The Book - E Lockhart

Kim got out, and Nora squealed and ran straight to her.

So that was how it was going to be.

Kim was jumping up and down. She’d had her hair cut into a very short bob. Tokyo chic.

She and Nora were hugging and checking each other out, the way girls do. I could hear them. “You look amazing, I can’t believe your hair!”

Kim was rounder, more filled out, than when I’d seen her at the end of the school year last June. She was wearing her favorite old khaki jacket, but her sneakers looked futuristically Japanese.

“I’m so glad to be back. God, I was so miserable.”

“Did you see Cricket last night? She said she was driving over, but my mom made me have family dinner, so I couldn’t come.”

“Yeah, she came out to Chez Shea with me and Jackson.”

“I’m so jealous.”

“Then we went to the B&O with Katarina and Ariel. We tried to call your cell at like nine-thirty but you didn’t pick up.”

“I forgot to charge it. Did you get my e-mail?”

“No, I never checked.”

“You didn’t get it?”

“No, I told you. Did you bring a swimsuit?”

And blah blah blah.

The Doctors Yamamoto, both of them, were unloading Kim’s stuff from the Mercedes.

“Let’s go buy chocolate,” I said suddenly, thinking Noel was behind me. But it was Hutch, still standing there.

“Okay,” he answered, checking his jacket pocket for his wallet.

So we left the dock and ran across the street to a little general store, where I spent money on caramel bars and jelly candies and mini Toblerones.

Hutch said he wasn’t supposed to have actual chocolate because the dermatologist had told him it was bad for his skin, and he did have very bad skin—he’d had it for years at that point—but it had never occurred to me he was trying to do anything about it.

It had just seemed like part of him.

And, horrible to say, like it was somehow his fault.

Which is obviously wrong when you write it down, but which is still the kind of thought that can lurk in the back of your head when you don’t really know someone.

So Hutch bought red licorice and sour straws and three rolls of hard candy. And we both got pop.

It was nice getting junk food at seven-thirty in the morning with no parents to tell you no.

The ferry was leaving. We all scrambled to get our stuff loaded on, then lined up so Mrs. Glass could check everyone off a list.

When it became absolutely necessary, Kim looked me in the eye and smiled a tight smile. “Hello, Ruby.”

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

“Good.”

“That’s nice.”

Then she clutched the arm of one of the sophomore girls and started asking her about the crew team. As if I didn’t exist.

Once the boat pulled onto the water, Hutch sat inside on a plastic yellow chair and jacked himself into his iPod. Kim and Nora and the sophomores went out on the deck.

Noel had been adopted by Courtney and her set of senior girls, who clearly judged Kieran, Mason and Grady too geeky to bother with. So I was alone. I pulled out a mystery novel and a Toblerone, found a seat near a window and started to read.

Forty-five minutes later, I went to the bathroom. It was painted yellow and had bits of stray toilet paper all over. Nora was in there, sitting on the gross floor.

She had been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I was still pissed about how she’d ditched me for Kim at the terminal.

“Nothing. It’s fine.”

“Come on.”

Nora wiped her nose.

“Kim didn’t know you were coming. She’s mad at me because I didn’t tell her.”

“I thought you were going to.”

“I couldn’t deal with calling her about it, so I sent her an e-mail. But she never got it.” Nora put her hands over her face. “So now she’s mad, and you know how she gets. She really yelled at me.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah. She made it sound like I had done this horrible thing, being friends with you again without even checking with her or telling her. And she said, like, that I set her up, letting her come.”

“You weren’t setting her up.”

“I know. But I didn’t tell her, either.” She started sobbing.

I didn’t want to act like it was all okay, because it wasn’t.

It just wasn’t.

So I gave Nora some jelly candies and the two of us sat there together, on that nasty floor, until the boat docked.

The island was awesome. Even with all that was going on, I was cranked to see the place. We were staying in a lodge that had rooms full of bunk beds, a big kitchen and a dining room with a view of the water, two saunas and a swimming pool. The teachers let us wander around and get settled, and once I’d dumped my stuff on a bunk bed I went out into the woods. There were broad paths running off in several directions, and I walked a ways on one, by myself.

It was peaceful. So peaceful that I could even imagine the trip would be civil and possibly fun. Kim would smile tightly at me, like she had on line for the boat ride, and we’d essentially ignore each other.

I’d spend the week with my friends, and nothing horrible would happen.

Peace would reign. Life would be sweet and easy.

Of course, I was wrong.

Canoe Island worked like this. In the mornings, we got up and straggled to breakfast and fended for ourselves. Glass cooked up scrambled eggs or pancakes if people got there by eight, but if you slept late you could eat peanut butter toast or something like that. There was a stack of Xeroxes on the breakfast table, and you were supposed to take one and read it before ten a.m. One day it was a section from Plato’s Republic about a cave; another day it was from a book called The Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon; and another, a bit from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. Different kinds of readings, all chosen to make you think.

Then we’d have a group discussion for an hour and a half, led by Glass and Wallace. I didn’t love the readings, but they were both so cranked over everything that the conversations were pretty interesting. Kim always sat off to one side, away from where I was.

Then we broke for lunch, which was sandwiches, and always un-vegetarian, so I ended up eating peanut butter again most days. Nora and Noel and I hung with Varsha and Spencer and Imari, and Kim stayed mainly with the senior girls. Hutch joined us sometimes, but overall he kept to himself.

After lunch, Glass offered a meditation session for an hour, which I did a couple of times. It was voluntary. You sat cross-legged on a mat in the big dining room and tried to think of nothing.

Which was impossible.

I’d think I was thinking of nothing, and then these thoughts would like attack my brain. About Angelo, and whether there was any hope for us. About Jackson, and how he was stepping out on Kim and she didn’t know it. About Doctor Z, and how I kind of missed her.

Hutch fell asleep once and snored. I gave him a nudge to wake him up, and Courtney and her friends laughed. “Shut up,” I said.

And they did.

In the afternoon, we were free to swim, go in the sauna or explore the landscape. We were supposed to be thinking over the philosophical readings and connecting to the natural world. But mainly we checked each other out in our bathing suits or walked through the woods, talking about TV shows and fashion and stuff.

There turned out to be one other house on the island, I guess belonging to the owners, and it was a pretty big hike up a hill to get to it. Once you got there, though, they had three llamas in a big pen.

Llamas!

Varsha, Spencer and Nora, who were with me when I discovered them, were nervous. But I had dealt with Laverne and Shirley at the zoo, so I went right up and patted the white one on the neck. He nosed my fingers, hoping for treats.