The Boys - E Lockhart

Whether I wanted it with Jackson, whether I wanted it with Noel, whether I just wanted it in the abstract, I didn't know. But I wanted it.

Then I wrote: "Do not think about guys who have broken your heart six ways. It is mentally deranged to chase after heartbreak."

I looked through some old Tate directories and found a photo of Nora's brother, Gideon Van Deusen, looking bohemian, even in a school photo. I cut him out and pasted him on there. "Wanting guys you can't have is a recipe for unhappiness," I wrote, remembering sixth grade. "Do not fall for people who hardly know you exist."

Then I found a picture of Finn Murphy and wrote: "Liking a guy just because he likes you: Immature and pitiful? Or a smart interpersonal relationship strategy likely to result in true happiness?"

The note Noel had written me on the first day of school was in the front pocket of my backpack.

Say you'll be my partner true

In Chemistry, it's me and you.

I glued on a picture of Noel I'd taken during November week earlier that year. He was standing on a dock with a stretch of water behind him, doubled over

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laughing. Then I took a thick black marker and wrote those last two lines of his poem on the left side of the map.

That was what I wanted. Someone who wanted me. Someone who wanted a partner. Not a life partner, but a girlfriend. Someone who wanted there to be a "me and you."

Only, Noel didn't seem to want that anymore. If he ever had.

I mean, he wrote that note the morning after he had no doubt touched the pink sweatered boobs of Ariel Olivieri and pressed his lips against hers.

Ag.

Plus, he couldn't even figure out why I was mad about the bodyguarding thing. Plus plus, he had spent the weekend skiing with Nora, and he liked her cinnamon buns.

More ag.

I realized that as I'd been thinking, I'd written his name over and over in one corner of the map: "Noel. Noel. Noel. Noel."

I crossed it out. Instead, I wrote: "Someone who doesn't care if my hair looks stupid."

I wrote: "Something uncomplicated."

I wrote: "Something real."

Then I wrote: "But is it real if it's uncomplicated?"

I opened this history of cinema book Dad got me for Christmas and paged through to see if I could find an image to use on the map. Movie stills flipped by. Beautifully lit, gorgeous Caucasian people in black-and-white. Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis. Then near the end of the book, in color. People

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looking more disheveled, perhaps, but still-no one's hair looked stupid. Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Gwyneth Paltrow.

There was kissing in those movie stills. A lot of kissing.

But none of it looked like anything real.

And yes, "real" was what I had just said I wanted. But now, fake and glam was looking a lot better than anything that was ever going to actually happen to me.

Fuck it. This whole therapy project was making me more depressed and confused than ever. I shoved the unfinished treasure map in my closet, called out for pizza and put Notting Hill in the DVD player.

***

Sunday around eleven-thirty, I was kneeling on the carpeted floor of Granola Brothers putting shoes back in their boxes when a pair of feet in gray rag socks and very, very old Birks stopped right in front of me. I looked up. Dark jeans. Belt with beads on it. Ancient plaid shirt. Flat stomach. Corduroy coat. Shell necklace. Hair shaggy enough to almost be considered long. Lovely thick eyebrows. Gideon Van Deusen.

"Ruby Oliver," he said. "Is that you?"

I stood up. "Gideon."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm selling Birks," I said. Most Tate Prep students don't have jobs. They don't need the money.

"What a coincidence. I need some Birks!" he said.

I laughed and looked at his feet again. "Yours are old, yeah," I said. "Do you want the same kind again?"

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"Wait," said Gideon, sitting down on an upholstered bench and crossing his long legs. He was at least six foot three. "I want to hear what you've been up to. Nora never tells me details. Are you still painting?"

Painting. He remembered.

"I have Art History this term. But I was using my watercolors just last night," I said.

Fletcher came over. "Is this a friend of yours?" he asked me.

Gideon answered, "Yes." Even though I was Nora's friend, not his. "But I came in for Birks," he added.

"Since your friend is here, Ruby, why don't you guys go have some chai?" Fletcher suggested. "It's quiet now. You can take a break for twenty minutes."

Fletcher was sending me out for chai with Gideon Van Deusen.

"I've got time," said Gideon. "But actually, I could use some dumplings. Do you want to get dumplings?"

Now I was getting a meal with Gideon Van Deusen. For a second, I forgot to feel neurotic and sorry for myself.

I was a girl to eat dumplings with, a girl with a job, a girl going for a meal with a boy she'd crushed on since sixth grade. I felt lucky and pretty.

Gideon and I walked through the Market to the Chinese snack stand. We each got a paper dish of vegetarian dumplings and doused them in soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot oil, then strolled to a bench and sat down. I could hardly look at Gideon's face, I was so nervous.

Not because I liked him, exactly.

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But because he was older.

And because the way his dark eyebrows framed his chocolate eyes made him seem thoughtful.

And because not very long ago I was a silly middle-schooler who wrote "Ruby loves GVD" on her sneaker.

"How's the zoo job?" Gideon asked, his mouth full of dumpling.

He remembered I had a zoo job! "I got fired for defending the rights of a pygmy goat," I told him, and explained about Robespierre and the drunk dad. "So now I am reduced to selling Birkenstocks."

"Why reduced?"

"No offense, but they're not my idea of an acceptable fashion statement." I stuck out my feet and wiggled them.

Gideon stuck his feet out too. "Homely, but you can't deny the comfort," he said.

I shrugged. "My toes get cold." Here we were, talking about feet. Had a day and a half working at Granola Brothers brainwashed me so much that I considered feet an interesting topic for conversation? I changed the subject. "What are you studying?"

Gideon told me how he was taking guitar lessons and writing an essay on carvings by the Native Americans of the northwest coast. When he talked, he moved his hands a lot, and looked me in the eye, as if he really wanted to share his ideas.

I half listened while I stared at him. Gideon had lived outside the Tate Universe for a year and a half. He no longer concerned himself with bake sales and parents'

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nights and the flower deliveries on Valentine's Day. He didn't think about where to sit in the refectory or read old gossip about himself on the bathroom walls. He was nearly an adult. We finished our dumplings and he walked me back to Granola Brothers. I sold him a new pair of the same exact sandals he owned, without him even trying them on. "I'm so glad I ran into you," he said, smiling. Making his thoughtful eyes light up.

***

The next weekend, I went to Nora's place and helped make the magic chocolate chip cookies she'd told us about. The ones that had made Gideon clean her room and loan her his iPod. But first we made miniature molten chocolate cakes in ramekins. Nora taught me how to beat egg whites until stiff and then fold chocolate into them. I kept yelling, "It's an emulsion, people!" even though I wasn't sure it really was an emulsion, technically.

We were dumping the chips into the cookie batter when Gideon walked in.

"What are you doing here?" Nora asked him.

"I brought my laundry home."