The Boyfriend List

also by e. lockhartfly on the wallthe boy book

For my dear old high school friends,

who were (and still are) excellent and hilarious—

and who never did anything like the bad stuff

people do in this book

Here it is, the Boyfriend List. In chronological order.

1. Adam (but he doesn’t count.)

2. Finn (but people just thought so.)

3. Hutch (but I’d rather not think about it.)

4. Gideon (but it was just from afar.)

5. Ben (but he didn’t know.)

6. Tommy (but it was impossible.)

7. Chase (but it was all in his mind.)

8. Sky (but he had someone else.)

9. Michael (but I so didn’t want to.)

10. Angelo (but it was just one date.)

11. Shiv (but it was just one kiss.)

12. Billy (but he didn’t call.)

13. Jackson (yes, okay, he was my boyfriend. Don’t ask me any more about it.)

14. Noel (but it was just a rumor.)

15. Cabbie (but I’m undecided.)

Before anyone reading this thinks to call me a slut—or even just imagines I’m incredibly popular—let me point out that this list includes absolutely every single boy I have ever had the slightest little any-kind-of-anything with.Boys I never kissed are on this list.Boys I never even talked to are on this list.Doctor Z told me not to leave anyone off. Not even if I think he’s unimportant.In fact, especially if I think he’s unimportant.Doctor Z is my shrink, and she says that for purposes of the list, the boyfriends don’t have to be official. Official, unofficial—she says it doesn’t matter, so long as I remember the boy and something about what happened.¹The list was a homework assignment for my mental health. She told me to write down all the boyfriends, kind-of boyfriends, almost-boyfriends, rumored boyfriends and wished-he-were boyfriends I’ve ever had. Plus, she recommended I take up knitting.²I still have some doubts about Doctor Z, though by now I’ve been seeing her for almost four months. I mean, if I knew a fifteen-year-old who sat around knitting sweaters all day, I’d definitely think she had some mental health problems.I know it’s weird to be fifteen and have a shrink. Until I had one of my own, I thought shrinks were just for lunatics, tragics and neurotics. Lunatics: insane-asylum candidates, people tearing their hair out and stabbing horses in the eyeballs and whatever. Tragics: people who get help because they’ve had something really bad happen to them, like getting cancer, or being abused. And neurotics: middle-aged men who think about death all the time and can’t tell their own mothers to stop poking into their lives.A lot of my parents’ friends are neurotics, actually, but the only other kid I know who sees a shrink (and admits to it) is Meghan Flack.³ She’s had one since she was twelve, but she prefers to call it a “counselor”—like it’s not a Freudian psychoanalyst her mom pays $200 an hour, but some fun college girl who’s in charge of her bunk at summer camp.Meghan sees the shrink because her dad died, which makes her a tragic in my book. Her shrink makes her lie on a couch and talk about her dreams. Then he explains that the dreams are all about sex—which later turns out to mean that they’re all about her dead father. Ag.Me, I don’t fit into any of my own categories. I’m not a lunatic, or even a neurotic. I started going to Doctor Z because I had panic attacks—these fits where my heart would beat really fast and I felt as if I couldn’t get enough air. I only had five of them, which Doctor Z says isn’t enough to count as a disorder, but all five happened within ten days—in the same ten days I—

lost my boyfriend (boy #13)

lost my best friend

lost all my other friends

learned gory details about my now-ex-boyfriend’s sexual adventures

did something shockingly advanced with boy #15

did something suspicious with boy #10

had an argument with boy #14

drank my first beer

got caught by my mom

lost a lacrosse game

failed a math test

hurt Meghan’s feelings

became a leper

and became a famous slutEnough to give anyone panic attacks, right?⁴I was so overwhelmed by the horror of the whole debacle⁵ that I had to skip school for a day to read mystery novels, cry and eat spearmint jelly candies.At first, I wasn’t going to tell my parents. I tend to keep them happy, get good grades, come home by curfew and not angst publicly about my problems—because as soon as I tell them one tiny thing about what’s going on, they act like it’s an earthquake. They can’t bear when I’m unhappy. They try and fix it; they’d fix the whole world if they could, just to make me feel better—even when it’s none of their business. It’s one of the many hazards of being an only child.So I was keeping quiet about the whole horror that is my life, and we had all sat down to dinner, and my mom was launching into some typical rant about the mayoral election or the rummage sale or some other boring thing she’s cranked up about—when suddenly I got dizzy and my heart started banging hard in my chest. I had to put my head between my knees because I felt like I was going to pass out.“Are you sick?” asked my dad.“I don’t know.”“Are you going to vomit? If you’re going to vomit, let me help you to the bathroom.”I hate the way he says “vomit.” Why can’t he say, “Are you queasy?” or “Is your stomach bothering you?” Anything but vomit, vomit, vomit.“No, thanks,” I answered.“Then are you depressed?” he wanted to know. “Do you know what the symptoms are?”“Dad, please.”“Does the universe seem pointless and bleak?” my father asked. “Do you think about suicide?”“Leave me alone!”“These are important things to ask. What about this: Do you feel like sleeping a lot? She slept until noon last weekend, Elaine.”“Are you fainting?” my mother interrupted. “I think she’s fainting.”“Is fainting a symptom of depression? I can look it up online.”“Have you been eating?” my mother said, as if a light-bulb had gone on in her head. “Are you worried about your weight?”“I don’t know,” I said. “No.”“Do you count your calories all the time and think your thighs are fat? Because I saw you drinking a Diet Coke the other day. You never used to drink Diet Coke.”“That was all the pop machine had left.” I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was like a rugby player was sitting on my chest, bouncing up and down.⁶“Eating problems are very common at your age.”“That’s not it. My heart is beating really fast.” My head was still between my legs, under the table.“It’s okay to tell us,” my mother said, sticking her head down under so she could see my face. “We support you. You don’t have to be skinny to be beautiful.”“What do you mean, your heart?” asked my dad, sticking his head under, too.“Fat is a feminist issue,” said my mother.“It can’t be her heart,” said my father. “She’s only fifteen.”“Shut up, you two!” I yelled.“Don’t tell me to shut up,” my mother yelled back.“You’re not listening!”“You’re not saying anything!”She had a point. I told her what was happening.My mother sat up and banged her hands on the table. “I know. She’s got what Greg has. Panic attack.”“Greg never leaves the house,” my father said, staying under the table to pick up some bits of food that had fallen under there.“Greg has a panic disorder. He doesn’t go out because he gets a panic thing every time he does.”“I’m not like Greg!” I said, sitting up slowly and trying to take a deep breath. Greg is a friend of my dad’s who runs a gardening Web site out of his apartment. He doesn’t go anywhere. If you want to see him, you have to visit and bring him take-out food. Books are piled up all over the place, and there are like four computers, and nine hundred plants blocking all the windows. He’s nice, but definitely insane.“Greg started out like you, Roo,” said my mother. “A little attack here, a little attack there. Have you had more than one?”“Four others,” I admitted, scared but also relieved that what was happening to me had a name.“I’m making some calls,” said my mother, standing up and bringing her plate over to the phone. “You have to see someone about this.”It was no use arguing. That woman is a whirlwind when she gets cranked up. She made Meghan’s mother, Sally Flack, who’s a doctor and lives down the block from us, come over right away and check my heart and breathing. Doctor Flack was in the middle of dinner. But she came anyway. My mother is a very forceful personality.Meghan’s mom examined me in our bathroom and said I checked out okay⁷, and then my mom spent two hours on the phone, describing my symptoms to every single person we know and getting all her neurotic friends to give shrink recommendations.