The Boyfriend List (6 page)

Jackson smiled at me that morning, first day of school.

The day after that, he said, “Hi.”

“Hi back,” I said.

The day after that, he said, “Hey, Ruby, what’s up?” and I said, “Not much.”

But the day after that, and this was before Kim had even noticed Finn and his stud-muffinly qualities, I got a note in my mail cubby. I used to get notes all the time, from Kim and Nora and Cricket, but this one was folded up into quarters, with a funny drawing of a frog on it. I knew who it was from, somehow, without even opening it.

Inside, it read: “The frog was for Awful Ariel Oliveri (AAO). Not for you. Sorry.” And then: “P.S. I just got my license. Need a ride home?-Jackson.”

My dad came to pick me up after school. He waited in front of the main building for forty-five minutes. I was long gone.

We went to Dick’s, this drive-in burger place that I’d always heard juniors and seniors talking about, but that I had never been to, since at that point none of my friends
was old enough to have a driver’s license. I’m a vegetarian, so I got fries and a milk shake. Jackson got a burger and a root beer float. We sat on the hood of his big old boat of a car, a Dodge Dart Swinger that had once belonged to his uncle.

He told me a little about Japan. He spoke some Japanese for me when I questioned his ability.

I did my riff on my family.

He said he wanted to row crew this spring, but he was worried, since he hadn’t been in a boat since before he went away. He talked about the food in Japan, and said he ate raw fish. I said that French fries were better with Dijon mustard.

He said he was a ketchup man all the way.

I said, If you tried the mustard, you’d become a convert.

He said, I have tried mustard.

I said, Was it Dijon?

He said, No. Just regular.

I said, Then you haven’t tried it.

Oh, he said, have you tried mayonnaise?

I said, Mayonnaise is gross.

He leaned in close, and said, Really, you don’t like it?

Ick, I said.

And he kissed me, and whispered, “I love mayonnaise.”

He kissed me again—

—and I didn’t feel like a loser

—and I didn’t worry that I couldn’t kiss right

—and my glasses didn’t get in the way

—and I didn’t wonder if he’d tell his friends

—and I didn’t wonder if it was a joke.

This is Jackson Clarke, I thought, who put the frog in my cubby. This is Jackson Clarke, who used to have braces. This is Jackson Clarke, who’s been to Japan. This is Jackson Clarke, whose tongue tastes like root beer. This is Jackson Clarke, who used to seem ordinary. This is Jackson Clarke.

I kissed him back.

He drove me home.

And there actually was a sunset.

Ben Moi was at my summer camp after sixth grade. He didn’t know I existed.

“There’s nothing to say about him,” I told Doctor Z. “I liked him. Everyone did. He was golden.”

“What did you like?”

I didn’t have an answer. “There was something about him. He always had a girlfriend. He had like three different ones over the course of the summer.”

“But not you?”

“One time, I sat next to him at a camp sing-along and I pressed my leg against his, trying to be sexy, but he kept moving it away. He was going out with this girl Sharone, anyway.”

“Then why did you put him on the list?” Doctor Z was chewing Nicorette again. I can’t imagine her smoking, but she must light up like a fiend as soon as her workday is done; she chews that gum like an addict.

“I used to think about him all the time,” I told her.

“Like what?”

“Huh?”

“What did you think?”

“I don’t know. Normal stuff about a boy you like.”

Doctor Z was quiet for a minute. “Give me a hint, here, Ruby,” she said. “Something.”

“I just wanted to go out with him. Like when I got dressed in the morning, I’d think about whether he’d like me better in jeans or shorts; or I’d wonder if he’d notice I put mustard on my French fries, and would he realize that I was unusual?”

“Did you think about kissing him?”

“Not really.”
¹

“Did you like talking to him?”

“We never had a conversation. Except once, he told me my shoe was untied.”

“Did he make you laugh?”

“No.”

“Was he talented, or interesting?”

“Um. Not particularly, I don’t think.”

“Did he make you feel special?”

“He made me nervous. I always felt sweaty and ugly whenever he was around.”

“Really?” Doctor Z leaned forward. “Why like someone who made you feel sweaty and ugly?”

“He was hot,” I explained. “Ben Moi was just the guy that you want as your boyfriend.”

“But why?”

“Can’t you just want someone?” I asked. “Does there have to be a reason?”

“This is therapy, Ruby.” Doctor Z sounded exasperated. “It might be helpful for you to try to articulate something about something.”

So I told her the truth: I thought about how it would be to have such a perfect, popular boy for a boyfriend. How with someone like Ben Moi, I’d know I was all right. I’d know I was pretty. I’d know my clothes were right. I’d know someone wanted me.

“Validation,” she said.

“I guess so.” It didn’t sound so good when she put it like that—but it didn’t sound untrue, either.

“And when you had a boyfriend, with Jackson, did you feel all those things?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “I did.”

It was amazing how simple it was, how fast Jackson and I went from strangers to spending every minute together. He met my parents. I met his parents. We did homework together. We kissed for hours. His dog liked me.

I never imagined that having a boyfriend would mean having someone to hang around with, someone who’d
drive over to my house to eat dinner with my parents on a Wednesday night, stay to play Scrabble, then sit on the couch reading his history assignment while I did my math. In fact, what it was like with Jackson was completely different from how I thought about dating in the first place.

I always figured a boyfriend would ask me out, then pick me up on Saturday night. Me and this imaginary boyfriend would do boyfriend/girlfriend things that you don’t normally do with other people: walk on the beach, go for a scenic drive, see a foreign movie, go dancing. We’d have plans. I never thought he’d swing by on Saturday morning to see if I wanted to run his errands with him and we’d end up buying fifteen lollipops at the drugstore and opening them all and having blind taste tests.

I always thought I’d get dressed up to go out with my boyfriend. I’d put on lip gloss and eye shadow and fishnet stockings. But Jackson would be waiting for me when I left swim practice in sweats and a T-shirt, and I’d jump into his car and we’d immediately start making out, and he’d touch my chest through the wet swimsuit I had on underneath and I didn’t care that I had no makeup on, or that my boobs were squashed together by the suit, or that I smelled like chlorine, or that I had worn the same T-shirt the day before. I was just happy to see him.

He left me notes in my mail cubby nearly every day. “Here’s a penny,” he wrote. “Maybe it’ll bring good luck. Or you could buy a kiss from me. Or stick it on your nose, throw it in the air and catch it, buy a penny candy, give it to a man who is down on his luck, give it for a tip to a bad waiter, get it cold and drop it down your shirt, swallow it
and get a free ride to the hospital, cover the face of someone’s watch so they’re late to class, give it to a cowboy and have him shoot a hole in it from fifty yards away, put it in your shoe for a trick on yourself. And I have only just begun to brainstorm! Your big bad penny-totin’ man, Jackson.” Or, “I left at 2 PM today because we got out of chem early. Why? There was a fire and a hurricane and lightning in the chem lab. Oh, sorry, did I alarm you? Really, it’s ’cause Dimworthy said, ‘Clarke, you’re so damn smart. I’ve taught you everything I know already about the mysteries of the universe. Get the hell outta here and go shoot some pool.’ So I left. See you tomorrow. Jackson.”

I loved those notes. I still have all of them. Back when I dreamed of having Ben Moi as my boyfriend, knowing I was pretty, knowing I was wanted—those things were true when I was with Jackson, and I didn’t worry.

Now—after everything that’s happened—I am tempted to say it was too good to be true. But it
was
true, for at least a month. And when I think of what I want from a boyfriend, or a lover, or a husband someday—what Jackson and I had, at first, that is the thing that I want.

The other way that Jackson was like Ben Moi was that he had had a lot of girlfriends. Before he went to Japan, he had gone with Beth, Ann and Courtney—all girls in his year—and once I started going out with him I developed Beth-Ann-Courtney radar. I could sense whenever one of them was in the room, what she was wearing, how pretty she looked. It seemed so weird that those Beth-Ann-Courtney lips had touched Jackson’s lips; that they’d held
his big, freckled hands; that he thought they were beautiful; that he thought they were interesting. Before Jackson was my boyfriend, those girls had seemed perfectly nice. Now, they seemed shallow and overly flirtatious. They irritated me, laughing and being charming and having nice legs and no glasses. I wished they would all three disappear.

Jackson and I had been going out for six weeks when an incident happened that inspired a whole new section of
The Boy Book
entitled “Traumatic Phone Calls, E-mails and Instant Messages: Documented Painful Episodes Involving Communication Technology.”
²

Here’s what happened: I was over at the Clarkes’ house on a weekday around six p.m. We were doing homework and playing video games in his room. The phone rang as Jackson was on his way downstairs to get something, so he asked me to pick it up.

“Clarke residence,” I said.

“Um, is Jackson there?” It was a girl’s voice.

“He’s downstairs,” I said, wondering who it was. “Do you want to hold on?”

“Um, yeah,” she said.

I handed the phone to Jackson when he returned. He sat down with his back to me. “Hey, what’s up?” he said into the receiver.

There was a pause.

“I can’t talk now, someone’s over.”

Why wouldn’t he say
Ruby’s
over? I wondered. Ruby, my girlfriend, is over. That’s what he should have said.

“Please don’t say that,” Jackson was almost whispering. “No, no, it wasn’t that way.”

What way?

“It’s not anything you did, I told you,” he went on. “Listen, it’s not a good time. Can I call you later? … Yes, I still have your number.”

Then he hung up, picked up the Xbox joystick and went back to killing aliens.

I looked down at my math homework, but I couldn’t concentrate. Who had been on the phone?

What were they talking about?

Why didn’t he tell me?

It was none of my business, really. He could get phone calls from whatever girls he wanted.

Or maybe it
was
my business; after all, I was his girlfriend, and wasn’t I entitled to know if there were other girls he had intimate conversations with, conversations that were obviously about important feelings?

“Who was on the phone?” I asked, trying to sound bored.

“Oh? Just now? Heidi Sussman,” he said. Heidi from Katarina’s set.

“What did she want?”

“She’s upset about something or other. I told her I’d talk to her later.”

“Upset about what?” I hoped I sounded concerned for Heidi and not overly nosey.

“Oh, she’s always upset about something. Who knows what it is, this time around,” Jackson said, killing aliens all the while.

What did that mean, always upset about something? What was going on with Jackson and Heidi Sussman? Was he just interested in the video game, or was he deliberately leaving out information?

I tried to be interested in the dying aliens.

I tried to be interested in my math.

I tried to think of another thing to talk about, a movie or something.

“Why is she calling
you
?” I finally asked.

“We used to go out,” he said. “You knew that.” Still killing aliens.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.” I couldn’t believe I’d been sitting next to Heidi in class for weeks, doing a scene with her in Drama Elective, saying hello in the halls, all without knowing that she had been Jackson’s girlfriend.

Jackson turned to look at me. I’m absolutely certain he knew I didn’t know, and actually meant me not to know for as long as he could hide it from me. “It was in the summer. We were hanging out at tennis camp,” he said. “We broke up before school started.”

“How long before?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A couple of days,” he said. “The day before, I think.”

“The same week we started going out?”

“Yeah, I guess. She keeps wanting to talk about it.”

“What does she say?”

“I don’t know.” Jackson chuckled and put his arm around me. “I wish she’d leave me alone. I’ve got better things to do.” He nuzzled my neck. “I’m not gonna call her back, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I couldn’t blame Heidi for wanting to talk. I mean, Jackson had barely caught his breath before replacing her with a new girlfriend. Suddenly I felt dirty, like I’d been involved in something ugly and mean without my knowledge. “You should talk to her,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. There shouldn’t be any bad feelings.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll call her later.”

I did mean what I said. If I was Heidi, I’d want the boy to talk to me. It would drive me insane if he kept saying he’d call and never did. It would be so unfair. But at
the same time, when Jackson told me he was going to the B&O for coffee with Heidi after school on Friday and wouldn’t be picking me up at swim practice, I was completely shattered. He was going out with his ex-girlfriend! The girl he had been kissing and thinking was pretty and special and wonderful only six weeks ago. I felt jittery all through practice, and swam badly. My dad picked me up, and I asked him to take me to a five o’clock movie so I wouldn’t have to think about Jackson and Heidi—so I wouldn’t give in to the temptation to call his cell phone while their big coffee discussion was still going on. But typical Dad, if we were having an afternoon together, he wanted to bond. “Why don’t we go to that B&O place you like?” he suggested. “I’ve always been curious about it.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Really? Aren’t you usually starved after practice?”

“I am, but all they have at the B&O is cake,” I said. “It’s like a coffeehouse.”

“You can have cake,” my dad said. “I won’t tell Mom. Besides, if they brew a serious cappuccino, I want to know about this place.”

He turned the wheel and got off the freeway at the exit for the B&O. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel like I could explain the situation to him, but if we showed up while Jackson was having coffee with Heidi, it would look like I was spying on them. And even though I actually
did
want to spy on them, I knew I wasn’t supposed to want to—and was supposed to be trusting of Jackson and unjealous of Heidi—because that was the cool way to be. Plus this
whole thing of them talking was my idea in the first place, so supposedly it would be insane for me to be jealous.