out and turned the radio on, then hit the button for K-ROCK. Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City" banged through the Jeep's speaker system. Retro metal. I pushed the volume up and closed my eyes.

There. With Guns N' Roses on, I couldn't think about anything. Didn't panic. Just turned off my brain until Meghan said, "You know I love you, but Hutch has totally warped your musical taste," and shoved a Rihanna CD into the stereo.

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***

Nora, Meghan and Noel were all skiing that weekend, so I job-hunted all day Saturday, bringing photocopies of my sucky resume to shops along University Ave and calling places listed in the newspaper: a tanning salon, the Jamba Juice in Bellevue Square, a telemarketing company that was looking for people to make cold calls about mattresses.

Sunday my dad and Hutch were pruning early-flowering rhododendrons and discussing various techniques for a gardening article my dad was writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hutch and I drilled each other for our Monday French quiz and the three of us went out and got Chinese food for lunch while my mom was at her yoga class.

Hutch asked me about the whole zoo debacle, and when I explained what happened he said he was boycotting the zoo to protest my losing my job.

"Thanks," I told him. "But when was the last time you actually went to the zoo?"

"Sixth grade," he admitted, shoveling a piece of garlic broccoli into his mouth.

"So you average once every five years or so?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Your support means a lot," I said. "I'm sure the zoo will take your protest extremely seriously."

"Never let it be said I didn't do my part," he said, reaching across me to snag the lo mein. "I defend your right to tell people how they smell, any day of the week."

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He smelled of garden dirt, soy sauce and a bit of BO, but I didn't say anything.

When we got home, I called Nora to find out how Operation Ski Bunny Romance was going, but she didn't pick up.

Neither did Meghan.

So I did my Am Lit homework.

***

Monday in Chem we curdled milk by adding vinegar and then squeezing it out in pieces of cheesecloth. In the middle of the disgustingness, I couldn't resist asking Noel, "How was Crystal Mountain?"

"Excellent."

What did he mean, excellent? Did he mean that he and Nora had fallen in love? Or did he mean there was nice powdery snow?

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Meghan's way better than me or Nora, so she went off with Gideon and some friends of his to ski Otto Bahn. Nora and I are well matched, so we stuck to Kelly's Gap Road and stuff like that."

I was annoyed. Why did skiers always talk about slopes like nonskiers had any idea what they were on about? And had he really skied with Nora all weekend? Riding on those chairlifty things, just the two of them, looking out at beautiful scenery?

Ag.

Or rather, Oh, I'm so happy for Nora.

Why didn't being a good friend come naturally to me?

Fleischman started babbling about casein and positively

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charged H⁺ ions and a lot of other boring stuff. I dried my hands when he told me to and tried to take notes on the lecture, but none of it was sticking with me.

"I mean, what did you do besides ski?" I finally asked Noel, when Fleischman was done talking and we were all supposed to be coming to the front of the room to taste various cheeses and think about what we'd learned in terms of their chemical makeup. "Roquefort!" Fleischman was shouting. "Epoisses! That one is stinky, watch out! Did you know raw-milk cheeses are illegal in the US of A? Yes, people! Can anyone explain why? Did anyone do the reading on pasteurization?"

I had done the reading, but I was more interested in what Noel was going to say than in gaining points with Fleischman.

Noel shrugged. "Nora brought some movies and we watched them."

"And?"

Noel put some Epoisses in his mouth and made a slight face. "She made these cinnamon swirl things on Sunday morning. They were seriously good."

Nora had taken my advice.

I wished she hadn't.

"She made blueberry muffins too," Noel added. "Amazing."

"I wasn't asking for the Nora report," I snapped. He looked puzzled. "You asked about the weekend."

"So?"

"So, I was just telling you."

"Back to your places, people!" Mr. Fleischman called,

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his comb-over flopping off his head. He sat us down and began to discuss the difference in curd-granule junctions between brick cheese and Cheddar, and explaining that next week we would be looking at the junctions under microscopes.

Noel bent over his notebook seriously. I bent over mine. We didn't say anything more.

When class is over, I told myself, I'm going to walk out without giving him another glance.

It's not like Noel is anything to me.

He was making out with Ariel last week.

He can fall for Nora and her cinnamon buns. I'll be nothing but happy for them.

I don't care.

Fleischman finished talking, and immediately I bent down to pick up my backpack. When I stood up, ready to dodge Noel so as not to have to continue our conversation, he was already gone.

***

"I think retro metal is maybe a cure for panic disorders," I told Doctor Z the next day.

She popped a square of Nicorette. "Ruby."

"Yes?"

"You don't have a panic disorder." I crossed my legs and picked at the fraying knee of my jeans.

"You know that, don't you?" repeated Doctor Z. "Yes."

"Three attacks in one week don't-"

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"Two attacks were in one day!" I interrupted.

"Fine. They're still not enough to constitute a disorder. It's an important part of our therapy that we keep you thinking rationally about your panic attacks. Because it is when people begin to fear them and avoid situations because of possible triggers that a disorder can emerge."

I knew all about that. "I am thinking rationally," I told her. "I'm telling you I think the cure is retro metal."

"Tell me about it."

"Retro metal is how Hutch survived years of roly-poly-ness without becoming hospitalized for mental stress. He just rocks out on a regular basis to the likes of Poison or Van Halen or whatever, and it keeps him from going insane. It's the secret mental health of hair bands."

A smile played at the corner of her mouth. "What's a hair band?"

"You know, those bands with ginormous teased-up hair they flip around while they play guitar," I explained. I knew I was wasting my therapy hour, but I kept going: "Retro metal is how my father manages to live with my supercontrolling mother. I expect the metal has to have some kind of a beat. Like AC/DC works, Aerosmith works, but not Metallica or any other speed metal."

Doctor Z shook her head gently.

"You doubt me," I said, "but I'm telling you, this theory is golden. You could write a book on the subject and become famous."

"Well," she conceded, "music can be an excellent stress release."

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"I'm saying, music that I don't even like. Music that by most objective standards actually sucks. Who would imagine it could be therapeutic?'

"Ruby."

"What?"

She didn't say anything. I hate it when she does that. I didn't say anything back.

But I hated sitting there in silence, too. "It's so passive-aggressive when you say my name and then don't say anything else," I finally told her.

Nothing from Doctor Z.

"I know you don't want to hear my theory of retro metal," I went on. "I know you think it's a front to avoid talking about something real."

Silence again.

"No doubt you want me to talk about why I had the panic attacks." Nothing.

"Or explain more about what happened beforehand." More nothing.

"Did you know Jackson said I looked bad when I had the panic thing on the path at school?" I said. "It kills me that he said I looked bad. He even told Noell looked bad."

Doctor Z chewed her Nicorette thoughtfully.

"You're thinking about how I'm talking about Jackson again, aren't you?" I said. "Because I haven't even told you about the Frog Laden with Meaning. If I were still obsessed with Jackson, that would have been like, the first thing I mentioned when I got in here. The Frog Laden with Meaning."

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"Actually ...," Doctor Z said.

But I went on: "Did I tell you Nora invited Noel skiing? Nothing happened between them, she told me, but they got to know each other much better and she's optimistic. Plus she baked him cinnamon buns and I know for a fact he was impressed. Nora is like a role model for going after what you want, don't you think? I should try to be more like her. I'm sure all my mental problems would be better if I embarked on the Imitate Nora Van Deusen Program for a Happier Mocha Latte (aka adolescence)."

"Actually," repeated Doctor Z, with only a slight sigh, "I was thinking that since we're coming up against some resistance on your part to engaging with me on topics of substance, maybe it's time for you to make a treasure map."

"A what?"

"A treasure map. Our time is over for today, but it would be useful for you to do at home, to bring in next week. It's a project."

I gave her a doubtful look.

"It's a treasure map because it's a concrete imagining of something you want for yourself in life," explained Doctor Z. "In this case, positive relationships with your peer group. But the map will make things more specific."

"I'm supposed to draw a map of positive peer-group relationships?" I stood and heaved my bag over my shoulder.

"Like a friendship collage," said Doctor Z. "You're showing yourself what you want your social life to look like. You can use photographs, words, paint, fabric, any

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kind of mixed media. Include activities you'd like to do with your friends, images that illustrate how you feel about your peers and possibly about your romantic prospects."

She sounded like she was reciting something from a textbook of shrinky ideas, and I wondered if she'd looked up treasure mapping in her secret Instruction Manual for the Care and Treatment of Annoying Teenagers before I arrived for my appointment.

"Whatever," I told her.

"Give it a try," Doctor Z said, and she had this hopeful, earnest look in her eyes that made me think she really, truly did want to help me be a normal person.

"Yeah, okay," I told her. "I'll get out my glue stick."

***

Both my parents were in the car waiting for me when I got out. They announced we were going to Judy Fu's Snappy Dragon for Chinese.

"How was Doctor Z?" asked my dad as I climbed into the backseat. He was behind the wheel of the Honda and there was garden dirt under his fingernails.

"Kevin, you're not supposed to ask her what happens in therapy," Mom said. The backseat was filled with plastic bags she wanted to reuse at the grocery store. I was squished in among them.

"I'm not asking what happened in therapy," Dad said. "I'm asking how Doctor Z is."

"She's fine," I told him. "She got a haircut."

"Did you learn anything interesting today?" he asked.

"It's not school, Kevin," my mother corrected him. "You can't ask her what she learned, because A, she didn't

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learn stuff and B, I already told you, you can't ask her what happened. It's supposed to be her business."

"Hello, I'm in the car." I said, scrunching grocery bags to make some noise in the backseat.

My mother ignored me. "Kevin, get on the freeway. It's shorter if you take I-Five."

"She could learn stuff," said Dad. "She's going through a growth process. It's different from school, but it's still learning."

"Learning that you can't ask her about. Do you think they have salad at Snappy Dragon?" Mom pulled out a compact and powdered her nose. "Because I'm going to need to eat raw there, you know."

"It's Chinese. Are you really expecting salad?"

"Eating raw is a commitment," Mom insisted. "It's no good if you cheat."

"You said okay to Snappy Dragon! I asked you!"

"Why are you so unsupportive of the raw-food way of life?"

Mom sulked for a few minutes and Dad drove. Finally, he said: "I don't see why Ruby wouldn't tell us what she learned. She doesn't have to give us details that feel private, she could share the insights she's gleaned, so as to help us relate to her better."

My mother sighed. "Take this exit."

"Is there anything else you want to share with us about therapy?" Dad asked me. "I hope you realize my ears are always open."

I don't know what came over me then. I was so mad at myself for wasting my therapy session--and honestly, I

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didn't think there was any way they'd believe me. "Doctor Z thinks I should get a dog," I answered.

"What? That's a strange prescription," my dad said.

"Actually," I continued, amused, "she thinks I should get a Great Dane."

"No way." My mother crossed her arms. "Kevin, left! Left right here!"

Dad turned obediently. "Doctor Z specified a dog breed?" he wanted to know.

"Yes," I lied. "But really she said any superlarge dog would do. It has to do with having a vessel for my psyche, and the vessel shouldn't be too small."

I thought for sure they were both going to start laughing any minute. But they didn't, so I went on. "It's supposed to work wonders for the ennui brought on by mocha latte."

"The what is supposed to do what for the what brought on by what?" my dad wanted to know.

"We're not getting a dog. N-0 spells mo," said my mother.

"I can spell," I reminded her.

"Tell Doctor Z she should check with us before putting ideas into your head," said Mom. 'Juana has one of those dogs and it's a total menace."

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10.

I join Up with Granola Brothers

Hey hey Roo,

I came by the bake sale table this morning but you weren't there. Jackson

--written on his green-tinted narrow-ruled paper--but with no frog; no frog whatsoever.

i got this note after first period the next morning. I had an early meeting with my college counselor and had skipped sitting at the CHuBS recruiting table while Meghan and Nora gave out linzer cookies.

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Why had Jackson come by the table?

What did he want?

And why was there no frog?

Had I expected a frog?

I wondered about it all morning, but I didn't see him until after sixth period, when I spotted him waiting to talk to Mr. Wallace as a group of seniors surged out of Contemporary Am Lit. He was wearing an old plaid shirt rolled above the elbows. His forearms were solid muscle from rowing crew.

"Hey." I tapped his shoulder.

"Ms. Roo to you, what's up?"

"You said something about the bake-sale table," I reminded him.

Mr. Wallace caught Jackson's eye. "I haven't forgotten about you, Clarke," he said. "Just give me one more minute here."

Jackson nodded at him and turned to me. "Oh, it was nothing important," he said. "I can tell you later."

I was annoyed. Why write me, then, if it was nothing important? It wasn't like we were friends. "Whatever," I said, turning to go-but he touched my arm.

"You're running the bake sale and it's happening on Parents' Day, is that what I hear?" he asked.

I nodded. "We're recruiting now."

Jackson flashed his grin. "Are there gonna be doughnuts?"

"Doughnuts are advanced," I said. "You deep-fry them. There's hot oil involved. Don't get your hopes up."

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Jackson pulled a face. "Doughnuts would be so good, though, don't you think?"

"Maybe."

"You should get someone to make them," he said.

"In your dreams," I said, annoyed. "I gotta go to class."

"Yes, in my dreams!" he called after me as I went into Pre-Cal. "There are homemade doughnuts in my dreams!"

***

Even though I was lying about the Great Dane, it's true that I like animals more than people. That's a horrible thing to say, I know. It's also no doubt one of the reasons I need therapy. Wouldn't anyone with a modicum of sanity care more about the homeless, or battered women, or any kind of person who might end up in a shelter than she would about fuzzy kittens?

Yes, anyone with a modicum of sanity would. But to me, dogs and cats are innocent. Goats and llamas, too. They're never duplicitous, they're never bitchy, they're never untrue.¹ They never write you confusing notes, or stare at your boobs, or steal your boyfriend, or write things about you on the walls of the bathroom.

When you love an animal, you don't mind if it has bad breath, or chews on your hoodie, or chases a toddler because its foot is hurting. You just laugh at those things, and try to understand them, and appreciate the animal for who it is. It's not conditional love-but love between people seems like it nearly always is.

***

¹ Except llamas. Sometimes llamas are bitchy.

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I got Archer to agree to switch our charity to Happy Paws, a no-kill "haven" that finds homes for abandoned dogs and cats, and Thursday afternoon I stayed late at school helping Meghan and Nora make posters for the Baby CHuBS recruiting table. Some were about Happy Paws, and the others offered a free baked good to anyone who signed up to contribute to the sale. The food would get the boys in, we figured.

"Guys will do almost anything for a chocolate chip cookie," said Nora. "I have a brother. Trust me, I know."

"Like what will they do?" I asked.

"Once I got Gideon and his friends to clean my room."

"Gideon cleaned your room?"

"He wouldn't do it now. He was like thirteen."

"What else?"

"He's loaned me his car. And his iPod. Stuff like that, just if I make him cookies."

Nora's brother, Gideon, is a freshman at Evergreen State College nearby in Olympia. It's one of those colleges where you make your own major. He's extremely hot in a messy, bohemian way, and I had a ginormous crush on him in sixth grade.

"Those must be magic cookies," put in Meghan. We had finished poster making and gone in the Jeep to the Pike Place Market to buy ingredients and baking paraphernalia. The Market is a big open-air craft and produce thing. Cobblestone streets. A view of Puget Sound. Fishmongers. Smells waft from the crumpet shop, Three

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Girls Bakery and the dumpling place I don't know the name of.

"If Nora made the magic cookies now," Meghan mused aloud, "I could give a cookie to Mike and have him do my horizontal bidding."

I cracked up. "What about Mark, Dave, Dan and Don?"

"Whichever," said Meghan.

"You are a bad, bad woman," Nora said.

"You're the one making the magic cookies," said Meghan. "I'm just planning to use them to their fullest potential."

Nora looked at her. "I thought you wanted true love before Spring Fling."

Meghan shrugged. "Sure. But that was before I knew you could make magic cookies."

We entered a kitchen-supply store, and as we trolled the aisles, I wondered what I would do with magic cookies.

Make Kim and Cricket forgive me? Make Noel fall in love with me? Make Jackson want me? I couldn't decide.

Nora didn't like any of the cookie cutters at Sur La Table. Archer wanted us to make rabbits and Easter egg shapes, but when we looked at them they were just so cutesy and Christian-centric we couldn't deal. So we gave up on baking supplies and followed Meghan over to the Birkenstock store. She's obsessed with those sandals,

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which is such a completely odd thing to be obsessed with, given that they are neither attractive nor practical. But there is no reasoning with that girl when it comes to footwear.²

Granola Brothers Footwear Emporium is in a corner of the Market devoted to stores selling Hmong tapestries, inexpensive cotton print blankets and silver jewelry. Inside the shop, Nora and I fingered batik shirts and tie-dyed dresses while Meghan debated earnestly between a pair of brown sandals and--another pair of brown sandals.

After a few minutes I noticed a sign on the counter saying HELP WANTED, so I asked the hippie man who was ponytailing around behind the counter what the job was.

"Working the register, selling Birks, restocking the sock wall"-there was a wall of colored socks-"and helping customers," he said. "We're a laid-back operation. Where have you worked before?"

I told him about the zoo internship and babysitting, leaving out the part about Robespierre and the drunk guy and being fired.

"And how do you feel about feet?" the guy asked.

Feet?

Ag. Who has strong feelings about feet?

"I think it's superimportant for people to have comfortable footwear," I told him. "I think happy feet make a happy person."

"Can you work Saturdays?" asked the guy. "Saturday is when it's really busy in here."

***

² Movies in which the romantic heroine sports Birkenstocks: none.

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"Sure," I said.

"Come in tomorrow at nine. You'll get an hour of training on how to fit the shoes and work the register," he told me. "We open at ten. You'll need to wear Birks to work, but otherwise, consult your own personal style genie."

Suddenly, life was sweet.

I had a job!

Hello, use of the Honda!

Hello, no more debt to my parents!

Hello, cash flow!

And hello, Birkenstocks.

Hippie sandals and an anchor coat. My personal style genie was having a seriously horrible month.

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11.

I Unleash the Powers of Magic Cookies

Thirteen Reasons Not to Look at Photos of Your Ex-Boyfriend

1. His smile lights up the picture. No one has a laugh like him.

2. He looks good without his shirt on. Really, phenomenally good.

3. Why did the two of you never get naked again? Why didn't you rip off his clothes the moment you had a chance? Because the way you are going now, in an apparently permanent state of Noboyfriend, that was the only opportunity you are ever going to get to touch a guy's naked chest. Which you really want to do before you die.

4. Look at the way he's got his arms around you in that photo. That was something real. No one could fake that. So how could he change from loving boyfriend into pod-robot¹?

***

¹ Pod-robot: Looks like a person but has no personlike feelings. Possibly a human who has been taken over by an alien life-form, possibly just a spectacularly

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5. Maybe he didn't change into a pod-robot. Maybe he still has buried feelings. After all, he did give you a Frog Laden with Meaning.

6. Remember how you two did that lollipop taste-test? Look, there he is making a funny face at the yucky grape flavor.

7. And remember how when you took that photo on the roof, he left you a note with mysterious instructions saying where to meet him and when, and then he kissed you up there and you looked at the view and took snapshots with the self-timer?

8. Remember, remember, remember...

9. What you had with this boy, for the time that it lasted--that is what you want out of love. The giddiness, the silliness, the comfort. That feeling is the whole reason to leave the state of Noboyfriend.

10. But will you ever be able to have that feeling with anyone but him?

11. Look, there he is with your ex-best friend. The two of them are holding pieces of sushi in their chopsticks and pointing at each other's food. Were they into each other then?

12. Were they holding hands under the table when you went to the bathroom? Were they laughing behind your back?

13. You will never know.

--from The Girl Book,written mid-February, junior year.

***

excellent robot. A relatively complete listing of movies with pod people, humanoid robots or something similar appears in a previous chronicle of the debacle that is my life, but here are a couple you really should watch if you have any pretensions to being a movie aficionado: Westworld; The Terminator; The Stepford Wives(1975 version).

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Saturday I worked at Granola Brothers. The other salespeople were college students helping pay their way through the U. They were devoted to an earthy, tie-dye aesthetic and a diet that included the voluntary consumption of sprouts. Meghan had given me a hand-me-down pair of Birks, and I wore them with black tights and a vintage dress. Fletcher, my boss, trained me--and as I spent the day organizing socks and ringing up sales, I had to admit the shop was a friendly and cheerful place to work. I can't say I was interested in feet--everyone there talked about feet a lot-but being there and helping customers did keep my mind off my declining mental health, my precarious friendships and my parents' insanity.

When I got home I tried to make the treasure map Doctor Z wanted me to do, even though I didn't feel like it. (I doubted it would cure me of panic attacks, and I wanted to spend the evening eating take-out pizza and watching Notting Hill again. So romantic.)

But since I was afraid of the way Doctor Z would look at me if I went back on Tuesday without it, I started the map as soon as I was done writing my Chem lab. I cleared off my desk; found a big sheet of paper left over from Advanced Painting Elective last term, some watercolors, scissors and a glue stick-and dug out my pile of photographs of Jackson, from back when we were going out.

They were hard to look at.

They made me remember things I didn't want to remember.

What did I want from my "relationship" with him? That's what Doctor Z wanted to know in the treasure map.

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Think of what you want from a situation, she was always saying, and then try to get it.

Except I didn't have a relationship with Jackson. I only used to have a relationship with Jackson. Then we broke up and spent a whole summer and first term junior year not having a relationship. Him being a pod-robot and me being a wreck. Then bit by bit, I got over him. Until he broke up with Kim and sent me the Frog Laden with Meaning.

What did I want?

Nothing.

No, that wasn't honest.

To be friends, nothing complicated. No frogs, no flirting.

No, that wasn't honest either. I wanted frogs! I wanted flirting. I wanted to have him love me again so I could humiliate him by rejecting him.

No. To have him love me again so I could prove to Kim and to myself that I was better than she was.

No. To have him love me again so I could experience true love.

No. Ag. No. There was not going to be true love with Jackson. He was a massive flirt and a cheater and generally bad news.

So what did I want?

Did I want him to love me?

Did I want to rip his clothes off?

Did I want redemption?

Revenge?

I painted the background of the treasure map with

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a thin wash of blue watercolors, dark water fading into pale sky.

Jackson Clarke.

When the paint was dry enough, I pasted a picture of the two of us holding lollipops right in the center of the map. It was a picture of happiness. Romantic happiness.

Whether I wanted it with Jackson, whether I wanted it with Noel, whether I just wanted it in the abstract, I didn't know. But I wanted it.

Then I wrote: "Do not think about guys who have broken your heart six ways. It is mentally deranged to chase after heartbreak."

I looked through some old Tate directories and found a photo of Nora's brother, Gideon Van Deusen, looking bohemian, even in a school photo. I cut him out and pasted him on there. "Wanting guys you can't have is a recipe for unhappiness," I wrote, remembering sixth grade. "Do not fall for people who hardly know you exist."

Then I found a picture of Finn Murphy and wrote: "Liking a guy just because he likes you: Immature and pitiful? Or a smart interpersonal relationship strategy likely to result in true happiness?"

The note Noel had written me on the first day of school was in the front pocket of my backpack.

Say you'll be my partner true

In Chemistry, it's me and you.

I glued on a picture of Noel I'd taken during November week earlier that year. He was standing on a dock with a stretch of water behind him, doubled over

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laughing. Then I took a thick black marker and wrote those last two lines of his poem on the left side of the map.

That was what I wanted. Someone who wanted me. Someone who wanted a partner. Not a life partner, but a girlfriend. Someone who wanted there to be a "me and you."

Only, Noel didn't seem to want that anymore. If he ever had.

I mean, he wrote that note the morning after he had no doubt touched the pink sweatered boobs of Ariel Olivieri and pressed his lips against hers.

Ag.

Plus, he couldn't even figure out why I was mad about the bodyguarding thing. Plus plus, he had spent the weekend skiing with Nora, and he liked her cinnamon buns.

More ag.

I realized that as I'd been thinking, I'd written his name over and over in one corner of the map: "Noel. Noel. Noel. Noel."

I crossed it out. Instead, I wrote: "Someone who doesn't care if my hair looks stupid."

I wrote: "Something uncomplicated."

I wrote: "Something real."

Then I wrote: "But is it real if it's uncomplicated?"

I opened this history of cinema book Dad got me for Christmas and paged through to see if I could find an image to use on the map. Movie stills flipped by. Beautifully lit, gorgeous Caucasian people in black-and-white. Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis. Then near the end of the book, in color. People

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looking more disheveled, perhaps, but still-no one's hair looked stupid. Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Gwyneth Paltrow.

There was kissing in those movie stills. A lot of kissing.

But none of it looked like anything real.

And yes, "real" was what I had just said I wanted. But now, fake and glam was looking a lot better than anything that was ever going to actually happen to me.

Fuck it. This whole therapy project was making me more depressed and confused than ever. I shoved the unfinished treasure map in my closet, called out for pizza and put Notting Hill in the DVD player.

***

Sunday around eleven-thirty, I was kneeling on the carpeted floor of Granola Brothers putting shoes back in their boxes when a pair of feet in gray rag socks and very, very old Birks stopped right in front of me. I looked up. Dark jeans. Belt with beads on it. Ancient plaid shirt. Flat stomach. Corduroy coat. Shell necklace. Hair shaggy enough to almost be considered long. Lovely thick eyebrows. Gideon Van Deusen.

"Ruby Oliver," he said. "Is that you?"

I stood up. "Gideon."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm selling Birks," I said. Most Tate Prep students don't have jobs. They don't need the money.

"What a coincidence. I need some Birks!" he said.

I laughed and looked at his feet again. "Yours are old, yeah," I said. "Do you want the same kind again?"

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"Wait," said Gideon, sitting down on an upholstered bench and crossing his long legs. He was at least six foot three. "I want to hear what you've been up to. Nora never tells me details. Are you still painting?"

Painting. He remembered.

"I have Art History this term. But I was using my watercolors just last night," I said.

Fletcher came over. "Is this a friend of yours?" he asked me.

Gideon answered, "Yes." Even though I was Nora's friend, not his. "But I came in for Birks," he added.

"Since your friend is here, Ruby, why don't you guys go have some chai?" Fletcher suggested. "It's quiet now. You can take a break for twenty minutes."

Fletcher was sending me out for chai with Gideon Van Deusen.

"I've got time," said Gideon. "But actually, I could use some dumplings. Do you want to get dumplings?"

Now I was getting a meal with Gideon Van Deusen. For a second, I forgot to feel neurotic and sorry for myself.

I was a girl to eat dumplings with, a girl with a job, a girl going for a meal with a boy she'd crushed on since sixth grade. I felt lucky and pretty.

Gideon and I walked through the Market to the Chinese snack stand. We each got a paper dish of vegetarian dumplings and doused them in soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot oil, then strolled to a bench and sat down. I could hardly look at Gideon's face, I was so nervous.

Not because I liked him, exactly.

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But because he was older.

And because the way his dark eyebrows framed his chocolate eyes made him seem thoughtful.

And because not very long ago I was a silly middle-schooler who wrote "Ruby loves GVD" on her sneaker.

"How's the zoo job?" Gideon asked, his mouth full of dumpling.

He remembered I had a zoo job! "I got fired for defending the rights of a pygmy goat," I told him, and explained about Robespierre and the drunk dad. "So now I am reduced to selling Birkenstocks."

"Why reduced?"

"No offense, but they're not my idea of an acceptable fashion statement." I stuck out my feet and wiggled them.

Gideon stuck his feet out too. "Homely, but you can't deny the comfort," he said.

I shrugged. "My toes get cold." Here we were, talking about feet. Had a day and a half working at Granola Brothers brainwashed me so much that I considered feet an interesting topic for conversation? I changed the subject. "What are you studying?"

Gideon told me how he was taking guitar lessons and writing an essay on carvings by the Native Americans of the northwest coast. When he talked, he moved his hands a lot, and looked me in the eye, as if he really wanted to share his ideas.

I half listened while I stared at him. Gideon had lived outside the Tate Universe for a year and a half. He no longer concerned himself with bake sales and parents'

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nights and the flower deliveries on Valentine's Day. He didn't think about where to sit in the refectory or read old gossip about himself on the bathroom walls. He was nearly an adult. We finished our dumplings and he walked me back to Granola Brothers. I sold him a new pair of the same exact sandals he owned, without him even trying them on. "I'm so glad I ran into you," he said, smiling. Making his thoughtful eyes light up.

***

The next weekend, I went to Nora's place and helped make the magic chocolate chip cookies she'd told us about. The ones that had made Gideon clean her room and loan her his iPod. But first we made miniature molten chocolate cakes in ramekins. Nora taught me how to beat egg whites until stiff and then fold chocolate into them. I kept yelling, "It's an emulsion, people!" even though I wasn't sure it really was an emulsion, technically.

We were dumping the chips into the cookie batter when Gideon walked in.

"What are you doing here?" Nora asked him.

"I brought my laundry home."

"You kidding me."

"No. It's cheaper, even figuring in the cost of gas. Plus my sister is making cookies!" He came over and stuck a finger into the batter. "Hi, Ruby. How's the job?"

"Good," I told him. "A little smelly sometimes."

"Feet," said Gideon.

"Exactly."

While Nora and I baked, Gideon trotted from his car

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to the basement several times. I couldn't help looking at his bare arms as he lugged his basket through the kitchen.

Later, he folded his stuff on the kitchen table. He was a good laundry folder. All the corners of his shirts lined up. And I thought:

1. Gideon hasn't gone out with anyone I'm friends with or used to be friends with.

2. No one I know is secretly in love with him and saying she's going ask him out.

3. He didn't make out with Ariel Olivieri and then refuse to speak to her.

4. He wouldn't leave me a note and then say it was nothing important.

5. He knows how to fold laundry and has attractive arm muscles.

6. Gideon Van Deusen has the sort of qualities I should look for in a boyfriend. He is straightforward and normal. He is outside the Tate Universe.

Nora, Gideon and I ate a few of the magic cookies and watched Moulin Rouge on DVD. When I handed Gideon a cookie, I silently wished his leg would touch mine during the movie.

And it did.

I didn't second-guess myself, and I didn't wonder if I really had feelings for him or was just using him as a substitute because I was lonely. I didn't think about Noel and I didn't think about Jackson and I didn't have a panic attack. I just sat there and got us all to make a list of movies besides Moulin Rouge where the heroine is a

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prostitute with a heart of gold²-feeling Gideon's warm thigh against mine.

***

Very early Monday morning, Meghan and I met Nora at school and set up the CHuBS recruiting table. As people drifted into the main building, Meghan and I tried (as we had on several previous days) to get people to sign up by bribing them with snacks--in this case, the miniature molten cakes and magic cookies. Nora left us with the baked goods and went to the darkroom to do yearbook stuff, printing pictures of sports teams and club members.

"I need to try the magic cookies right now," said Meghan. "Who can I try them on?" She scanned the hallway. None of the candidates for Operation Sophomore Love was anywhere in evidence.

"I'm not saying they definitely worked," I told her. "I'm saying my leg was touching Gideon's."

"For how much of the movie?"

"Um ... seventy-two percent."

Meghan squealed. "That's a lot! That's deliberate leg-touching. Was it a long movie?" I nodded.

"Okay, so how did it work?"

***

² Here's the list we came up with, with help from the Internet. Movies that make prostitution seem like a glam job in which you might end up falling in love with a supercute and quality guy such as young Christian Slater or Ewan McGregor: Moulin Rouge; Pretty Woman; Trading Places; Milk Money; The Girl Next Door; Risky Business; Irma la Douce; From Here to Eternity; Klute; Memoirs of a Geisha; LA. Confidential; Night Shift; True Romance.

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"I gave him a cookie, and while he was eating it, I thought about what I wanted him to do."

Meghan crinkled her nose. "But it was Gideon."

"So?"

"So, he's the one who did Nora's bidding before. Maybe the magic cookies only work on him. Maybe they won't do anything to other boys."

"Which is why you have to try them on someone else," I said.

"There's no one to try them on."

We sat there for a minute. A few geeky freshmen wandered by. Varsha from swim team came and signed up to make pecan-caramel squares. She took a chocolate cake on a paper plate.

"Maybe," said Meghan, "we can eat the cookies ourselves and make a wish for something we want to have happen."

I doubted it would work, but I didn't want to squash her idea. All I'd had for breakfast was carrot juice and an apple. "Let's try it," I said.

Meghan took a magic cookie for herself and one for me. "We each make a wish for something we want. Not world peace, just like the stuff Nora wished for-someone will loan you his car, someone will bring you a present, someone will kiss you today. Okay?"

"Okay."

I looked seriously at my cookie. I knew it was stupid, but it was also kind of like the treasure map I was supposed to be finishing, wasn't it? Like envisioning what you

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want in the world, putting your energy toward imagining things the way you'd like them to be.

"Do we wish while we chew?" I asked. "Or before we chew?"

"You're the expert," said Meghan. "You wished while Gideon was chewing, right?"

"Right. So decide on your wish, but don't wish until you're chewing. You ready?"

We bit into our chocolate chip cookies, brown-sugary and delicious, and I wished, fervently, that somehow, today, I would know what to do with myself when it came to boys. The treasure map. Jackson, Finn, Noel, Gideon.

I wished that something, anything, would happen to help me sort out how I felt.

I wished for a sign. An answer to my questions.

I closed my eyes while I chewed, and when I opened them-Jackson Clarke was standing in front of me. "Hey there, Ms. Roo," he said.

I choked and coughed.

"I can wait." Jackson slid into the chair next to me and looked at the Baby CHuBS sign-up sheet. He chuckled. "Finn Murphy is making brownies?"

I managed to swallow my cookie and answer him. "We have a campaign."

"What is it?"

"Tate Boys Bake."

"Baking is the new basketball," said Meghan. "Ha ha."

"Seriously," I said.

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"I do cross-country and crew, anyway," said Jackson. "I don't subscribe to the cult of basketball."

"The new crew, then," I told him. "The new thing that's cool for guys to do."

"Roo."

"What?"

"If it involves an apron, guys are not gonna think it's cool."

"There's no reason girls should be the only ones who contribute. The male population of Tate Prep needs to let go of their antiquated notions of masculinity."

Jackson shrugged. "If I give up my antiquated notions of masculinity, can I have a cookie?" He reached over to the plate.

"Hold it!" I grabbed his wrist. "You not only have to give up your antiquated notions of masculinity, you have to actually bake for the sale. Are you signing up?"

Jackson pulled his arm away, laughing, took a cookie and scarfed it before I could even think what I'd command him to do as he ate. "Those are amazing!" he said. "Did you make them?"

"Nora did," I answered. "But I was sous-chef."

"I didn't think you made them.³"

"I creamed the butter and sugar," I said. "I pressed the button on the mixer and kept it pressed until Nora told me to stop."

***

³ Ag. What did that mean? This is the kind of statement that makes it exceedingly difficult to talk to your ex-boyfriend.

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Jackson reached for another cookie "Hey!" Meghan complained. "Are you signing up or not?"

"I'm not signing up," he said, biting in. "But I have a proposition for you." He took off his jacket and unwound his scarf.

"Make yourself comfortable, why don't you," I said.

"Remember I stopped by the other day and you weren't here?"

Yes, I thought. You left me that frogless note.

"I couldn't tell you what it was about with Wallace standing right there, but I'm running the Parents' Day Handicap and I need a covert base of operations."

The Parents' Day Handicap is not a tradition at Tate Prep-not yet. A senior boy who was a friend of Jackson's started it only last year. On Parents' Day, all the upper-school parents stroll through Tate looking at science projects, art exhibitions, yearbook layouts and videos of sports victories. Then they cluster into the auditorium and hear speeches from the heads of various departments--science, music, drama, English, etc.-talking about the wilderness programs, the school plays, the new electives on offer. Each department head is only supposed to talk for four minutes, because while the wealthy parent body is well inclined to pony up donations after a day of being assaulted with the wonders of the Tate Prep education, they also get bored if any of it goes on too long.

However, these are teachers. They are used to filling an hour-and-fifteen-minute class period with musings on the subject of light and dark imagery in Hamlet, causes of the French revolution or emulsions. They tend to ramble

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on. And Parents' Day is not like the Academy Awards. No music comes on to tell the long-winded it's time to shut up.

So the senior-his name was Sky Whipple, but everyone called him the Whipper-he had this idea to make odds on how long the teachers would talk. You could place a bet, a real money bet, on a particular department head. Depending on general tendencies to blather, the activities of the department and placement in the evening's program, the Whipper gave you odds. A long-winded teacher, early in the night, whose department had undergone radical changes? He'd be the favorite, paying out maybe two dollars for a dollar bet. A shy teacher speaking last might earn you fifteen bucks on the dollar as a long shot.

Jackson explained that he was taking bets and wanted a central yet unobtrusive location where people could find him before school. Could he hang for a couple of mornings at the Baby CHuBS recruiting table? Then, on Parents' Day night, after the speeches, he could sit at the bake sale table and pay out to the winning bettors as if he were innocently making change.

"What's in it for us?" asked Meghan.

Jackson shrugged. "If you're trying to get guys to sign up, maybe me sitting here would help? You've got a very girly operation, otherwise."

That was true. "You'd add manliness to the bake sale," Meghan said.

Jackson laughed. "Exactly."

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My heart was pounding, like it always did when Jackson was around.

Was he flirting with me?

Was he talking to me to get back at Kim for something? Was he trying to be friends?

"If you're going to sit here, you have to talk to everyone who comes by about how cool Baby CHuBS is going to be and how we're going to raise all this money for Happy Paws," Meghan was saying. "You have to encourage people to sign up."

"I could do that."

"Guys. Get the guys to sign up," she clarified. "Can I get a commission?" Jackson asked. "What do you mean?"

"Like, for every guy I rope in, you give me a free cookie?"

"No way," Meghan said. "It's us doing you a favor. And after what you did to Roo last year, you should count yourself lucky we're willing to help you out at all."

Jackson blushed. "Point taken," he said. Then he nudged me with his elbow. "I'm older and wiser now," he told me. "So can I sit at your table?"

My face was hot. I nodded.

"Okay, we have a deal. I can give you a tip: Ms. Harada is a long shot with a good chance this year. Wants support for her art and wilderness program." Jackson popped the last of his second magic cookie into his mouth.

As he chewed I looked at him hard. If I was over him, why couldn't I concentrate whenever he was around?

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Why did it hurt so much when he flirted with me?

Or when he flirted with Meghan?

Why did I feel guilty for just talking to him, as if I was betraying Kim, who didn't even like me anymore?

He was chewing, and digging in his backpack to find his pen, and I wished on the magic cookie.

I wished for everything to be easy between us.

To feel relaxed around him.

For all the leftover pain to disappear.

Bad move.

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12.

I Embark on a Doughnut Enterprise

Roo,

It's been more than a week since Crystal Mountain, and still, Noboyfriend.

Should I ask him out? Maybe to go watch the boys' lacrosse game? Circle one: Yes or No.

You will notice I am writing you a middle school-type questionnaire note. I guess I'm desperate.

Say you'll still be my friend despite this failing. Nora

--crumpled in a small ball and passed to me during Am Lit while Wallace was trying (and failing) to make his laptop show us a PowerPoint slide show.

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R: Of course I am still your friend.

N: You didn't circle Yes or No!

R: This is 21st century. Hello? So Yes.

N: But I asked him skiing already.

R: Not the same thing. That was a group event.

N: You're right. I'm going to ask him. I have liked him for way too long to wait anymore.

R: Yay.

N: What if he says no?

R: Don't angst. He will say yes. You are gorgeous. And he already loves your cinnamon buns.

N: Cinnamon buns not enough.

R: Plus you like to watch sports on TV. You are every guy's dream.

N: What if he's busy? Then I won't know whether he wanted to say yes or no.

R: At least you will have asked.

N: Gideon was flirting with you the other night.

R: A little, maybe. He is out of my league.

N: Not.

R: Yah. It was just a mercy flirt.

N: If you get together with Gideon, and I get Noel, we can all hang out together.

R: I'll just hold my breath for that one.

N: We'd be like sisters! R: You know I only date pod-robots.

Of course, most of what I wrote was a lie. Well, not precisely a lie, because I do think girls should ask boys out and I do think Nora is gorgeous and any guy

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would be lucky to have her, but what I wanted to write was "Can't you just move on and like somebody else instead of fixating on Noel, especially when you are a nicer person than I am with better hair and way bigger boobs? Because even though I ate dumplings with Gideon, and even though I wished his leg to press against mine, if Noel starts liking you back, I might die of sorrow."

But I didn't write any of that. I wrote what I wrote.

Because I loved Nora.

And I wanted to her to be happy.

And I had been flirting with Gideon, and it was so nice of her to want me to go out with her brother. It was ridiculous and wrong for me to act like I had the slightest claim on Noel.

But was it so bad to want Nora to be happy with someone else? Some nice basketball muffin, or a student government type?

And why was it that I had to lie to my friend in order to do the right thing by her? In order to be a good person, I had to pretend I didn't feel the way I felt.

Was that what good people did? Denied their feelings and acted fake?

Nora didn't ask Noel out that day anyway. Or the day after that. She kept saying "Today is the day," but the boys' lacrosse game came and went without her asking him. So much for the Imitate Nora Van Deusen Program for a Happier Mocha Latte.

"If you ask Noel to Spring Fling, I'll ask a sophomore," Meghan said to Nora at lunch Friday.

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"Spring Fling again?" I said. "Meghan, it's not even Valentine's Day."

"Which sophomore?" Nora asked.

"I don't know," said Meghan. "Which do you think?"

"If you don't know, it doesn't matter to you like it matters to me," said Nora. "It's not a fair trade."

Meghan laughed and ate her taco.

Nora didn't ask Noel out.

***

Thursday night was my night to cook for the Baby CHuBS recruiting table. And yes, I decided to make doughnuts. Call me pathetic, I won't deny it. Jackson had implied he doubted my baking abilities, and now I was going to make doughnuts. Just to show him I could.

I got a recipe off the Internet, rode my bike to the corner store for ingredients and started mixing dough. I expected Mom to throw a fit about deep-frying activities in her raw-food kitchen, but she just said, "I have to go over to Juana's for a bit now."

In case you forgot, Juana is my mom's best friend-the playwright with thirteen dogs and four ex-husbands.

"Why?" I asked, trying to figure out which thing in the drawer was a ladle.

"I have to pick something up." Mom put on her coat.

"What?"

"It's private," Mom said, smiling like she was someone special.

Whatever. I was making doughnuts. I wasn't going to get dragged into the Elaine Oliver show right then.

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She left. Dad was working at his desk, composing a newsletter about early spring plantings.

I got out flour, baking soda, eggs, milk, butter, sugar and all that. I created an emulsion of butter and sugar creamed together that would have made Fleischman proud. My batter turned into dough as I added flour. I rolled it into a nice little ball, and ...

Damn. Now I was supposed to chill the dough for two hours. How could I have not read that part of the recipe?

I stuck it in the freezer for half an hour.

Now to heat oil in the big pot we used for pasta (back when my mother let us eat pasta). The recipe said 365 degrees.

How was I supposed to tell when it was 365 degrees? I looked at the bottom of the recipe. "Special equipment needed: candy thermometer." I had no candy thermometer.

Who has a candy thermometer? That's like a highly specialized item.

I called Meghan first, because she lives near me, but she didn't have one, so I called Nora.

Nora didn't pick up the phone.

Gideon did.

"I thought you were at Evergreen," I told him. "I don't have classes on Fridays, so I drove home this afternoon," he said. "Nora's at a yearbook meeting."

"Do you guys have a candy thermometer?"

"Uh, maybe."

"Could you check? Because I have a Doughnut Enterprise that requires a candy thermometer."

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"Would I know one if I saw one?" The sound of Gideon rummaging through a kitchen drawer.

"Maybe. Wouldn't it look like a thermometer?"

He laughed. "You don't know what it's supposed to look like?"

I opened the freezer to poke the dough. "No. I decided to make doughnuts for our bake sale recruiting table and I'm like halfway through and I realized I need a candy thermometer."

"I think this is it. Hold on," Gideon said. "Mom! Is this thing a candy thermometer and can Ruby borrow it?"

I couldn't hear what she was saying, but Gideon eventually said: "She doesn't want to loan it out."

"Tell her it's a doughnut emergency," I said.

"She's having a doughnut emergency," he said.

"Oh, and tell her it's for charity," I said.

"It's for charity," he said.

"And tell her it will look good on Nora's college applications if CHuBS does well."

Gideon laughed. "She already said yes. Should I drive it over?"

Oh.

Gideon was going to drive a candy thermometer over to my house. Was it possible the other night hadn't been a mercy flirt at all?

So sue me. I changed my shirt and put on red lipstick before he got there. Most any girl would have done the same.

***

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Gideon made a lot of noise about the houseboat. How cool it was, how he drove past the rows of Seattle houseboats all the time and had never been inside any of them, how much he liked the greenhouse, how amazing it must be to have so much nature right in your home.

My dad ate it up, of course, and raised his eyebrows at me in a hopeful way, as if to say, "Is this polite, intelligent and bohemian young man a new boyfriend? Can I begin to hope that you will become well-adjusted?"

I felt sorry for Dad for a second-because I know he worries about me--but then he pulled a complete Kevin Oliver move by saying, "Gideon, it's so nice to see Ruby has a new friend. I know she was lonely over winter break when Meghan and Nora were away."

I felt like retching. "He's Nora's brother, Dad."

"Okay. But he can still be your friend."

I was sure Gideon was going to run away screaming any second, but he walked over to the stove and asked me what I was measuring with the candy thermometer.

"Oil," I told him. "To fry the doughnuts."

"Can I watch?"

"Oh, urn. Sure."

We put on oven mitts and measured the temperature of the oil until it was 365 degrees. In between testing the oil, I rolled out the dough and cut circles in it with a cookie cutter.

Gideon stayed. He helped me put the circles into the oil with a spatula.

They fried and turned brown! It was amazing.

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We scooped them out with tongs and shook powdered sugar over them. Gideon ate one before it was cool and burned his mouth and had to suck on an ice cube. I got a splatter of oil on a vintage sweater that probably wouldn't come out, plus a small burn on my wrist. Still, we had doughnuts!

And more doughnuts.

We spread them on cookie trays covered in paper towels to soak up the oil. When the table was full, we put them on plates on the dining room chairs and on top of the credenza behind the sofa. We didn't talk that much-just "Watch out, that one's getting too dark" and "Here, your turn with the spatula," stuff like that.

We had taken the last batch of fried deliciousness out of the oil when my mother came back from Juana's.

With a Great Dane.

My stomach dropped.

"Surprise, Ruby!" she yelled, standing in the doorway and letting the cold air rush in.

Oh my God. She had believed me about the dog.

How could she have believed me?

The dog was beautiful, but enormous. His head was as high as my chest and he had pointy ears and a tail like a whip. He was spotted like a Dalmatian and barking in a friendly way.

Rouw! Rouw!

My mother had a leash on him, but as he lunged into the house, she bent down and undipped it. "Welcome to your new home, big boy. Say hello to Ruby."

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The dog ran over to me and smelted my hand, then licked me from fingertips to wrist in one giant swipe of tongue. ''Hiya, puppy," I said.

I love the way dogs want to lick you right away if they like you. They're so direct.

He sniffed Gideon briefly, then ran to the table. In a matter of seconds, the dog stood on his hind legs with his forefeet on a chair and ate an estimated twenty-two doughnuts. He spilled several trays and dusted the floor, the rug and one edge of the sofa with powdered sugar.

Oh no. All our hard work. All our deliciousness.

"Polka-dot, no!" My mother dashed over and grabbed him by the collar.

Polka-dot turned and gave her an enormous lick across the face, then ate another doughnut.

"Stop him!" I cried, and Mom was still saying "no"-- but Polka-dot outweighed her by probably forty pounds, and he was very much enamored of the fried deliciousness that was my Doughnut Enterprise. Mom yanked him, and Gideon went over and yanked him, and frankly, Polka-dot was too strong for both of them. He was willing to come off the table, but then he just began scarfing up the doughnuts at chair level. I felt like crying, but my mom and Gideon had lost control, so I went over to Polka-dot and tapped his nose, like I'd seen Juana do when her dogs misbehaved. "No!" I said firmly.

Polka-dot licked me and ate another.

I tapped his nose again. "That's people food!" I said.

He looked at me as if to say, "Isn't it good stuff? Thank you for sharing!"

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I had to admit, it would have been funny under other circumstances. He just looked so sure that I was going to understand his point of view. Still, a tear leaked out as I moved the single undamaged tray of doughnuts to the top of the refrigerator. I had worked so hard on them. Jackson would have been so impressed.

We just let Polka-dot have his way after that. He ate everything that was left on the floor. The four of us stood in silence, watching as he poked his head under the table, his tail snapping back and forth in doggy joy.

"At least he's cleaning the floor," said my father, who had been no help whatsoever during this entire escapade. "There won't be a speck of powdered sugar left when he's done."

Polka-dot wagged his tail.

"So I got you a dog, Ruby," said my mother, stating the obvious. "Like your therapist said you should have."

"Mom!" I'm not ashamed that I go to a shrink, but it's still not a factoid you want broadcast to hot college boys who are helping you cook. I mean, Gideon is so well-adjusted that the idea of mental illness must completely repel him.

"I knew Juana had a Great Dane," Mom explained. "So I went and got him for you."

"I wasn't serious!" I cried. "You weren't?"

"No! It was a joke."

"Tell me that's not true."

"Therapists don't tell you what dog breed to get. Why would you think I was serious?"

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"I don't know," said my mother. "Maybe because that's what you told me when we were having a serious conversation about your therapy?"

Gideon grabbed his jacket. "I should be getting home," he said. "It's late. Sorry about your doughnuts, Ruby."

"Oh, that's okay!" I said, as brightly as I could, while my face flushed with shame. Not only did he know I went to a shrink, now he also knew that I lied to my parents and fought with them.

So much for any attraction he might have felt. "Why don't you take a few home for your family?" I said, to cover my embarrassment. "I don't have enough to bring in for the bake sale recruiting, anyhow."

"Okay," he said. "They'll love 'em." As I wrapped four doughnuts for him, Gideon held out his hand to my dad. "Thanks for having me over, Mr. Oliver."

My dad shook enthusiastically. "Call me Kevin."

"And Mrs. Oliver, nice to meet you."

"I don't know what you were thinking, Ruby," my mother snapped at me, ignoring Gideon completely. I handed him the doughnuts. He gave me a quick wave and walked out the door.

My mom and I had a full-on argument over the mess in the house, my lie about the dog, her behavior toward Gideon, my lack of gratitude for Polka-dot and who knows what else. I cleaned the kitchen, wrapped the last two doughnuts in foil for my dad and Hutch to eat the next afternoon and spent the night sleeping on the couch so that Polka-dot-whose enormous people-food meal had seriously disagreed with him--could be

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taken out for walks every hour when he whimpered at the door.

***

I didn't bring my stupid treasure map to Doctor Z; I pretended I needed more time. We spent most of our Tuesday session talking about Polka-dot and how my parents had been transferring all their obsessive worry about me onto him: Polka-dot wasn't getting walked enough. Or he was walking too much and didn't he look like he might be limping? Or he was lonely at night and should sleep with them; no, he needed privacy at night and was content on the living room couch.

He shouldn't be allowed on the couch.

No, he was one of the family now, of course he could get on the couch! Endless discussion.

"It sounds like they love him," said Doctor Z.

I thought about it. "Yeah, they do," I said. "They've fallen in love with him, even though they didn't want him at first."

"Why did they get him if they didn't want him?" she asked. I hadn't told her about my lie. "They got him for me," I told her. Doctor Z crossed her legs. "That's a big present."

"I guess."

"Getting you a Great Dane when they didn't want one themselves."

My mom had been so pissy with me about Polka-dot-saying stuff like "You asked for him, you walk him"-that I hadn't had a minute to think about it that way.

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She had gotten me a big present. One she didn't want around. As a surprise.

Because she thought it would help my mental health. Because she loved me.

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13.

I Am Wearing the Wrong Bra

Roo,

Here, in late payment for services rendered, four apricot Fruit Roll-Ups.

Also, in compensation for unforeseen hardships associated with the job of bodyguard, one candy ring in a flavor that appears to be blue raspberry, though I am not certain. In any case, it is blue. And I am blue.

Roo, I don't know what I did, exactly, because I am a fool, because I am not good with girls, because sometimes I'm all wrong when I'm around you.

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You know that, right? Yes.

Everything has been all wrong between us since the bodyguard thing. I confess I don't know exactly what I did, but I did something wrong. And for the something, I am sorry. Noel

--found in my mail cubby Wednesday morning, written on yellow legal paper and folded in quarters, taped onto a brown paper bag containing four apricot Fruit Roll-Ups and a blue candy ring.

noel and I hadn't spoken more than we had to since the argument about Crystal Mountain. We had done our labs in Chem tersely and without amusement. I didn't sit by him in Art History. I was mad about Ariel, and Nora, and about Noel not understanding why I might be mad, and I felt spazzed out in general around him, so I just acted as cold and silent as I could. That way, at least, I wouldn't end up saying anything more I'd regret.

But I got his note Wednesday morning and I couldn't stay mad. There's something about seeing a guy's feelings written down, something about him taking that risk and committing his heart to paper, that means so much more than anything he could just say.

I read the note over several times and tasted the candy ring.

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It was gross, actually, but no one had ever given me a ring of any kind before.

And here was one from Noel.

An apology ring. A sweet ring. A blue ring.

I tried it on and would have worn it for the rest of the day, but I knew I'd have to explain to Nora where it came from, so instead of wearing it, I wrote Noel back on a blue Post-it and stuck it in his mail cubby.

Sometimes, actually, you are very good with girls.

-R

I wasn't going to feel guilty about writing back, I told myself. It was the only polite thing to do. I couldn't go saying nothing when Noel had given me candy and Fruit Roll-Ups, could I?

And anyway, what I wrote was short. It wasn't like we were having some epic correspondence Nora didn't know about.

Yeah, my note was a little flirty. But Meghan flirted with everyone all the time, and it didn't mean anything. It was simply an expression of her personality. Flirting is a normal part of human interaction. Just because I flirted with Finn when we got him to join Baby CHuBS didn't mean I liked him back. It was only a way to pass the time. And just because Jackson had been sitting at our bake sale table making witty remarks-that didn't mean anything either.

So there. It was fine to write Noel back. I was going

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to Chemistry and I was normal. It was nice to be friends.

When I walked into class, Noel's grin was so wide and open I knew he'd read what I wrote. Everything was easy between us again.

That day's experiment was a ginger ale volcano. We were supposed to put on these beige plastic smocks, which were exceptionally unflattering, and Fleischman gave each pair of lab partners a screw-top bottle of ginger ale, Altoids and small pieces of paper.

"My vanity is challenged," I said to Noel. "I hate it when we have to wear smocks."

"I have no vanity," he said, "but I'm sweating in this thing."

"That's it," I said. "We're not wearing them." I shrugged mine off, took Noel's from him and hung them back up.

"People!" called Fleischman. "I'm not going to make it mandatory, but I think you want to wear your smocks."

"Captain of the Beaker," said Noel. "Prepare the experiment."

"Smockless," I said, "I will do your bidding."

I rolled a stack of Altoids into a small tube of paper, quickly opened the pop and dumped the mints into the ginger ale.

Boom! The ginger ale exploded out the top of the bottle and sprayed all over the room. Ours was first. Boom! Boom! Boom! The others followed. Fleischman was ecstatic. Everyone was laughing and

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wiping their faces, and some boys were trying to drink the pop as it foamed out the top of their bottles.

Me, I was wearing a white T-shirt. With a bright orange bra underneath. And no smock.

I was soaked in ginger ale.

"Nice rack, Oliver," said Neanderthal Darcy from the table on the other side of us.

"Heh heh heh," chuckled obnoxious Josh, his eyes glued to my boobs. "This is the best Chem class all year."

I looked at Noel. He was drenched too, but he was wearing a navy blue hoodie over a black T-shirt. And his eyes were going exactly where Josh's and Darcy's were.

My anchor coat was in my locker three stories down, and I knew if I ran out of the room I'd end up making the whole debacle more dramatic than it already was. I looked at Ariel and Katarina, hoping one of them would have a sweater handy and take pity on me. They were both wearing their smocks, so I couldn't see their outfits, but neither one was taking any action.

Fleischman was oblivious. He was talking to a table of kids whose ginger ale hadn't exploded properly.

Should I run out of the room and get my coat?

Or walk over to the closet and put a smock on?

Should I brazen it out and let everybody see my bra?

Don't panic.

"You could stop traffic with those, Oliver," said Darcy. "The color's bright enough."

"She could stop traffic without the bra too," chuckled Josh.

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"Excuse me," I said. "I'm wondering: Did your mothers raise all of their children to be sexists, or were you two singled out specially?"

"Don't get offended," Darcy said. "Orange is a good color on you!"

Josh nudged him. "Check it out. She's cold."

I crossed my arms over my chest.

"How could you tell?" Darcy asked.

Josh cupped his hands in front of his chest, then wiggled his pointer fingers. "You can tell."

I couldn't think of anything snappy to say, so I turned to leave the room for my coat when I saw--Noel. Holding out his damp hoodie to me. Keeping his eyes steadily on the floor so they wouldn't rest on my boobs anymore.

I took it silently, flushed with gratitude and embarrassment, put it on and zipped it up. It smelled like green apple hair gel and laundry soap.

We finished the lab in silence, wiping ginger ale from the stools and floor, then writing up our observations and listening to Fleischman talk about bubbles and surfaces and I don't know what.

I kept thinking, I'm wearing his hoodie. I'm wearing his hoodie.

No guy, not even Jackson, had ever given me his clothes to wear. And even though it was wet, it was incredibly warm.

***

Right after class, I was in a bathroom stall wringing the ginger ale out of my bra and T-shirt when Kim and Cricket came in together.

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"Just act like she doesn't exist," Cricket was saying. "Like Jackson doesn't exist. Neither of them are worth your time to even think about."

Were they talking about me?

They were talking about me.

"I can't believe he's hanging around her like that, sitting at her bake sale table, after everything that happened," Kim answered.

"She's always wanted him back, you know that," said Cricket. "Erase the whole thing from your mind. Those people do not exist."

Kim sighed. "That's harder than you think."

My stomach twisted. I wanted to bust out of the toilet stall and explain that I wasn't doing anything with Jackson and he was just doing the Parents' Day Handicap at our table, and couldn't we keep the truce we'd settled into before Kim and Jackson broke up? Because really, truly, I meant no harm.

Only, I stayed where I was.

Besides the fact that if I came out they'd know I'd been hiding with my feet tucked up on the toilet seat, listening to their conversation, nothing I wanted to say was entirely true. I had been flirting with Jackson. I did have moments of wanting him back, now that he was single and talking to me.

What kind of person was I? Pretty awful, I had to admit.

I mean, if I was Kim, I would hate me. And if I was Cricket I would hate me.

How did I become someone I myself would hate?

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"Come to my house after school," Cricket told Kim. "We'll rent movies and eat cheesy popcorn. I'll get Katarina, Heidi and Ariel to come too."

"Nothing romantic," said Kim. "I can't watch romantic movies in my current state of mind."

"Of course not."

"And no anime or I'll think about Jackson."

"Would I ever intentionally watch anime?" Cricket asked.

"No," Kim admitted.

"Action," promised Cricket. "Action where guys take their shirts off. That'll make you feel better."

Kim laughed. "Not Troy again."¹

Maybe it was the mention of Troy. Cricket had convinced us to rent that movie so many times in ninth grade. It made me sad to think of them watching it again (because of course they would, despite what Kim said)--eating the popcorn Cricket always used to make with Cheddar, Parmesan and pepper.

Without me.

Thinking about it, I panicked. There in the toilet stall, my breathing grew short, my heart pounded, I could feel beads of sweat forming on my forehead. You don't need another description. Same horror show, same channel. I stayed in the toilet stall through my whole lunch period, holding on to Noel's hoodie for comfort.

I kept thinking: I can't go on hanging out with Jackson at the bake sale table.

***

¹ Troy. Basically, lots of war and shirtless men.

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I can't go on liking Gideon a little and liking Noel a lot.

I can't keep pretending to help Nora get Noel while secretly wanting him myself.

***

After school, still wearing the hoodie, I convinced Nora to drive me to Dick's Drive-in so I could make up for the calories missed at lunch. We got milk shakes and three orders of French fries with tartar sauce and mustard and leaned against the hood of her car to eat, even though it was chilly out.

"Noel saved me," I said, having explained the debacle with the ginger ale and the orange bra.

"Just goes to show," said Nora, her mouth full of French fry.

"What?"

"Skin color is the best color for underwear. It never shows through your clothes."

"That's not my point," I told her.

"Bright orange bra is just asking for disaster," Nora went on.

"Really," I told her. "I have a point, and I want you to hear it."

She looked surprised. "Okay."

"My point is-" I didn't know the best way to say it. I took a slurp of my milk shake to buy time. "Noel rescued me like it meant something. Like he wanted it to mean something."

"Oh." Nora's face fell.

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"And maybe I wanted it to mean something too," I said.

Our fries were gone, so Nora crumpled up our greasy squares of paper and threw them in the garbage.

"What do you want me to say to that?" she asked as she came back.

"I don't know."

She twirled a strand of her hair on her finger and sighed. "You know I've liked him for a long time."

"Yeah, I know."

"You told me you were just friends."

"We are just friends," I said, not wanting to lie but wanting to say what she wanted to hear. "I'm just trying to be honest with you."

Nora was silent for a moment. "Let me be honest back, then," she said. "You don't know how it is to like someone for a long time. To keep thinking he might like you back, and thinking he might like you back, and never being sure. Every day you think something might happen. Every day you tell yourself, probably not-but maybe. And then every day it doesn't. It's hard."

I nodded.

"So-it's just not fair for you to suddenly decide you like Noel just because he loaned you his hoodie, when I've been liking him for months," said Nora. She looked at me plaintively, then opened the car door and slid into the driver's seat. I got in next to her.

"There's more," she said.

"What?"

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"Like, with you and Meghan. It's hard being friends with you sometimes."

My pulse quickened. I had been trying to be so good-encouraging, reliable, honest-and now she was saying I was hard to be with?

"I love you both, but you know."

"No, I don't."

"Guys are always looking at you and wanting you," said Nora. "You're so sexy all the time, with lipstick and stuff, and Meghan-well, she's just Meghan. The two of you sit there at the bake sale table flirting with everyone. I just can't be like that. I'm not that type."

"You think I'm sexy?". I blurted.

Sometimes I felt sexy, and sometimes I felt like a troll. In any case, I didn't walk around all day trying to be sexy.

"Hello? Orange bra? Fishnets?"

I nodded. When she put it that way, she had a point. I was shocked, though, that she thought of me and Meghan as the same kind of girl. Meghan was experienced and enterprising and often annoying on the boy front.

Was I the same way?

It was true, I guess, that I was getting attention from Gideon, Finn, Noel and maybe even Jackson, while Nora was getting attention from--no one. And that despite all the horrors that resulted, I had had a real boyfriend last year, while Nora had been Noboyfriend for life.

And I liked wearing fishnets. And I did like the way guys looked at my legs when I wore them.

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"So I guess I'm saying, please don't steal him," Nora went on as we pulled out of the drive-in parking lot.

"I'm not trying to steal him," I said. "I'm just trying to talk about it."

Nora kept looking straight ahead. "It's not fair for you to have Gideon and Jackson and half the soccer team flirting with you, and then decide you're interested in the one guy I like when you could have almost anyone. Don't you see what I'm saying, Roo?"

I had never thought of myself that way. As flirting with half the soccer team. But with CHuBS recruiting, I couldn't deny it was true.

I looked at Nora. Her hands in fuzzy blue gloves. Her skin tan from skiing. Her lips a little chapped. Her eyes on the road because she's always a good driver, even when she's upset.

I didn't want to be the slut most people at school thought I was. I didn't want to be the boy-stealing flirt Nora obviously thought I might be. I wanted to be a good friend. The kind of friend who gets invited over for Troy and cheesy popcorn when something bad has happened.

"Point taken," I told her.

***

"Ruby, did you make the treasure map we talked about?" Doctor Z asked next Tuesday, when I told her about the drama.

"No. But I'll get to it, I promise."

Doctor Z looked at me.

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"I've been superbusy," I said. "Did I tell you about the SAT practice tests? They're making us do practice tests. I spent my Saturday night doing that."

She looked at me some more.

"Plus all the Baby CHuBS stuff, plus I have to read House of Mirth. Plus"-I spit it out-"I had another panic attack this morning. Just randomly before I left for school."

She crossed her legs and still didn't say anything.

"Are you mad I had the panic attack? Because you're right, I should be over them by now."

Doctor Z shook her head. "I'm not mad. This is not about me being mad or judging you in any way, Ruby."

"Sorry."

"You don't need to apologize," said Doctor Z. "I'm wondering if we should spend some time examining your resistance to making the treasure map."

"I don't know what I want!" I yelled. "How can I make a map of what I want when I don't know what I want?"

Silence from Doctor Z.

"I want Jackson one day. I want Noel another day. I want Gideon another. Sometimes I want random people I don't even like especially, like Finn Murphy or my Am Lit teacher."

"Um-hm."

"I want something real one day and I want something like in the movies the next. I'm not consistent, so I don't know how on earth I'm supposed to do this assignment."

"I see."

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I sat there for a minute or two. "What should I do?"

"I can't tell you that," said Doctor Z.

"Then we're not going to get anywhere," I told her, "because I don't know what to do myself. I know you always say I should take action to get what I want out of a situation, but if my mental health is so bad I don't even know what I want, there's no action to take."

"Lots of people don't know what they want."

"Yeah, but are they mentally stable?"

"Possibly."

I stared at her.

Doctor Z chewed her Nicorette. After a while, she said, "I can offer you an observation, for what it's worth."

"What?"

"The treasure map assignment was to create a map of positive peer-group relationships-a friendship collage."

"Uh-huh."

"The map you've been describing, based on what you said just now about Gideon, Jackson and Noel, is more like a treasure map of boys rather than friends."

Oh.

"When we're talking about these people, we're talking about love relationships, are we not?"

"Um. Maybe not love, exactly."

"Romantic relationships."

"Yes."

"I think that's an interesting interpretation on your part."

"What do you mean?"

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"I mean that you interpreted peer-group relationships as romantic relationships." Oh yeah. That.

"That's why I'm here," I told her. "My priorities are completely warped."

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14.

I Suffer from Rabbit Fever

Dear F-SHAN (Former Secret Hooter Agent Noel),

The hooters of F-SHAR (Former Secret Hooter Agent Ruby) are sincerely indebted to you for their heroic rescue last week. Despite the closure of the Hooter Rescue Squad, your skills remain sharp and your instincts unwaveringly chivalrous.

F-SHAR has kept your hoodie much longer than she meant to, but now it's clean and she can give it back. In the interim, she begs you to accept this package of Band-Aids that look like bacon strips, as a sign of her sincere appreciation for your efforts.

--written on white typing paper in black pen--after several drafts; folded in thirds and wrapped around a package of bacon Band-Aids. Shoved with hoodie into Noel's mail cubby.

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I hadn't thanked Noel properly for the rescue, since after my conversation with Nora I felt self-conscious every time I talked to him. But finally I did the laundry and I had to give him his hoodie back, so I wrote this note trying to be amusing and unromantic.

At the start of junior year, before Nora liked him, before he asked if he could kiss me, back when we were friends without any added weirdness, Noel and I had formed a top-secret agency devoted to protecting the rights and interests of hooters everywhere. It was subsequently disbanded. Long story. Anyway, the note was a flashback to the days of the Hooter Rescue Squad, when we were friends, just friends. I stuck it in Noel's cubby on Thursday morning.

I bought the bacon Band-Aids at Archie McPhee. It's this amazing store on Market Street that has things like windup nuns, Devil Duckies, pirate garbage cans, action figures of Sigmund Freud and Jane Austen-and the world's largest collection of snow globes. I got Noel the bacon Band-Aids, even though I'm a vegetarian, because it was so perfect that the bacon was the right shape. Also because Mr. Fleischman had sent home a Chem handout on hydrogenation and how bacon fat is solid at room temperature and liquid when heated and how you could make soap from it too. The Xerox included a photograph of bacon-as if Chem students couldn't be relied upon to have a clear idea of what bacon was without visual assistance. Noel and I had laughed about that a lot when we first got the handout: "What's bacon, again?" he kept asking. "I can never seem to remember. I hope it's not on the test."

Thursday lunch, Noel wrapped three of his fingers in

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bacon strips. He waved them at me across the refectory, and I got my raisin salad and went to sit with him, Nora, Meghan and Hutch.

Hutch was wearing fingerless gloves and his usual biker jacket with "Iron Maiden" painted on the back. He didn't talk much, not around Meghan and Nora, at least. I wasn't sure if it was because Hutch didn't like them, or because he worried they didn't like him, but he was definitely different at school than when he worked with my dad in the greenhouse.

While we ate, Meghan, Nora and I put on the serious pressure for the boys to contribute to Baby CHuBS.

Hutch shook his head. "You don't want to eat my cooking, trust me."

"Noel?" Nora pressed, leaning across the table and tapping his arm. "Won't you help us out? It's for a good cause. Ooh, excellent Band-Aids." She touched his hand. "What happened to your fingers?"

Noel smiled at her. "I didn't burn myself baking, I'll tell you that."

"Does it hurt?" Nora pushed out her bottom lip sympathetically.

"Nah," said Noel. "I'll live."

"So bake for us!" she said. "I'm not much of a cook."

"But your parents cook," I said. "Your parents are cooking fiends. You could use some of your mom's recipe books. Does she make French stuff, like pastry?"

Nora turned to me. "When were you at Noel's house?" she asked.

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"In the fall," I said. "When you couldn't go to Singin' in the Rain with us."

"Oh," said Nora, in a voice that had that slight edge to it-that edge that meant, I didn't know you'd been to his house.

Hutch laughed. "Ruby dragged you to Singin' in the Rain?¹" he teased Noel. "Dude, you have no willpower."

Noel put his head on the table in mock shame. "Apparently I cannot say no when Ruby makes me do girly stuff. First a musical comedy, now baking."

"Ruby's not making you," said Nora. "I am asking you, very sweetly."

Hutch slapped Noel on the back. "You know what you need?"

"What?" Noel said, turning his face toward his bottle of orange juice.

"You need to go see Van Halen at Key Arena."

"Oh no," I said. "He does not need that. You do not need that, Noel."

"You think that will counteract my sissy baking?" Noel asked Hutch, lifting his head.

"That was an official yes!" cried Nora. "You heard it here, first, guys."

"David Lee Roth is a rock legend,"¹ said Hutch, still talking about Van Halen.

***

¹ David Lee Roth: Fronts retro-metal band Van Halen. The man has been known to wear studded chaps without pants underneath and to pair that article of clothing with a gold breastplate and an off-the-shoulder shirt. I think that's all you need to know.