E. Lockhart - Real Live Boyfriends

I was going to say: Coach has me doing extra workouts for my knee.

I was going to say: I haven’t got time.

I was going to say: Maybe I could just donate money straight to Happy Paws, instead of baking.

I was going to say: I only made those croissants to impress you, anyway, back in the day.

And then I realized: I should just say yes.

Yes. I will make chocolate croissants.

Noel

I thought about not answering him until a couple days had gone by, just to show that it didn’t matter to me. Pretending that we were just talking about a bake sale contribution and nothing more.

But I don’t really want to be that girl. The girl who squashes her feelings down. If there is anything I learned in therapy, it’s that squashing is an excellent way to give yourself panic attacks.

So I wrote back:

I was going to act like it didn’t matter much.

I was going to say, Thanks for contributing to Happy Paws.

I was going to say, Good luck with the Columbia app and the knee exercises, like we were acquaintances and I felt a mild interest in your well-being.

But I don’t want to lie.

I am really, really glad you’re making croissants.

Polka-dot is too.

Noel wrote:

List of things to do:

Ask Mom for recipe.

Shop for butter. (Croissants involve lots of butter.)

Shop for chocolate. (You want the chocolate kind.)

Apologize to Ruby for acting like a dolt and kissing the vampire girl in front of her. No matter how long we’d been broken up, that was a warped move and the kind of manipulative crap I usually associate with guys other than myself.

Sorry.

Mom was in the kitchen doing unspeakable things to slabs of dead pig involving the Cuisinart, a lot of garlic and pieces of washed intestine. Dad was puttering in the greenhouse listening to REO Speedwagon. Polka was thumping his tail quietly on the carpet, looking at me expectantly, hoping for his before-bed walk.

Everything was just as it had been ten minutes ago.

And everything was different.

Noel was making me croissants.

Noel had said sorry.

I wrote back:

Flour. You will need flour.

Also, I suspect, a small amount of salt.

Seconds later, his reply:

Maybe I will need help.

And I wrote:

What?

And he wrote:

Your help.

And I wrote:

My help with the croissants?

And he wrote:

Help me.

I didn’t write back, because I was putting on my coat and brushing my teeth and putting on lip gloss and deodorant and grabbing the keys to the Honda and shouting to Mom that I’d be back by curfew and pushing Polka back in the front door with my foot because he wanted to go out so bad and there was no way I was taking him. Then I was in the car driving to Madrona in the chilly night.

The lights were on in Noel’s kitchen. Through the windows I could see his mom and stepdad doing dishes and wiping down the countertops. The little girls’ rooms in the front of the upstairs were dark, though, and Noel’s lights were out as well, except for the glow from his computer monitor.

I couldn’t ring the bell. Couldn’t just make small talk with his parents and ask if I could come in after all this time without seeing them.

And I couldn’t call. No cell.

So I scootched my bag underneath the porch and climbed the rose trellis on the side of the house up to the porch roof. I edged along it until Noel’s window was in front of me, and then, feeling kind of stalkerish and dumb but also like a girl in a movie about love, I felt around for a pebble to toss at the glass.

No pebbles. I was on the roof.

I felt in the rain gutter.

Nothing but some truly disgusting sludge.

What was I thinking? Of course there were no pebbles on the roof.

I picked at the shingles, hoping a bit of one would come off in my hand.

No luck.

Aha! Tums.

I had a small roll of antacid tablets in the front pocket of my jeans, left over from the misguided ingestion of two cappuccinos in a fifteen-minute period.

I took out a Tum and threw it at Noel’s window.

He didn’t answer.

I threw another Tum.

And another.

And another.

Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum.

Ag. I suddenly got worried that maybe Tums were toxic to birds or squirrels and I was inadvertently poisoning the small-animal population of Madrona.

I collected as many as Tums as I could find from where they’d fallen on the roof, then knocked on Noel’s window.

Looking in, I saw he wasn’t answering because he had headphones on. He was clicking back and forth between his e-mail and iTunes, tapping his fingers on the edge of his keyboard now and then.

He was wearing pajamas.

I had never seen Noel in pajamas.

Actually, they were blue and white striped pajama pants and a white T-shirt so thin and faded you could practically see through it.

I knocked harder, and he turned around.

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

He bolted out of his room.

Where had he gone?

Was he going to tell his parents I was on the roof?

No, he would never do that.

Was he angry I had come?

Was I being a stalker?

Had he left because he couldn’t deal with seeing me?

Should I just go home?

Would I die trying to climb down the rose trellis?

I was turning to attempt it when Noel came back.

He was wearing jeans and waving something at me.

A toothbrush.

He opened the window, leaned out, and before I could even speak—he kissed me. His mouth was cold and minty. I kissed him back and felt dizzy and clutched the edge of the windowsill. He kept kissing me, and I kept kissing him and I was so happy. Then he climbed out the window and we sat on the porch roof with our backs against the house and he waved his toothbrush again.

“You went to brush your teeth,” I said. “You kept me waiting on your roof in the cold so you could brush your teeth.”

“We had scallions at dinner,” Noel said.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” I told him.

“I was!” he protested. “I just—I wanted to kiss you so bad as soon as I saw you, and then I thought about the scallions and I panicked. I thought, She’s come all the way here and she’s going to run away as soon as she smells my breath.”

“I wouldn’t run away from scallion breath.”

“Oh, you might. This was serious.”

I kissed him again. And this time I think we both felt the cold outside and how precarious it was where we were sitting. We held on to each other like we were holding on for our lives on the edge of this precipice

of the roof, of the end of high school,

of college,

of love,

of scary, complicated, adult-type relationships—

and I felt Noel shaking and I realized he was crying. Not sobbing, but crying gently, like his eyes were leaking and he just couldn’t help it.

“What’s wrong?”

He swallowed. “Booth died,” he said. “My friend Booth was riding ahead of me down Seventh Avenue. We were crossing Twenty-third Street and this car was making a left and I saw it coming, this blue car, and it was like slow motion, Booth crossing the path of the car and it swerving and then the bike hurtling through the air with Booth still clinging to it.” Noel wiped his eyes and went on. “I threw my bike on the sidewalk and ran over. People were standing around and I suddenly realized maybe no one had called the ambulance, so I called, and I had to tell them what happened, and then it took so long for them to come.”