When we watched a movie, he always held my hand.
He still put notes in my mail cubby almost every day, with jokes and little stories about stuff he’d been thinking about.3
He was my boyfriend, I was his girlfriend. Whatever else went wrong, that seemed completely clear.
Until seven days before the Spring Fling dance.
Friday night, Jackson and I went to a movie. He didn’t reach over and hold my hand, like usual, but when I reached over to take his, he stroked my palm. After, we got ice cream at a place in the mall, but the lights were fluorescent-bright and the movie had been something sad with people dying in it, and somehow the mood was dead. Neither of us talked too much.
He dropped me off at the edge of our dock without coming in, though we kissed for a long time and even got in the backseat of the car so we could lie down.
The next morning, he called around eleven. “Roo, we have to talk.”4
“What about?” I asked.
“Not on the phone.”
“Want to come over?”
“I can’t come till after the ball game. Matt and Kyle are due here any minute to watch it on TV.”
“Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“Can I just come over at six?”
“Sure. Are you staying for dinner?”
“I can’t. I have something to do at seven.”
“What?”
“Um. This thing with my mom.”
“Okay. What is this about?”
Jackson paused. “I’ll see you at six, Ruby. We can talk then.”
Any idiot would probably know he was going to break up with me, and part of me knew it too. What else does “We have to talk” mean? and why else would he come all the way over to my house when he had to be somewhere else an hour later? But the Spring Fling was coming up, this big event Tate has every year on a miniyacht, and I had saved my money and bought a vintage dress from the 1970s. Jackson was taking me out for dinner and then to the dance. Afterward, a bunch of kids were actually coming over to my place to hang out, since the dock for the miniyacht was a short way over from our houseboat.
So it didn’t seem like we could possibly be breaking up. Things were happening. We had plans. We were together.
But even with all that, the day was like torture. I called Kim six times.
She was out. Her cell was off. I figured she was with Finn. I left messages, and she didn’t ring back.
I called Nora. “It must be sex,” she said. “You were lying down in the car together last night, now he’s all overexcited. He wants to go all the way. Or at least to third base.”
I called Cricket. “It must be the whole spending-time-with-the guys-thing. He needs to go out and do manly things with his manly man friends. Pete’s like that. Did I tell you what he said to me last night?” And then blah blah on about Pete and his adorable machismo.
I tried not to deal with my parents. It was a pretty day, so I took my homework out to the end of our dock and did it out there. I was reading Great Expectations for Brit Lit. Then I went back into the house and used my dad’s computer to write up my science lab for Bio/Sex Ed. Then I took a long shower and blew out my hair and put on makeup and my favorite jeans and tried on six shirts. My stomach was sticking out, all of a sudden, and everything I wore looked funny. I tried a different bra. I took the makeup off. I put some of it back on. I put on perfume and it smelled like too much. Finally I put on my old swim team sweatshirt and figured at least it would look like I didn’t care what I was wearing.
Jackson was on time. He looked gorgeous, his hair curling at the back of his neck and an old T-shirt untucked at the waist. He came in and made small talk with my father for ten minutes. Then he asked if I wanted to take a walk down the dock.
I had just spent most of the day down at the end of it, but I said okay.
When we got there, he broke up with me. Only, he kept saying it like I wanted it, too.
“We haven’t been getting along,” he said. “We want different things.”
“I don’t think I’m the one for you,” he said. “I don’t think I make you happy.”
“We need time to think things over,” he said. “You need someone different from me.”
This is Jackson Clarke, I thought, who used to really like me.
This is Jackson Clarke, who used to be mine.
This is Jackson Clarke, who kissed me last night.
This is Jackson Clarke.
This is Jackson Clarke.
This is Jackson Clarke.
“Why?” I asked him.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “We just need to think it out.”
“Was there something I did?”
“Of course not. Don’t be so sensitive.”
“You’re breaking up with me and you want me not to be sensitive?”
“You blow things up, Roo. I’m not breaking up with you. It’s not like that. I’m just saying we should have some time apart. We both know that’s true.”5 He looked at his watch. “I gotta go. I have to be at that thing at seven. I’m sorry.”
I sniffed. “Can’t you call and be late?”
“I really can’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
He didn’t answer. “We’ll be friends, right?”
I nodded.
“That would mean a lot to me. I do like you, Roo.”6
He kissed me quickly on the cheek, and stood up to leave.
I started to cry.
He was already walking up the dock. I heard his car door slam. The engine turned over, and he drove a way.
I called Kim three more times that nigh t, but I couldn’t reach her. Cricket and Nora had gone to the movies, but at nine o’clock they answered Nora’s cell together. “Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry,” said Nora, over and over, but she kept interrupting everything I was saying to explain the situation to Cricket, who was sitting right next to her saying “What? What is it?” all the time.
“I’d kill Pete if he ever did that to me,” said Cricket, when she finally grabbed the phone. “Did I tell you what he said about the Spring Fling?” Then we lost the connection because they were in Nora’s dad’s car and he was driving over the bridge.
I told my parents about the breakup on Sunday at dinner. I had to explain because my mom asked why my eyes were all puffy.
Mom: “Oh, I never liked him anyway. He’s a horrible boy.
Dad: “Elaine, she needs to come to a place of forgiveness. Otherwise she’ll never move on.”
Mom: “It just happened. She needs to vent. She needs to express her anger.”
Me: “Mom, I—”
Mom: “Roo, be quiet. She needs to raise her voice and be heard!”
Dad: “I wonder how Jackson is feeling right now. Roo, can you think about his perspective, come to an understanding of his position? Because that’s the way you’ll truly transcend the negativity of this experience.”
Mom: “I never liked the way he’d honk the horn for you without coming in.”
Monday at school, I felt lost. The beat of every day had been Jackson. Early morning, he’d be in the refectory drinking tea. After third period, quick kiss in the main hallway. We’d usually eat lunch together; I’d see him crossing the quad after fifth; and he’d be waiting for me after lacrosse practice (swim season is over). Now, I spent the day half avoiding him and half hoping he’d see me in one of our usual spots and have a change of heart. But when I finally did see him in the refectory at lunch, he was sitting with Matt and a bunch of the guys. “Hey, Roo,” he said, “what’s up?”—and turned away, before I could even answer.
Kim was shocked and sweet when I saw her in first period and finally told her what had happened, although she said a few things that in retrospect seem eviclass="underline" “You were kind of expecting it, though, weren’t you?”
No.
“But things had been getting weird for a while.”