The Boy Book (23 page)

“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 this.”

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.”

“I have to see a shrink because I freak out about stuff,” I said. “And I’ve been trying to figure out why I do things, and why I feel like I feel, and how I ended up not having any friends for such a long time.”

He looked at me as if asking me to go on.

“And I just last month made up with Nora, and she finally wants to be friends with me after everything that happened, and, well—we have a code.”

“Like what?”

“Like we can’t take up with a guy if someone else likes him first.”

Noel paused. And then said: “I see.”

“She’s my friend, and I don’t want to lose her like I lost Kim and Cricket, and I’m trying to figure out how to be a good person, and it doesn’t always come naturally to me.”

“I think you’re a good person,” said Noel.

“Sometimes I am,” I answered. “And this is one of those times.”

“Oh.”

“So I’m really sorry, but I don’t think there’s anything else to do.” I stood up. “I should probably go.”

“Yeah,” he said. “You probably should.”

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I turned and walked out the door.

Tuesday, I went to school with
The Boy Book
wrapped in some old Santa Claus paper. On it was a note I had written:

Dear Kim,

We were friends once.

I doubt we’ll be friends again. Too much has happened. But maybe we can remember what it used to be like without such a ginormous quantity of bitterness.

So I want you to have this book.

I was telling you the truth the other day. I know sometimes I am sour mean bitter breakup lady, but sometimes I am also loyal truth-telling lady who messes in business that’s not her own. But only because she really can’t stand it when bad stuff is going on.

Anyway.

Here’s
The Boy Book.

Brava for Kaptain Kangaroo. May she rest in peace.

—Roo

I left it in her mail cubby, though I had to squash it in order to get it in. It was easier than giving it to her in person.

And I felt relieved.

Like that whole era of my life was over.

Like
The Boy Book
and everything it stood for—me, Nora and Cricket and Kim—was done with. And the thoughts inside it too.

Some of them were worth remembering. The front-close bra and not sunbathing topless and the clever comebacks to catcalls. But most of it was in the past.

It was a document of how I used to think. When I was, sort of, someone else.

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

Nancy Drews.

That is, things I am good at.
¹

1. The backstroke. Not great, but decent and getting better.

2. Talking. I’m like my mom that way.

3. Making lists. I really could medal in this one.

4. Movies. Remembering trivia and being able to say semi-intelligent stuff about cinema when called upon to do so.

5. Getting animals to like me. And not being afraid of them.

6. Reading mystery novels. Which is not that hard. But I do it fast.

7. Writing stuff down in such a way that it is at least moderately amusing.

8. School, generally. With the exception of math, which, if I am honest, I just don’t care about at all.

9. Painting pictures of animals that semi-resemble the actual animal that I am trying to paint. Human bodies still elude me, as proven by multiple attempts in Advanced Painting Elective—and my landscapes suck, as do my pictures of fruit. But when I paint something by myself, from a photo in one of my animal books or just from memory, it comes out pretty good. Not that I do it that often.

10. I am good at giving presents.

11. And finding clothes in vintage shops.

12. And being a good friend. At least, I am getting better.

—written by me, Ruby Oliver, all by myself. Exact date: November 21, junior year.

m
eghan broke up with Bick at Thanksgiving. He cried and begged her not to.

It was very satisfying to hear about, but Meghan was sad. Because she loves him. But she told him that the long-distance thing, whether they were faithful or taking it one day at a time, was making her insane. And she hated thinking that she had to go to college in Boston, when she might want to go somewhere and study singing, or skip college and train to be a yoga teacher, or go to school somewhere warm by the beach. And she didn’t actually think they’d ever get married, and she didn’t want to think about getting married now anyway, and there wasn’t any point to it anymore.

She couldn’t live her life in Seattle with her heart and mind at Harvard, she told him.

Nora and I took her out for espresso milk shakes to make her feel better. Then we went and saw a big cheesy movie with alien invaders, and slept over at the Van Deusens’.
²

Kim said thank you for
The Boy Book,
and we had a little fake hug, and then went back to pretty much ignoring each other, only now we said hi in the halls and I could go to parties without angsting that something awful would happen. She and Cricket became fully enmeshed in the Katarina-Heidi-Ariel set, and Nora stayed on the fringes, mainly hanging out with me and Meghan.