The Boys - E Lockhart

While we ate, Meghan, Nora and I put on the serious pressure for the boys to contribute to Baby CHuBS.

Hutch shook his head. "You don't want to eat my cooking, trust me."

"Noel?" Nora pressed, leaning across the table and tapping his arm. "Won't you help us out? It's for a good cause. Ooh, excellent Band-Aids." She touched his hand. "What happened to your fingers?"

Noel smiled at her. "I didn't burn myself baking, I'll tell you that."

"Does it hurt?" Nora pushed out her bottom lip sympathetically.

"Nah," said Noel. "I'll live."

"So bake for us!" she said. "I'm not much of a cook."

"But your parents cook," I said. "Your parents are cooking fiends. You could use some of your mom's recipe books. Does she make French stuff, like pastry?"

Nora turned to me. "When were you at Noel's house?" she asked.

158

"In the fall," I said. "When you couldn't go to Singin' in the Rain with us."

"Oh," said Nora, in a voice that had that slight edge to it-that edge that meant, I didn't know you'd been to his house.

Hutch laughed. "Ruby dragged you to Singin' in the Rain? 1 " he teased Noel. "Dude, you have no willpower."

Noel put his head on the table in mock shame. "Apparently I cannot say no when Ruby makes me do girly stuff. First a musical comedy, now baking."

"Ruby's not making you," said Nora. "I am asking you, very sweetly."

Hutch slapped Noel on the back. "You know what you need?"

"What?" Noel said, turning his face toward his bottle of orange juice.

"You need to go see Van Halen at Key Arena."

"Oh no," I said. "He does not need that. You do not need that, Noel."

"You think that will counteract my sissy baking?" Noel asked Hutch, lifting his head.

"That was an official yes!" cried Nora. "You heard it here, first, guys."

"David Lee Roth is a rock legend," 1said Hutch, still talking about Van Halen.

***

1 David Lee Roth: Fronts retro-metal band Van Halen. The man has been known to wear studded chaps without pants underneath and to pair that article of clothing with a gold breastplate and an off-the-shoulder shirt. I think that's all you need to know.

159

Noel put his head back down. "If I make French pastry, I don't know if even Led Zeppelin would be strong enough to counteract it."

"Will you really do French pastry?" I asked. "What does your mom know how to make? Can you make pain au chocolat?"

Noel groaned.

"It's not sissy baking," said Meghan. "Several guys on the soccer team are already signed up."

"She's right," said Nora. "It's manly manly baking."

Noel lifted his head. "She can make pain au chocolat," he said, with faux resignation. "I'll get her to show me how."

"Yay!" Nora clapped her hands.

Noel stood to bus his tray. "Ruby, I am powerless to deny you, but you may be the death of me."

Hutch laughed. "You can come over and play Guitar Hero this weekend if you need to reclaim your manhood."

"I may need to," said Noel.

When the boys left, Nora's forehead wrinkled. "He's powerless to deny you?" she said to me. I held up my hands in innocence.

***

At my next week's therapy appointment I told Doctor Z about the conversation with Nora, the Hooter Rescue Squad note I wrote to Noel and how I'd gotten him to make pain au chocolat for the bake sale.

Doctor Z listened quietly and then she said: "Explain to me again how your note read?"

"The one I gave Noel?"

160

"Yes."

"It said thank you for ... um ... rescuing my boobs. Only I called them hooters because that's the official term used by the Rescue Squad."

"Hm."

"What?"

"You wrote the note after the conversation with Nora, am I understanding correctly?"

"Yes."

"But you don't feel you were flirting with Noel."

"No."

"Some people might say that writing a note about your breasts to a boy is a flirtatious thing to do." Ag.

Ag, ag, ag.

I had written a note about my breasts to Noel.

What kind of girl writes a note about her breasts to the boy her best friend likes?

What kind of girl writes a note about her breasts, period? Was I in total denial, flirting with Noel when I'd promised not to? Was I a horrible person?

How had I let myself do that, after my promise to Nora?

There has got to be a word for the general but inadvertent sex mania I've been having. I mean, this is probably how rabbits feel, and why they're always procreating at unreasonable speed. Like they don't even mean to be thinking about sex, much less doing anything sexy, and then they suddenly find themselves in the throes of horizontal action, or whatever position rabbits do it in. They

161

find themselves doing it and having a whole rabbit family without even meaning to, just like I find myself looking at Wallace's chest hair or flirting with Jackson or pressing my thigh against Gideon's or writing notes to Noel about my boobs.

Ag again. I am completely Rabbity. I have Rabbit Fever. That's what's wrong with me.

That and panic attacks. And being a roly-poly, of course. And being a rotten friend.

"Ruby?" Doctor Z was leaning forward.

"Yes?"

"Try to be here, now, okay? You have my attention."

This is something Doctor Z has taken to saying often. "Be here, now." Like when I start thinking of all kinds of stuff that I'm not telling her and tune out that I'm even in therapy and that someone's even there waiting for me to talk. Be here, now.

"Okay," I told her. "I'm here." And I burst into tears.

162

15.

I Should Resist, but I Do Not Resist

Dear F-SHAN,

I am sorry I wrote you that note about my hooters. Completely inappropriate.

Suspect I am possessed by strange demon. Am researching quality exorcists. Please, please, forget it ever happened.

--written on a half-sheet of notebook paper and folded in quarters. the day after my therapy appointment, I put the note in Noel's mail cubby. After Chem, he grabbed my arm and

163

pulled me down the hall and up the stairs. "I want to show you something," he said, but when we got to the painting studio on the top floor, it was empty. The room had a skylight and cool winter sun shone into the room, which was filled with easels and half-assed student paintings. It smelled like turpentine.

"What?" I said. "I didn't think you were taking painting this term."

"I'm not," said Noel. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and said, "Really, I want to tell you something, and I knew we could be alone here."

"You're not showing me anything?"

"No." He laughed nervously.

"What do you want to tell me?"

"Well." I took his hands off me and walked around the room.

"What?"

"Anything I say is going to come out stupid."

"You brought me here," I told him. "You might as well say it."

"Okay." He kept pacing back and forth. "I--I'm dying to hear about your hooters."

"Excuse me?"

Noel wiped his hand across his forehead. "That came out wrong."

"You think?"

"I mean, you don't have to say sorry about that note you wrote me."

"Thanks," I told him. "But I talked to my shrink about it and she pointed out that if I don't want people to think

164

I'm a famous slut, I shouldn't, you know, do slutty-type stuff."

"It wasn't slutty," said Noel, standing still, finally.

"Yeah," I said. "It pretty much was."

He took a step toward me. "It wasn't slutty. It was sexy."

Oh.

He thought I was sexy.

"I want to hear everything about you, all the time," Noel said. "Hooters--or whatever."

"You do?"

"I really do," he said.

I felt so dizzy-happy that he told me this, though I knew I shouldn't even be there with him, though I knew Nora would be mad, though I knew there were so many things wrong about all of it.