“Oh?”
“Because I’m neurotic bitter breakup lady and I was trying to make a power move.”
“But you didn’t end up telling her, did you?” asked Doctor Z.
“No.”
“So why did you tell her something similar now? Was it a power move this time?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “But I guess coming to Canoe Island at all was. I mean, not a manipulative, evil power move so much as me refusing to lose my friends and not go on the retreat when I wanted to go, just because she was going to be there, too.”
“You were standing up for yourself.”
“Yeah. But that’s not what I was doing when I told about Jackson.”
“No?”
“I wasn’t showing Kim that Jackson still liked me. I was showing that he didn’t. That he was with that zoo girl. That in fact, anything between him and me is well and truly over.”
I hadn’t said that out loud yet.
It sounded good.
“What Jackson was doing with that zoo girl was wrong,” I went on. “Plain and simple. And no matter what’s between Kim and me, it’s bad to have your boyfriend cheating on you.”
“You told her out of kindness.”
“Because we pledged to tell each other the truth. To tell each other ‘all relevant data.’ In The Boy Book,” I answered. “And even if we don’t have a friendship anymore, and even if it’s not my business, I don’t think Kim deserves to be powerless and ignorant when her boyfriend’s stepping out.”
Doctor Z inhaled cigarette smoke, audibly, and then said the kind of thing she always says. “Is there any way you could tell her that?”
“Duh,” I answered. “I could just tell her.”
“Um-hm.”
“But she might try to kill me. You know that, don’t you? I’ll be axe-murdered by a venomous exchange-program escapee, and it will be all because of your bad advice.”
“Roo,” announced Doctor Z, “our hour is up. Do you want to make an appointment for next week?”
“Yes,” I answered after a pause. “I do.”
I went through the last day of Canoe Island in a daze. I couldn’t speak to Kim because (1) she was never alone, and (2) I was terrified. But I didn’t have any more panic things, and not much happened in general.
When the boat docked in Seattle on Sunday in the late afternoon, and my mom and dad were there jumping up and down in front of the Honda like absolute lunatics, I felt a flood of relief that Canoe Island was over. But I also felt like I had done something, and been somewhere, and proven myself in ways that I hadn’t before.
We gave Hutch a ride home because no one had come to pick him up. He said his parents were away on vacation. “Then come to our place for dinner!” cried my dad. “Wait, no, let’s go out to Chinese. Judy Fu’s Snappy Dragon? Whaddya say?”
Hutch looked at me sideways. “I don’t want to barge in on your family outing,” he said. “That’s cool.”
“You should come,” I said, making my voice sound warm even though I was actually a little unsure because he’s a leper and he sometimes weirds me out—and because for so long, just in principle, I have been essentially anti–John Hutchinson. “They make these excellent fried wontons,” I added.
“Oh,” Hutch mumbled, in that foggy way of his. “If there are wontons involved, count me in. You didn’t say wontons before.”
“Wontons, wontons, wontons!” yelled my dad.
And I yelled it after him. “Wontons, wontons, wontons!”
So Hutch came to dinner with us.
And it was okay.
If this were a movie of my life, I would go on for a couple of weeks in a state of dejection, after which Noel would appear on my doorstep one day begging forgiveness for being so cranky and hopefully bringing some quality gift. We would kiss somewhere cinematic, like outside in a snowstorm (Bridget Jones) or on an ice rink (Serendipity) or on a fire escape (Pretty Woman). And that would be the end.
But as I have learned, to my disappointment, life is never like the movies. And as I have also learned, thanks to what is now nine months of therapy (with one month-long hiatus): if you don’t want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you. Like Doctor Z says, “We can’t know or say what other people will do. You have to think what you want to do to get the situation where you want it to be.”
Noel wasn’t in school Monday. After swim practice, I got Varsha to drop me in the U District, where I bought a CD of goofy frat-rock songs. Then I caught the bus to Noel’s house, which took an hour. And I rang his bell.
“Ruby!” cried Mrs. DuBoise, wiping her hands on her apron. She was completely covered in tomato sauce and had a blotch of flour on her cheek. “I am attempting to make pizza. Have you ever made pizza? I have this stone that’s supposed to make our regular oven like a pizza oven.”
“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.”