The Book - E Lockhart

That was it.

But I did get my driver’s license, and neither of my parents needed the car on Tuesday afternoon, so after the Doctor Z appointment I swung into the mall next door, jumped out to buy a blackberry smoothie from the frozen yogurt stand, got back in the Honda, and drove to an interview I had for a part-time job.

Not a lot of kids at Tate Prep have to work after school. They don’t need the money. Finn Murphy, Kim’s stud-muffin ex-boyfriend, mans the counter at the B&O Espresso—this great coffee bar with amazing cakes and batik prints on all the tablecloths—but he’s the only other person I know of on scholarship.

Me, I needed to work. And no way was I babysitting anymore. That kid was like a vomit machine.

The Woodland Park Zoo, where I had the interview, is extremely pretty. They keep the animals in these nice naturalistic enclosures. And they have an internship program where you get paid a little honorarium and you muck out stalls or take school groups around, and learn about zookeeping.

I parked and found the administration building. A woman named Anya, who was wearing an ugly brown zoo uniform, took me into her office and sat me down on a hard folding chair. “Tell me about your work experience, Ruby.”

“Babysitting is pretty much it,” I said. “This would be my first real job.”

“And what makes you want to join our team here at the zoo?”

Doctor Z had made a big pitch for my finding some alternative thing to spin my brain around on. I mean, I swim in fall and play lacrosse in spring, and I read mystery novels and watch way too many movies, but I didn’t really have any interests that occupied my mental energies, as she put it, and with school starting I would now be forced to spend all day every day at the exact place where all the badness happened last year, a place that was still filled with psychological weirdness and horror—which then made me seriously in danger of spending all my free time fixating on stuff Jackson once said to me, or imagining him fooling around with Kim, or obsessing on what happened and what I could have done to make stuff turn out differently—or at least how I might have retained some smidgen of dignity. And when my mind goes round and round like that, I start to feel panicky.

So Doctor Z wanted me to have a distraction. At first she said I should consider a hobby, something creative, but when I said knitting and stuff like that makes me gag, she said she meant something that would occupy my thoughts.

“I’m interested in animals,” I said to Anya. “In how they behave. I read this book, The Hidden Life of Dogs, about the social dynamics of all these dogs that live in this one house. One was the alpha dog, and he bossed the others around, but when he wasn’t there the whole dynamic changed.”

“Oh?”

“And I read how there were these gay penguins at a zoo in Berlin. A number of them, actually. And one of the penguin couples adopted a rock, instead of an egg, and they’d sit on it to keep it warm.”

“Yes, I read about that,” said Anya, and I wondered if she thought I was a complete idiot. I mean, I really was interested in this stuff, but a list of goofy factoids wasn’t about to qualify me to muck out a goat pen or answer tour group questions on the food chain.

“Did you read about the polar bear that got depressed?” I babbled on. “I think it was in New York City. His name was Gus, and he was so miserable all alone in his cage that he started OCD-ing and he would swim back and forth for hours at a time, as if he couldn’t stop.”

She didn’t say anything.

“They helped him out by giving him toys and putting his food in hard-to-reach places, so he had to like rip open this plastic jar to get the fish inside. And they gave him peanut butter, too—he’d lick it off whatever it was. So he had stuff to keep him entertained, and he stopped OCD-ing.”

“Yes, we have toys for our polar bears here, as well,” said Anya.

“But it makes me think,” I said—because once I’m on a roll I don’t stop; I’m like my mom that way—“It makes me think that zoos are problematic. I mean, I know they’re important for education, and they get people to care about the animals in the first place so students will want to study them and so people can do stuff to prevent extinction. But if the animals are getting depressed, and they always seem to be having trouble mating in captivity, then there’s got to be something horrible about zoos, as well. I mean, I’d be a madman if I was locked up somewhere with a bunch of polar bears staring at me all day.”

Damn. Damn. Damn. Why did I have to say all that? Anya was going to think I was a complete antizoo loon, trying to get a job there so I could secretly unlock the cages and let the polar bears out to eat Seattle.

She looked down at the application I’d filled out and pursed her lips. “You’re a junior at Tate Prep?” she asked.

“Yes,” I answered, though there didn’t seem to be much point anymore.

“That’s a good school. Tell me about your studies.”

I rambled on about my American History & Politics class from last year, and how I was actually cranked to take Am Lit now, and tried to sound semi-intelligent for ten minutes. Then we said goodbye.

When I got home, there was a message from Anya on the answering machine saying I had the internship, if I wanted it, and I could work every Saturday from noon until six, and Fridays after school.

She said she thought I had a real sympathy for animals, and that was what they were looking for.

To celebrate, my parents took me out for ice cream. My dad kept calling me Zookeeper Roo. Then I spent the evening reading over The Hidden Life of Dogs.

By the time I turned my light out, I hadn’t thought about Jackson for nearly four hours.

Your Business Is Our Business: A Pledge

We are your friends and everything is our business!

Just kidding.

Of course you have a right to privacy.

But in the pursuit of badly needed knowledge about the male of the species, we, the undersigned, do solemnly pledge to reveal in these pages any bit of relevant data on the subject at hand. That is, if you find out something about boys and you can benefit female-kind by explaining it, you will do so in this book.

Even if it is embarrassing.

For example, if you find out:

1. How to do the nether-regioning in a proper and sophisticated manner

2. Why some guys think it is cool to get drunk

3. Why they act different in front of their friends

4. What they say about us when we’re not there

5. What they do when we’re not there

6. Why they don’t want to dance at a dance (Hello? It’s a dance.)

7. Why they don’t call when they say they will

8. Why they don’t shave when they have wispy mustaches that are obviously ugly

9. Why they don’t want to talk about feelings, or

10. Why they chew with their mouths open

We need to know! And you must report back.

We pledge to reveal all relevant information.

Signed, in solidarity,

Kanga, Roo, Cricket and Nora

—written by all of us. Approximate date: October of sophomore year.

the morning after I got the zoo job, an e-mail from Noel showed up in my inbox. Send time 12:34 a.m.: