The Boys - E Lockhart

"He's embarrassed!" yelled Meghan. "Finn, why are you embarrassed?"

"I'm not embarrassed," he answered, pouring milk. "I just feel bad because I was about to bail, and now here you guys are calling me a founding member."

"What? You can't bail on us," said Meghan. "We have your brownie pledge in writing."

Finn shrugged. "Well, I-"

I interrupted him: "You also can't describe ninja-good levels of brownies and then fail to follow through. How do we know you can even make ninja brownies?"

"I learned from the guys in the kitchen here," Finn said. "I started working the early-morning shift on weekends, so now I'm around when they're baking. I can do lemon bars too."

He put our lattes on the counter and gave us two extra-large pieces of chocolate raspberry torte. "It's on me, by the way," Finn said, gesturing at the cake.

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"Really? I think I might love you." It was out of my mouth before I realized what I was saying. Ag.

Cancel. Erase.

Saying things like that to completely inappropriate boys who are not mine to say such things to is one of the reasons I have antagonized most of my former friends and am now a roly-poly.

How could I say that to Finn?

How stupid am I?

And of course, he blushed again.

Stop blushing, Finn! Stop it, stop it! I shoved a bite of torte into my mouth so I wouldn't talk anymore.

Meghan, who flirts with everyone and therefore has no need to go into mental gyrations any time something suggestive comes out of her mouth, saw it all in terms of Operation Sophomore Love. "Hey," she said, "maybe the other guys on the soccer team can bake too. How about some of the underclassmen?"

"Hardly." Finn laughed.

"What?" Meghan looked innocent. "They have a lot of free time. They don't have to worry about the SATs or anything. Don't you think you could get some of the JV players to contribute?"

Finn coughed on purpose. "The soccer team guys are not bakers."

"Why not?" Meghan asked, spooning a bit of foam from her mocha and licking it off in a way that would have

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made me hate her guts a year ago. "A guy who bakes is very attractive."

What the hell. It was all for charity, right? "Me too," I said. "Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me."

Finn stammered. He flushed. By the end of the conversation, he had promised to make ninja brownies and lemon bars, plus he swore he'd recruit the members of the soccer team for the manly baking project by convincing them that it would attract girls.

"This is going to change the whole social order at Tate," I said to Meghan as we left the B&O in the rain.

"It'll get us out of this state of Noboyfriend, if that's what you mean," she answered, unlocking the doors and climbing into the Jeep.

"No, I mean it'll change the antiquated sex roles that go on during bake sales," I said.

"Speak English."

"You know. Every year, girls bake. Boys eat. It's like the nineteenth century."

"I guess."

"That's why I never liked CHuBS that much in the first place. It was all girls in the kitchen. In fact, I bet you no boy has contributed to CHuBS, ever. And like Wallace said in American H and P last year, if you change one part of the pattern in a social system, the rest will have to shift in accordance."

Meghan said, "Finn was blushing the whole time we were in there. Did you notice?"

Yeah. I noticed.

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Being Meghan, she didn't see how complicated it was that he was blushing at me and I'd noticed him blushing; and that I'd looked at his forearms with his shirtsleeves rolled up and that he gave me free cake. It was so, so complicated, because Finn used to be Kim's and I used to be Jackson's but Finn always looked at my legs, and today I'd said "Nothing is hotter than a guy who can feed me" like a complete slut and he kept blushing--it was all so complicated, my heart started pounding.

I didn't want to have a panic attack. This was the third one in like a week.

Breathe, Ruby, breathe, I said to myself.

It doesn't have to happen. You are in charge of yourself.

But there wasn't any air in the car.

Stop, heart, slow down, I thought. There is nothing to spaz out about.

The only thing that's happening is that a boy you've known since kindergarten is helping with your bake sale.

Breathe.

I reached out and turned the radio on, then hit the button for K-ROCK. Guns N' Roses' "Paradise City" banged through the Jeep's speaker system. Retro metal. I pushed the volume up and closed my eyes.

There. With Guns N' Roses on, I couldn't think about anything. Didn't panic. Just turned off my brain until Meghan said, "You know I love you, but Hutch has totally warped your musical taste," and shoved a Rihanna CD into the stereo.

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***

Nora, Meghan and Noel were all skiing that weekend, so I job-hunted all day Saturday, bringing photocopies of my sucky resume to shops along University Ave and calling places listed in the newspaper: a tanning salon, the Jamba Juice in Bellevue Square, a telemarketing company that was looking for people to make cold calls about mattresses.

Sunday my dad and Hutch were pruning early-flowering rhododendrons and discussing various techniques for a gardening article my dad was writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Hutch and I drilled each other for our Monday French quiz and the three of us went out and got Chinese food for lunch while my mom was at her yoga class.

Hutch asked me about the whole zoo debacle, and when I explained what happened he said he was boycotting the zoo to protest my losing my job.

"Thanks," I told him. "But when was the last time you actually went to the zoo?"

"Sixth grade," he admitted, shoveling a piece of garlic broccoli into his mouth.

"So you average once every five years or so?" I asked.

He nodded.

"Your support means a lot," I said. "I'm sure the zoo will take your protest extremely seriously."

"Never let it be said I didn't do my part," he said, reaching across me to snag the lo mein. "I defend your right to tell people how they smell, any day of the week."

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He smelled of garden dirt, soy sauce and a bit of BO, but I didn't say anything.

When we got home, I called Nora to find out how Operation Ski Bunny Romance was going, but she didn't pick up.

Neither did Meghan.

So I did my Am Lit homework.

***

Monday in Chem we curdled milk by adding vinegar and then squeezing it out in pieces of cheesecloth. In the middle of the disgustingness, I couldn't resist asking Noel, "How was Crystal Mountain?"

"Excellent."

What did he mean, excellent? Did he mean that he and Nora had fallen in love? Or did he mean there was nice powdery snow?

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Meghan's way better than me or Nora, so she went off with Gideon and some friends of his to ski Otto Bahn. Nora and I are well matched, so we stuck to Kelly's Gap Road and stuff like that."

I was annoyed. Why did skiers always talk about slopes like nonskiers had any idea what they were on about? And had he really skied with Nora all weekend? Riding on those chairlifty things, just the two of them, looking out at beautiful scenery?

Ag.

Or rather, Oh, I'm so happy for Nora.

Why didn't being a good friend come naturally to me?

Fleischman started babbling about casein and positively

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charged H +ions and a lot of other boring stuff. I dried my hands when he told me to and tried to take notes on the lecture, but none of it was sticking with me.

"I mean, what did you do besides ski?" I finally asked Noel, when Fleischman was done talking and we were all supposed to be coming to the front of the room to taste various cheeses and think about what we'd learned in terms of their chemical makeup. "Roquefort!" Fleischman was shouting. "Epoisses! That one is stinky, watch out! Did you know raw-milk cheeses are illegal in the US of A? Yes, people! Can anyone explain why? Did anyone do the reading on pasteurization?"