***
3 What Julia Roberts says to Hugh Grant in Notting Hill--only with the sexes reversed.
4 The way Ewan McGregor does for Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge.
5 What Tom Cruise says to Renee Zellweger in Jerry Maguire.
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him, he still blows you off the next day to watch a basketball game with the guys.
And in life, you do have to choose between your friend and the boy you like. She doesn't magically fall in love with someone else, realize she's gay or turn out evil. No one turns out to be evil. People are complicated and make mistakes. They're thoughtless, selfish womanizers who can turn into pod-robots at a moment's notice-but they're also funny and kind sometimes when you've been crying (Jackson). Or they're stubborn and self-righteous and unforgiving, but also generous and honest and they take care of you when you're having a panic attack (Nora).
They're not ideal and romantic, either. They're handsome and good kissers and above all interesting, but they're insensitive about things like asking you to be a bodyguard, and they don't believe you when you try to explain why you were hugging someone else (Noel).
Or they're hyperverbal and reasonably good-looking, and they mean well and they're good with animals, and they can put on a damn good bake sale, but they get confused about what and whom they want, and all too often can't resist temptation (me).
In life, maybe you do eventually find love, but it's not with your high school boyfriend. It's with a completely different person whom you never even met before--someone who didn't figure into the first part of the story at all. In life, there's no happily-ever-after-into-the-sunset. There's a marriage, complete with arguments, bad hair, lost hair, mentally unstable children, weird diets, dogs that fur up the couch, not enough money. Like my parents. That's
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their life I just described-but then, there they were, talking on the phone about my dad massaging my mom's groin area after yoga; cuddling on the couch; holding hands and wearing stupid Great Dane paraphernalia.
That's all we can realistically hope for. In fact, I think it's as close to happily-ever-after as things get. Though I am not yet sure if I find that fact depressing or encouraging.
The next Tuesday, when I told Doctor Z all these thoughts I'd been having, she asked me if I wanted to be friends with Nora.
I hadn't put it to myself that way, as a question.
Did I?
I was mad that she was only friends with me so long as I kept my hands off Noel. Even though it took like four months for her to ask him out. Even though, aside from agreeing to go to Spring Fling, he'd never given her any evidence of liking her back, and in fact had been
1. writing me sexy notes about Chemistry
2. giving me candy rings and
3. full-out kissing me.
I loved Nora. I had loved her for a long time, and there was still so much to love about her. But she didn't really love me back, did she? She had dropped me twice (once now, once sophomore year) rather than trying to understand why I'd acted the way I did. She had been furious about me and Noel without even listening to my side of it-because even though we were friends, she still basically thought of me as a boyfriend stealer.
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She didn't allow me any room to behave any way but the way she wanted me to.
My family didn't get rid of Polka-dot when he ate our doughnuts. We didn't get rid of him when his tail knocked Great-grandpa's antique clock off the credenza. We didn't get rid of him because he furred up the couch or had indigestion or slobbered on our baked goods so we couldn't eat them. No, we took him on car rides even when he misbehaved and we bought stupid shirts and tote bags saying how much we loved him.
Of course we scolded him. We said "No, Polka-dot!" and tied him on the dock if he was farting. Maybe we even slapped his nose once in a while. But we told him we were mad and then we forgave him. Because our attitude was generally: Polka-dot is good. Polka-dot is loved. If Polka-dot is a huge pain to live with once in a while, we'll deal with it, because the good outweighs the bad.
I wanted a friend who felt about me the way my family felt about Polka-dot. That's what I told Doctor Z. I used to think Kim was that friend, but now there was no way we'd ever be anything to each other again.
Were we ever true friends, then, since it had ended so badly?
Yes, actually. We were. Before boys and Mocha Latte came between us. Before we both wanted the same thing. Before, before.
Now Meghan might be that kind of solid friend. Sometimes I didn't understand her, and a lot of times she didn't understand me, but she cut me slack. And I cut her some.
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Nora wasn't a true friend in that way. Or she hadn't been in a long time, and I didn't know if she'd ever come back around to loving me like I loved Polka-dot. Maybe she would if I just gave it time. If circumstances changed again.
Maybe.
***
May was uneventful. It rained and Seattle turned emerald green. I watched the girls' lacrosse team play a few times. I took the SATs.
During carpool and on weekday afternoons when Finn worked or played soccer, I hung out with Meghan, but most of the time at school she had become half of Finn&Meghan, just as sophomore year she'd been half of Meghan&Bick. She kissed Finn in the refectory, sat on his lap and made a spectacle of herself.
She ate with the boy soccer muffins at lunch most days, leaving me to either join them (awkward) or sit alone (more awkward), since Hutch was usually with Noel. On weekends she had taken over my job at Granola Brothers, since now I worked at the zoo, and at night she was always with Finn and sometimes with Nora-so really, I hardly saw her.
It's not that she was ditching me. It's that Meghan was the kind of girl whose world centered around her boyfriend. She always had been, and she probably always would be. She was the girl who ate lunch all sophomore year at a table full of seniors who didn't like her, oblivious because Bick's shining smile was the only thing she could see. So I wasn't surprised, or even mad, that she became half of Finn&Meghan. That was who she was.
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I was grateful, though, for my schedule at the zoo. It kept me from noticing how alone I usually was on weekends.
One day in late May, when Hutch was working for my dad, he brought over this documentary, Dream Deceivers. It's about how these two teenagers shot themselves after a Judas Priest concert-Judas Priest being a retro-metal band that was one of Hutch's favorites. The boys' families and the legal team they hired tried to put the blame on the band, claiming subliminal messages in their lyrics had mesmerized the kids into a suicide pact.
These people obviously had no understanding of the secret mental health of hair bands. Anyway, the movie was superinteresting, and after watching it we decided to have a documentary film festival in my living room, to be curated by yours truly.6
Hutch's parents are never home, so my dad began asking him to stay for dinner. At first, when Hutch tasted my mom's zucchini-cashew loaf, I was pretty sure he was never going to eat dinner with us again-I could see the sick look on his face. So I said something I'd been meaning to say for a long time: "Mom, if we have to eat raw, couldn't we just have salad and fruit a couple nights a week? Just salad and fruit-no recipes you've found on
***
6 We watched March of the Penguins, Super Size Me, Spellbound, American Movie, Mad Hot Ballroom, Grizzly Man, Hoop Dreams, Shut Up & Sing--and for Hutch, Metollica: Some Kind of Monster. Which is about a retro-metal band in group therapy, if you can believe it.