by E. Lockhart
Or maybe it was a gift from a client. Maybe some deranged neurotic thought: Oh, I’m going to give Doctor Z a photo of myself so that she can look at me always. And the client was pretty much loony, so Doctor Z had to display the photo whenever the client came for therapy because otherwise he would go berserk and have to be straightjacketed with maniacal grief. Then when he wasn’t there, she didn’t really want to look at it, so she turned it facedown.
“Ruby!” Doctor Z startled me.
“What?”
“Is this subject difficult to talk about?”
“I got distracted,” I said. “What were we discussing?”
“Your relationship with Noel.”
Oh.
Yeah.
Funny how I could forget that, even for a minute. Why is my brain like this? It just switches gears and starts obsessing about something completely unimportant.
“I’m really happy he wants to be together,” I told Doctor Z. “It’s so great to have him back. I’m so relieved.”
She stared at me.
I wasn’t lying.
I really felt that way.
I just felt a whole lot of other stuff too.
She stared at me some more. I could hear the clock ticking. I could hear myself breathing. I could hear someone out in the hallway talking.
I twisted my hair. She knew what I was going to say. And she knew I knew she knew.
“But I’m not,” I said. “Actually. Happy. Or relieved.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Why are people so crap at apologizing?” I said. “I know people feel bad about stuff they’ve done, but still they don’t apologize for it. My dad never apologizes to my mom. He just starts cuddling her or rubbing her shoulders until she stops pouting.”
“Could that be a form of apology?”
“Kind of. But also not.”
“Noel apologized to you. Didn’t you say that he did?”
“Yeah, but ‘Sorry I was so hard to reach’ isn’t a real sorry.”
“Why not?”
“He made it sound like the whole thing was out of his control. He didn’t say, ‘Sorry I didn’t call you back. Sorry I didn’t write you. Sorry I hurt your feelings. Sorry I didn’t run after you.’ ”
“It didn’t feel like a real sorry,” Doctor Z said. She does that a lot. Repeats what I’ve said.
“And when he said sorry he was hard to reach, I said, ‘It’s okay.’ But only because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone says sorry. Not because I meant it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Or maybe because I wished it was okay. But—”
She looked at me.
“—it was a complete lie.”
“Oh.”
“I was basically acting fake the whole night, trying to pretend I was just letting everything go. Or like I hadn’t even minded how he’d disappeared on me and not called me and all that. Like I was some extra-mellow relaxed girlfriend who didn’t care about anything. Like those two poems made up for everything.” I bit my nails. “I kept thinking—all night I kept thinking that if I had never gone over to his house after work, he might never have even called me.”
“Really?”
“He would have just gone about his life, avoiding me, or forgetting about me, or meaning to call me but not just yet—whatever he’s been doing since halfway through the New York trip.”
“Mm.” Doctor Z popped a piece of Nicorette out of its packaging and put it thoughtfully in her mouth. “What did you two talk about?”
I shrugged. “The movie we saw. Whether or not Christian Bale is deranged. Why there aren’t more female action heroes.”
“Ah.”
“Why did we have to go to a movie? For once in my life, I didn’t want to go to a movie.”
“No?”
“We didn’t talk that much, even.”
“Oh.”
Noel and I had kissed in the front seat of the Honda when I drove him home, and we had held hands in the theater—but whenever I spoke I had this sense that I was chattering at him. Like some part of his brain was elsewhere.
He wasn’t truly listening. So I didn’t tell him anything.
You have to have someone listening if you’re going to really talk.
1 Go ahead and laugh, but sometimes I listen to Dad’s Queen albums even when he and Hutch aren’t rocking out in the greenhouse. Okay, and sometimes Guns N’ Roses. And sometimes Aerosmith. And once AC/DC.
Retro metal is very good for diverting panic attacks.
The Waketastic Adventure!
a video clip:
Roo’s parents sit on their couch. Polka-dot is there too, his head on Elaine’s lap. Kevin has garden dirt on his T-shirt. Elaine is wearing black, her frizzy hair puffed out around her head.
Roo: (behind the camera) What’s your definition of friendship?
Elaine: I don’t know why we’re doing this, Kevin. She still hasn’t taken back what she said. I told you I wasn’t outputting energy toward her until I had a full apology.
Kevin: It’s for her college applications. We agreed to be supportive of her college applications, even though the two of you are going through a difficult time.
Elaine: It’s not a difficult time. She just owes me an apology. (Looking directly at the camera.) That’s what friendship is, Ruby. Apologizing when you know you should.
Roo: I did apologize.
Elaine: Not fully. I don’t know why we have so much trouble being friends. A mother and a daughter should be the closest friends.
Kevin: My mother and I weren’t friends. She was my mother. She mothered me.
Elaine: Are you saying something about my mothering?
Kevin: No.
A couple of days before school started, Meghan was with Finn per usual and I didn’t have to work at the zoo and Noel had to go shopping with his stepdad for school clothes and cross-country shoes, so I helped Dad in the greenhouse a bit and then went out on the dock to mess with the video camera.
I was trying to figure out how to shoot something dark with sunlight behind it, fiddling around with settings and playing snippets back to see how my shots turned out, when I heard the putt-putt of a motorboat.
“Did you run out of gas again?” I shouted when Gideon was twenty feet away.
“No,” he yelled. “I’m full.”
“Do you need a Band-Aid?”
“No.” He cut the engine and tied up.
“What do you need?”
“A driver.” He climbed out and bopped me on the arm, dude style.
“What?”
“You ever wakeboard?”
I rolled my eyes.
“But you water-ski.” He said it like a statement.
No. I didn’t. I mean, I had been out on the Van Deusens’ boat before while other people were waterskiing, the summer after freshman year, but the one time I tried to actually get up on water skis I had fallen flat on my butt within two seconds.
“Hasn’t Evergreen started yet?” I said, to change the subject.
Gideon wasn’t fooled. “Yeah, but it’s the weekend. Okay, so you don’t water-ski. But aren’t you some kind of awesome swimmer?”
“I’m on the team at Tate,” I said. “But I’m not taking home a lot of ribbons.”
“It’ll be easy for you,” he said. “And driving the boat’s really fun. No roads. Nothing but the wind on your face.”
Was I really going out on a boat with Gideon Van Deusen?
When I completely had a boyfriend?
“I’ll teach you,” said Gideon, smiling. “Wakeboarding is actually easier than waterskiing for a lot of people.”
“Um. I gotta ask my dad,” I said. “Will you wait here?”
“Sure.” Gideon immediately lay down on the dock. “I’ll just absorb some sun.”
I went into the house, but I didn’t ask my dad. He was mumbling something about his mother into a dri
ed-out peony plant. What I did was call Noel.
He hadn’t called me that day, or the day before. I hadn’t seen him since Thursday night.
The cell went to voice mail.
I tried again.
Again voice mail.
The third time I left a message. “Hey, it’s Ruby. You want to go get ice cream with me tonight? I have a craving for Mix. Maybe coffee with Heath bar and chocolate chips. Call me right now if you can go.”
Then I sat on my bed and waited for him to call me back.
And waited.
And he didn’t call.
I don’t know why I was surprised.
I put on a bathing suit. The Speedo my parents got me for team practice, nothing cute.
And still, I sat on my bed.
And still, the phone didn’t ring.
I put on a cotton vintage skirt and a T-shirt. Flip-flops.
I grabbed a towel.
I looked at the phone.
Noel was my boyfriend. But he wasn’t my real live boyfriend anymore.
Fine.
The water was insanely cold, and it took me five tries to get up on the wakeboard. When I did, my legs felt like jelly and the sun was in my eyes—but I was up, and light was glinting on the water, and I was cutting in and back across the wake of the boat, and I was laughing and screaming both together and it was just gorgeous. The universe seemed golden for a minute.
Then I was over my head in the bitter water, and Gideon was steering the boat around to pick me up, and he was laughing. “Don’t stick your butt out! The moment you stick your butt out it’s over.”
He reached his tan arm down and I grabbed it and he hauled me up onto the boat. “You wanna go again?”
I nodded.
So I went again.
And again.
And then it was a long time before I fell.
I drove for a while, and Gideon attempted numerous tricks, many of which failed. He was trying to get airborne, but most of the time he just crashed into the water, laughing. When he got tired, we floated for a while. I was cold and he gave me his fleece hoodie to wear. We drank Cokes from a cooler and ate these weird organic cheese puffs Gideon brought.
I thought, and not for the first time, that Gideon would make an excellent boyfriend. As I watched him driving the motorboat back toward my dock, I said to myself:
This is Gideon, whom I loved in sixth grade. This is Gideon, who doesn’t live in the Tate Universe. This is Gideon, who traveled the world for a year after high school.
This is Gideon, who plays guitar. This is Gideon, whose leg touched mine all through the movie that time. This is Gideon, who listens to what I say.
This is Gideon, straightforward and normal.
This is Gideon, who said I should call him if I didn’t have a boyfriend.
“Thanks for the waketastic adventure,” I told him.
He looked down at me. “You’re …”
“What?”
Gideon shook his head. “Different from most of Nora’s friends, that’s all.”
More deranged, I thought. “I’m not sure we’re exactly friends anymore.” Nora had been on Decatur Island with her parents since a week after the funeral, so I hadn’t seen her. I wasn’t sure what the status was.
“She said you guys made up.”
“She did?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I guess we did,” I said.
Gideon ate a cheese puff. “Cricket and Kim and that new one, Katarina what’shername—”
“Dolgen.”
“And Heidi and Ariel. They’re all the same.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. They all seemed so unique to me. Especially Cricket and Kim. They had been my closest friends for years and years. “We should probably change the subject,” I said.
“Okay.” We didn’t speak. The roar of the boat made it nearly impossible to have a conversation anyway.
As I got out of the boat, I took off Gideon’s hoodie and gave it back to him. “Thanks for letting me borrow this.”
“Keep it.”
“What? No, I can’t.”
“Just for now,” Gideon said. “I don’t need it for the drive home.”
“But I have sweatshirts in the house,” I said. “I don’t need it either.”
Gideon jumped into the boat and started the engine. “Keep it,” he repeated, over the noise. “This way, I have to come get it back from you.”
Noel and I did go get ice cream that night. It was okay. It just seemed like he was—not a pod-robot, but maybe a recent lobotomy patient. Like part of his brain had been cut out by surgeons in an experimental procedure that left him with only a section of his former personality intact.1
Either that, or he didn’t like me that much anymore.
I tried to ask him about it, but the conversation just went like this.
Roo: Hey. Um. Is there anything wrong?
Noel: What?
Roo: Is there anything wrong?
Noel: No.
Roo: It seems like something’s wrong between us.
Noel: I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s fine.
So I shut up and ate my ice cream. Then later, Noel stopped his mom’s car in front of my dock, and he seemed so cold. Like he was just expecting me to hop out, without a kiss goodnight or anything. This huge awkwardness loomed between us, and I freaked out a little and couldn’t help but break one of Meghan’s rules for what to talk about when you’re alone in the dark with your boyfriend.
Roo: What are you thinking?
Noel: Until a minute ago I was thinking about parallel parking.
Roo: So everything’s okay?
Noel: Yeah.
Roo: Things seem a little odd is all.
Noel: They do?
Roo: It’s hard to talk to you.
Noel: I don’t know what you mean.
Roo: You don’t think anything’s wrong?
Noel: Nothing’s wrong, Ruby.
Roo: Forget it, then.
I was about to get out of the car when he leaned in and put his hand on my boob. He didn’t even kiss me first. It was like the least romantic boob fondle in the history of all boob fondling. I might even go so far as to call it a grope.
Actually, if he hadn’t been my boyfriend I would have slapped his hand away and called him a Neanderthal. As it was, I let him grope it. Then we kissed goodnight for a while, but all the time I was thinking: Excuse me, but that’s my boob; it’s not yours to just grab because you want a conversation to be over.
While we were kissing, I could tell Noel was really getting into it—you know, in the nether regions—and I was wondering how a guy could want to make out with me so much—he was all over me, really—and still not call me the way he used to, or send me e-mails, or even really talk to me when I was trying to have a serious conversation. I didn’t really touch him back, the way I usually did, because my brain was going:
Why do you say nothing’s wrong when there’s obviously something wrong?
And if you don’t like me that much anymore, why do you like grabbing my boob?
In fact, I think you like grabbing my boob more now than you did before you left.
And oh, actually, that feels amazing.
And oh, I think I love you.
I do love you, Noel.
At least, I love the you who used to be here.
But now, that you is somewhere else.
Like maybe New York City.
Or maybe just closed off to me.
And was it something I did?
Or something I said?
And oh, that neck-kissing thing is—
No one ever did exactly that before.
I do love you.
But hello, I don’t really feel like kissing when everything’s so weird with us.
And I don’t know if you get to touch my boobs and kiss my neck that way when you wait so long to call me back and you never seem to hear what I am trying to tell you.
It was really quite a complicated situation to be in, and not anywhere near as fun as getting horizontal had been, back when everything was cheerful and simple between us. Eventually when his hand roamed up my dress toward my butt, I pulled away and said, “Something’s wrong with me, then, Noel, if nothing’s wrong with you.”
He crinkled his forehead. “What?” It was like he’d forgotten the whole conversation we’d just been having.
I didn’t want to repeat myself. “I have to go,” I said.
“Ruby, wait!” he called as I got out of the car. “Are you mad?”
“No,” I turned. “I just have to go. We have school tomorrow.”
Noel didn’t get out of the car. He didn’t chase after me. Just like at Snappy Dragon, he didn’t chase after me.
1 Lobotomies: For real, they used to do this to people from the 1930s to the ’50s. Just chopped out a bit of the brain to see if it solved a person’s mental health problems, including anxiety disorders and just inconvenient behavior like moodiness or defiance. The procedures involved either drilling holes in the scalp or going in through the eye with an ice pick. And get this: the doctor didn’t need to get the patient’s informed consent, so you could completely just go to bed in the mental hospital and wake up with a section of your brain having been removed.
Needless to say, it’s good I wasn’t born back then, or I’d have had an ice pick through the eyeball ages ago.
An Agonizing Public Scene! With Violence!
a video clip: Meghan, leaning against the front of her Jeep, which is parked in front of the Olivers’ dock. She’s holding her usual thermos full of vanilla cappuccino and wearing a golf team T-shirt, a jean skirt and Birkenstocks.
Roo: (behind the camera) It’s the first day of school, so I want to ask you about popularity.
Meghan: I used to think I was popular, and then later I realized I wasn’t.
Roo: What do you mean?
Meghan: Back when I was going out with Bick. He was a senior, and he had all these friends, and we went to lots of parties. I hung around with all these senior girls. I thought I was popular.
Roo: Then what?
Meghan: You didn’t invite me to your Spring Fling party, remember?
Roo: I’m so sorry.