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.
Kim and Jackson stayed together. What I heard from Nora (who made up with Kim quickly after Canoe Island) was that Kim confronted him, and there was really quite a scene, but he broke things off with the zoo girl and told Kim he was incredibly sorry and had just been so confused and lonely that he’d made a big mistake. And he wrote her notes and gave her a Hello Kitty lunch box and a cashmere sweater. So she forgave him.
I never told her about the notes he wrote me, or how he invited me to Kyle’s party.
I decided it wasn’t my business to tell.
And besides, Jackson was fully cured of his tendency to flirt with me or try to get me to forgive him, or whatever it was, by the obvious fact that it was I who spilled the beans to his girlfriend about his stepping out with the zoo girl.
Things were awkward between me and Noel for a few weeks, but after that it got a little better. We stayed Chem lab partners, but he stopped sending me e-mails. We ate lunch together on the Chemistry days, but we always found other people to sit with, too. Sometimes he came out to the movies with me and Meghan and Nora, but we never went anywhere alone, and we never talked on the phone. The Hooter Rescue Squad was officially defunct.
I never told Nora what happened when I went to his house with the CD.
Noel didn’t like Nora, not that way. She would sometimes sit next to him on purpose, or look at him for a long time like she wasn’t keeping track of the lunch conversation, and I could tell she still liked him.
Besides which, she told me she did. She said he was interesting, and funny, and she liked the way his hair stood up.
And I had to agree.
She said he was outside the Tate Universe, at least more than everyone else was, and that the guys at Tate were generally too pigheaded and sexist. And even those who weren’t were manly-manly preppy future doctors of America.
Muffins.
Which was true.
But Nora never got the courage to ask Noel out. When I hinted around about it, she kept saying she would. But then she didn’t. A senior from the basketball team tried to scam on her at a party Heidi Sussman had in early December. Nora kissed the guy for a short time in the kitchen, but then she complained she was tired and went home, never to really deal with him again.
I retrained for penguin-lecture-giving at the zoo and redeemed myself in Anya’s eyes on the next go-round. I started to like the Family Farm part of the job as well. Me and Laverne and Shirley got pretty close. And after a while, I asked to do less gardening and more stuff with the animals, so Anya let me help muck out the farm animal pens instead of gardening. Which was gross, but anyway.
Of course, all my money went to paying back my parents for Canoe Island, so I was broke until the new year.
My parents were happy that I was dealing with my issues in therapy with Doctor Z, and continued to speculate on whether I was a lesbian.
And to remind me that they were okay with that.
“I’m not a lesbian, you guys,” I’d say.
“It’s a perfectly normal way to be, sweetie.”
“Yeah, only I’m not.”
“It’s normal to be in denial, too. Just be true to yourself,” one of them would say, and then we’d have a long dinner conversation for my benefit about all the gay friends my mother has, and her possibly lesbian relationship with Lisa from high school, and movies they’d seen and liked with gay characters in them, and famous people who were gay. Then my dad would give me some meaningless compliment—how pretty I am or what an interesting person I am—in hopes of boosting my self-esteem. And I would look at my plate and stir my pasta around, waiting for the meal to be over.
Ag.
A few days after Canoe Island, Hutch asked Noel if he wanted to go see Aerosmith in concert, and Noel said yes, and they went and did manly bonding things involving rock music. So the two of them started hanging out a bit. And though Hutch’s leper status didn’t improve much beyond that, and his skin didn’t either, he sat with us at lunch now and then. And it was okay, so long as he didn’t quote obscure retro metal lyrics that no one understood.
We went back to being partners in French.
Angelo fell in love with his new girlfriend. Her name was Jade. Juana told my mother, and my mother (completely ignorant of my adventures with Angelo) told me. She said Angelo brought Jade home for dinner and she was really charming and smart, and Angelo just looked at her like the sun was shining through her eyes.
And I didn’t feel a thing when I heard about it. Except glad for him.
We had to have dinner together sometimes, just like we always had. But we sat on opposite sides of the couch when we were watching TV, and I always wore a back-close bra and a dress, just to stay on the safe side. Because when I looked at the excellence of Angelo’s profile, I did start to remember his proficiency in the boob-groping department and got a little tempted. But then I’d just pet a rottweiler or a shih tzu or something and make some comment about reality TV, and the moment would be over.
And me. Ruby Oliver. I started The Girl Book. Excerpt at the start of this chapter. It’s like a free-for-all notebook for stuff that I’m thinking. I made a cover for it with a painting of Humboldt penguins, gouache on construction paper, and it doesn’t look half bad. My dad bought a new computer and gave me his old one, so I used that to write down all the things that happened at the start of this school year, which is what you’re reading now.
I swim. And I go see Doctor Z. And I work my zoo job. And I write stuff. I rent movies with my girlfriends and drink espresso milk shakes at the B&O.
I don’t think about Jackson at all anymore. I see him in the halls, and my radar is gone. He’s a pod-robot and I don’t care.
I do not care.
I do not care.
I see Kim, and there is still an ache for the kind of friends we used to be. Because I don’t have that with anyone, the way I did with her. And maybe I never will.
Maybe friendships aren’t like that when we get older.
But the Kim ache is dull. Not a surge of immediate panicky pain and anger like it used to be. It’s an ache for what happened in the past, not what’s happening now.
I can live with it.
And I do.
If I am sad about anything, and sometimes I am, it is Noel. I talk about him a lot in therapy. Because I think there could have been something, a real thing, between us. And now there is just a low-level friendship that will never get any deeper. At least, I don’t think it will.
I made the right decision. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have any regrets.
The first night of winter break, I had Meghan and Nora sleep over at my house.