The Boy Book

by E. Lockhart

  “Cricket still isn’t speaking to me.”

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

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

  “Are you going to forgive me?”

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

  “Oh,” she said. “Thanks.”

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

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

  Kim’s face fell. “What do you mean?”

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

  “Why are you telling me?”

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

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

  “What?”

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

  “That’s not it.”

  “I thought we were putting it behind us.”

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

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

  “I saw them together, Kim.”

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

  “I’m pretty certain.”

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

  “No, I–”

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

  “I’m not making it up.”

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

  “Kim, I–”

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

  “Fine,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

  There is plenty of air.

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

  Calm down.

  Calm down.

  Breathe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No,” I answered. “It can’t wait.”

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

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

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

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

  Beep.

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

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

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

  “Hello, is this Ruby?”

  “Yes.”

  “Doctor Zaczkowski.”

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

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

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

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

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

  “You were doing something kind?”

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

  “Oh?”

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

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

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

  “Yes.”

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

  “Oh?”

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

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

  “No.”

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

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

  “You were standing up for yourself.”

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

  “No?”

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

  I hadn’t said that out loud yet.

  It sounded good.

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

  “You told her out of kindness.”

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

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

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

  “Um-hm.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  So Hutch came to dinner with us.

  And it was okay.

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

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

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

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

  “Cool.”

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

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

  “What?”

  “Ruby is here! Can she come up?”

  “I guess so,” he yelled down.

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

  “That’s okay.”

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

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

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

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

  “Call me Michelle.”

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

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

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

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.”

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

  “I was an asshole,” he said.

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

  “Maybe.”

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

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

  “What?”

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

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, it was me.”

  “What?”

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

  “Oh.”

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

  “How come?”

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

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

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

  I nodded.

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

  “Are you okay?”

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

  “That’s good.”

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

  “Are you still gonna do cross-country?”

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

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

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

  I sat on the floor.

  Because the bed just seemed too bedlike.

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

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

  “Yeah?”

  “Um.”

  “What?”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  I wanted him to.

  I so wanted him to.

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

  But I shook my head. “No.”

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

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

  “But they’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Is it ’cause you have a boyfriend?”

  “What? What boyfriend?”

  “I heard it from Jackson.”

  “When did you hang out with Jackson?”

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

  “And he said–”

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

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

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

  I pulled back. “I can’t.”

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

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

  “Kind of, yeah.”