Doctor Z hadn't spotted me yet, but she was heading toward the shop. I shut the door of Granola Brothers and dove as quickly as I could behind the counter.
The bell jingled as someone opened the door. "Schmoopie!" cried the man with the horrible feet. "What do you think?"
I froze.
There was the sound of kissing. Schmoopie and the man.
Then, Doctor Z's voice: "They look good on you. How do they feel?"
"Nice!" he said. "Strange, though. I'm not used to this much arch support."
"You'll grow to love them," said Doctor Z. "Everyone does."
More sounds of kissing.
Ag.
I was so spazzed out I hit my head on the edge of the counter, knocking down a display of tie-dyed socks and letting out an involuntary squeal.
"Are you okay?" The man with the horrible feet came around to the side of the counter so he could see me.
"Fine, fine." I stayed seated on the carpet, hidden from Doctor Z, collecting socks and sorting them into purple and orange. "Thanks for asking. Do you want to take those shoes?"
Maybe I could ring him up from down here, if he was
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paying with a credit card. Maybe I'd never have to stand at all.
"I'm wondering if I should try them in suede," he said. "My girlfriend told me the suede is really comfy."
I had no choice. "I can get those for you," I said, and hauled myself to standing. "Hello, Doctor Z."
"Ruby." She smiled at me. "I had no idea you worked here."1
"Yes," I said, forcing my voice to be cheerful. "Well."
"Good to see you."
"Yes. Um."
The man with the horrible feet said, "Lorraine, do you know each other? What a wild coincidence!"
"Just from around town," said Doctor Z.2
"How great!" said her boyfriend. "Ruby, I'm Jonah." He held out his hand.
"Nice to meet you," I said, though I felt like passing out.
Did Jonah know all about me?
Did Doctor Z put her Birkenstocked feet up on the coffee table after a hard day and tell him all about her roly-poly client who couldn't keep any of her friends and blew off her therapy homework and kept having panic attacks and suffered from Rabbit Fever?
***
1 Translation: "I see you every week for therapy and you never told me you got a new job. What do you think we're doing in those sessions your parents are paying for? Because you are obviously failing to tell me the most basic and everyday facts about your life."
2 Translation: "She's a mental patient, but of course, since we're in public, I respect her confidentiality and won't reveal how I know her."
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Ag and more ag.
It was so weird to see her out in the real world, holding a mesh bag full of winter squash and something wrapped in brown paper that was probably fish.
Honestly, I had never thought about Doctor Z eating. I mean, of course she ate. She had to eat. Everybody eats. But I never thought about what she ate, and now I knew what she was having for dinner, and that she was going to cook, and that she must really really like winter squash because there were several big gourdlike items in that bag of hers.
Who on earth likes winter squash that much? I mean, it's okay, but it's not exactly a pinnacle of deliciousness.
"Ruby helped me put the shoes on," said Jonah, pulling gently on his ponytail. "She thinks they're the right size."
"I'll get the suede for you to try. Be right back," I said, and ducked into the storeroom as quickly as I could.
I had also never thought of Doctor Z as having friends, much less a lover. And not just a lover in the abstract, but Jonah, an actual flesh-and-blood aging white hippie lover who called her Schmoopie and kissed her in the middle of shoe shopping. Which would actually have been cute and romantic-
1. If she hadn't been my shrink. Because it is almost more disturbing to think about your shrink having sex than to think about your parents having sex--which is already plenty disturbing, thank you very much. And--
2. If he hadn't had those horrible feet. Because not only was my shrink friendly with those horrible feet, my shrink actually lay down naked with her perfectly
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normal feet (I had seen them in her Birks) next to his disgusting ones, which were no doubt smelling and fungus-ing up the bed every night, and--
Ag.
This whole train of thought was not good for my mental health.
Just treat them like customers, Roo, I said to myself. Pretend she's a colleague of Mom's or a friend's parent and put on your fake please-the-grown-ups smile and get it over with.
So that is what I did. Jonah liked the suede ones. He paid with cash. Doctor Z said, "Have a nice day, Ruby," and I nodded, but no words would come out of my mouth.
After they left, I sprayed the shoes he didn't buy with an antifungal mist we kept in the back for cases of possible contamination.
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17.
I Choke on Ninja Deliciousness
Dear Oliver,
Since you've never run a CHuBS before, and your big day is coming up in a couple of weeks, I want to offer you some tips and reminders. I should have done this before--sorry! I've been so busy getting Spring Fling organized, and we're even starting to think about prom (!!) so I haven't had a minute.
Anyway, I wanted to remind you how many old-girl CHuBS will be at Parents' Day. For example, Spencer Hanson's mom, Mason Silvey's mom, etc. They have baked every year for the big December sale. You might remember Ms. Hanson's reindeer cookies? Yum! The legacy of CHuBS is important to these ladies, I just want you to know.
Also, it's great you've got boys contributing, and I'm excited about your deliciousness idea! But let's not forget that we know what sells,
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and we know how much the Tate community depends on the CHuBS tradition, and with Easter around the corner, we can take advantage of that. I heard you've been going through some ups and downs in your personal life, so give me a holler if I can bake anything extra or offer guidance about the sale. --Gwen Archer
--written on a sheet of notebook paper in Gwen's round handwriting; folded in thirds and slid covertly across the table during French V.
translation: "I hear you're a big slut and everyone hates you, plus I'm worried you'll make an enormous debacle of Baby CHuBS because you're not doing it the way I would do it and I'm worried people will blame the failure on me. In fact, I'd like to fire you and run it myself at this point, but I don't have the guts, so I'm going to make you feel like crap and then pretend to offer help in the hopes that you'll step down."
I didn't reply to the note, and I ran away after French V so I wouldn't have to talk to Archer. I was too miserable to deal with her and her CHuBS agenda, so I avoided her in class and in the hallways and acted like I didn't see her waving me over in the refectory.
You might think The Return of the Roly-poly slut-aka my life-would be an interesting movie. It might have nudity or some stylized violence, even if the acting was hokey. It might have wild costumes and play at midnight to a cult following.
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But no. It was not an interesting movie. Just dull footage of a girl dressed in jeans and an old bowling shirt, reduced to a single friend.
Everyone at school knows Nora hates her now-- though they may not know exactly why.
Everyone knows Ariel hates her too-and they do know exactly why. They know the girl made out with Noel in the art studio. And since everyone loves Ariel, they hate the Roly-poly Slut to keep Ariel company.
Heidi, usually polite enough in History of Europe, moves to the other side of the room to sit with tennis players, saying something smells like a rat. Katarina mutters "bitch" under her breath in the lunch line.
No one knows that Noel thinks the girl was in a clinch with Jackson, but they do know Jackson keeps sitting at the CHuBS table, and rumors are flying. The girl tries to speak to Kim one day after Am Lit, thinking maybe she can explain, but Kim says, "It's strangely quiet in here. Cricket, I don't think I heard anything. Did you hear something?" Cricket says "No, it's silent as a tomb." They walk away.