The Boy Book (5 page)

One day, in the middle of all the horror that was going on sophomore year, I had found myself alone by the cubbies. I was late to class, so no one was in the halls.

In Kim’s cubby was a note from Jackson.

I know it is completely wrong and also psycho, but I took it. I shoved it down in the pocket of my jeans, where it felt like it was burning a hole into my leg, and ran into a stall in the girls’ bathroom to read it.

K—

I’m in Global Studies, and I’m looking out the window

And I see you late for class because you went to buy a sticky bun.

You’re licking the icing as you walk across the quad

And I like the way your tongue looks, licking,

And I like the way you walk,

as if you like the way your sandal-feet are tickled by the grass.

So it’s like you’re with me now,

as Kessler hands us out a pop quiz

and I haven’t done the reading, ’cause

last night I was with you.

Tears ran down my face and I had to stay in the bathroom for twenty minutes, blowing my nose, splashing water on my cheeks, putting on lip gloss, and then crying again and having to do it all over.

It seemed so wrong to see that note in Jackson’s writing, that note with his blue-black pen, that note that only a month before would have been addressed to me, and to know it wasn’t mine.

To know I’d never have another note like that, never again.

And now I had one. We hadn’t spoken since the end of last March, and here, in my hand, was a note. I opened it.

Saw you from afar at Northgate yesterday.

Proof: you were drinking a purple smoothie.

Then you got in the Honda and drove away, you legal driver, you.

Happy (late late late) birthday.

Jackson

At that moment—and I know this is certifiably insane—I missed Kim so much. It was Kim I’d always talked to about everything. She’d dissected Jackson’s notes, analyzed his gifts, listened to the blow-by-blow of any argument we’d had.

If this was last year, Kim, Nora, and Cricket and I would have spent the entire lunch period discussing the possible meanings of Jackson’s note, after which we’d have written a new entry in
The Boy Book
—if not several new entries.

I couldn’t talk to Noel. He was a guy. Plus, he was on the cross-country team with Jackson, and they didn’t like each other much, so he wouldn’t be objective. And I couldn’t talk to the girls from swimming. I didn’t know them well enough. So I grabbed Meghan an hour later as we were going into Am Lit.

“Jackson wrote me a note,” I whispered as the teacher
¹
tinkered with the connection of his laptop to a projection screen. He was all cranked to show us these Web sites about Colonial Boston and Puritan women in preparation for reading
The Scarlet Letter
.
²
But he wasn’t technically adept, so someone from the AV club was supposedly on his way over to help.

“What did it say?” whispered Meghan.

“Happy birthday.”

“Is it your birthday?” Meghan smiled. “No, wait, I gave you something in August. Lip gloss.”

“He saw me driving the car the other day, so he figured out I turned sixteen.”

“That’s so sweet!” Meghan has no eye for the subtleties and weirdnesses of human drama. “When I turned sixteen,” she said, “Bick brought three dozen roses to my house at like six in the morning, and left them in a vase outside my bedroom door. He arranged it ahead of time with my mom.”

I didn’t say anything. Bick, Bick, Bick.

“He’s like that,” Meghan said, and turned her attention to the Bostonian Society Web site, which was finally up on Mr. Wallace’s screen.

At lunch, I didn’t see Jackson anywhere. Seniors drive off campus a lot and get lunch at Dick’s Drive-In or wherever. Nora and Cricket were sitting with Katarina, who had started going out with the nefarious Cabbie shortly after he squeezed my boob in the movie theater, but had apparently dumped him over the summer.

I sat with Meghan, eating my ranch-dressing raisin salad, and listened to her talk about Bick.

Blah blah blah.

But when I saw Nora get up and grab her backpack, with Cricket and Katarina still sitting, I bussed my tray.

“Nora. Wait up.” We were in the refectory foyer.

“Hey, Roo.” She smiled. A good sign.

I felt like maybe I was supposed to make small talk. Ask her how the rest of her summer had been, discuss the classes I was taking. But I couldn’t. “Can I show you something?”

“I guess. What?”

“Let’s go outside.”

It was gray out—Seattle is nearly always gray—but warm. We went out to the quad and sat on the grass. I pulled the note from my pocket.

Nora took it and read it in silence. Then she said, “Why are you showing me this?”

I wanted to be friends again.

I wanted to tell her about the Hooter Rescue Squad—for her to laugh and feel grateful.

I wanted her to say, in her Nora way, all the things she thought the note meant, all the things it didn’t mean.

I wanted her to tell me if I should write back. And what I should say.

As if nothing bad had ever happened between her and me.

As if Kim was some random girl Jackson was dating, and not her friend.

I thought all that would be obvious. And I guess I thought she would do it. Just do it automatically, because I was Roo, and she was Nora.

“Kim is going to freak out when she hears,” Nora muttered, not waiting for my answer.

“I didn’t show it to you so you’d tell Kim,” I said, taking the note back.

“Roo–”

“It’s only a ‘Happy birthday.’”

“Then why are you showing it to me?”

“I–”

“Because if Jackson’s stepping out on Kim, or even thinking about it, I’m going to have to tell her. That’s what friends do. We had a pledge.”

“Why would you freak her out for nothing? He’s not getting back with me.”

“He’s not?” Nora eyed me. “Roo, then I don’t understand what this is about. Why are you putting me in the middle?”

“I’m not putting you in the middle.” I felt like I might cry.

“Yes, you are,” she said. “You’re making me choose between lying to Kim and being nice to you. God, sometimes it’s like you have no sense of how other people are going to react to what you do.”

“I thought—” Anything I could say was going to make me sound like a pathetic leper.

“You thought what?”

“I thought we could talk about it,” I said. “Like we used to talk about stuff. I needed someone who would understand.”

“Look, Roo,” said Nora, standing up. “I can’t make you stop liking Jackson. It’s a free country. You can like whoever you like.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Whatever. It seems like you do.”

“Well, I don’t.”

“What I’m saying is, you can do whatever you do and I can’t stop you. But you can’t go stealing other people’s boyfriends and think people are going to like you for it. And you can’t go putting me in the middle, because I’m just not going to be there.”

I thought she was going to turn around and walk away, but she didn’t. She stood still, looking at me like she thought I was going to say something.

Nora tries to be a good person. She believes in God. She does charity work. She would never want a guy she wasn’t supposed to want.

“I can’t tell if we’re friends or not,” I said finally. “You and me.”

“I can’t tell, either,” she almost whispered.

“Are you going to tell Kim about the note?”

“I don’t know.” Nora picked at her fingernails. “I wish you hadn’t put me in this position.”

“Sorry.”

“What
is
up with you guys?”

“Me and Jackson? I haven’t talked to him. We haven’t even said hi since June.”

“For real?”

“For real.”

“Well,” she said. “Maybe you should just stay away from him.”

“I probably should,” I answered.

“I gotta get to class,” said Nora, sighing.

“Yeah, me too.”

And that was how we left it.

When I thought about it later, I realized that Nora
was
telling me who to like and what to do, even though she said she couldn’t. “Like she was saying that if I stayed away from Jackson, we could maybe be friends again,” I explained to Doctor Z at our Thursday-afternoon appointment.

“Um-hmm.”

“Do you think she’ll tell Kim?” I asked.

“I couldn’t say.”

“Do you think she’ll tell Cricket? Because Cricket will tell Kim.”

“Roo,” said Doctor Z, leaning forward a bit. “We can’t know or say what other people will do.
You
have to think what
you
want to do. What
you
can do to get the situation where you want it to be.”

“I could tell Kim,” I said. “I have her e-mail.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I feel like it’s what I’m
supposed
to do. Like that’s the code we set up when we wrote
The Boy Book.
To tell each other everything. Even after what happened. Because if it was my boyfriend writing notes to other girls, I’d want my friends to tell me.”

“You want to uphold the rules you laid out in
The Boy Book.
”

“Yeah,” I said. “Only if it was me, I also couldn’t stand the suspense, thinking my faraway boyfriend might be stepping out. It would drive me certifiably insane, when probably there’d be no reason to even angst about it. I mean, Kim’s in Tokyo. There’s nothing she could even do.”

“Are you saying maybe it isn’t very nice to tell her?”

“I actually opened an e-mail to her today and started typing before I deleted it.”

“It sounds like you want to tell her.”

I was quiet for a minute. “I kind of want her to know.”

Silence from Doctor Z.

“Because—I guess I want her to think he still likes me. It’s like, Kim’s got all the power. She’s got Jackson, she’s got Cricket, she’s got Nora, she’s got everything. And the only thing I’ve got that she doesn’t have is this note.”

“I see.”

“So it’s not out of the goodness of my heart that I’d tell her. It’s actually out of the sour meanness of my soul.”

“I don’t think you have a sour, mean soul, Ruby.”

“You don’t?” I said. “Then I’m not sure you know me that well.”