The Boys - E Lockhart

That's why she isn't popular. Girls don't actually like a person who licks her lips like a porn star in history class or distracts their boyfriends at parties by wearing a bikini in the hot tub. And Meghan has no self-awareness whatsoever, despite being the only other teenager I know who sees a shrink, so she doesn't understand how irritating some of the stuff she does is.

She doesn't bug me anymore, though. There's a lot to be said for a girl who sticks by you when hardly anyone else at school will, and the two of us secretly sing ridiculous

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pop songs at the top of our lungs when she carpools me to school.

"I'm over this Noboyfriend thing," Meghan announced as I sat down. "I decided that during Choir."

"Already?" I cracked open my peach iced tea. "Way over it."

"Hello? You've been Noboyfriend for what, a month?"

"Seven weeks!" Meghan said, her mouth full of taco. "Please don't tell me you're counting."

"Yes, I'm counting."

"Well, don't make me count or I may have to slit my wrists." 2

"Roo. Suicide threats are not funny."

"Then don't make me count."

"Okay, I won't make you count..."

"Thanks."

"... but only because I'm wearing white pants. The bloodstains would never come out. Ooh, there's Nora." Meghan jumped up and wrapped her arms around Nora's five-foot-eleven-inch frame. "Come sit, come sit! I need your advice!"

Nora folded herself onto the bench next to me and lifted the top piece of bread off her sandwich. "This ham doesn't smell right," she said. "Here." She shoved it toward my face. "Tell me, does that smell right?"

"No ham smells right," I told her. "It's a hunk of dead pig."

"Veggie." She laughed. "Here, Meghan, smell it."

2 I had been Noboyfriend for thirty-nine weeks at that point.

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Meghan smelled and shook her head. "Don't eat it. I need both of you alive to help me leave the state of Noboyfriend."

"What about me?" Nora asked. "I want to leave it too." 3

"Of course. This should be the end of Noboyfriend for all of us. Especially because it's never too early to think about Spring Fling."

I moaned. "It is too too early."

"Fine. Only I think it would be great to have a boyfriend for Spring Fling. Not just a date, but like a real boyfriend to be in love with."

This is a perfect example of how Meghan's brain works. She can think that she'd like to work toward being in love by the time a particular dance comes around, even though she doesn't have so much as a crush on any particular boy at school. And she wants to be in love not really to be in love, but to maximize romance on the mini-yacht dance Tate Prep throws every April. I mean, what kind of person has that for a goal, anyhow, instead of, I don't know, making varsity lacrosse or a 2100 on the SAT?

"And who is this real boyfriend going to be?" I asked Meghan.

***

3 Nora is in a state of perpetual Noboyfriend--only pretty much without catatonia, depression or ennui. It has been sixteen and a half years of Noboyfriend for Nora, though she does appear to like boys rather than, you know, girls. She is possessed of a good heart, beautiful dark curls, the ability to bake and talk basketball simultaneously, plus enormous hooters and stable mental health-- really, everything a guy could want. But still: Noboyfriend.

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"I don't know. That's what I need help with. Who would be good for me?"

"Meghan!"

"What?"

"Who do you like?"

She shrugged. "I'm ruling out seniors," she said. "The last thing I need is another guy who's going off to college. But I'm having trouble when I look at the juniors, too." She reached into her backpack and pulled out the school directory, which contained everyone's name, address and school photo from the previous year. She flipped it open to the junior class page and handed it to me. "I've known these guys since kindergarten. We all have. It might be biologically impossible for me to go out with any of them. Unless you see something I haven't."

Nora looked over my shoulder. "Look at Noel's hair," she said, pointing to his photo.

I laughed. He was wearing a ridiculous amount of hair gel.

I scanned the photos. Tate Prep is a small school with a serious dearth of decent guys: it was all Neanderthals, sporty muffins and Future Doctors of America, or guys in the gaming club and guys who hadn't hit puberty yet, ineligible for reasons I think must be obvious. That was pretty much it.

"How about Hutch?" I said.

John Hutchinson (aka Hutch) has been at Tate since kindergarten. He's a leper due to tragic skin and a marked tendency to quote retro heavy-metal lyrics in place of making sane conversation, but now that I got to know him

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this past fall, I don't think he's so bad. He became my dad's gardening assistant last year. They work together in the greenhouse on the southern side of our houseboat, and even though Hutch is even more lacking in human relationship skills than I am, he's a nice guy. Noel likes him too.

Meghan wrinkled her nose. "I like a guy more athletic than Hutch," she said diplomatically. Because Hutch is not an attractive physical specimen.

"This is bad news," said Nora, shaking her head over the directory. "You may have to look at sophomores."

"We are allowed to go out with guys outside of Tate, you know," I said. "There's no law against it."

Meghan sniffed. "When would I even meet such a guy? I have tennis team starting soon; I have therapy. College visits on weekends. The most important thing in life, and I don't even have time for it, really."

"Boyfriends are not the most important thing in life," said Nora. "They can't be."

"Not boyfriends. Love."

I shook my head. "You are a warped little bunny, my friend."

"Seriously," Meghan persisted. "What's more important than love? Because it's not tennis team, I'm telling you that right now."

"So you have to look at the sophomores," Nora said.

I groaned.

"Why not?" Nora went on. "Boys do it all the time. I don't want to think about how many junior and senior

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guys are going out with sophomore girls right now. It might as well be the other way around."

Meghan shot a glance over to a sophomore table, where two six-foot boys were leaning back in their chairs. One threw a raisin at the other, who fell out of his chair. Knocked spineless by a raisin.

"They're taller than they used to be," she said thoughtfully.

"Operation Sophomore Love," I said. "That's your project, right there."

***

Normally after school I have sports practice or therapy or I go to my internship at the Woodland Park Zoo, where I work in the penguin exhibit and the Family Farm area. But I was sitting out lacrosse this term since there was no way I'd make varsity goalie, and the internship hadn't started again yet.

These circumstances meant I was free after school to go shopping with my mother. I needed a coat and a couple of sweaters. The weather was colder than usual that winter, and I'd gained a few inches since sophomore year. She picked me up in the Honda.

My mother is more bohemian than the other mothers at Tate Prep. Other mothers tend to be brain surgeons, lawyers or homemakers, while Elaine Oliver is a semisuccessful performance artist and part-time copy editor who could easily earn a merit badge for annoying babble. Despite her artsy lifestyle and minimal income, she would still like to dress me as the kind of child she wishes she had.

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That is, wholesome and well-adjusted.

Mom took me to the BP department of Nordstrom because Grandma Suzette gave her a gift certificate there for Christmas. Also, I suspect, because Nordstrom is safely in the mall, where there are no vintage shops for me to wander into.