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 Kangaroo1 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.
Saturday morning at dawn, we all had to meet at a ferry dock two hours north in Anacortes, where a charter boat was taking us to Canoe Island. My dad drove me. My hands were shaking so badly whenever I thought of seeing Kim again that I started to wish I had some of the pills Doctor Acorn had been so cranked about.
As we drove, I tried to do a therapy assignment Doctor Z had given me awhile back, which was to acknowledge to myself precisely what I feared, rather than letting it be vague.
Ruby’s List of Canoe Island Paranoias:
1. Kim will repeat her version of the Spring Fling debacle to anyone and everyone who doesn’t already know it, and any small bit of the Canoe Island contingency who were friendly to me will turn cold and mean.
2. Once Kim has reminded the boys what a slut I supposedly am, they will harass me and the whole trip will be one long siege of dick photography–type jokes. 3
3. Kim will haze me in some way, like pouring soup on my sleeping bag, throwing out my swimsuit or putting garbage in my duffel bag.
4. Kim and I will get in some completely embarrassing public argument.
5. Kim will make Nora stop talking to me.
6. And Noel, too.
As my dad sped the Honda along the freeway, I massaged my own hands (a therapy relaxation technique) and reminded myself:
Kim is not the devil. She’s a person.
A person you used to love.
Her whole agenda in life is not to torture you. She probably never even thinks about you.
And please. She’s not going to pour soup on your sleeping bag. This is eleventh grade.
You survived May and June sophomore year and the world didn’t come to an end. The two of you saw each other every day in school. So much time has passed since then that seeing her shouldn’t be any big thing.
So why are you freaking out?
Dear Kaptain,
I am guilty. Because of Jackson and the notes and the hiking up my skirt to show off my legs.
And I know he’s stepping out on her.
And Kaptain, in June of sophomore year I had nothing left to lose.
But now I have Nora and Noel. If they ditch me, all I’ll have is Meghan.
Answer: What’s done is done (with Jackson). What you know about the stepping out is none of your business anyway. And if Noel and Nora are really your friends, you won’t lose them. And if you lose them, then you don’t want that kind of friend anyway.
But Kaptain…
Answer: What now?
Kaptain, I’m just getting more and more freaked out the more I think of all this stuff.
Answer: You’re being completely irrational.
Me: It’s how I feel.
The Kaptain in my head didn’t reply.
I breathed as deeply as I could and watched the buildings fly by outside the car window.
When we arrived, Kim wasn’t there yet. The ferry dock was bustling. The air was damp, and seagulls were wandering around looking for snacks. Kids were saying goodbye to their parents, sleeping bags and suitcases piled around them.
Here’s who was there:
Varsha and Spencer from swim team, plus Spencer’s boyfriend (Imari, captain of the boys’ team),
Nora and Noel,
three senior boys who were very studious and hung around together all the time (Kieran, Mason and Grady),