The Boys - E Lockhart

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which is such a completely odd thing to be obsessed with, given that they are neither attractive nor practical. But there is no reasoning with that girl when it comes to footwear. 2

Granola Brothers Footwear Emporium is in a corner of the Market devoted to stores selling Hmong tapestries, inexpensive cotton print blankets and silver jewelry. Inside the shop, Nora and I fingered batik shirts and tie-dyed dresses while Meghan debated earnestly between a pair of brown sandals and--another pair of brown sandals.

After a few minutes I noticed a sign on the counter saying HELP WANTED, so I asked the hippie man who was ponytailing around behind the counter what the job was.

"Working the register, selling Birks, restocking the sock wall"-there was a wall of colored socks-"and helping customers," he said. "We're a laid-back operation. Where have you worked before?"

I told him about the zoo internship and babysitting, leaving out the part about Robespierre and the drunk guy and being fired.

"And how do you feel about feet?" the guy asked.

Feet?

Ag. Who has strong feelings about feet?

"I think it's superimportant for people to have comfortable footwear," I told him. "I think happy feet make a happy person."

"Can you work Saturdays?" asked the guy. "Saturday is when it's really busy in here."

***

2 Movies in which the romantic heroine sports Birkenstocks: none.

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"Sure," I said.

"Come in tomorrow at nine. You'll get an hour of training on how to fit the shoes and work the register," he told me. "We open at ten. You'll need to wear Birks to work, but otherwise, consult your own personal style genie."

Suddenly, life was sweet.

I had a job!

Hello, use of the Honda!

Hello, no more debt to my parents!

Hello, cash flow!

And hello, Birkenstocks.

Hippie sandals and an anchor coat. My personal style genie was having a seriously horrible month.

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11.

I Unleash the Powers of Magic Cookies

Thirteen Reasons Not to Look at Photos of Your Ex-Boyfriend

1. His smile lights up the picture. No one has a laugh like him.

2. He looks good without his shirt on. Really, phenomenally good.

3. Why did the two of you never get naked again? Why didn't you rip off his clothes the moment you had a chance? Because the way you are going now, in an apparently permanent state of Noboyfriend, that was the only opportunity you are ever going to get to touch a guy's naked chest. Which you really want to do before you die.

4. Look at the way he's got his arms around you in that photo. That was something real. No one could fake that. So how could he change from loving boyfriend into pod-robot 1?

***

1 Pod-robot: Looks like a person but has no personlike feelings. Possibly a human who has been taken over by an alien life-form, possibly just a spectacularly

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5. Maybe he didn't change into a pod-robot. Maybe he still has buried feelings. After all, he did give you a Frog Laden with Meaning.

6. Remember how you two did that lollipop taste-test? Look, there he is making a funny face at the yucky grape flavor.

7. And remember how when you took that photo on the roof, he left you a note with mysterious instructions saying where to meet him and when, and then he kissed you up there and you looked at the view and took snapshots with the self-timer?

8. Remember, remember, remember...

9. What you had with this boy, for the time that it lasted--that is what you want out of love. The giddiness, the silliness, the comfort. That feeling is the whole reason to leave the state of Noboyfriend.

10. But will you ever be able to have that feeling with anyone but him?

11. Look, there he is with your ex-best friend. The two of them are holding pieces of sushi in their chopsticks and pointing at each other's food. Were they into each other then?

12. Were they holding hands under the table when you went to the bathroom? Were they laughing behind your back?

13. You will never know.

--from The Girl Book, written mid-February, junior year.

***

excellent robot. A relatively complete listing of movies with pod people, humanoid robots or something similar appears in a previous chronicle of the debacle that is my life, but here are a couple you really should watch if you have any pretensions to being a movie aficionado: Westworld; The Terminator; The Stepford Wives (1975 version).

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Saturday I worked at Granola Brothers. The other salespeople were college students helping pay their way through the U. They were devoted to an earthy, tie-dye aesthetic and a diet that included the voluntary consumption of sprouts. Meghan had given me a hand-me-down pair of Birks, and I wore them with black tights and a vintage dress. Fletcher, my boss, trained me--and as I spent the day organizing socks and ringing up sales, I had to admit the shop was a friendly and cheerful place to work. I can't say I was interested in feet--everyone there talked about feet a lot-but being there and helping customers did keep my mind off my declining mental health, my precarious friendships and my parents' insanity.

When I got home I tried to make the treasure map Doctor Z wanted me to do, even though I didn't feel like it. (I doubted it would cure me of panic attacks, and I wanted to spend the evening eating take-out pizza and watching Notting Hill again. So romantic.)

But since I was afraid of the way Doctor Z would look at me if I went back on Tuesday without it, I started the map as soon as I was done writing my Chem lab. I cleared off my desk; found a big sheet of paper left over from Advanced Painting Elective last term, some watercolors, scissors and a glue stick-and dug out my pile of photographs of Jackson, from back when we were going out.

They were hard to look at.

They made me remember things I didn't want to remember.

What did I want from my "relationship" with him? That's what Doctor Z wanted to know in the treasure map.

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Think of what you want from a situation, she was always saying, and then try to get it.

Except I didn't have a relationship with Jackson. I only used to have a relationship with Jackson. Then we broke up and spent a whole summer and first term junior year not having a relationship. Him being a pod-robot and me being a wreck. Then bit by bit, I got over him. Until he broke up with Kim and sent me the Frog Laden with Meaning.

What did I want?

Nothing.

No, that wasn't honest.

To be friends, nothing complicated. No frogs, no flirting.

No, that wasn't honest either. I wanted frogs! I wanted flirting. I wanted to have him love me again so I could humiliate him by rejecting him.

No. To have him love me again so I could prove to Kim and to myself that I was better than she was.

No. To have him love me again so I could experience true love.

No. Ag. No. There was not going to be true love with Jackson. He was a massive flirt and a cheater and generally bad news.

So what did I want?

Did I want him to love me?

Did I want to rip his clothes off?

Did I want redemption?

Revenge?

I painted the background of the treasure map with

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a thin wash of blue watercolors, dark water fading into pale sky.

Jackson Clarke.

When the paint was dry enough, I pasted a picture of the two of us holding lollipops right in the center of the map. It was a picture of happiness. Romantic happiness.