E. Lockhart - Real Live Boyfriends

“It was liberating,” I told Doctor Z later. “Like I said, I’m not letting this badness in my life. I’m flushing it down with all the poo.”

The upside-down picture wasn’t on her desk anymore. I was grateful because it was seriously distracting. Likewise, Doctor Z wasn’t wearing an orange poncho or patchwork skirt or anything else so incredibly crafty and horrific that it detracted from my ability to have a therapeutic experience.

“My mother did this nasty thing,” I went on, “but I didn’t have to let it in. I mean, I have enough things in there tainting my brain. I don’t need that.”

“Good.”

“I also didn’t have to give the questionnaire to Dittmar. Even though he told us to turn it in. Sometimes, it’s just better to ignore what you’re supposed to do and do what’s best for you. ”

Doctor Z nodded. Then she asked: “What else do you think is tainting your brain?”

“Oh,” I said. “Just my dad’s depression, missing my dead grandma, our carnivorous household, Meghan always off with Finn, Nora always off with Kim and Cricket, Hutch in Paris, total isolation, mental illness, people who are cruel to animals, the question of whether to grow out my bangs, college applications, guilt over Noel, guilt over Gideon, major heartbreak and self-loathing. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Well,” Doctor Z said, crossing her legs, “can you flush any of that ?”

“How could I flush it?”

“You tell me.”

“These are not the kinds of things you can flush.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not pieces of paper. They’re situations.”

“What if you put them down on pieces of paper?”

“You’re not serious.”

“Sure. That can be a very therapeutic thing to do. You write out a problem that is bothering you, and then you flush it. Or burn it. Destroy it in some way as a gesture of setting yourself free.”

“Yeah, but I can write my heartbreak down on paper six thousand times and flush it just as many. I’m still going to be heartbroken when I wake up in the morning. I’m still going to feel awful when I see Noel at school.”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“How do you know until you try?”

“You’re serious.”

“This week. Consider writing something that’s bothering you on a piece of paper and flushing it,” said Doctor Z. “It can be a small thing, if you want. It doesn’t have to be your heartbreak, if you’re wedded to that.”

“I am not wedded to my heartbreak,” I said. “I hate my heartbreak. I hate it.” I was almost crying. “I am just heartbroken ,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Really?” she said. “Really?”

After swim practice on Thursday I was in the B&O, reading The Yellow Wallpaper for Women Writers and cursing Mr. Wallace for insisting we both start and finish it over the weekend, 2when Nora came in, her face swollen and pink. It was Finn’s day off, so he and Meghan were somewhere else, doing couple things.

“Can I sit with you?” Nora asked.

We hadn’t hung out since school started. She was friendly, and we chatted in the halls if we ran into each other, but most of the time she was in Kim and Cricket land.

“Knock yourself out,” I told her. “You okay?”

Nora sniffed and shook her head. “Not really.”

“What happened? Something with Happy?”

“No, Happy’s fine.” She’d been arranging her tall frame on the chair across from me, digging around in her book bag, unwinding a cotton scarf she had around her neck. Now she looked at me and chewed on her thumbnail.

“What, then? Did I do something?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is it about Noel?”

“Roo, please, can you stop asking and just let me tell you?”

My skin felt hot and I nodded silently.

“Kim, Cricket and I were on a three-way call just like an hour ago,” she said. “Kim set it up so we could all talk about yearbook stuff while she had to be home supervising the gardener. I was talking to them on my cell from the photo lab where I was printing. I don’t know where Cricket was, but anyway. We finished the yearbook stuff and I hung up and put the phone down without really looking at it, because I had a picture in the fixer and I realized it had been in there kinda long.”

She stood up and ordered a black coffee from the guy at the counter. Like she didn’t want to go on with the story. But black coffee doesn’t take long to serve, and pretty soon Nora was back sitting across from me.

“So like ten minutes later I went to use the phone again and it had never hung up. I put it to my ear and Kim and Cricket were still talking.” Nora wiped her eyes. “I know it’s a bad thing to do, but I listened, and it didn’t take long to figure out they were talking about me.”

“Ag.”

“Cricket was saying she was sick of hearing about Happy Happy Happy all the time, and Kim was saying I was just so controlling about yearbook, which is really unfair because I’m the editor, I’m supposed to be the boss of it, and she didn’t have to be on it if she didn’t want to.”

“What did you do?”

“Cricket said I was no fun anymore and did I have to wear a stupid jog bra all the time, there was something about the jog bras that just really annoyed her and she couldn’t stand to look at my uniboob one more day.”

It was true. Nora did have the uniboob. But in her defense, she has these really ginormous hooters, and she’s kind of self-conscious about them, so she squashes them down with the jog bra. Summer after freshman year, back when all four of us were friends, Kim and I had written an entry in our group notebook on “The Care and Ownership of Boobs” 3that was in part intended to alert Nora to the uniboob issue that was going on. In fact, Kim and I had had a long discussion over whether to explicitly include information on the uniboob problem, but we had eventually decided to leave it off because we were too scared of hurting Nora’s feelings. We had hoped she would just read the instructions on the care and ownership and reexamine her own boob-related practices.

But she never did.

“Uniboob?” I said innocently. “What uniboob?”

“I don’t know. I mean, how can she be mad at my boobs ?” Nora wailed. “They never did anything to her.”

“Your boobs are fantastic,” I told her. Which was true. It was just her bras that were bad. “Maybe they stole attention from her. Maybe she’s jealous of the way all the guys look at your chestal profile.”

“Ugh.” Nora grimaced. “Only guys like Neanderthal Darcy. Not quality guys.”

“Maybe Cricket’s in love with Neanderthal Darcy,” I said. “Did you ever think of that?”

“I still haven’t told you the worst part.”

“Tell me.”

Nora sipped her coffee and shook her head. “First, before I do: Roo, I want to say sorry.”

“What for?”

“For not talking to you over the whole Noel business. For letting a guy come between us. For just—we’ve been friends a really long time and I should have acted different. When I was mad at you, I should have talked it out.”

“Thanks,” I said. It was good to hear her apologize, and I’d really never thought she would. But it did not escape my notice that she was saying all of this to me now, when not only did she have Happy but I had lost Noel. It’s a lot easier to stop being jealous and mad when the girl who supposedly stole your guy is a heartbroken puddle of angst and everyone knows it.

“Yeah, well.” Nora shook her head. “I feel like a third wheel with Cricket and Kim all the time. At lunch, at yearbook, out for coffee. It’s like the two of them have something together that I don’t have, like it doesn’t matter whether I’m there or not, most of the time.”