The Boy Book (21 page)

That evening, before dinner. Me and Nora in the women’s sauna.

Varsha and Spencer had just left. We’d been warming up after swim practice. Nora was sweating out her toxins.

Nora: Poor Noel. Did he tell you what happened?

Me: No. Did he tell you?

Nora: No. I only know what Wallace told us.

Me: I hope it’s not anything serious.

Nora adjusted her boobs in her swimsuit, the one I saw her buying in the U District that spring. She really does have a great body, when she shows it off.

Her: Do you think…

Me: What?

Her: Do you think he’d ever, you know, think of me?

(What?

Oh.

OH.)

Me: You mean, think of you, like a thing?

Her: Uh-huh.

Me: You like him?

Her: Yeah. Yeah, I think I do.

Me: Wow.

Her: No, I definitely do.

Me: Since when?

Her: Kyle’s party.

Me: He’s shorter than you.

Her: And I’m sure I weigh more than him too. But he’s cute, don’t you think?

Me: Sure.

Her: I’m not a size-ist.

I laughed. At five foot eleven, Nora can’t afford to be a size-ist, or there would be hardly any guys for her to date.

But it hadn’t mattered until now, because she hadn’t wanted to go out with anyone.

Her: You guys are such good friends. He hasn’t said anything about me, has he?

Me: No.

Her: Are you sure?

Me: We’re really not that good of friends. I don’t think he’d tell me if he had a thing for you.

Her: He wouldn’t?

Me: No.

It hadn’t occurred to me to think of Noel and Nora. But now it did. She was kind, and funny, and good at sports. She had beautiful dark curls and huge hooters. Plus she could bake.

Every guy’s dream. Who on earth would want a neurotic eyeglass leper-slut when he could have a sporty, mentally stable big-hooter cook?

“He’d be lucky to get you,” I said. And I meant it.

“You really think so?”

“Anyone would be lucky to get you,” I said. “You’re a catch.”

Nora smiled and patted my knee. “I should ask him out, then. Because I really like him. Don’t you think?”

I felt jealous then. And a little dizzy.

Why?

I liked Angelo.

Didn’t I?

Didn’t I?

I thought, Rules for Dating in a Small School: If your friend has already said she likes a boy, don’t you go liking him too. She’s got dibs.

I didn’t know how I felt.

Or I did, and I couldn’t deal with it.

“I’m getting too hot,” I told Nora. “I’ve gotta go take a shower.”

Why Girls Are Better than Boys

1. We are prettier. There’s no denying it.

2. We smell better, too.

3. We are loyaler. Is that a word? Maybe not. In any case, we’ve been your friends since forever, and we
will
be your friends forever, and that what’s-his-name is just a momentary obsession we’ll all laugh about when we’re gray-haired ladies knitting on porch swings. (Although Roo states here and now that she refuses to ever, ever knit, not even when she’s eighty.)

4. We will tell you honestly if those jeans make your butt look either weirdly flat or ginormous.

5. We have tampons in our backpacks if you need one.

6. In fact, we also have tissues, gum, lip gloss, nail clippers, combs, extra hair clips, Tylenol and things of that nature, none of which guys
ever
have. Nora even has Band-Aids.

7. We are more likely to stay alive if we fall off an ocean liner. It’s true! Women are generally shorter and weaker in the upper body, but we have better endurance, we live longer and we float better. So there.

8. We call when we say we will.

—written by Kim and Roo, together, in Kim’s writing. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.

t
he next day (Friday) after lunch, I skipped Glass’s meditation and went for a walk by myself, heading up the hill toward the llamas.

Did I suddenly have feelings for Noel just because my psychology was messed up and I liked a boy I wasn’t supposed to like? Or was I even more perverse than that, and liked him now because he was mad at me?

Or had I liked him all along, and liking Angelo was a mere momentary aberration from my true feelings?

I tried thinking of Angelo, and the heart-fluttery, I-like-him-so-much emotion that I’d had before wasn’t there. I mean, I still thought he was hot. But it wasn’t the same.

I tried thinking of Noel, but the whole thing was so confusing. I couldn’t make sense of myself.

When I got to the top of the hill, the llamas were in their pen, eating out of a trough. I couldn’t see anybody in the owners’ house, so I walked up and took some pellets in my hand. The llamas nuzzled their soft noses at me to get the food, and I stroked their hairy necks.

I stood there for a few minutes, thankful not to be thinking of anything but making the animals feel good and watching the way they pushed each other out of the way in hopes of getting some attention.

Then I heard footsteps on the path behind me, and turned.

It was Kim.

“Ruby,” she said. “I was hoping I could talk to you.”

Here is how it had been with Kim, in more detail: we seemed to have an agreement to be civil but to keep out of one another’s way whenever possible. Like when she came into the sauna and I was there, I got up after a couple of minutes and went to take a shower. Or when I saw she’d decided to do the meditation with Glass, I skipped it.

I had noticed that she avoided Courtney ( Jackson’s ex) the same way I did, and that she avoided Nora, too. She was mainly with Mei and Sierra, or with some of the sophomores who had rowed crew team with her in the spring. She never sat near me at meals, and when we’d had to cook together, she’d busied herself with a turkey while I made salad, and we’d barely had to speak.

Standing on the path, Kim looked small and alone. One of her knees was muddy, like she’d fallen on her way up the hill, and her hands were dirty too.

“Did you follow me out here?” I asked.

“Kind of, yeah.”

“You can feed the llamas if you want,” I said. “They’ll eat out of your hands.”

Kim right away scooped up some feed pellets and stretched her muddy palm out to the biggest llama, the white one.

That’s something I had always liked about her. She wasn’t timid. The llama sniffed her hand twice and started to eat.

“I owe you an apology,” she said finally.

“Oh?”

“I should never have made that Xerox last year. You know, the one with your list of boys on it.”

“I know what Xerox you’re talking about,” I answered. “There was only one Xerox.”

“I knew it was private,” Kim went on. “And I knew it wasn’t what people thought it was. I can’t really say what got into me. I was so angry I couldn’t see, like everything had gone black.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then I wrote stuff on the bathroom wall, and made Cricket and Nora take sides with me, and it was like a way of making the blackness disappear. I don’t know if you can understand that.”

“I don’t think I can,” I said. “You ruined my life.”

“I know.” Kim stopped looking at me and reached down for another handful of feed. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it over the summer, but it wasn’t until I was in Tokyo, with no one to talk to, that I really saw how far overboard I went. I should have just yelled at you or something. I mean, we used to be friends.”

“Yeah,” I said. “We used to.”

“Anyhow,” she said, looking at me again. “What I did was completely wrong. And I wish I hadn’t done it. I shouldn’t have put Nora and Cricket in the middle, either.”

“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.