The Boy Book

by E. Lockhart

  contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1. The Care and Ownership of Boobs

  2. Rules for Dating in a Small School

  3. Your Business is Our Business: A Pledge

  4. What to Wear When You Might Be Fooling Around

  5. Scamming: Our Brief and Irregular History

  6. Levels of Boyfriends

  7. Neanderthals on the Telephone: Or, How to Converse

  8. Boy-Speak: Introduction to a Foreign Language

  9. Clever Comebacks to Catcalls

  10. Why You Want the Guy You Can’t Have: Inadequate Analysis of a Disturbing Psychological Trend

  11. The Kaptain Is In

  12. Why Girls Are Better than Boys

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

  Acknowledgments

  Preview of Fly on the Wall

  Also by E. Lockhart

  Copyright

  For Zoe Jenkin

  The Care and Ownership of Boobs

  (a subject important to our study of the male humanoid animal because the boobs, if deployed properly, are like giant boy magnets attached to your chest.

  Or smallish boy magnets. Or medium.

  Depending on your endowment.

  But boy magnets. That is the point.

  They are magnets, we say. Magnets!)

  1. If you jiggle, wear a bra. This means you. (Yes, you.) It is not antifeminist. It is more comfy and keeps the boobs from getting floppy.

  2. No matter how puny your frontal equipment, don’t wear the kind with the giant pads inside. If a guy squeezes them, he will wonder why they feel like Nerf balls instead of boobs. And if you forget and wear a normal bra one day, everyone will then speculate on the strange expanding and contracting nature of your boobage. (Reference: the mysteriously changing chestal profile of Madame Long, French teacher and sometime bra padder.)

  3. A helpful hint: For optimal shape, go in the bathroom stall and hike them up inside the bra.

  4. Do not perform the above maneuver in public, no matter how urgent you think it is.

  5. Do not go topless in anyone’s hot tub. Remember how Cricket had to press her chest against the side of the Van Deusens’ tub for forty-five minutes when Gideon and his friends came home? Let that be a lesson to you. (Yes, you.)

  6. Do not sunbathe topless either, unless you’re completely ready to have sunburnt boobs whose skin will never be the same again (Reference: Roo, even though she swears she used sunblock) or unless you want to be yelled at by your mother for exposing yourself to the neighbors (Reference: Kim, even though really, no one saw and the neighbors were away on vacation).

  —from The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (A Kanga-Roo Production), written by me, Ruby Oliver, with number six added in Kim’s handwriting. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.

  the week before junior year began, the Doctors Yamamoto threw a ginormous going-away party for my ex-friend Kim.

  I didn’t go.

  She is my ex-friend. Not my friend.

  Kim Yamamoto was leaving to spend a semester at a school in Tokyo, on an exchange program. She speaks fluent Japanese.

  Her house has a big swimming pool, an even bigger yard, and a view of the Seattle skyline. On the eve of her going away, so I hear, her parents hired a sushi chef to come and chop up dead fish right in front of everyone, and the kids got hold of a few wine bottles. Supposedly, it was a great party.

  I wouldn’t know.

  I do know that the following acts of ridiculousness were perpetrated that night, after the adults got tired and went to bed around eleven.

  1. Someone chundered behind the garden shed and never confessed. There were a number of possible suspects.

  2. People had handstand contests and it turns out Shiv Neel can walk on his hands.

  3. With the party winding down and all the guys inside the house watching Letterman, Katarina Dolgen, Heidi Sussman and Ariel Olivieri wiggled out of their clothes and went skinny-dipping.

  4. Nora Van Deusen decided to go in, too. She must have had some wine to do something like that. She’s not usually a go-naked kind of girl.1

  5. A group of guys came out onto the lawn and Nora’s boobs were floating on top of the water as she sat on the steps of the pool. Everyone could see them.

  6. Shep Cabot, aka Cabbie, who squeezed my own relatively small boob last year with great expertise2 but who is otherwise a lame human being as far as I can tell, snapped a photo—or at least pretended he did. Facts unclear upon initial reportage.

  7. Nora grabbed her boobs and ran squealing into the house in search of a towel. Which was a bad idea, because she wasn’t wearing anything except a pair of soggy blue panties. Cabbie snapped, or said he snapped, another photo. The rest of the girls stayed coyly in the pool until Nora, having got her wits together and wearing a pair of Kim’s sweatpants and a T-shirt, came out and brought them towels.

  I know all this because no one was talking about anything else on the first day of school.

  Nobody spoke to me directly, of course. Because although I used to be reasonably popular, thanks to the horrific debacles of sophomore year—in which I lost not only my then-boyfriend, Jackson, but also my then-friends Cricket, Kim and Nora—I was a certifiable leper with a slutty reputation.

  Meghan Flack, who carpools me to school, was my only friend.

  Last year, Meghan and her hot senior boyfriend, Bick, spent every waking minute together, annoying all the girls who would have liked to date Bick, and also all the guys who didn’t want to watch the two of them making out at the lunch table.

  People hated Meghan. She was the girl you love to hate—not because she does anything mean or spiteful, but because she’s naturally gorgeous, extremely oblivious, and completely boy-oriented. Because she licks her lips when she talks to guys, and pouts cutely, and all the guys stare at her like they can’t pull their eyes away.

  But I don’t hate her now. She doesn’t even bug me anymore. And she was lost on the first day of school junior year, because Bick had left for Harvard the week before.

  So Meghan and I were standing in front of the mail cubbies when we heard a crew of newly minted senior girls discussing Kim’s party and what happened. Then we heard more from the guys who sat behind us in American Literature, and then from a girl who is on the swim team with me. By the end of first period it was clear that Nora’s boobs were going to be the major focus of nearly every conversation for the rest of the day.

  Because Nora is stacked.

  Really stacked.

  She is just not a small girl.

  She’s on the basketball team, and she keeps those things in line by wearing a sports bra every day instead of a regular, so maybe you wouldn’t notice unless you slept over at her house and saw them in the flesh. But once they pop out, they’ve popped. I don’t like to use this language to describe the female body, but the right word for what Nora’s got on her chest is hooters.

  Nora Van Deusen is actually not the kind of girl guys tend to pay attention to. She’s never had a boyfriend. She takes photographs and watches sports on TV. She laughs a lot and drinks her espresso black with no sugar. Her family goes to church.

  And now, she was walking down the hall with her books clutched to her chest, looking down at the floor while guys called, “Don’t hide that light under a bushel!” or, “Set ’em free, Van Deusen! Twins like that need a regular airing.”

  God, it was like they had never been forced to take American History & Politics, where we spent nearly half a semester on the history of feminism. Everyone should have known, after that, that it’s completely
retro and lame to make comments about other people’s bodies in the hallway.

  “Hey, Nora, can you fly me somewhere with those hot-air balloons?”

  It was like they’d never seen a boob before.

  And maybe they hadn’t.

  Besides the info Meghan and I got eavesdropping, the main person who filled me in was Noel DuBoise. He turned up in my Art History class and then again in Chemistry, where we decided to be lab partners as a way of lightening up what promised to be a painful semester of scientific suffering.

  Here’s Noel: blond, spiky hair that probably requires quantities of gel; nondrinker, clean liver, vegetarian but heavy smoker; pierced eyebrow; underweight; funny in a mutter-under-your-breath way. I’d known him forever, because everyone at Tate Prep has known each other since kindergarten,3 but I really only made friends with him in Painting Elective last year, and then he stood by me during all the debacles of sophomore spring, when everyone acted like I was covered with the strange blue spots of leprosy.

  Noel is one of those people who doesn’t have a clique—but he isn’t a leper, either. I used to wonder if he was gay, but he’s completely not, though he definitely holds himself aloof from the rabidly hetero merry-go-round of our high school.

  Noel looks at the Tate Universe as if he finds it all mildly amusing and sometimes a bit sickening, but he’s willing to participate for purposes of research so that he can bring back interesting tidbits of information to the ironic, punk rock planet where he really lives.

  People like him for this quality. They invite him to parties. He can sit at anyone’s table. But he never really seems committed, if you know what I mean.

  Noel and I hadn’t seen each other all summer. I had been traveling with my mom during the first half.4 Then, in August, he went to New York City to visit his older brother, Claude, who goes to Cooper Union.

  Even when we were both in Seattle, Noel and I had never been the make-plans level of friends. More like Painting Elective friends who sometimes put notes in each other’s mail cubbies.

  We didn’t call each other or anything.

  At the end of the summer, though, Noel had sent me an e-mail. A New York City travel report.

  Number of stairs to Claude’s walk-up apartment: seventy.

  Number of lights in Times Square: a gazillion.

  Number of dumplings consumed in a single sitting: eleven.

  Number of times yours truly did not go to bed until four a.m.: eleven.

  Number of times Claude called me a little punk: countless.

  Number of gay dance clubs he dragged me to: three.

  Name of person who busted out dancing and then fell on his little punk butt with all his brother’s friends looking: Noel.

  I wondered if he sent the e-mail to more than one person, but then I decided I didn’t care. I had only one official friend (Meghan), and I couldn’t afford to get huffy. So I wrote him back:

  Number of Popsicles consumed in a single sitting: 3.5.

  Number of times my dad said, “Where did those Popsicles go? I was sure I had some in here”: six.

  Person who is annoying me: my mother. Twenty seconds ago she went, “Ruby, I notice there is a lot of your stuff lying around the living room,” because she read a book called Empower Your Girl Child that told her not to tell me to pick up my damn stuff, because that kind of authoritative directive subjugates me when I’m supposed to be developing my autonomy. Instead, she’s supposed to remark on something I’m doing that she doesn’t like, using the phrase “I notice,” and then wait for me to make an independent decision to take the socially responsible action of…picking up my damn stuff.

  Only I am wise to her wily parenting ways, because I read her book when she wasn’t looking!

  Person who is making me laugh right now: John Belushi.5 (No, not here. That would be seriously weird and highly disturbing. On TV.)

  Person I can see out my dad’s office window: Hutch.6

  Person who has her driver’s license and permission to borrow the Honda on weekends:

  Roo!

  Roo!

  Roo!

  And Noel wrote back:

  Why Hutch outside window?

  And I wrote back:

  He helps my dad in the greenhouse. Kevin Oliver = sole employee and proprietor of a gardening catalog/ newsletter/extremely boring publication entitled Container Gardening for the Rare Bloom Lover.

  Hutch got a haircut.

  Noel didn’t reply. But on that first day of school he asked me to be his Chem lab partner. Even though we didn’t have to do a lab until Thursday.

  I nodded. After class, we headed toward the refectory for lunch, and Noel lit a cigarette, not caring if any teachers could see him.

  I looked at his pale skin and his bony hand clutching the smoke, and he’d written “through page 40” on his knuckles in blue ink. I was thinking how good it was to see him, and how even though we hadn’t seen each other all summer, maybe we’d be friends, at least of the hanging-out-at-school sort, and also how he was really quite cute in an anemic sort of way, when Noel tossed his cigarette in the garbage and grabbed my arm. We were ten yards from the refectory entrance.

  “Just a sec,” he said. “You can come with me if you want—” And he pulled me around the side of the building, behind a bush where no one could see us from the path.

  I thought for a second he was going to kiss me and I didn’t know if I wanted him to because I hadn’t thought it was leading to that even though we had held hands that one time at the Spring Fling afterparty but maybe I did want it to lead to that—and his pale neck looked beautiful and his gray-green eyes had a sparkle and yes, I did want to.

  But would he really kiss me right there in the middle of the Tate campus, halfway to lunch?

  And was it a good idea for a person (me) with a bad reputation to be making out in the bushes on the first day of school?

  Then Noel pulled an orange plastic tube out of his jacket pocket, inhaled, stuck it in his mouth and pressed the top down. He breathed in and out a few times, then put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, looking at the ground.

  I could see the white skin of his back, between the top of his cords and his coat.

  He stood up and puffed again.

  He wasn’t going to kiss me at all.

  I felt like an idiot.

  “Don’t angst,” Noel said, looking at my shocked face. “It’s not crack.”

  “I know,” I said, though I hadn’t been sure. Not being a crack smoker myself.

  “I probably should have explained ahead of time. It’s kind of creepy to drag you into the bushes and force you to watch me inhale controlled substances.” He stood up and shoved the tube back in his pocket.

  “You’re asthmatic,” I said, after a second.

  “Since I was four.”7

  “But you smoke.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “No.”

  “Then why do it?”

  Noel sighed. “Because it fucking annoys me. ‘Noel, don’t forget your medicine.’ ‘Noel, stay inside—it’s dusty out today.’ ‘Noel, don’t work yourself too hard.’ ‘Noel, check in with the nurse.’ ‘Noel, don’t do this, don’t do that.’”

  “Harsh.”

  “It’s like—I hate having restrictions. The doctor said I shouldn’t go on overnights without a parent. I shouldn’t go to summer camp. I shouldn’t travel to dusty or polleny locations. She even said I shouldn’t run cross-country. That I should pick something that doesn’t push the lungs for such a long time.”

  “But you do run.”

  “Exactly. And I went to summer camp. And I travel without regard to the pollen count. Because I want to prove I can.”

  “The smoking is like that?”

  “In a sick way, yeah.” He laughed. “I don’t want them telling me I can’t.”

  “You’re a madman.”

  “So they tell me.” Noel changed the subject. “Hey, i
t’s pizza day. You getting that, or salad bar?”

  “What I want is one of those sticky buns,” I answered.

  We left the bushes and went into the refectory.

  Had we just had some kind of moment? Not a kissing moment like I’d thought, but a little intimate thing where he was letting me in somehow?

  Maybe Noel had told me a secret.

  Or maybe he took all his friends—sophomore girls and Painting Elective people, whoever (he was always hanging around with someone)—maybe he took all of them in the bushes too. In fact, maybe I was the last person in the Tate Universe to have the Noel DuBoise bush/puffer experience.

  I couldn’t tell.

  We got on line. I ordered a sticky bun and made myself the same salad I always get: lettuce, raisins, fried Chinese noodles, baby corn, cheese, black olives, ranch dressing. Noel got pizza. I couldn’t find Meghan, but I didn’t know what her schedule was. Maybe she’d had lunch already.

  We sat down at one of the junior tables.

  Cricket and Nora were two rows over. My ex-friends. Where I would have been, if life had been different.

  I felt a rush of gratitude to Noel for not leaving me to eat lunch alone on the first day of school.

  He tossed his head in their direction. “I went to that Yamamoto thing last week,” he said apologetically. “She invited me.”

  I shrugged. Kim had always thought Noel was cool.

  “I know you wouldn’t be caught dead there,” he went on, giving me more credit than I deserved, “but I can give you a report if you want a little light entertainment.”

  Then he recapped the news about the skinny-dipping and the boobs, adding the details of the soggy blue panties and Cabbie’s photographs.

  “Oh my God!” I said, indignant on Nora’s behalf. “He can’t go showing those around school.”

  Noel leaned back in his chair. “I judge him capable of pretty much anything.”

  “Nora would be shattered.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, more shattered than almost anyone else I know.”