The Boyfriend List (3 page)

“Uh! Get off me!” Adam looked around at his friends as if for help—but they seemed too surprised to do anything.

Kim called him a shallow, phony Barbie doll, and his friends started to laugh.

She was getting started on how he was an uncute, piddle-brained know-nothing, and Adam was looking like he really might hit her, when a tall teacher with a thick brown beard put his hand protectively on Kim’s shoulder. “Walk away from it, boys,” the teacher said. “Just walk away.”

Adam stepped back, but punched the air near Kim’s head.

“I said, walk away,” the teacher repeated. “You’re not going to fight girls in my gymnasium. It’s not happening. End of story.”

Adam turned to go, but he gave Kim the finger when the teacher looked away for a second.

Kim and I got a lecture about behavior and how if we wanted boys to be gentlemen we should act like ladies, which was idiotic because we didn’t want the boys to be gentlemen. We wanted them to think we were pretty and ask us to dance and hold our hands and maybe kiss us in the corner and then send us clever instant messages.

Yes, that’s what we wanted, even from boys who were as stupid and mean as Adam Cox and his friends.

I know I should have felt grateful to Kim for defending me, but I was embarrassed. I wished we had been the kind of girls those boys would have been nice to, automatically. I’m not even sure what kind of girls that would have
been, why some girls were attractive to boys and others weren’t. We were just as cute as Heidi and Katarina—both of whom were dancing with actual ninth graders from Sullivan Boys’ Academy. Our clothes were fine. My glasses weren’t any worse than Heidi’s nose blackheads or Katarina’s retainer. But somehow we weren’t in that league. It didn’t seem like anything that would ever change. Although it did.

The whole Adam debacle did have one redeeming element. Kim and I began our official joint notebook, in which we wrote the most important bits of boy/girl information we knew. We decorated the notebook with silver wrapping paper, and decided that its contents would be for the use of any female we deemed worthy (meaning Cricket and Nora) for purposes of attracting and not immediately repelling the opposite sex—and for understanding what the heck they were all about. We called it
The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them (A Kanga-Roo Production),
as if it was a nature book about lizards or something.

Which it kind of was.

The very first thing we wrote in it was this: “If you’re trying to talk to a boy in front of his friends, don’t mention anything too girly. Like mermaids. Or kittens. If you do, he is apt to act like a complete wanker and cause severe injury to your self-esteem. Beware.”

Then later, as our understanding of the male psyche increased (well, it’s still pretty minimal, but as we got older and read more books and watched more television, at least), we added, bit by bit as our humiliations mounted
up: “In addition to mermaids and kittens, the average boy is likely to feel threatened if you mention the following topics: Poetry. Sunsets. Movies with kissing. Notes he’s written to you. Notes you wrote to him. Instant messages, likewise. Also e-mail. Past actions suggesting sentiment, such as weeping or saying he likes you. Pet names such as ‘snookie’ or ‘peachie’ that the two of you share (if going out). Hairstyles. His mother. Books you liked when you were younger. Dolls. Cooking (if he does it). Singing (if he does it). Failure.”

At this point, the first page of
The Boy Book
is so jam-packed with two years’ worth of margin scribbles and tiny writing in between the lines that we had to tape an extra page in to make room for all the info on this topic. On the new page, the following addition was made at the start of our sophomore year: “Cramps. Why he didn’t call. What he is doing Saturday night. Feelings of any sort whatsoever.” And lower down, in Cricket’s rickety scrawl, one of her few additions to this important piece of literature: “When encountered in groups, the human boy, as our serious documentation proves, is one of the greatest conversational inhibitors known to the female kind. There’s nothing to talk to them about! They’re jerks when they’re with their friends! It’s so weird. Scientists are baffled.”

I told my parents the story about A dam when I got back from the mixer. I still told them things, then. My dad’s first response was to ask me how I thought
Adam
felt.

“Good,” I said. “He felt good.”

“You don’t think he must have felt shy, to be acting like that?” he asked.

“No.”

“Sometimes people are mean because they feel insecure about themselves.”

“He just didn’t like us.”

My mother interrupted. “You didn’t like
him
!” she cried. “He was a jerk, Roo. Don’t think any more about him.”

“He’s not a jerk,” said my father. “He’s Roo’s friend.”

“He’s not my friend,” I said.

“He used to be,” said my dad. “I’m sure he wouldn’t act that way without a reason. Poor kid must be having trouble.”

“Kevin, the kid is a bully. He used to boss Roo around in nursery school, and he’s grown up into a monster. Let her be angry.”

“I’m not angry,” I said.

“I think it’s important to come to a loving place when people are unkind,” my dad said. “I want Roo to see that people act badly out of pain.”

“I want to call his mother up,” stormed my mom. “Kids can’t be acting like that. People can’t treat Roo like that.”

“Don’t call his mom!” I cried, grabbing her arm. “Please!”

“Why not? He’s a rotten boy and Susan Marrowby-Cox should know about it.”

“Elaine, don’t label people so much. We don’t want Roo carrying around all this fury. We have to teach her forgiveness.”

“Hello, Dad. I’m still here,” I said.

“If I didn’t carry around fury,” said my mother, “I wouldn’t have a career. People pay to come see me have fury. It’s productive. It’s cathartic.
Elaine Oliver! Feel the Noise!”

“Come on,” said my father. “You know you have forgiveness issues. Let’s not pass them on to Roo.”

“Don’t bring up my issues. That’s not what this is about.”

“That’s exactly what it’s about.”

“I think it’s about
your
issues,” my mother said.

“My what?” yelled my dad—and they were off and running, arguing for the rest of the evening while I sat in my bedroom with my headphones on, trying not to hear them through the paper-thin walls.

I didn’t really want to tell Doctor Z about seeing Adam Cox, but she kind of squeezed it out of me by not saying anything, and I finally got bored and told the story. I regretted it afterward.

Because really, the story about Adam at the mixer was a story about Kim. And how we used to be. And how angry she can get. And how angry she is at me, now.

I didn’t want to talk about boy #2 on my list either—because talking about Finn Murphy
also
means talking about Kim.

Damn. It’s like she’s everywhere.

“All right, then,” said Doctor Z. “Number two.”

I pretended I didn’t remember who number two was, and looked over at the paper. “Oh, Finn.” I stalled for time. “Why are we doing this?”

Doctor Z shrugged. “It’s a way of talking about your history. It’s a subject that seems important to you. What can you tell me about Finn?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be asking me about my feelings,” I shot back, “not quizzing me about my boyfriends?”

“Okay.” She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward. “How do you feel?”

“It’s not like any of them are even official boyfriends,” I went on, “until you get to the end of the list. They’re
‘almosts.’ People I had a crush on, or almost went out with, or they almost liked me, or we kissed once.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The only real boyfriend I’ve had is Jackson.”

“Jackson.”

“Yeah. But I don’t want to talk about him.”

No way was I telling her about Jackson. He had been my boyfriend for six months—had been my funny, laid-back, mayonnaise-eating, all-the-time-hanging-out, good-kissing, gravelly-voiced Jackson for most of sophomore year. He had fallen asleep with his head on my shoulder. We had driven around the city for hours in his beat-up old car, never running out of things to talk about. He told me he’d never felt this way about anyone before.

He had only been my ex for sixteen days. We’d even kissed since he broke up with me. If I told Doctor Z what happened with that kiss, and with Kim, and the Spring Fling debacle, and the stupid, stupid boyfriend list she made me write that had already made everything even worse—she might not approve when Jackson finally came around and loved me again.

“All right, then,” said Doctor Z. “You wanted me to ask how you feel.”

“It would be better than talking about a bunch of boys I barely even know,” I snapped.

“So how do
you feel
?” Doctor Z looked like she might laugh.

“I feel bored.”

Doctor Z didn’t say anything.

“Right now. I feel like I’m wasting my time,” I said.

Again, she didn’t say anything.

I wasn’t going to say anything if she wasn’t going to. I looked at my fingernails. I pulled at a thread sticking out of my jeans.

“Are you?” Doctor Z finally said.

“Am I what?”

“Are you wasting your time?”

“It’s a waste of time to be here, I mean.”

“But you’re here, Ruby. You don’t have a choice. Are
you
wasting the time?”

We were silent. Four more minutes ticked by. I could see the second hand going around the clock.

It was true.

I
was
wasting my time. Because I wasn’t telling her anything.

Dad’s friend Greg, the one with the panic attacks, stays in his house all day and eats out of delivery cartons.

The attacks were completely scary. I felt sick and weak when they were happening.

Doctor Z looked sweet in her stupid embroidered sweater and red glasses. Not like someone with a PhD in mental illness.

I didn’t have anyone else to talk to. None of my friends would even speak to me. Not Cricket. Not Kim. Not Nora. Not even Meghan or Noel.

“Finn is the boy who started this whole horror,” I finally said.

In second grade, Finn was not the six-foot blond soccer player he is today. He was a shrimp with white hair
who stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth when he was concentrating. I never noticed him much. No one ever noticed him much. Until one day, he was in the school library when I was in there, and he was checking out a book on wildcats that I had read already.

“Did you know that a panther is really a black leopard?” I said.

He looked surprised and clutched the book to his chest.

“And that a mountain lion and a cougar and a puma are all the same thing?” I went on. “It’s in there.”

“Where?”

“I’ll show you.”

We bent over the book together, looking at big glossy photographs of lions and ocelots and bobcats in the wilderness. It turned out Finn knew a lot already about the way they train circus lions, and he told a funny story about a cat he knew who could do tricks.

About a half hour later, Katarina and Ariel came into the library and saw us with our heads together over the book. “Ruby and Finn, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” they shouted.

“Shhh,” whispered the librarian.

But the damage was done.

For the rest of the year, people teased me and Finn every time we came within two feet of each other.

On the playground: “Ruby’s got a boyfriend, Ruby’s got a boyfriend!”

In kissing tag: “Ruby, I got Finn for you! Come here and kiss him!”

At lunch: “Finn! There’s a chair free next to Ruby. Don’t you want to sit with your girlfriend?”

It never died down, because Finn sometimes actually
would
come over and sit in the chair, or he’d give up his swing if he saw me waiting—which only made things worse. He never denied anything either, although I did. When people teased him about me, he’d look over into my eyes in this sweet, shrimpy way that I got to like. After a while, it was as if we had this special secret friendship without ever talking.

After summer vacation, people seemed to have forgotten all about the whole thing. There were new rumors to circulate; the old jokes weren’t funny anymore.

But Finn and I remembered. I never spoke to him if I could possibly avoid it. I never chased him in tag, sat near him at lunch, never partnered up on field trips, nothing. I didn’t want to risk being teased again, and I’m sure he didn’t either—but every now and then I still got that sweet, shrimpy look from him, across the crowded playground.

By the start of sophomore year, he had deshrimped himself. His hair had darkened (though he was still blond), and he had become an athlete. He was quiet, good at computers and science; he played violin in the orchestra. Cute, in a soft, slightly big-nosed way. Not popular, but not geeky, either. Just there. We still didn’t talk to each other. It had become old habit by then. If the seat next to him was empty, I automatically didn’t sit in it. If I saw him in the halls, I didn’t say hi—and he didn’t say it, either. No contact at all, besides the looks. Until—

“Know what’s true?” Kim said, a week after school
started, tenth grade year. She and Cricket and I were sitting on the grass outside the refectory after lunch, drinking pop and people-watching.
¹
Cricket was braiding her long blond hair into tiny braids.

“Tell me what’s true,” I said.

“Finn Murphy is a stud-muffin.”

I opened my Brit Lit notebook and flipped through it. Years and years of pretending Finn didn’t exist had made this an automatic reflex. But Cricket nodded. “I think you’re right,” she said, looking across the quad to where Finn was kicking a soccer ball around with a couple of other boys. “He is a muffin.
²
There’s no denying it. But he’s a studly muffin. And that makes all the difference.”

“I hung out with him after school yesterday,” Kim said.

“No way!” Cricket hit her with a straw.

“Way. I went to the B&O to do homework and he was working behind the counter.
³
It was dead in there and his boss was off, so he came out and sat with me.” Kim looked down at her lap.

“Was it a
thing?”
I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think it was a thing.”

“What kind of thing?” Cricket wanted to know.

“A thing thing.”

“A thing thing? You mean, really?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, was it, or wasn’t it?”

“Okay, it was. It was definitely a thing thing.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Are you saying there was kissing?”

Kim looked at the sky. “I’m not saying there wasn’t.”

“You kissed Finn Murphy?” squealed Cricket.

“Cricket!”

“Kanga had a thing thing/kissing thing with Finn Murphy yesterday afternoon and we’re only hearing about it
now?”
Cricket sounded outraged.

“I had a lot of homework,” said Kim.

“That’s no excuse. You could have e-mailed us, at least,” said Cricket. “You are shockingly out of line, young lady. Thing things with stud-muffins that no one else knows about? What is the world coming to?”

“Wait!” I held up my hand. “It is only a real and true thing thing if the kissing thing was
good.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Cricket said. “Was he a good kisser?”

“Was there tongue?” I asked.

“And was it only a little tongue, or a whole big slurpy tongue?” Cricket asked.

“And where did it happen?” I said. “Did he tongue you right there in the B&O?”

“Or did he walk you home?”

“Or what?”

“I didn’t say I kissed him,” said Kim, looking pleased with herself. “I only said that he’s a stud-muffin this year.”

“He’s a good kisser, then,” said Cricket, standing up to go to her next class. “Look how she’s gloating. That’s a happy Kanga.”

Within a week, Kim and Finn the stud-muffin were going out and it was common knowledge. I had just started seeing Jackson (#13 on the list, my now-ex-boyfriend and the reason for nearly all the debacles of sophomore year). Cricket had a boyfriend named Kaleb from summer drama school, and Nora had—well, Nora can talk about boys with the best of them, and in eighth grade I know for a fact that she tongue-kissed three different guys in a single month—but she hasn’t gone out with anyone like a boyfriend/girlfriend thing. I think she’d like to. It just doesn’t seem to happen. She takes pictures and rows crew and plays basketball.

Anyway, the sudden glut of actual boyfriends led to many new and fascinating additions to
The Boy Book,
the most important of which was a list of Rules for Dating in a Small School. Here they are:

1. Don’t kiss in the refectory or any other small, enclosed space. It annoys everyone. (Hello, Meghan and Bick!)
   

2. Don’t let your boyfriend walk with his hand on your butt, either. It is even more annoying than kissing. (Meghan again.)
   

3. If your friend has no date for Spring Fling (which is the sort of dance where you need a date, and you get a corsage, and all that) and you already have one, you must do reconnaissance work and find out who might be available to take your friend.
   ⁴
   

4. Never, ever, kiss someone else’s official boyfriend. If status is unclear, ask around and find out. Don’t necessarily believe the boy on this question. Double-check your facts.
   

5. If your friend has already said she likes a boy, don’t you go liking him too. She’s got dibs.
   

6. That is—unless you’re certain it is truly “meant to be.” Because if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, and who are we to stand in the way of true love, just because Tate is so stupidly small?
   

7. Don’t ignore your friends if you’ve got a boyfriend. This school is too small for us not to notice your absence.
   

8. Tell your friends every little detail! We promise to keep it just between us.
   

I was happy for Kim. She had never had an official boyfriend before—and Finn seemed to do all the right things. He called her, he took the bus over to her house to watch movies on TV, he left her notes in her school mail cubby—the place where we usually got notices about
assemblies or sports events. He also sat around on the quad with us, and at our lunch table lots of days—which meant that suddenly I was hanging around with this boy that I pretty much didn’t speak to.

I could have started speaking to him, of course. That would have been the normal thing to do. I could have tried to make friends with him, like Nora and Cricket did. Not close friends, but goofing-around friends. Cricket called him Blueberry and wouldn’t tell him why, and Nora went with Kim to watch soccer games and took action pictures with her Instamatic. But some part of me felt scared of talking much to Finn—or of being seen with him. I could still hear Katarina’s singsong voice, “Ruby and Finn, sitting in a tree …” and it was hard to break that old habit of avoiding any seat that was open next to him.

Also, I didn’t want Kim to think I was trying to steal her boyfriend, if rumors did start up again.

So I was civil. I said hi, and all that, but I basically didn’t deal with him if I could avoid it—and he basically didn’t deal with me. It was easier that way.

In late October, after Kim and Finn had been going out about six weeks, Kim nailed me on it. “Do you have a problem with Finn?” she asked me. We were eating ice cream bars and sitting on my deck. It was probably the last warmish day before the heavy Seattle rains set in for fall.

“Not at all, he’s great,” I said.

“Because you hardly even talk to him.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“You give him the cold shoulder.”

“I don’t mean to, Kim. I have a lot on my mind.” (I didn’t, though. It was an excuse.)

Kim looked concerned. “Like what?”

“Like how Mr. Wallace will never be my husband,” I joked. “I’m pining away for him, but he’s such a Marxist, he’ll never marry me.”

“Roo.”

“All I want is to be Mrs. Wallace and have little South African-accent babies—”