E. Lockhart - The Boyfriend List

My dad won.

My mom went off to take an angry shower. Then they squashed the foam rubber taco suit into two black plastic garbage bags and wore the silly hats to the party.

I called Jackson, and he came over, and we made out. I was still wearing my kitty-cat suit.

1 Mae Yamamoto is a brain surgeon. She talks superfast, and she’s always doing six things at once. You go into Kim’s house and her mom is chopping vegetables, washing the cat in the sink, consulting on the results of someone’s biopsy over the phone, cleaning out the fridge, changing out of her work clothes and yelling at Kim for overusing the credit card, all at the same time. You have to see it to believe it.2 Freddy Krueger is the insane serial killer from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies with knives on the ends of his fingers and a horrible, red-scarred face. He murders people by haunting their dreams, so no one is safe if they fall asleep.3 So Finn was probably on scholarship too. I had never realized that. Even though he worked at the B&O, it never really occurred to me that he had to.

7. Chase (but it was all in his mind.)

The story of Chase Williams is important because it’s a story about presents. That’s what I figured out, when I talked about him with Doctor Z.

I don’t see why boys can’t give presents like normal people. 1Kim got me this amazing red vintage jacket for my birthday last August. It fits just right. We all gave Nora a copy of Playgirl on Valentine’s Day, since she wasn’t going to have an actual valentine. 2And last Christmas I got my mother a book by a performance artist called Spalding Gray, which she read in less than a week. And Nora made me cupcakes the day after I won a 100-meter freestyle race (I usually place second or third—or I flat-out lose) and there were five of them, each with a squiggly letter in blue frosting: C-H-A-M-P.

These are good presents. Thoughtful. Some for special occasions, some just because. Normal, problem-free, everybody’s happy.

But bring a boy into the picture, and the whole thing goes weird. Jackson and I had present-giving trouble, that’s for sure.

After Hutch’s gummy bears, the first present I ever got from a boy was an extremely pretty bead necklace from a boy named Chase Williams, who has since transferred to a different school.

He was an awkward boy. Downy black hair sprouted across his upper lip. His neck was short. Starting in seventh, everyone at Tate has to do a sport, and Chase and I were both swimmers, so I saw him several days a week at practice. But I didn’t really know him. A completely typical conversation between us:

Him: “You doing freestyle?”

Me: “Uh-huh.”

Him: “Me too.”

Me: “Hundred or two hundred?”

Him: “Two.”

Me: “Sounds good.”

Him: “Yeah.”

Me: “Well, I gotta get changed.”

Him: “Okay. Later.”

Chase mainly hung around with this other swimming guy, Josh, who was big and redheaded and laughed so loud you could hear him all the way inside the girls’ locker room.

It was early December, almost time for the middle school Christmas dance. 3One day, about an hour after practice, my phone rang. Josh. 4

“What’s up?” I asked. I couldn’t think why he was calling me. 5

“Chase wants to ask you something,” he said.

I was thoroughly confused. “What?”

“Chase! Get on the phone!” Josh started giggling. I wanted to hang up, but that seemed rude, and no boy had ever called me on the phone before either, so I was kind of curious. 6“Aw, he’s gone in the other room. Hold on!” Josh put the phone down.

I sat there. This was so dumb. But I couldn’t hang up, or I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what Chase had to say. 7

“Ruby, are you there?” Josh’s voice sounded breathless.

“Yeah.”

“He wants to know—ow, Chase, that hurt!—he wants to know, do you want to go to the Christmas dance?”

“With him?” I so didn’t. Chase was repulsive to me. I couldn’t quite say why. But if I thought about slow-dancing with him, a creepy feeling went up my spine.

“She can tell me tomorrow!” yelled Chase in the background.

“Did you hear that?” asked Josh.

“She doesn’t have to say right now!”

“Did you hear?”

“Yeah,” I said. “All right. I’ll think about it.”

“She’s thinking about it,” Josh told Chase.

The next day, Josh came up to me as Kim and I were eating lunch. “This is from Chase,” he said, pulling a bead necklace out of his pocket and scooting it toward me across the table. “For you.”

The necklace was really pretty—but looking at it almost made me sick. I didn’t want it. Taking it would feel like a promise. Like telling Chase there was a thing between us.

I didn’t want a thing.

And why was Josh doing all the talking for him? 8

I looked around the refectory, but I couldn’t see Chase anywhere. “How come he’s giving me this?” I asked.

Kim rolled her eyes. “Duh. He likes you.”

“Yeah,” said Josh. “I told you, he wants to know if you’ll go to the dance with him.”

Was the necklace supposed to convince me? Like, Oh, I didn’t like him before, but now that there’s jewelry involved, I want to go?

“You could just go as a friend if you want,” said Josh. 9“You could still have the necklace.” 10

If I took the necklace, only horror could result. For instance, I’d have this necklace, and this Christmas dance date—both without even talking to Chase himself. Next time I saw him, I’d have to go up and say thank you, and tell him whether we were going as “just friends” or as—what? What would you even say? As “regular”? As “boyfriend and girlfriend”? There wasn’t even a normal way to say it! And then I’d have to wear the necklace, and people would know about it, and it would be like we were going out, which might be nice since I’d never had a boyfriend—except that he grossed me out.

The whole situation made me feel like I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs.

“I can’t go to the dance,” I said. “My family’s going out of town.” (Completely untrue.)

“Oh. Okay. Wait one sec.” Josh jumped up and ran out of the refectory for a minute, presumably to confer with Chase outside. Then he came back. “You can still have the necklace,” he said. “If you want to go to McDonald’s with him on Friday.”

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“You could order fries.”

I didn’t know what to do. If I said I was busy Friday, it seemed like he’d come up with some other day, or try to get me to keep the necklace anyhow. “I’m not allowed to go out with boys,” I said. “Or take presents from them, or anything. My mom says.” (Again, completely untrue.)

“Really?” Josh looked skeptical.

“She’s completely not allowed,” Kim cut in. “Her mom is psycho.”

“You wouldn’t have to tell,” Josh said.

“Oh, she’d find out for sure,” I lied. “She finds out everything.”

For weeks after that, I ducked into doorways and behind bushes to avoid Chase. At swimming, I looked down at the ground and pretty much tried to be invisible. I felt like a jerk for lying, and I knew he probably knew it was a lie, and the whole thing was a horror.

He didn’t let me off the hook, either, by finding a new girl to go to the Christmas dance with. He went alone, and I went with Kim and Nora, and he asked me to slow-dance, even after everything that happened.