E. Lockhart - Real Live Boyfriends

“What?” Dad look shocked.

“Juana asked me yesterday if I wanted to drive down to the Oregon coast with her women’s empowerment group, and I told her no, because I felt guilty leaving you when you’re still moping about Suzette’s death.”

“Don’t miss it on my account,” Dad said bitterly.

“And Ruby. Ruby’s being a drama queen about this thing with Noel what’shisname. The two of you are driving me crazy with all your negativity and self-involvement,” she said. “So you know what? I don’t feel guilty anymore. I don’t need to work so hard stuffing sausages and making Halloween costumes when no one appreciates anything I do. I can go to Oregon and sit in a hot spring!”

“I did appreciate the sausages,” said my dad. “I made a point of telling you I liked them.”

“Roo didn’t.”

“I’m a vegetarian!” I yelled.

“I’ll be leaving tomorrow morning,” said my mother. “It will be a relief to get away from both of you.”

She stomped into the bedroom and emerged with her purse, furiously putting lipstick on. Then she slammed the front door and walked—awkwardly in her costume—into the fading light.

When she was out of sight, Dad took off his cardboard box, let Polka back in the house and gave him the costume. Polka chewed on it, thumping his tail heavily on the carpet.

Dad lay facedown on the floor beside the dining table and announced he was just going to rest there for a minute.

“Aren’t you going to go after Mom?”

“I gave the prongs to the dog,” he said. “There’s no way I can be forgiven unless I have prongs.”

“Are you going to let her go on vacation without us?” I said. “Is she really going to leave?”

“I don’t know,” Dad said, turning his head to rest the alternate cheek on the carpet. “Your mother pretty much does what she wants to do.”

“Are you depressed?” I asked, standing over him. It was a stupid question. Of course he was depressed. He was the king of being depressed.

“I’m just so tired.”

“Dad! You have to do something. She’s leaving us.”

“Will you answer the phone?”

“What?”

“The phone.”

Oh. It was ringing. I picked it up, thinking it would be Mom calling from her cell, but instead it was Gideon. “Hey, wakeboarder,” he said.

“Hey, wakeboarder yourself.”

“Happy Halloween.”

“Same to you.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“Trying to peel my dad off the floor.”

“Ha-ha,” said Gideon. “You want to come to a party with me?”

“I’m supposed to go to this soccer party with Nora.”

“She told me you’d rather do something else.”

“She did?”

“She said something about muffins.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Is yours a costume party?”

“Of course.”

“What are you being?”

“A bad surgeon. But I need to get fake blood. I forgot to get fake blood.”

“Use ketchup.”

“Good idea. I’m going to squirt myself with ketchup and pick you up in half an hour.”

“I’m going out, Dad,” I said when I hung up. “Are you going to be okay?”

He didn’t answer. He was asleep.

Gideon kissed me before we even got to the party. I wasn’t ready. As we got into his hybrid, he leaned over and very simply put his lips on mine—not like he was lunging at me or anything, just impulsive and sweet.

He smelled like ketchup. He was wearing a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. There was a rubber severed hand sticking out of his pocket.

We kissed for a minute and then he said: “I’ve been wanting to do that for like, years.”

“I was way too young for you,” I said.

“You’re too young for me now,” he said. “But you’re older than you were.”

“Maybe it’s you who’s too old for me ,” I told him.

“Maybe we should be quiet and kiss a little more,” he said, leaning in.

The thing about kissing Gideon was he was a lot more experienced than any other guy I’d kissed. I mean, there was no way he was still a virgin. He had traveled around the world for a year and then started at Evergreen College, which was full of people who still lived by the “make love, not war” slogans of the sixties. In other words, Gideon’s kissing was the kissing of a guy who knows exactly what this kind of thing can lead to, and who has long since been done with two-hour make-out sessions where everyone keeps their clothes on. The people he was used to kissing obviously had full and intimate knowledge of the nether regions and what to do if one encountered them.

It was a little slobbery for my taste, to be honest.

“You have to put the severed hand in the back,” I said after a minute or two. “It’s freaking me out.”

He threw it over his shoulder to the backseat, where it landed with a creepy squish. “I’ll kiss you some more later,” he said. “We’re late for the party.” He turned the key in the ignition.

“I’ve never kissed anyone who talked so much about kissing,” I told him.

Gideon laughed. “I like to be direct.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inscrutable and generally send mixed messages.”

“I doubt it.”

“Human interaction is not my strong point,” I told him.

“Not seriously.”

“Seriously,” I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn’t know.

Gideon put his hand on my leg. “What’s your strong point, then?” he asked.

“Goats,” I told him. “I am excellent with goats.”

The party was a college party.

I was out with a college guy, I suppose I should have known I was going to a college party, but I was so intent on getting away from Dad and his misery that I hadn’t really thought about where Gideon was taking me. It turned out to be a the apartment of this guy Ted Hsaio (pronounced Shaw) who’d been in Gideon’s year at Tate and was now a junior at the University of Washington.

Hsaio lived just off the Ave in the U District, in a studio apartment. As we walked down the hall, I could hear the roar of voices coming from his place, and when Gideon opened the door we saw a wall of people, all in costume, jammed up against each other and smoking, plastic cups of beer clutched in their hands. “Van Deusen!” Hsaio yelled when he saw Gideon. They fake-sparred, the way guys do when they don’t want to hug, and finally Gideon threw his bloody rubber hand at Hsaio. Hsaio was dressed as a fisherman in waders and a hat. He carried a fishing pole and had several plastic fish sticking out of his pockets. “Who’s your new girl?” he yelled at Gideon over the din.

“What?” Gideon yelled back in Hsaio’s ear.

“Who’s your girl?” said Hsaio, even louder.

“This is Ruby.”

I waved.

“Cradle robbing?” Hsaio asked Gideon.

“Shut up.”

“Dude, we’d all do it if we could.”

“Same as ever, huh, Hsaio?”

“Why change what’s working?” Hsaio laughed.

Gideon grabbed my hand and pulled me to the tiny kitchen, where a cadaver and two lady pirates were filling cups from a keg and mixing some kind of drink called a kamikaze. Two girls in slut costumes were sitting on the countertops and a guy in a gorilla suit leaned against the fridge. It smelled of sweat and booze.

Gideon handed me a cup of beer, which I didn’t want, and then grabbed a guy dressed as Jackie Onassis into a bear hug. “DuBoise!” he cried. “What the hell are you doing here?”

DuBoise.

DuBoise? I sloshed half my beer down my dress.