E. Lockhart - Real Live Boyfriends

“Really?”

“My mom says three is just a difficult number,” Nora went on, “but when I hung out with you and Meghan I never felt like a third wheel, ever. I just felt like we were all three friends. Like it was natural.”

“It was,” I said.

“Anyway, the thing I haven’t told you yet is that Cricket said to Kim they should decide on a code word to use with each other when they want to get rid of me.”

“A what?”

“Like, she said they should still be friends with me, but they didn’t want me hanging around with them all the time. So whenever they wanted to ditch me, they’d say ‘jog bra.’ ”

“And Kim agreed?”

Nora nodded. “She talked about how she didn’t want to hurt my feelings but yeah, she was sick of me too. So if, like, they wanted to go to Top Pot Doughnuts after school—”

“Is that where they go now?” I said. Because neither of them had set foot in the B&O since the debacles of sophomore year.

“Yeah. Anyway, if they wanted to go without me , because apparently I’m too controlling and boring and obsessed with my boyfriend, and my boobs are just so annoying Cricket wants to scream, then one would say something like, ‘At crew practice my jog bra was cutting into my side in the worst way.’ Then the other would know that they should both make excuses and leave me behind.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Ag.”

Nora reached over, picked up my fork and helped herself to a bite of my chocolate cheesecake. Just the way she used to. Before all the badness happened.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing. I started crying so I had to hang up the phone in case they heard me. Then I came to find you.”

“We should make a code word for what complete wenches they are,” I said.

“Like what?” Nora sniffed.

“Like mushrooms . I hate mushrooms.”

“I like mushrooms.”

“Okay, then what about soybeans ?”

“Ugh.”

“We can see them in the refectory and say things like, ‘Oh, you know what really makes me ill? Soybeans!’ And no one will know what we’re talking about.”

Nora kind of started laughing but then her face crumpled and she was crying. “I can’t believe this happened,” she said. “They’ve been my friends since forever.”

“Mine too,” I said. “Or were.”

“How am I ever going to show my face at Tate again?” sobbed Nora. “Am I supposed to just go there and act like everything’s okay, and smile at them and even sit with them, pretending like we’re friends when I know they want to get rid of me? Or am I supposed to stop hanging around them, since they don’t want me anyway, and act like I just happened to have other people to be with?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or am I supposed to be mad at them and not speak to them?” Nora wept. “I don’t know how to even go to school in the morning.”

Of course, this was exactly how I had felt ever since the debacles. Every day, I was walking into a hotbed of hostility and potential cruelty. But I didn’t say that to Nora. What I said was: “I want to try something. Will you come in the bathroom with me?”

The B&O Espresso bathroom is painted dark purple and is not even big enough for one person. If you’re in there on the toilet, you could completely wash your hands at the same time, without ever getting up. (Not that you would.)

I brought a marker, and Nora and I squeezed ourselves in there together. She is five eleven, so my face was practically in her uniboob, but I just went with it. I pulled off a long piece of toilet paper and wrote, in large letters: The Wenchery of Cricket and Kim . Then I gave it to Nora.

She took it and looked down at me. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“We’re flushing it down with the poo,” I told her.

“What?”

“The wenchery of Cricket! Down with the poo.”

“Do you have to say poo ?” Nora asked. “You could just say flush it down. You don’t have to mention poo. There’s no poo in there right now anyhow.”

She was right. “We’re flushing it,” I told her. “Because we don’t want it to have power over us. Because we don’t want to be trapped in the yellow wallpaper.”

“What’s flushing it gonna do?”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “But my shrink wants me to do it. It’s good for the mental health.”

“But the wenchery is my problem,” said Nora, waving her toilet paper sign. “Not yours.”

Of course the wenchery of Cricket and Kim was a problem for me as well, but she was right. It wasn’t looming large in comparison with my enormous freaking host of other problems. “Doctor Z wants me to flush my broken heart,” I said. “But I don’t think I can.”

“Can you flush the Boneheadedness of Noel?” Nora asked. Which, given that she’d once crushed on him, was really a very nice thing to say.

I shook my head. “The problem isn’t his boneheadedness. The problem is that I’m deranged. Everything would have been okay if I wasn’t such a mental patient.”

“Okay. Seriously. That’s what you have to flush,” said Nora.

“What?” I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Come on, Roo,” Nora was pulling a sheet of toilet paper off the roll. She grabbed my pen.

“What are you writing?” I tried to peek over her tall shoulder.

“Shush. You’re going to thank me.”

Someone knocked on the door of the B&O bathroom. “In a minute!” Nora yelled. “We’re doing therapy homework!”

“Yes!” I called. “It’s more important than urination!”

Nora handed me the toilet paper. In enormous letters she had written: Self-loathing .

“No, no, no,” I said. “I can’t give that up. Who would I be without my self-loathing?” I was being sarcastic, but Nora looked at me seriously.

“You could let it go, Roo. You’re always saying awful stuff about yourself. Like you just called yourself a mental patient.”

“But I am a mental patient.”

“You make it sound like you’re locked up in the asylum.”

“Well,” I joked, “it’s only a matter of time.”

Nora made an exasperated sound. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

“Okay, but it’s not fair. You’re getting to flush the badness of other people, but I have to flush the badness of myself.”

The knock sounded again on the door of the bathroom. “Just a minute!” called Nora. “Roo. We have to flush now.”

“Fine,” I said. “We rip them up first.”

Nora and I ripped our toilet paper signs into tiny shreds and dropped them into the paint-splattered toilet.

We flushed.

“Good riddance!” I yelled as the paper swirled down.

Then we opened the door to the bathroom and tumbled out of it, laughing hysterically.

Bonsoir, Hutch,

Comment va Paris? I have a mental image of you wearing your fanny pack and a beret, holding a baguette and playing bread air-guitar on the top deck of the Eiffel Tower.

But I know that can’t be how you spend an average day.

Just on Saturdays, right?

Ruby,

The pastry of France kicks the ass of the pastry of America. It kicks it so hard the pastry of America hobbles to the curb whimpering, then scuttles down the street never to be seen again. That is how good the pastry is here.

Maybe you should come out at Thanksgiving break.

Or not. Whatever.

You probably have plans.

Hutch