The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and Me, Ruby Oliver

by E. Lockhart

  “Really?”

  “Don’t worry. Nora will realize the truth of the situation and be over the whole thing before lunch. Listen, if I were you, I would have done the exact same thing.”

  Yeah, but Meghan was a girl who hadn’t had a single female friend until last year. And for good reason.

  “Look at it this way,” she went on. “Noel likes you, you like Noel. Neither of you can help it. It just happened. You can’t angst so much about it, you have to follow your feelings.”

  “It didn’t just happen,” I said. “I flirted with him. I wrote him notes.” I wrote him notes about my boobs. “I’m a bad person.”

  “You are not.” Meghan squeezed my knee. “You just liked a guy and you could tell he liked you back, so you acted on it.”

  I shook my head. “I did to Nora exactly what Kim did to me last year,” I said. “I stole the guy she liked.” My cappuccino was going cold in my hand. I was too upset to drink it. “What kind of person would go out and do the exact same thing that ruined her whole life when someone did it to her?”

  “Nuh-uh.” Megan honked at a small blue sports car that had cut in front of her. “That is not what you did.”

  I hunched into my anchor coat. “It pretty much is.”

  “Roo, you and Jackson were going out. You had been going out for months.”

  “So?”

  “Nora just liked Noel. She barely even talked to him on the phone or anything. If she thinks that’s anything like the same as you and Jackson, she is seriously inexperienced.”

  But the thing was—Nora was seriously inexperienced.

  “She’s not going to be mad for long,” said Meghan confidently. “We’re all friends. Give her a couple days, and clear things up with Noel and everything will be fine. Maybe you should send him flowers for V-Day. I’m thinking of sending some to Mike. And maybe Don.”

  “Noel hates me,” I said.

  Meghan pulled into the Tate Prep parking lot. “No one hates you, Roo. Noel just got jealous. You worry way too much.”

  I was ridiculously glad that Meghan didn’t hate me, even though I would never understand the way her mind worked in a million years. As soon as we got to school, I went to the Valentine’s Day table in the refectory and ordered her two dozen carnations.

  Nora ate lunch with Kim and Cricket. She didn’t meet my eyes in Am Lit. She looked away whenever I passed her in the halls. But ninth period I cornered her in the darkroom.

  She was bent over the enlarger, fiddling with the focus on a photograph of the men’s heavy eight posing in their boat. The room glowed a soft red, and there was the sound of running water. There was no one else there.

  “Nora?”

  She unbent at the sound of my voice. “Roo, I asked you to just leave it.”

  “I need to apologize,” I told her.

  “You’ve apologized six different ways already. What else are you going to say in person?”

  She had a point. “I thought maybe we could talk about it, figure things out between us.”

  Nora put her hands on her hips. “The only thing to talk about is how I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But—”

  “You went behind my back, you took the guy I liked, you did everything the same as you did last year, and no amount of apologizing or saying you’re not going to go out with him now—nothing is going to erase it.”

  “Nora, I’m sorry.”

  “You should have thought of that before you kissed him. You should have thought of that before you lied and said you wouldn’t steal him.”

  “Can’t you just try and understand?” I begged her. “It’s not fair for you to just stop speaking to me without even listening to my side. I tried to tell you how I felt when we went to Dick’s. I told you about the ginger ale and the hoodie.”

  “And then you said you wouldn’t steal him.”

  “I didn’t mean to lie about it. I was trying to be the person you wanted me to be.”

  “Roo. Please just go. I have to get these pictures done.”

  “Nora, we’ve been friends since sixth grade. Can’t you cut me some slack? Do I have to be perfect all the time, or we’re not friends?”

  “Please go!” Nora yelled.

  I stood there, trying to think if there was anything I could say that would make things better. “It just seems like friends should forgive each other,” I said lamely. “Or at least try to understand each other. Not shut down completely.”

  “If you won’t leave, then I will,” Nora snarled at me.

  She grabbed her bag and walked out of the darkroom, leaving her negatives on the table and the light on in the enlarger.

  Over the next two days, my life was like a movie entitled Return of the Roly-poly Slut. Meghan and Hutch were the only people to even speak to me. Hutch gave no indication he had any clue what had happened, but he did do a stealth coffee run one afternoon when he was working for my dad and brought me a surprise cappuccino. So maybe he felt sorry for me.

  I had two panic attacks.

  Trying to get my mind off things, I called Granola Brothers and asked if they had any extra hours for me to work over the weekend.

  “Sure, dudette,” said Fletcher. “You can work till eight on Saturday instead of four—and if you want to come in for Jo-Beth on Sunday at ten, she has a birthing class she wants to go to. You can sub for her until two.”

  So I went in. It was a good distraction. The only bad part of the job was the feet. When people came in to try on shoes, they had to be fitted barefoot. Birkenstocks have these special footbeds that mold to your feet as you wear them, and you have to make sure the customer’s foot is fitting properly in there or else the shoes won’t be comfortable. So for a good chunk of a working day I was on my knees buckling sandals onto sweaty winter feet. Feet with chipped toenail polish, feet with hair, feet with black gunk underneath the nails, feet with misshapen toes, all kinds of feet.

  Fletcher and Jo-Beth and the other people who worked at Granola Brothers were seriously committed to the health of feet. They wanted everyone to leave the store with shoes that were going to change their whole attitude toward footwear. And I have to admit, my Birks—hand-me-downs from Meghan—were comfortable. So comfortable that I had started noticing the way my Mary Janes pinched around the toes, and the way my Vans didn’t have a whole lot of arch support.

  While I was working my late Saturday shift that weekend, a tall, long-haired guy about forty-five years old came in. The store was busy, and he stood there looking at a pair of suede Arizona-style and patting them the way people do when they’re not quite sure they want to try something on. He was wearing a hand-knit sweater and jeans. He had white skin and hair that used to be red but was now graying. Deep grooves on either side of his mouth, like he smiled a lot, and little rimless glasses.

  “That’s our most popular style,” I told him. “Would you like to try them on?”

  He looked at me as if he was surprised I worked there, and said, “Yeah, that would be great.”

  He told me his shoe size and I went in the back and brought out a couple of pairs for him to try on for fit. He took off his boots and a pair of old, used-to-be white tube socks and happily revealed the strangest, hairiest, smelliest feet I’d ever seen. I mean, I had seen a lot of feet by this point, but these were especially horrible. I tried not to gag as I buckled him in. He must have had some kind of fungus on his toenails, or between his toes. Something was not right.

  “My girlfriend thinks I should start wearing these,” he said. “The air circulation is supposed to be good for the skin, yeah?”

  I stood up to get away. “The air circulation is a benefit, but people also wear them with socks in the cold weather,” I said, gesturing at the sock wall. “The footbed molds to your sole and gives you ideal arch support.”

  He paced the floor with a spring in his step. “These feel good. How do they look?”

  Aside from the fact that I could see his disgusting feet, they looked
fine. At least, as fine as Birkenstocks can ever look. “I think that’s your size,” I told him. “As long as they’re comfortable.”

  “My girlfriend is meeting me here soon,” he said. “She’s across the way buying vegetables. Do you mind if I wear them around the store for a few more minutes until she arrives? I’d like to have her opinion.”

  “Knock yourself out,” I told him. “And investigate our sock wall. If you’re looking for air circulation, you’re going to want only a hundred percent cotton.”

  “Hey, thanks!” He smiled and went over to the socks and started looking at them with impressive earnestness.

  I headed for the door of the store and opened it for a moment to get some fresh air after the strange and funky smell of his feet. As I stood there, I saw a familiar sparkly orange poncho heading across the cobblestone street of the Market, past the Hmong tapestry place, along the aisle of batik blankets—

  Doctor Z.

  I had never seen her out in public before. I had never even seen her in the waiting room of her office or the halls of her building.

  What are you supposed to say to your shrink when she’s shopping?

  How nice to see you, what a cute poncho?

  Ooh, what did you buy?

  How’s your weekend going?

  No! You can’t ask her anything, because you’re not supposed to ask about her personal life. She only asks you stuff. And you can’t update her on your mental health either:

  Oh, about my insanity, I can kind of turn it off and function while I’m at work, isn’t that interesting?

  Or, Hey, I was going to tell you on Tuesday, but since you’re here, I made out with Noel, got caught by Ariel, then hugged Jackson and got caught by Noel. Nora hates me and my life is falling apart.

  Ag.

  Doctor Z hadn’t spotted me yet, but she was heading toward the shop. I shut the door of Granola Brothers and dove as quickly as I could behind the counter.

  The bell jingled as someone opened the door. “Schmoopie!” cried the man with the horrible feet. “What do you think?”

  I froze.

  There was the sound of kissing. Schmoopie and the man.

  Then, Doctor Z’s voice: “They look good on you. How do they feel?”

  “Nice!” he said. “Strange, though. I’m not used to this much arch support.”

  “You’ll grow to love them,” said Doctor Z. “Everyone does.”

  More sounds of kissing.

  Ag.

  I was so spazzed out I hit my head on the edge of the counter, knocking down a display of tie-dyed socks and letting out an involuntary squeal.

  “Are you okay?” The man with the horrible feet came around to the side of the counter so he could see me.

  “Fine, fine.” I stayed seated on the carpet, hidden from Doctor Z, collecting socks and sorting them into purple and orange. “Thanks for asking. Do you want to take those shoes?”

  Maybe I could ring him up from down here, if he was paying with a credit card. Maybe I’d never have to stand at all.

  “I’m wondering if I should try them in suede,” he said. “My girlfriend told me the suede is really comfy.”

  I had no choice. “I can get those for you,” I said, and hauled myself to standing. “Hello, Doctor Z.”

  “Ruby.” She smiled at me. “I had no idea you worked here.”1

  “Yes,” I said, forcing my voice to be cheerful. “Well.” “Good to see you.” “Yes. Um.”

  The man with the horrible feet said, “Lorraine, do you know each other? What a wild coincidence!”

  “Just from around town,” said Doctor Z.2

  “How great!” said her boyfriend. “Ruby, I’m Jonah.” He held out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, though I felt like passing out.

  Did Jonah know all about me?

  Did Doctor Z put her Birkenstocked feet up on the coffee table after a hard day and tell him all about her roly-poly client who couldn’t keep any of her friends and blew off her therapy homework and kept having panic attacks and suffered from Rabbit Fever?

  Ag and more ag.

  It was so weird to see her out in the real world, holding a mesh bag full of winter squash and something wrapped in brown paper that was probably fish.

  Honestly, I had never thought about Doctor Z eating. I mean, of course she ate. She had to eat. Everybody eats. But I never thought about what she ate, and now I knew what she was having for dinner, and that she was going to cook, and that she must really really like winter squash because there were several big gourdlike items in that bag of hers.

  Who on earth likes winter squash that much? I mean, it’s okay, but it’s not exactly a pinnacle of deliciousness.

  “Ruby helped me put the shoes on,” said Jonah, pulling gently on his ponytail. “She thinks they’re the right size.”

  “I’ll get the suede for you to try. Be right back,” I said, and ducked into the storeroom as quickly as I could.

  I had also never thought of Doctor Z as having friends, much less a lover. And not just a lover in the abstract, but Jonah, an actual flesh-and-blood aging white hippie lover who called her Schmoopie and kissed her in the middle of shoe shopping. Which would actually have been cute and romantic—

  If she hadn’t been my shrink. Because it is almost more disturbing to think about your shrink having sex than to think about your parents having sex—which is already plenty disturbing, thank you very much. And—

  If he hadn’t had those horrible feet. Because not only was my shrink friendly with those horrible feet, my shrink actually lay down naked with her perfectly normal feet (I had seen them in her Birks) next to his disgusting ones, which were no doubt smelling and fungusing up the bed every night, and—

  Ag.

  This whole train of thought was not good for my mental health.

  Just treat them like customers, Roo, I said to myself. Pretend she’s a colleague of Mom’s or a friend’s parent and put on your fake please-the-grown-ups smile and get it over with.

  So that is what I did. Jonah liked the suede ones. He paid with cash. Doctor Z said, “Have a nice day, Ruby,” and I nodded, but no words would come out of my mouth.

  After they left, I sprayed the shoes he didn’t buy with an antifungal mist we kept in the back for cases of possible contamination.

  1Translation: “I see you every week for therapy and you never told me you got a new job. What do you think we’re doing in those sessions your parents are paying for? Because you are obviously failing to tell me the most basic and everyday facts about your life.”

  2 Translation: “She’s a mental patient, but of course, since we’re in public, I respect her confidentiality and won’t reveal how I know her.”

  I Choke on Ninja Deliciousness

  Dear Oliver,

  Since you’ve never run a CHuBS before, and your big day is coming up in a couple of weeks, I want to offer you some tips and reminders. I should have done this before—sorry! I’ve been so busy getting Spring Fling organized, and we’re even starting to think about prom (!!) so I haven’t had a minute.

  Anyway, I wanted to remind you how many old-girl CHuBS will be at Parents’ Day. For example, Spencer Hanson’s mom, Mason Silvey’s mom, etc. They have baked every year for the big December sale. You might remember Ms. Hanson’s reindeer cookies? Yum! The legacy of CHuBS is important to these ladies, I just want you to know.

  Also, it’s great you’ve got boys contributing, and I’m excited about your deliciousness idea! But let’s not forget that we know what sells, and we know how much the Tate community depends on the CHuBS tradition, and with Easter around the corner, we can take advantage of that. I heard you’ve been going through some ups and downs in your personal life, so give me a holler if I can bake anything extra or offer guidance about the sale.

  —Gwen Archer

  —written on a sheet of notebook paper in Gwen’s round handwriting; folded in thirds and slid covertly across the table during French V.r />
  translation: “I hear you’re a big slut and everyone hates you, plus I’m worried you’ll make an enormous debacle of Baby CHuBS because you’re not doing it the way I would do it and I’m worried people will blame the failure on me. In fact, I’d like to fire you and run it myself at this point, but I don’t have the guts, so I’m going to make you feel like crap and then pretend to offer help in the hopes that you’ll step down.”

  I didn’t reply to the note, and I ran away after French V so I wouldn’t have to talk to Archer. I was too miserable to deal with her and her CHuBS agenda, so I avoided her in class and in the hallways and acted like I didn’t see her waving me over in the refectory.

  You might think The Return of the Roly-poly Slut—aka my life—would be an interesting movie. It might have nudity or some stylized violence, even if the acting was hokey. It might have wild costumes and play at midnight to a cult following.

  But no. It was not an interesting movie. Just dull footage of a girl dressed in jeans and an old bowling shirt, reduced to a single friend.

  Everyone at school knows Nora hates her now—though they may not know exactly why.

  Everyone knows Ariel hates her too—and they do know exactly why. They know the girl made out with Noel in the art studio. And since everyone loves Ariel, they hate the Roly-poly Slut to keep Ariel company.

  Heidi, usually polite enough in History of Europe, moves to the other side of the room to sit with tennis players, saying something smells like a rat. Katarina mutters “bitch” under her breath in the lunch line.

  No one knows that Noel thinks the girl was in a clinch with Jackson, but they do know Jackson keeps sitting at the CHuBS table, and rumors are flying. The girl tries to speak to Kim one day after Am Lit, thinking maybe she can explain, but Kim says, “It’s strangely quiet in here. Cricket, I don’t think I heard anything. Did you hear something?” Cricket says “No, it’s silent as a tomb.” They walk away.

  The girl changes Chem lab partners at the request of Noel.