The Boy Book (18 page)

Mom was going as Frida Kahlo, the artist, and had drawn her eyebrows together, put on nearly black lipstick and found some Mexican peasant clothing. She was forcing my dad to be Salvador Dalí, my favorite painter, who had an insane mustache. She glued it on his lip and squeezed him into a red velvet coat, a yellow shirt and a long-haired wig.

There was a party at Jackson’s friend Matt’s, but I don’t need to tell you I wasn’t going. Meghan came over and we watched
The Ring, The Others
and half of
The Exorcist
before we got too scared and had to turn on all the lights and eat Popsicles to de-freak ourselves.

The Friday before November Week, Nora pulled me aside when she saw me in the refectory. “Kim is coming home,” she whispered. “Her flight gets in this morning.”

“What?” I was shocked.

“She doesn’t like the exchange program.”

“Why not?”

“Her host family is mean to her. She’s been really homesick.”

Oh.

I had figured that Kim, who had traveled all over the world with her parents on vacation, was having a great time in Japan. It had never occurred to me that she was doing anything but having glamorous, independent adventures. “How did you find out?” “E-mail. But here’s what I have to tell you. Please don’t be mad.”

“What?”
³

“Like two weeks ago, before she told me she was coming home, Kim asked me what I was doing for November Week. So I told her.”

“And?”

“And I said it sounded cool, and Mr. Wallace was leading it, and there was a swimming pool and a sauna. But I didn’t tell her it was you and me and Noel.”

“You lied?” Nora never lies.

“I left that part out. About you and me being friends again. I didn’t want things to get complicated.”

“So?”

Nora twisted a curl on one of her fingers but didn’t answer.

“She’s coming with us.” My voice sounded heavy in my own ears.

“I’m so sorry,” said Nora. “I had no idea that’s why she was asking. She was in Tokyo!”

“No, there was no way you could know.”

“It turns out Jackson’s doing rafting, which is completely full. And she probably knew Cricket was doing Mount Saint Helens, but Cricket’s been so deep in Katarina-Heidi Land, I think Kim decided she’d rather pick Canoe Island.”

“Did you tell her I was going?”

Nora shook her head. “I was so shocked when I got her e-mail, I didn’t reply.”

“But Cricket might have told her.”

“Yeah, maybe. Cricket knows I’m going with you.”

The whole thing was a certain horror.

“Maybe I can get out of it,” I said. “Maybe my parents can get a refund.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But you were so cranked to go.”

“Not anymore.”

“I’m sorry.” Nora bit her thumbnail.

“I’m going to pull out and do that public school greening project.”

“Really, really sorry,” said Nora.

“Me too,” I said.

But when I told Noel I was pulling out, he said, Don’t. “You can’t let fear run you.”

And then I told Meghan, and she said, Don’t. “Kim is nothing to you. Remember?”

“We’ll miss you,” said Mr. Wallace. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider? No one’s going to take your spot at this late date. You can show up for the ferry tomorrow morning if you change your mind.”

I called Nora that afternoon after my zoo job. “If Kim signed up for Canoe Island knowing I was going,” I said, “that’s awful.”

“How so?”

“Because she can’t actually
want
to be there if I’m there. It’s obvious the whole thing will be a debacle. She’s forcing me out.”

“I don’t think Kim would do that. She probably doesn’t know.”

“I bet she does.”

“She’s not evil, Roo. You two just don’t get along anymore.”

“I feel like she’s going to come back from Tokyo and steal the only three friends I have,” I said. “I’m going to end up with no one.”

“I never stopped being friends with her,” said Nora. “You know that. And I don’t want to be in the middle. Can’t everyone just be polite?” Nora is always one for people getting along. She likes life to be orderly.

“I doubt it,” I said. “Are you going to tell her I’m going?”

“Not if you’re staying home and doing the greening project.”

“But if she’s as innocent as you think,” I said, “she’ll pull out when she hears I’ll be there.”

“Roo, please, please, please don’t get me more in the middle of this than I already am.”

I sighed. Nora was right.

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”

“So are you going?”

“Yes,” I answered, surprising myself. “I am.”

The Kaptain Is In

Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,

I gave a boy named Billy my number at a party after he kissed me. So why didn’t he call?

Answer: Don’t angst, he’ll call.

Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,

I think he should call three days after kissing me and getting my number. That’s only polite, plus I read it somewhere online. And now it’s been two weeks. So if he does call, what should I say?

Answer: Tell him you’re busy and you’ll call him back. And then don’t. That’s the best he deserves.

Dear Kaptain,

But I want to talk to him!

Answer: You shouldn’t, though.

But Kaptain, if he calls me, doesn’t he like me? Which means I should talk to him. Blowing him off isn’t going to get me anywhere.

Answer: Sweetie, he’s not going to call. If he was going to, he’d have called already!

But Kaptain, you said he’d call!

Answer: Sometimes the Kaptain tells little white lies to make her friends feel better. Sorry. You’d better forget him.

—questions by me, answers by Kim. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.

w
e had invented Kaptain Kangaroo
¹
as
The Boy Book
advice columnist at the start of ninth grade. Most of the Kaptain’s columns degenerate from the advice format into just notes. Sometimes Kim and I would hand the book back and forth in school, so the exchange lasted a whole day. Other times, we’d sit side by side watching a movie on TV at her house, making entries during the boring parts.

We took turns being Kaptain.

The above entry was written during an insane two weeks in the summer when this boy I kissed at a toga party never called. I couldn’t believe that I could kiss someone and it would seem like the start of something, and he’d ask for my number, and then I’d never see him again. It didn’t seem possible.
²
Even the first guy I kissed, a guy at camp who was completely gross, was around for the last ten days of camp, so it wasn’t like a kiss-and-disappear.

Anyway, packing for Canoe Island was boring, and my mind was spinning in a frenzy of nerves, so I pulled out
The Boy Book
and paged through it, reading old entries and thinking about me and Kim and how we used to be.

Best friends.

It seemed like it would last forever back then.

As I was reading, I came across an entry way at the back of the book where all the rest of the pages were blank. The questions were in Nora’s handwriting, and the answers were in Cricket’s—and I remembered that back in February I had left the book at Nora’s house for several weeks before retrieving it.

Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,

My friend’s boyfriend is annoying and I wish she’d break up with him. What should I do?

Answer: Suck it up, baby. All guys are annoying sometimes. Even most of the time. Unless you’re going out with them.

Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,

What if he’s mean to her?

Answer: Different situation. If he puts her down, makes her do sex things she doesn’t like, or does any of those horrors you read about in magazines, you’re entitled to tell your friend he sucks.

Dear Kaptain,

But what if he’s not tangibly mean, he just makes her feel terrible with all kinds of manipulative weirdness?

Answer: Are you talking about the whole Valentine’s Day thing?

Nora: And the cupcakes and how he talked to Heidi all night at Kyle’s party in December and a million other small horrors.

Cricket: Like how he blew her off for that basketball game and then made her feel guilty for being mad.

Nora: Exactly.

Cricket: I know. It sucks so much. The Kaptain has no answer. You’ve really stumped her this time.

They were writing about me and Jackson, of course.

But I had never had any clue they thought
that
about the stuff that had been going on. I’d always thought they
liked
Jackson, and considered me lucky to have him.

And now it turned out they thought he treated me badly.

And I knew it was true. But it was different to see it written down by people on the outside.

Part of me went right into Jackson-girlfriend mode, even though I hadn’t been his girlfriend for almost half a year, thinking: They don’t know him. They don’t know how he is when he’s alone with me. How it is when we kiss. What it’s like when we hang out at his house, the way he writes me all those funny notes, the way he laughs at my jokes.

And another part of me was thinking:

I am better off without him.

I am better off without him.

I am really, truly better off without him.

Which I had never thought before.