The Book - E Lockhart

He didn’t want people to know he had asthma, he said. If people knew, it would be like walking around with a sign on his back that said “Defective Goods,” and he wasn’t sure what made him drag me into the bushes that first day of school, because he never showed people his inhaler. Aside from the school nurse and the cross-country coach, both of whom had to know, I was the only one.

“Why me?” I asked.

“I don’t have that many friends.”

I socked him on the arm. “You’re golden, Noel. You get invited to parties all the time. You could eat lunch with anyone you want.”

“True enough. But I don’t have them over to meet the folks like you did today. I’m not close to any of them.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of it like that.

“I’ve told you, the Tate Universe isn’t quite my thing.”

“And I am?” I said it sarcastically, and his answer surprised me:

“Yes,” said Noel. “You are my thing.”

Abruptly, he stopped walking. I stopped a few steps ahead and turned back to wait for him. I thought he was going to take my hand and kiss me, and I thought that I wanted him to.

I thought, Oh, we’re not friends, we’re in love.

And then a pile of college students poured out of a bar next to where we were standing, laughing with their arms around each other, singing “Louie Louie.”

Noel started walking again and began talking about frat rock as a genre. 5So I asked, who were the Knack and why were they called that? Because I had seen something about them on “Behind the Music.”

For my edification, Noel sang “My Sharona” in such a loud voice that everyone looked at us like we were insane as we walked up the Ave. Then we both sang “Wild thing…Dow dow dow NOW…I think I love you…Dow dow dow NOW…but I wanna knoooow for sure…”

We got in the Honda and went on discussing subjects generally related to frat rock (including the movie The Blues Brothers, the death of John Belushi, and old Saturday Night Live episodes we’d seen), and suddenly, we were in front of his house.

I stopped the car. He hopped out.

And I drove myself home.

The next day, nothing was sexy or romantic between us. It was all back to normal.

FIVE. In French Cinq (level five), we had to act out dramatic scenes from Cyrano de Bergerac and I was forced to be partners with Cricket.

Heidi and Ariel were in class with us too, but they partnered with each other, and Cricket was left with no one. We’d had an assignment like this once earlier in the term, and Cricket had partnered with a sophomore named Sophie, while I had partnered with Hutch. 6But Hutch was absent, and Sophie had since made friends with another girl in the class, so Cricket got stuck with me.

We hadn’t spoken for months, but she had never talked any crap about me that I could hear, and she never bothered Nora for refriending me. She just pretended I didn’t exist.

After Madame Long split us up into partners, Cricket dragged her backpack across the room to where I was sitting.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Do you want to be Roxane or Cyrano?”

“You can be Cyrano,” I said. “You are the summer drama camp goddess. You’ll do it better.”

I was so mad at her and I wanted her to like me again, if that makes any sense.

Like, I didn’t think she was such a good person anymore, and she didn’t think I was such a good person anymore, but she had always made me laugh and I missed her.

“Okay,” Cricket said.

So we read through the scene, with everyone else reading through scenes all around us, and I thought, God, each second of this is torture because we’re so mad at each other, and also, This is kind of fun and maybe we’ll be friends again.

We practiced until the end of the period. When Madame Long told us to stop, Cricket immediately stood up and put her book in her backpack. “Later,” she said—and I thought, Really? Does she mean later, as in she’ll see me later, she’ll talk to me later? although I knew it was just a phrase.

I left class slowly, feeling relieved to at least have talked to Cricket after all this time, and stupidly hopeful.

Cricket was standing in the hall with Ariel and Heidi, who had come out of French across the way. As I walked past them, I waved.

“Heya,” said Heidi.

“God, she is so annoying,” Cricket complained, loud enough for me to hear.

And I thought, Annoying? What did I do?

I did nothing; we just read the scene.

I understand if she thinks I’m a bad person. But since when am I annoying?

Why would she think that?

Heidi elbowed Cricket in the ribs. “She can hear you,” she whispered.

“Fine,” said Cricket, even louder. “She should know how annoying she is.”

“Try to imagine how little I care,” I lied.

SIX. I finally called Angelo. Two weeks after going to the movies with Noel, and three weeks after he first gave me his cell number.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to call before. It was more that I knew it would be awkward when I did, because Angelo and I hadn’t figured out how to talk to each other yet.

And maybe we never would.

Besides which, I couldn’t sort out my feelings.

I liked him. He had nice fat lips and was a camp counselor and was funny with his dogs and was practically a medalist at boob groping. But there were complicating factors. Five, to be precise.

1. Our moms were friends.

2. I’d lied to Jackson about Angelo being my boyfriend.

3. I was jealous of the zoo girl being with Jackson. 7

4. I kept thinking about those two times with me and Noel when I thought he might kiss me. 8

5. The physical side with Angelo had progressed pretty far, pretty fast. You know, straight to the groping on day one. And though that whole part of it was my idea, I’d never gone any farther than the upper regions. Not even with Jackson. I had no idea what Angelo would be expecting on our third encounter, but it would almost certainly get horizontal.

Still, I wanted to kiss him again. I mean, I had gone months kissing no one after the Spring Fling debacle, but now that I had remembered what it was like, I was interested. And I thought, Why are you overanalyzing and making yourself miserable? Angelo is a good guy. You like each other at least enough to go hang out for an evening. It’s not marriage. It’s one date. So just call him. Go out with him. See what happens.

He answered on the second ring. “Hola.”

“Hi, it’s Ruby,” I said.

“Oh, sorry,” he laughed. “I thought you were going to be somebody else.”

“No. Just me,” I said. And went right to the point. “Do you wanna, um, hang out sometime?”

“What, like, sometime soon?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.”

There was an awkward pause. “Roo, I, um…”

“What?”

“You never called…”

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been busy.”

“…so I figured you weren’t into it.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, that’s okay. You don’t have to be into it if you don’t feel it. You should do what’s right for you.”

“Um-hm.”

“I mean, I started seeing someone,” he said. “When you didn’t call. This girl at my school. And I—I don’t want to step out on her.”

Of course. “No, no,” I said. “I wasn’t asking you that.”

“It was just…you didn’t call. And you told me not to call you, which is why I didn’t.”

“You’re completely right,” I answered. “That is what I said.”

Here was Angelo, who wouldn’t step out on a girl he’d only been seeing for two weeks. A guy who, though certainly not skilled in the telephone department, appeared to be straightforward and honest.