"What are you doing here?" Nora asked him.
"I brought my laundry home."
"You kidding me."
"No. It's cheaper, even figuring in the cost of gas. Plus my sister is making cookies!" He came over and stuck a finger into the batter. "Hi, Ruby. How's the job?"
"Good," I told him. "A little smelly sometimes."
"Feet," said Gideon.
"Exactly."
While Nora and I baked, Gideon trotted from his car
118
to the basement several times. I couldn't help looking at his bare arms as he lugged his basket through the kitchen.
Later, he folded his stuff on the kitchen table. He was a good laundry folder. All the corners of his shirts lined up. And I thought:
1. Gideon hasn't gone out with anyone I'm friends with or used to be friends with.
2. No one I know is secretly in love with him and saying she's going ask him out.
3. He didn't make out with Ariel Olivieri and then refuse to speak to her.
4. He wouldn't leave me a note and then say it was nothing important.
5. He knows how to fold laundry and has attractive arm muscles.
6. Gideon Van Deusen has the sort of qualities I should look for in a boyfriend. He is straightforward and normal. He is outside the Tate Universe.
Nora, Gideon and I ate a few of the magic cookies and watched Moulin Rouge on DVD. When I handed Gideon a cookie, I silently wished his leg would touch mine during the movie.
And it did.
I didn't second-guess myself, and I didn't wonder if I really had feelings for him or was just using him as a substitute because I was lonely. I didn't think about Noel and I didn't think about Jackson and I didn't have a panic attack. I just sat there and got us all to make a list of movies besides Moulin Rouge where the heroine is a
119
prostitute with a heart of gold2-feeling Gideon's warm thigh against mine.
***
Very early Monday morning, Meghan and I met Nora at school and set up the CHuBS recruiting table. As people drifted into the main building, Meghan and I tried (as we had on several previous days) to get people to sign up by bribing them with snacks--in this case, the miniature molten cakes and magic cookies. Nora left us with the baked goods and went to the darkroom to do yearbook stuff, printing pictures of sports teams and club members.
"I need to try the magic cookies right now," said Meghan. "Who can I try them on?" She scanned the hallway. None of the candidates for Operation Sophomore Love was anywhere in evidence.
"I'm not saying they definitely worked," I told her. "I'm saying my leg was touching Gideon's."
"For how much of the movie?"
"Um ... seventy-two percent."
Meghan squealed. "That's a lot! That's deliberate leg-touching. Was it a long movie?" I nodded.
"Okay, so how did it work?"
***
2 Here's the list we came up with, with help from the Internet. Movies that make prostitution seem like a glam job in which you might end up falling in love with a supercute and quality guy such as young Christian Slater or Ewan McGregor: Moulin Rouge; Pretty Woman; Trading Places; Milk Money; The Girl Next Door; Risky Business; Irma la Douce; From Here to Eternity; Klute; Memoirs of a Geisha; LA. Confidential; Night Shift; True Romance.
120
"I gave him a cookie, and while he was eating it, I thought about what I wanted him to do."
Meghan crinkled her nose. "But it was Gideon."
"So?"
"So, he's the one who did Nora's bidding before. Maybe the magic cookies only work on him. Maybe they won't do anything to other boys."
"Which is why you have to try them on someone else," I said.
"There's no one to try them on."
We sat there for a minute. A few geeky freshmen wandered by. Varsha from swim team came and signed up to make pecan-caramel squares. She took a chocolate cake on a paper plate.
"Maybe," said Meghan, "we can eat the cookies ourselves and make a wish for something we want to have happen."
I doubted it would work, but I didn't want to squash her idea. All I'd had for breakfast was carrot juice and an apple. "Let's try it," I said.
Meghan took a magic cookie for herself and one for me. "We each make a wish for something we want. Not world peace, just like the stuff Nora wished for-someone will loan you his car, someone will bring you a present, someone will kiss you today. Okay?"
"Okay."
I looked seriously at my cookie. I knew it was stupid, but it was also kind of like the treasure map I was supposed to be finishing, wasn't it? Like envisioning what you
121
want in the world, putting your energy toward imagining things the way you'd like them to be.
"Do we wish while we chew?" I asked. "Or before we chew?"
"You're the expert," said Meghan. "You wished while Gideon was chewing, right?"
"Right. So decide on your wish, but don't wish until you're chewing. You ready?"
We bit into our chocolate chip cookies, brown-sugary and delicious, and I wished, fervently, that somehow, today, I would know what to do with myself when it came to boys. The treasure map. Jackson, Finn, Noel, Gideon.
I wished that something, anything, would happen to help me sort out how I felt.
I wished for a sign. An answer to my questions.
I closed my eyes while I chewed, and when I opened them-Jackson Clarke was standing in front of me. "Hey there, Ms. Roo," he said.
I choked and coughed.
"I can wait." Jackson slid into the chair next to me and looked at the Baby CHuBS sign-up sheet. He chuckled. "Finn Murphy is making brownies?"
I managed to swallow my cookie and answer him. "We have a campaign."
"What is it?"
"Tate Boys Bake."
"Baking is the new basketball," said Meghan. "Ha ha."
"Seriously," I said.
122
"I do cross-country and crew, anyway," said Jackson. "I don't subscribe to the cult of basketball."
"The new crew, then," I told him. "The new thing that's cool for guys to do."
"Roo."
"What?"
"If it involves an apron, guys are not gonna think it's cool."
"There's no reason girls should be the only ones who contribute. The male population of Tate Prep needs to let go of their antiquated notions of masculinity."
Jackson shrugged. "If I give up my antiquated notions of masculinity, can I have a cookie?" He reached over to the plate.
"Hold it!" I grabbed his wrist. "You not only have to give up your antiquated notions of masculinity, you have to actually bake for the sale. Are you signing up?"
Jackson pulled his arm away, laughing, took a cookie and scarfed it before I could even think what I'd command him to do as he ate. "Those are amazing!" he said. "Did you make them?"
"Nora did," I answered. "But I was sous-chef."
"I didn't think you made them.3"
"I creamed the butter and sugar," I said. "I pressed the button on the mixer and kept it pressed until Nora told me to stop."
***
3 Ag. What did that mean? This is the kind of statement that makes it exceedingly difficult to talk to your ex-boyfriend.
123
Jackson reached for another cookie "Hey!" Meghan complained. "Are you signing up or not?"
"I'm not signing up," he said, biting in. "But I have a proposition for you." He took off his jacket and unwound his scarf.
"Make yourself comfortable, why don't you," I said.
"Remember I stopped by the other day and you weren't here?"
Yes, I thought. You left me that frogless note.
"I couldn't tell you what it was about with Wallace standing right there, but I'm running the Parents' Day Handicap and I need a covert base of operations."
The Parents' Day Handicap is not a tradition at Tate Prep-not yet. A senior boy who was a friend of Jackson's started it only last year. On Parents' Day, all the upper-school parents stroll through Tate looking at science projects, art exhibitions, yearbook layouts and videos of sports victories. Then they cluster into the auditorium and hear speeches from the heads of various departments--science, music, drama, English, etc.-talking about the wilderness programs, the school plays, the new electives on offer. Each department head is only supposed to talk for four minutes, because while the wealthy parent body is well inclined to pony up donations after a day of being assaulted with the wonders of the Tate Prep education, they also get bored if any of it goes on too long.