They’re very team-spirity.7 Bick: His real name is Travis Schumacher. But have you ever seen the movie Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro? Scariest thing ever. De Niro plays a kind of sad, likable psychopath named Travis Bickle. If you ever hear people going, “You talkin’ to ME?” they’re imitating Taxi Driver. Anyway, Travis Schumacher… Travis Bickle … Bickle… Bick. There you go.8 Some more complaints against Meghan:
1. She’s always rubbing the back of her neck and moistening her lips with her tongue like she’s in a porn video (not that I’ve ever seen one). Whatever. It’s practically indecent, and very annoying, and boys seem to like it. At least, they stare at her when she does it, even if she’s only asking them about a homework assignment.
2. When people are sitting around in a hot tub (a very Seattle thing to do at parties), she’s always in a bikini. The rest of us wear T-shirts and boxers.
3. When we were reading Othello for Brit Lit, our teacher was trying to point out to us that it’s basically impossible to know anything for sure and certain, and asked if there was anything anyone in class felt we absolutely knew for sure. Meghan was the only one who raised her hand and this is what she said: “I know my boyfriend loves me.”9 I don’t think the senior girls like her much either. They eat lunch with her, but you never see her leaving with any of them, or sitting with any of them on the quad unless Bick is there too. After all, Meghan is a sophomore making time with the punk-rock-loving, rugby-playing, crew-rowing spiky-haired seniorness of Bick—and in a school as small as Tate, that seriously reduces the number of old-enough, hot-enough potential boyfriends for the senior girls.10 Except for one time, when her Jeep broke down just as she was dropping me off. She came in and called the tow truck. After that, she went into our bathroom, did whatever in there, came out and asked me, “Where’s your bathtub?”
She seemed almost freaked out when I told her we didn’t have one. Just the shower. I mean, it’s a houseboat. There’s not a lot of room—hello? Kim, Nora, Jackson and Cricket have been in my bathroom a million times and none of them ever said anything about it, and Meghan’s comment definitely gave me one of those moments that I have every now and again at Tate, where I think: I am not the same as these rich people.
But after the weirdness of that one interaction died down, it was actually okay having Meghan over. We watched some goofy stuff on after-school TV until her mom picked her up.
4. Gideon (but it was just from afar.)
Gideon Van Deusen is Nora’s older brother. He graduated already and took a year off, driving around the country visiting unusual places like the world’s only corn palace and the museum of surgical science. Then he’s going to Evergreen, deferred admission.
I liked him starting in sixth grade, when he was in ninth. He had intense eyes. It began when I was over at Nora’s house playing video games. Gideon must not have had anything better to do, because he was hanging around with us. He told a funny story about how the week before, his youth group leader from church brought in two loaves of banana bread for everyone to eat. One loaf was nice-fluffy and sweet; the other was all sunk in and weighed like a pound. The leader said the second one had been made with the exact same ingredients as the first—only they were put together in the wrong order. He told the kids that the wrong order made the whole banana bread taste gross, and it was the same thing with sex. If you had sex before marriage, you had done it in the wrong order. And you would turn out gross. But if you did everything in the right order, meaning not having sex until your wedding night, you came out wonderful, fluffy and sweet. Angel material. So all the boys and girls should save themselves for marriage.
I thought this story was exotic because (1) my family doesn’t go to church, and before Gideon told this story I hadn’t even realized that Nora’s family did, and (2) when Nora went into the kitchen to get us all some pop, Gideon told me that he liked the gross, heavy banana bread better.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you have to think for yourself,” he said. “You can’t believe everything people tell you.”
“But did it really taste better?” I wanted to know.
“Not really,” he said. “Politically.”
“Okay, but did it at least taste kind of good? Or were you faking?”
“That’s not the point, Roo. You know that.” He said it like he had confidence in my understanding.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I know.”
It was then that I decided that Gideon was fascinating, and wrote “Ruby loves GVD” on the bottom of my sneaker that same night. I started tracing over it with a purple Magic Marker, whenever I was bored in class. Within a week, it had become this nice lettering that looked like calligraphy.
Then one day, I put my feet up on the chair in front of me during assembly.1 Nora saw the sole of my shoe. “You mean GVD, Gideon, my brother?” she cried.
I blushed.
“Ag! I can’t believe you like my brother!”
“She loves him,” squealed Kim, grabbing my foot and turning it so she could see. “That’s what she wrote.”
“Don’t angst, I swear I won’t tell,” promised Nora.
“I won’t tell either,” added Kim.2
“But since when do you like him?”
“No, since when does she love him?”
“He’s a nice guy.” I yanked my foot away.
“Nice doesn’t make you love someone,” said Kim.
“Ugh,” said Nora. “He’s gross.”
“He’s different,” I said. “He wants to be a musician.”3
“You think he’s cute?” asked Nora, wrinkling her nose in disbelief.
Of course I did. He was—and is—incredibly cute in a messy, rebellious way. “Not really,” I said.
“His eyebrows grow together.”
I loved his eyebrows. I still love his eyebrows. “It’s more his personality,” I said, feeling stupid.
“And he never cleans his room. There’s mold growing around up there.”
He was unusual, I wanted to say. He had better things to do than be tidy. “Don’t tell!” I begged.
Nora shook her head like I had revealed an interest in bug collecting, rather than her brother. “I said I wouldn’t.”
But of course she did. Or at least, she hinted. That very afternoon, as I was heading across the quad to the library, Gideon caught up to me. “Roo, I hear there’s something on your shoe that I should see,” he said.
“What?”
“On your shoe.”
“There isn’t anything.”
“I think there is.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Come on, let me see it.”
“No!”
“Please?”
“It’s nothing, leave me alone.”
He tackled me, laughing, and I fell onto the grass, squealing, completely embarrassed, oh, the horror, having never told a boy I liked him, ever in my life, smelling his Coca-Cola smell, laughing and almost crying and worrying that he would notice I didn’t have any boobs yet and that my sneaker was stinky.