The Boyfriend List (15 page)

The only person who was nice to me was Noel. We had Painting Elective together, and he walked with me across the quad afterward, barefaced lighting up a cigarette with his paint-covered hands, even though any teacher could have seen him at any time.

“Thanks for the ride Saturday,” I said.

“At your service.”

“I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“Someone else would have given you a lift.”

“Maybe.”

“You were having a party, Roo.”

“I guess.”

“You’re like the warrior princess of the Tate universe,” said Noel. He lowered his voice to sound like a TV announcer: “No matter what they said about her. No matter what people thought! Ruby Oliver was undaunted. She gave parties, she kissed other people’s boyfriends, she held hands with strange men. In her magical silver dress, she kicked the asses of one and all who dared to stand in her way….”

I laughed. “Then why do I feel like a leper?”

“The warrior princess was covered with the strange green spots of leprosy,” Noel went on in his announcer voice, “but that did not diminish her charms nor impair her miraculous kung fu and painting abilities.”

I kickboxed the air in front of me. “Tcha!”

“Seriously,” said Noel. “You’re not afraid to be seen with me? After what people are saying?”

“What do you mean?”

“At least three people have asked me if we’re going out now.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Cricket asked what I thought of the Dalí poster in your bedroom.”
⁷

“She did?”

“And Nora asked if we were an item.”

“Nora? Why wouldn’t she ask
me
?”

“And Josh asked if I was ‘doing you’ behind Jackson’s back all along.”

“Josh is a moron.”

“Yeah, but he’s asking what people want to know.” He sucked on the butt of his cigarette and then stubbed it out on the bottom of his combat boot. I wondered if Noel had seen me sort of kissing Angelo, and guessed he probably hadn’t. But he would hear about it soon enough, that was for sure.

I stared at Noel. He was delicate, underweight, wearing a leather coat.

He looked me in the eye. “I don’t mind if they’re saying that stuff,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

I wondered if he had held my hand because he liked me—or because he was being nice. I wondered if he liked girls at all. It was hard to tell with Noel, the way it was hard to tell when he was serious or when he was joking. Like he was on the cross-country team, but he never seemed to care about winning or not winning, the way Jackson did. And he smoked cigarettes, but was otherwise a straight-edge; no beer, no drugs, no meat, no toxins. He even drank carrot juice.

He was a disorienting person.

“I’ll tell them whatever you want me to,” he went on. “Nothing ever happened. Or we’ve been together since Christmas. Or I fondled your digits against your will. Or we had an incredible one-night stand. Whatever you want me to say. I don’t give a crap what Cricket and Nora think. Or Jackson Clarke, even if he is bigger than me. They’re a bunch of Tate idiots, anyway.”

“Those people are my friends, Noel,” I said, suddenly feeling defensive.

“Some friends.”

“What does
that mean?”

“I mean, if those are your friends you’ve got no need for enemies.”

“There’s just a misunderstanding. It’ll all blow over.”

Noel shook his head. “You think better of this scene than I do, Ruby. Don’t you see how fake those girls are? Let it go. Have a laugh about it when you’re older. Forget that junk.”

I wanted to believe him, to skip off to some punk-rock hangout and develop ironic distance and start over in a universe where it didn’t matter what any of these people thought about me. But I couldn’t.

I just loved them.

“Trust me,” he said. “You don’t need Jackson Clarke or Cricket McCall to have a life.”

I’m not ironic. I’m—whatever the opposite of ironic is. Oversensitive. Overly sincere.

“Why are you following me around, Noel?” I said. “Fuck off.”

Not surprisingly, I had another panic attack shortly after this Noel situation, and on Tuesday I pretended I was sick and stayed home all day, eating jelly candies and reading a mystery novel. Actually, since I didn’t know what a panic attack was yet, I figured I was probably dying of some heart attack/lung disorder horror, but I told my mom
I had a bad headache and cramps. She let me stay home, and then fussed over me for the first two hours, bringing me muscle-relaxant teas and hot water bottles while popping back and forth to the desk in the living room where she was doing her freelance copyediting. Finally, finally, she had to go out to a meeting and I was able to take a shower, have a good cry and eat the pound of spearmint jelly candies I knew my dad had hidden in his office.

Wednesday I went to school and flunked a math test I’d forgotten about. Kim called me a slut under her breath in H&P, and Mr. Wallace heard her and gave a lecture on the negative effects of labels, and how words like that serve to limit women’s sexual expression, and how there’s a whole history of words that basically mean
slut
⁸
and yet there are no equivalent epithets for men whatsoever, and didn’t
that
say something about how women are viewed in our culture? He said a more accurate term could be: “a girl who’s using sexuality in an attempt to gain approval from the opposite sex….” Or, if you look at it a different way, “a liberated, open girl who likes boys and feels comfortable expressing affection, but is misunderstood.” Blah blah blah.

I’m sure he meant well, but I wanted to call Kim a megaslut right back and not think about it anymore.

I let three easy shots in when we played Nightingale Girls’ School (I play goalie), and the whole lacrosse team was annoyed with me. And then after the game, I agreed
to go to the movies with Cabbie, this rugby player I barely know who randomly showed up to watch girls’ lacrosse—and who probably only asked me out because he’s heard I’m a slut, thanks to Mr. Wallace’s epic discussion of that word, its historical context and its linguistic precursors, which had been the sole topic in the refectory and on the quad for the rest of the school day.

I don’t know why I said yes. I didn’t want to go out with him, really.

But I didn’t want to stay home on Friday night, either.

I thought I was putting on a pretty good face at dinner that night with my parents. Just sitting there, pushing my brown rice around the plate like usual. But then I had the fifth panic attack, right there at the dinner table, and that was when my mom decided I was surely becoming anorexic, my father was certain I was suicidal and my mother made Meghan’s mom come over and then called Juana and then called Doctor Z.
⁹

I started therapy the next day, finished writing the first draft of the Boyfriend List Friday morning—and then threw it in the trash at school like the mental patient that I am.

Monday morning, I got to school late because I took the bus (Meghan hadn’t shown up since the Spring Fling party) and found a Xerox in my mail cubby. It was a grayed-out copy of the pretty, cream-colored stationery
my grandmother bought me, with Ruby Denise Oliver across the top. The paper had been crumpled and then pressed flat again on the glass of a photocopier.

It was my first draft of the boyfriend list for Doctor Z, out of order, with arrows drawn all over, names crossed out, names squeezed in, some silly doodles.

I looked at the wall of mail cubbies. The same Xerox was still sticking out of about ten mailboxes in the sophomore section, and a few more in the junior and senior sections—but it was clear that most people had already picked up their mail. I grabbed the few that were left and stuffed them in my backpack. And then yet again, my heart started hammering and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Was I going to die of a heart attack out of sheer humiliation? I stumbled over to the girls’ bathroom and sat down on the floor, wheezing and staring at the list. Horror.

Who had done this? Why?

Finn. Hutch. Gideon. Chase. Shiv. Jackson. Noel. Cabbie. All of them were Tate boys, though Chase and Gideon were long gone. Then Adam. Ben. Tommy. Sky. Michael. Angelo. Billy. No one would know who they were.

Except there
was
an Adam Bishop who took Painting Elective. And Ben Ambromowitz was a sophomore I knew from swimming. And Tommy Parrish had gone out with Cricket in ninth grade. Sky Whipple (the Whipper) was captain of the crew team. Michael Sherwood was in my Geometry class. Chase Hilgendorf was a cute freshman lots of girls had their eyes on. And Billy Alexander was a senior friend of Bick’s—or there was Billy Krespin, my Bio/Sex Ed lab partner.

Except for Angelo and Gideon, every single one of these names looked like the name of a boy who currently went to Tate.

What would people think?

That it was a list of boys I planned to sink my slutty claws into.

That it was a list of boys I already
had
sunk my slutty claws into.

That by putting the boys in order, I was somehow rating them. How good-looking they were; how good they were at kissing; how good they were in bed.

Whatever the interpretation, the list made it seem like I was basically a man-eater, chewing my way through Tate’s hunky population without so much as a batted eye for the poor, vulnerable girlfriends whose hearts were breaking right and left.

Anyone could have pulled the list out of the trash on Friday, but Kim was the only person who would have Xeroxed it.

I skipped first period and pretty much hid in the bathroom. Then I forced myself to go to class—Drama Elective. I could see the Xerox sticking out of some people’s binders as we stumbled through a reading of Ibsen’s
A Doll’s House,
sitting in a circle and changing parts whenever the drama teacher noticed people getting too restless. Later, in the hallways, I could hear whispers as I went by.

Tommy Parrish and Ben Ambromowitz gave me weird looks.

The Whipper pinched my butt in the hallway.

Cabbie and Billy Alexander talked crap about me where I could easily overhear.

Ariel, because she’s dating Shiv, slammed into me so hard in the refectory line that my shoulder got bruised. “Ooh,” she said loudly, “I guess I wasn’t thinking about other people’s feelings.”

Michael from Geometry leered and waggled his eyebrows, then passed me a note that said, “You’re on my list too.”

Chase Hilgendorf said hi to me in the hall, then cracked up laughing.

In class, Finn growled at me under his breath: “You’ve made everything worse, you know.”

“What?” I asked.

“Why would you go and do that?” he whispered. “You know what Kim’s like when she’s mad.”

“I didn’t write it for everyone to see,” I started to say—but he turned away from me and wouldn’t talk anymore.

It went on like this all week. I went from being just a leper to being a leper
and
a famous slut.
¹⁰
By Friday, the girls’ bathroom in the main building had a ton of anti-Roo graffiti.

“Who does Ruby Oliver think she is?” (This in Kim’s writing.)

“Mata Hari.”

“Pamela Anderson.”

“God’s gift to the male sex.”

“Ruby Oliver is a _____ (fill in the blank).”

“Lousy friend.”

“Fantasist.”

“Slut.” (Kim again.)

“Ho. Remember? We can’t say
slut
anymore.”

“Trollop.” (Kim.)

“Hussy.”

“Tart.”

“Chippie.”

“What is that boyfriend list? Your interpretation here.”

“Guys she’s blown, in order of size.”

“I hear she goes on her knees behind the gymnasium.”

“Guys she’s done, in order of conquest.”

“Guys she’s done behind other girls’ backs.” (Kim.)

“Do you think she really did Noel DuBoise? Who has he gone out with, anyway?”

“Do you think she really did Hutch? Gross.”

“Maybe he’s an acquired taste.”

And in Nora’s round printing: “Come on, ladies. She may be a lousy friend, but doesn’t
everyone
make lists of boys they think are cute? That’s probably all it is.”