“Chase wants to ask you something,” he said.
I was thoroughly confused. “What?”
“Chase! Get on the phone!” Josh started giggling. I wanted to hang up, but that seemed rude, and no boy had ever called me on the phone before either, so I was kind of curious.6 “Aw, he’s gone in the other room. Hold on!” Josh put the phone down.
I sat there. This was so dumb. But I couldn’t hang up, or I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what Chase had to say.7
“Ruby, are you there?” Josh’s voice sounded breathless.
“Yeah.”
“He wants to know—ow, Chase, that hurt!—he wants to know, do you want to go to the Christmas dance?”
“With him?” I so didn’t. Chase was repulsive to me. I couldn’t quite say why. But if I thought about slow-dancing with him, a creepy feeling went up my spine.
“She can tell me tomorrow!” yelled Chase in the background.
“Did you hear that?” asked Josh.
“She doesn’t have to say right now!”
“Did you hear?”
“Yeah,” I said. “All right. I’ll think about it.”
“She’s thinking about it,” Josh told Chase.
The next day, Josh came up to me as Kim and I were eating lunch. “This is from Chase,” he said, pulling a bead necklace out of his pocket and scooting it toward me across the table. “For you.”
The necklace was really pretty—but looking at it almost made me sick. I didn’t want it. Taking it would feel like a promise. Like telling Chase there was a thing between us.
I didn’t want a thing.
And why was Josh doing all the talking for him?8
I looked around the refectory, but I couldn’t see Chase anywhere. “How come he’s giving me this?” I asked.
Kim rolled her eyes. “Duh. He likes you.”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “I told you, he wants to know if you’ll go to the dance with him.”
Was the necklace supposed to convince me? Like, Oh, I didn’t like him before, but now that there’s jewelry involved, I want to go?
“You could just go as a friend if you want,” said Josh.9 “You could still have the necklace.”10
If I took the necklace, only horror could result. For instance, I’d have this necklace, and this Christmas dance date—both without even talking to Chase himself. Next time I saw him, I’d have to go up and say thank you, and tell him whether we were going as “just friends” or as—what? What would you even say? As “regular”? As “boyfriend and girlfriend”? There wasn’t even a normal way to say it! And then I’d have to wear the necklace, and people would know about it, and it would be like we were going out, which might be nice since I’d never had a boyfriend—except that he grossed me out.
The whole situation made me feel like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.
“I can’t go to the dance,” I said. “My family’s going out of town.” (Completely untrue.)
“Oh. Okay. Wait one sec.” Josh jumped up and ran out of the refectory for a minute, presumably to confer with Chase outside. Then he came back. “You can still have the necklace,” he said. “If you want to go to McDonald’s with him on Friday.”
“I’m a vegetarian.”
“You could order fries.”
I didn’t know what to do. If I said I was busy Friday, it seemed like he’d come up with some other day, or try to get me to keep the necklace anyhow. “I’m not allowed to go out with boys,” I said. “Or take presents from them, or anything. My mom says.” (Again, completely untrue.)
“Really?” Josh looked skeptical.
“She’s completely not allowed,” Kim cut in. “Her mom is psycho.”
“You wouldn’t have to tell,” Josh said.
“Oh, she’d find out for sure,” I lied. “She finds out everything.”
For weeks after that, I ducked into doorways and behind bushes to avoid Chase. At swimming, I looked down at the ground and pretty much tried to be invisible. I felt like a jerk for lying, and I knew he probably knew it was a lie, and the whole thing was a horror.
He didn’t let me off the hook, either, by finding a new girl to go to the Christmas dance with. He went alone, and I went with Kim and Nora, and he asked me to slow-dance, even after everything that happened.
That time, I actually had the courage to tell him no. Not that I was out of town (which I obviously wasn’t), not that my parents wouldn’t let me, not that I was a vegetarian. Just no.
Maybe it was because he had had the courage to ask me to my face.
On TV there are these diamond commercials: men buying women expensive gifts, and the women swooning with delight. Jackson and I used to make fun of those ads; we’d be sitting in the rec room at his house, watching TV, squashed together in one big armchair, and we’d laugh at how excited the ladies would get over a bit of shiny rock that doesn’t even have a function. “Doesn’t she want something more personal?” Jackson said, about one lady who started to cry when her husband gave her the twenty-fifth-anniversary diamond bracelet. “Doesn’t she want something unique? I would never buy you some shiny rock that’s just like a million other shiny rocks, given to a million other girls.”
“What if I had a shiny rock collection?” I asked. “What if shiny rocks were my thing?”
“Then I’d go to the beach and find a rock myself, and shine it up with sandpaper and a chamois cloth,” he said.
“Cheapskate,” I laughed.
“It would be special,” he said. “It would be different.”
We had been going out for five weeks at that point, and the thing I didn’t say was that a rock—even a rock shined up with a chamois cloth—really doesn’t seem as nice to me as a diamond bracelet.
I mean, it’s a friggin’ rock.
Jackson didn’t understand how to give me presents. You’d think something like that wouldn’t matter between two people who are having lollipop taste tests and three-hour kissing sessions. But it did. Back in sixth grade, that necklace Chase tried to give me wasn’t just a present. It was more like a bribe, or a plea for me to like him. And with Jackson, the things he gave me weren’t just presents, either. They were apologies. Or halfhearted obligations. Or cover-ups.
Below, a list of present-giving misdemeanors, perpetrated by Jackson Clarke upon the unsuspecting and inexperienced Ruby Oliver.
One: In first month of going out, put a tiny ceramic frog in my mail cubby every Monday morning. There were four. I still have them on my desk. Each one is in a different position and has a different expression on its face. Okay, that’s not a misdemeanor. It’s very nice. But then—
Two: Stopped with the frogs. No explanation. That fifth Monday, I looked in my mail cubby first thing, all frog-ready, and it was empty.
I looked again after my first class, and it was still empty.
It was empty all day.
Why no frog?
I felt stupid bringing it up because it was just a tiny ceramic frog and not a big deal or anything, but I wondered all day why he hadn’t given me a frog. Then I thought, Maybe he forgot to bring it to school with him and he’ll bring it on Tuesday.
But on Tuesday, no frog, again! A frogless day.
At the end of Tuesday, Jackson asked me if anything was wrong. I tried to make a joke of it, felt so dumb even bringing it up, but it was bothering me, like we had this special thing that we did and now he’d canceled it. “Ruby!” he laughed. “There were only four frogs, that’s why! They had four different expressions at the store, and I bought them all. I ran out. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I said okay, and I was sorry to be so silly. But if I had been him—that is, if I had been the one giving the frogs, I would have found a frog substitute for the Monday after the frogs ran out. I would have found a gummy frog, or a plastic frog bath toy, or written a note with a frog on it. At the very least, I would have warned him that the fourth frog was, in fact, the final frog. Something. He wouldn’t have gone wondering and feeling disappointed for two days.