The Boyfriend List (8 page)

“Elaine,” he said, “I can’t drive the car in a taco shell.”

“Juana doesn’t live that far,” my mom countered. “You said you’d wear whatever I came up with.”

“I didn’t know it would be a
taco,”
my dad complained.

“I spent all day on it. If you’d come in once from the deck, you’d have known what it was.”

“It’ll be too hot. I won’t be able to sit down.”

“You can put it in the trunk until we get there.”

“I can’t even move in this thing.” My dad was wearing the foam rubber shell, his arms sticking out on either side. “How will I eat?”

“I’ll feed you,” said my mother.

“Very funny.”

“It’s romantic, Kevin. It’s theatrical. Why can’t you be a good sport about this?”

“It’s a taco,” he said. “It’s not romantic.”

“We’d be two parts of the same whole. I’ll nestle in.”

“Can’t we wear the silly hats from last year?”

“Those are so boring!” my mom yelled. “Why are you always so conservative? Theater is my life! I’m a creative person! I can’t go to the party in some silly hat. It’s Halloween. All my friends will be there. Roo, you like the taco suit, don’t you?”

“I’m staying out of this one,” I said, flicking on the TV.

“Kevin, you’re repressing my creativity!” my mom cried.

“No. I’m refusing to make a fool of myself and spend an evening sweating on my feet when I worked all afternoon in the garden.”

“You shouldn’t have spent all afternoon in the garden, then,” my mom said, pouting.

“What was I supposed to do?” my dad yelled. “There’s a frost predicted any day now!”

“You knew we were going out tonight.”

“I’m ready to go out. I’m happy to go out. Just not in a taco shell!”

Blah blah blah. They went on for at least an hour.

My dad won.

My mom went off to take an angry shower. Then they squashed the foam rubber taco suit into two black plastic garbage bags and wore the silly hats to the party.

I called Jackson, and he came over, and we made out. I was still wearing my kitty-cat suit.

The story of Chase Williams is important because it’s a story about presents. That’s what I figured out, when I talked about him with Doctor Z.

I don’t see why boys can’t give presents like normal people.
¹
Kim got me this amazing red vintage jacket for my birthday last August. It fits just right. We all gave Nora a copy of
Playgirl
on Valentine’s Day, since she wasn’t going to have an actual valentine.
²
And last Christmas I got
my mother a book by a performance artist called Spalding Gray, which she read in less than a week. And Nora made me cupcakes the day after I won a 100-meter freestyle race (I usually place second or third—or I flat-out lose) and there were five of them, each with a squiggly letter in blue frosting: C-H-A-M-P.

These are good presents. Thoughtful. Some for special occasions, some just because. Normal, problem-free, everybody’s happy.

But bring a boy into the picture, and the whole thing goes weird. Jackson and I had present-giving trouble, that’s for sure.

After Hutch’s gummy bears, the first present I ever got from a boy was an extremely pretty bead necklace from a boy named Chase Williams, who has since transferred to a different school.

He was an awkward boy. Downy black hair sprouted across his upper lip. His neck was short. Starting in seventh, everyone at Tate has to do a sport, and Chase and I were both swimmers, so I saw him several days a week at practice. But I didn’t really know him. A completely typical conversation between us:

Him: “You doing freestyle?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Him: “Me too.”

Me: “Hundred or two hundred?”

Him: “Two.”

Me: “Sounds good.”

Him: “Yeah.”

Me: “Well, I gotta get changed.”

Him: “Okay. Later.”

Chase mainly hung around with this other swimming guy, Josh, who was big and redheaded and laughed so loud you could hear him all the way inside the girls’ locker room.

It was early December, almost time for the middle school Christmas dance.
³
One day, about an hour after practice, my phone rang. Josh.
⁴

“What’s up?” I asked. I couldn’t think why he was calling me.
⁵

“Chase wants to ask you something,” he said.

I was thoroughly confused. “What?”

“Chase! Get on the phone!” Josh started giggling. I wanted to hang up, but that seemed rude, and no boy had
ever called me on the phone before either, so I was kind of curious.
⁶
“Aw, he’s gone in the other room. Hold on!” Josh put the phone down.

I sat there. This was so dumb. But I couldn’t hang up, or I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what Chase had to say.
⁷

“Ruby, are you there?” Josh’s voice sounded breathless.

“Yeah.”

“He wants to know—ow, Chase, that hurt!—he wants to know, do you want to go to the Christmas dance?”

“With him?” I
so
didn’t. Chase was repulsive to me. I couldn’t quite say why. But if I thought about slow-dancing with him, a creepy feeling went up my spine.

“She can tell me tomorrow!” yelled Chase in the background.

“Did you hear that?” asked Josh.

“She doesn’t have to say right now!”

“Did you hear?”

“Yeah,” I said. “All right. I’ll think about it.”

“She’s thinking about it,” Josh told Chase.

The next day, Josh came up to me as Kim and I were eating lunch. “This is from Chase,” he said, pulling a bead necklace out of his pocket and scooting it toward me across the table. “For you.”

The necklace was really pretty—but looking at it almost made me sick. I didn’t want it. Taking it would feel like a promise. Like telling Chase there was a thing between us.

I didn’t want a thing.

And why was Josh doing all the talking for him?
⁸

I looked around the refectory, but I couldn’t see Chase anywhere. “How come he’s giving me this?” I asked.

Kim rolled her eyes. “Duh. He likes you.”

“Yeah,” said Josh. “I told you, he wants to know if you’ll go to the dance with him.”

Was the necklace supposed to convince me? Like, Oh, I didn’t like him before, but now that there’s jewelry involved, I want to go?

“You could just go as a friend if you want,” said Josh.
⁹
“You could still have the necklace.”
¹⁰

If I took the necklace, only horror could result. For instance, I’d have this necklace, and this Christmas dance date—both without even talking to Chase himself. Next time I saw him, I’d have to go up and say thank you, and tell him whether we were going as “just friends” or as—what? What would you even say? As “regular”? As
“boyfriend and girlfriend”? There wasn’t even a normal way to say it! And then I’d have to wear the necklace, and people would know about it, and it would be like we were going out, which might be nice since I’d never had a boyfriend—except that he grossed me out.

The whole situation made me feel like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

“I can’t go to the dance,” I said. “My family’s going out of town.” (Completely untrue.)

“Oh. Okay. Wait one sec.” Josh jumped up and ran out of the refectory for a minute, presumably to confer with Chase outside. Then he came back. “You can still have the necklace,” he said. “If you want to go to McDonald’s with him on Friday.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“You could order fries.”

I didn’t know what to do. If I said I was busy Friday, it seemed like he’d come up with some other day, or try to get me to keep the necklace anyhow. “I’m not allowed to go out with boys,” I said. “Or take presents from them, or anything. My mom says.” (Again, completely untrue.)

“Really?” Josh looked skeptical.

“She’s completely not allowed,” Kim cut in. “Her mom is psycho.”

“You wouldn’t have to tell,” Josh said.

“Oh, she’d find out for sure,” I lied. “She finds out everything.”

For weeks after that, I ducked into doorways and behind bushes to avoid Chase. At swimming, I looked down at the ground and pretty much tried to be invisible. I felt
like a jerk for lying, and I knew he probably knew it was a lie, and the whole thing was a horror.

He didn’t let me off the hook, either, by finding a new girl to go to the Christmas dance with. He went alone, and I went with Kim and Nora, and he asked me to slow-dance, even after everything that happened.

That time, I actually had the courage to tell him no. Not that I was out of town (which I obviously wasn’t), not that my parents wouldn’t let me, not that I was a vegetarian. Just no.

Maybe it was because he had had the courage to ask me to my face.

On TV there are these diamond commercials: men buying women expensive gifts, and the women swooning with delight. Jackson and I used to make fun of those ads; we’d be sitting in the rec room at his house, watching TV, squashed together in one big armchair, and we’d laugh at how excited the ladies would get over a bit of shiny rock that doesn’t even have a function. “Doesn’t she want something more personal?” Jackson said, about one lady who started to cry when her husband gave her the twenty-fifth-anniversary diamond bracelet. “Doesn’t she want something unique? I would never buy you some shiny rock that’s just like a million other shiny rocks, given to a million other girls.”

“What if I had a shiny rock collection?” I asked. “What if shiny rocks were my thing?”

“Then I’d go to the beach and find a rock myself, and shine it up with sandpaper and a chamois cloth,” he said.

“Cheapskate,” I laughed.

“It would be special,” he said. “It would be different.”

We had been going out for five weeks at that point, and the thing I didn’t say was that a rock—even a rock shined up with a chamois cloth—really doesn’t seem as nice to me as a diamond bracelet.

I mean, it’s a friggin’ rock.

Jackson didn’t understand how to give me presents. You’d think something like that wouldn’t matter between two people who are having lollipop taste tests and three-hour kissing sessions. But it did. Back in sixth grade, that necklace Chase tried to give me wasn’t just a present. It was more like a bribe, or a plea for me to like him. And with Jackson, the things he gave me weren’t just presents, either. They were apologies. Or halfhearted obligations. Or cover-ups.

Below, a list of present-giving misdemeanors, perpetrated by Jackson Clarke upon the unsuspecting and inexperienced Ruby Oliver.

One: In first month of going out, put a tiny ceramic frog in my mail cubby every Monday morning. There were four. I still have them on my desk. Each one is in a different position and has a different expression on its face. Okay, that’s not a misdemeanor. It’s very nice. But then—

Two: Stopped with the frogs. No explanation. That fifth Monday, I looked in my mail cubby first thing, all frog-ready, and it was empty.

I looked again after my first class, and it was still empty.

It was empty all day.

Why no frog?

I felt stupid bringing it up because it was just a tiny ceramic frog and not a big deal or anything, but I wondered all day why he hadn’t given me a frog. Then I thought, Maybe he forgot to bring it to school with him and he’ll bring it on Tuesday.

But on Tuesday, no frog, again! A frogless day.

At the end of Tuesday, Jackson asked me if anything was wrong. I tried to make a joke of it, felt so dumb even bringing it up, but it was bothering me, like we had this special thing that we did and now he’d canceled it. “Ruby!” he laughed. “There were only four frogs, that’s why! They had four different expressions at the store, and I bought them all. I ran out. It doesn’t mean anything.”

I said okay, and I was sorry to be so silly. But if I had been him—that is, if I had been the one giving the frogs, I would have found a frog substitute for the Monday after the frogs ran out. I would have found a gummy frog, or a plastic frog bath toy, or written a note with a frog on it. At the very least, I would have warned him that the fourth frog was, in fact, the final frog. Something. He wouldn’t have gone wondering and feeling disappointed for two days.

Three: Christmas. A reasonable time to give a present to your girlfriend, no?

Yes.

But Jackson’s family went to Tokyo for the holidays, so he wasn’t there on the actual day. The day before he left, I gave him this great brown leather coat I found at Zelda’s
Closet for thirty dollars. It was from the seventies, I think, and he had been saying he wanted a jacket like that for months. I was so happy when I found it. And he completely liked it—but he didn’t have anything for me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were getting me anything.”

I said it was okay, it didn’t matter. But then, when he got back from Tokyo, I kind of thought he’d have something for me, then. Actually, I completely expected he’d have something. Is that insane? Bick bought Meghan a cashmere sweater. Finn saved up his money from working at the B&O and gave Kim a stack of CDs she’d been wanting. My dad gave my mom an amber necklace. But it was already January when Jackson got back, so I guess he figured Christmas was over and he had missed it.

Four: We had a fight. Jackson forgot that he had plans with me on Saturday, nothing much, he was just coming over to watch a movie on TV, but still. On Friday night we hung around at his friend Matt’s place with a bunch of his friends, and when he dropped me off, he very clearly said, “See you tomorrow.”

I called him on Saturday morning, and his mom said the Dodge needed a new muffler and he had taken his car to the shop and would be back around two. By five o’clock he hadn’t called.

By six o’clock he hadn’t called.

At seven, I called him again. “You just missed him,” she said. “Matt came by and picked him up. I think they went to the game.”

Well, I could go to the basketball game, if I wanted,
and see him there. But the bus to Tate takes like forty-five minutes and only comes once an hour, and my mom and dad had gone to Juana’s house for a dinner party, so they weren’t driving me anywhere. Besides, I didn’t think any of my friends were going, and it seemed weird to go alone. I called Kim, and she was going to the circus with Finn; Nora and Cricket were over at Cricket’s and said I could come meet them at the B&O for coffee at nine, but I thought maybe Jackson’s mom was wrong and he was getting a ride to my house from Matt, not going to the basketball game at all. So I stayed home to wait for him.