As soon as he saw what was written on the bottom of my shoe, though, Gideon’s face changed. I don’t think he knew what it would say, just that it would be something about him. And here is the reason that I still like Gideon Van Deusen, with his lovely hairy eyebrows: He didn’t laugh, or tease me, or tell me to get away. He sat up very seriously, and said, “Roo, that’s so sweet. I’m flattered.”
“It’s only a doodle,” I said, looking down at the grass.
“No, it’s nice. I’d much rather it was you writing about me on your shoe than that annoying Katarina.”
“Really?” Katarina was considered adorable by almost everyone.
“Sure,” he said. “Write on your shoe all you want. Write a whole book. Fine by me: I’d be famous!”
He slung his backpack over one shoulder, and was gone.
I didn’t speak to Nora for a week.4 Then she said she was sorry, and I got over it.
Nothing else ever happened between Gideon and me.
I’d see him at the Van Deusens’ house. My heart would thump.
He’d say, “Hi, Roo,” and be too busy to ever say much else.
But I still think about Gideon. I wonder if he was lonesome driving across the country on his own. I think of him playing guitar out on a wide prairie by a campfire, or learning to surf off the coast of Big Sur. I asked Doctor Z if it was psychologically questionable to like a boy three years older who will never, ever like you back.5 Or to still think about a boy who has never even touched you, except for that tackle on the grass.
“It’s normal to have fantasies, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Doctor Z.
“It doesn’t feel normal,” I said. “I thought about him even with Jackson.”
“When you and Jackson were out together?”
“No. When I was alone.”
“What did you think?”
“Just what it would be like, if he liked me.”
“What would it be like?”
“Like everything was easy,” I said, after a minute. “Like everything was simple.”
“Life isn’t simple, Ruby.”
“But it would be,” I said, “if I…” I found I didn’t know what to say.
“Did it feel simple with Jackson? When you first liked each other?”
“For about a month,” I said. “Then it got complicated.”
“A month isn’t very long.”
“I know,” I said. “But it was a good month.”
Jackson Clarke put a tiny dead frog in my mail cubby near the end of eighth grade. I knew it was him because Cricket saw him walking away with a small, dripping Ziploc bag. We couldn’t figure out if the frog was meant to be mean (and if so, why would he single me out?)—or if he had a crush on me, and this was his idea of a gift (maybe he was a science dork?).
He was a grade ahead of us, so I had never thought much about him until then. We didn’t have classes together. His face was square and freckled, his hair dark brown and inclined to curl if he didn’t keep it short. His eyes crinkled up when he laughed. He was tall and had a raspy voice. And he was obviously an asshole. My cubby smelled like frog for three days. I wondered if he had done it on a dare.
I felt sad for the frog and buried it under a bush outside the main building. In fact, the whole episode kind of shattered me, and I couldn’t figure out why. I looked at Jackson in the hallways, trying to gauge whether he hated me, or liked me, or was even thinking about me. But he never looked my way.
Summer came, and fall again—but Jackson wasn’t in school. We heard his dad had business in Tokyo, and had moved the whole family there for a year. Jackson would go to school in Japan. I didn’t think about it much—until he came back, first day of sophomore year.
I love the start of the school year. I think about what clothes to wear. I use a nice black pen in my fresh, new narrow-ruled notebooks. I crack the spines on my books. Everyone looks different, and everyone’s the same. Jackson was like four inches taller than he had been (which was already pretty tall), and he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said something in Japanese. I saw him laughing with a bunch of other juniors in the hallway as I walked in the door, and suddenly—I knew I liked him. The sun came through the window and lit up his hair. He had a bandage around his wrist like he had sprained it. His backpack was at his feet, looking new and stiff.
I think I had liked him all year, while he was away.
In movies, there are always misunderstandings before the hero and heroine get together. He seems like he hates her, she thinks she hates him, he maybe courts her a little, they connect for a moment, then she misunderstands something and hates him again for most of the movie, despite various appealing things he does to try to win her. Or it’s the other way around, he seems like he hates her because he misunderstands something she did.
And then it turns out they were wrong. They love each other madly. And that’s the end.6
Well, I know I watch too many movies. I should be working with my dad in the garden or helping the needy or getting a little fresh air. But I fully expected that if romance ever did come my way, it would only be after a long stretch of hints and confusions and tiny gestures and retreats; or even after a stretch of full-out dislike, which would suddenly morph into true love when all parties least expected it. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t expecting violins and sunsets and roses, at least not in any great numbers. I just figured on a little drama.
But no. When it came to me and Jackson, everything was easy right from the beginning. So easy, it almost didn’t seem like romance.
It was the middle that was difficult.
And the end was even worse.
Another thing that happens in the movies: They all have these dramatic crises where everything looks bleak and you think the couple will never, ever get back together. But then they realize they can’t live without each other, and in the end they live happily ever after.7
It’s all a lie. When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he’s done something awful—he probably has.
You’re not going to love him again.
He’s not going to apologize, or come back to you.
He probably doesn’t even ever think about you at all, because he’s too busy thinking about someone else.
Face it. There’s not going to be a happy ending … at least not with this hero. So don’t go mooning around thinking that your breakup is only the crisis before the big romantic scene, because I’m here to tell you that it’s not. When you are dumped, you are dumped, and the guy isn’t going to change his mind and realize that suddenly he loves you instead of that girl he’s flirting with in the refectory, now that he’s free.8
Jackson smiled at me that morning, first day of school.
The day after that, he said, “Hi.”
“Hi back,” I said.
The day after that, he said, “Hey, Ruby, what’s up?” and I said, “Not much.”
But the day after that, and this was before Kim had even noticed Finn and his stud-muffinly qualities, I got a note in my mail cubby. I used to get notes all the time, from Kim and Nora and Cricket, but this one was folded up into quarters, with a funny drawing of a frog on it. I knew who it was from, somehow, without even opening it.
Inside, it read: “The frog was for Awful Ariel Oliveri (AAO). Not for you. Sorry.” And then: “P.S. I just got my license. Need a ride home?-Jackson.”
My dad came to pick me up after school. He waited in front of the main building for forty-five minutes. I was long gone.