E. Lockhart - The Boyfriend List

Shiv is popular. I knew I’d never get him alone in the refectory or on the quad. He’s always surrounded by the adoring Ariel or a bunch of loud rugby players. But he’s also on the Sophomore Committee, which is Tate’s round-table way of having a class president/vice president/treasurer, etc.—and that meant he stayed late on Wednesdays.

I skipped lacrosse practice and waited after school until his meeting was over, reading a book outside the classroom door. My hands were soaked with sweat, I was so nervous, but I took deep breaths and didn’t have a panic attack. He came out. I stood. “Hey, Shiv, do you have a minute?”

“I guess,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Well, you probably know Jackson dumped me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, um, I—can we go somewhere?” Two brainy-looking committee members were standing right next to us in the hall.

“Okay.” Shiv shrugged as if he didn’t care what we did.

“I don’t mean go somewhere go somewhere,” I said, remembering that he surely thought I was a slut, and after all, last time the two of us had been alone we’d been all over each other. “I mean, outside on the steps.”

“I got it.” He looked at me like I was an idiot. We went outside and sat down.

I looked at my shoes. They were scuffed.

I fiddled with my fingernails, and chewed on one of them a bit.

I got out my pencil, and tapped it on my knee.

“Roo,” said Shiv. “I don’t have all day.”

“Okay. Do you remember you once asked me to be your girlfriend?”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

“But then, somehow, it never happened?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I, well—I wondered why you changed your mind. I’m not mad or anything. Only, I’m trying to figure stuff out, since the Jackson thing, and I know it wasn’t a big deal, and maybe you don’t want to explain, but I’ve been thinking about it, I guess, and …” Blah blah blah. I went on for some ridiculous amount of time, sounding completely lame and saying “like” just about every other word.

Eventually, finally, I got it all said and shut up so he could answer.

“Roo, you were laughing at me,” Shiv said, looking down at his own shoes now. “I heard you on the quad.”

“What?”

“I heard you, with Cricket and Kim and those guys, cracking up over what a jerk you thought I was.”

“That’s not true!”

“I was there.”

“I didn’t.”

“You yelled ‘Gross!’” he said. “I know I’m not wrong. And you were laughing all over the place, like I was some big joke.”

“Ag!” I said. “That’s not how it happened.”

“And something about I smelled like nutmeg? Like you were disgusted by kissing an Indian or something.” His voice was bitter. “I wasn’t going to go out with you after that. I didn’t even want to look at you for months.”

“Nutmeg is good, Shiv,” I said. “Nutmeg smells good.”

“You made me feel like a loser, Roo,” he said. “Like a complete outsider.”

Shiv, the golden, the popular, the perfect. Saying this to me.

“I didn’t say what you thought I said,” I whispered. “At least, I didn’t mean what you thought I meant.”

“Okay, then,” he said.

“I liked you. They were asking me what it was like to kiss you. That’s all. It’s how girls are, together. No one said anything bad.”

“All right.”

“The gross thing was about ear licking. Cricket asked if we did ear licking, and I’d never heard of it before.”

He laughed a little. “I guess that’s nice to know.”

“All this time I thought it was something wrong with me that made you stop talking to me,” I said.

“It was,” he pointed out.

“I mean with my kissing, or my body, or my personality.”

“It was your personality.”

“Oh.” I tried to crack a smile. “But it was a mistake. Please believe me. I would never say that stuff about you.” 2

“Yeah, okay.”

“The Indian thing is not a thing. I mean …”

“I got it, Roo.”

“I’m all messed up now.”

“Yeah, well. I’m all messed up too,” he said. “But thanks for the explanation.”

He hiked his bag over his shoulder and walked down to the parking lot without offering me a ride.

1 I swear, I am the only person at Tate who doesn’t have a cell phone. Even the fifth graders have them.2 When I think about it, this is both true and not true. I have talked a lot of trash about people. Meghan. Hutch. Katarina. I really have. But throughout this whole horror, I never said one mean thing about Kim, Cricket or Nora to anyone, even when all that stuff was up on the bathroom wall.

So am I a bad person or a good person?

13. Jackson (Yes, okay, he was my boyfriend. Don’t ask me any more about it.)

By now, you know everything about Jackson Clarke, probably way more than anyone on earth wants to hear. This is all I have to add:

I still think about him every day.

When I see him, my heart jumps up in my chest.

I long for him to talk to me, and whenever he even says hello, I feel a thousand times worse than I did before.

I wish he was dead.

I wish he still liked me.

When I got home from talking to Shiv, Hutch was on my deck. Again. Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, he helps my dad greenhouse the southern deck. Especially now that the weather’s good, the two of them are always huddled together over a peony bush or a broken window-pane, the boom box blasting cassette tapes of Hutch’s retro metal.

The sunlight was starting to fade; it was maybe six o’clock. “Hey, Hutch. Hey, Dad,” I called, waving as I came down the dock. The two of them were staring up at the greenhouse, which I had to admit was coming together. “You guys taking a break?”

My dad had taken to hiding Popsicles in the way-back of the freezer, so that he and I could get enough calories in the macrobiotic nightmare of our life. I popped inside and got one for me, one for my dad and one for Hutch, too (my mother was out, needless to say). Then the three of us sat on the edge of the deck, leaning forward so the Popsicles didn’t melt on our clothes, watching the boats sail across the lake.

I actually felt happy for the first time since Jackson broke up with me.

Now don’t go getting excited that I’ll suddenly notice Hutch in the soft pink light of the sunset and fall in love. He’s not the love of my life, and no, we haven’t been destined to get together ever since those gummy bears back in fourth grade, just because that’s what happens in movies. 1And don’t go thinking he and I become best friends in a Breakfast Club sort of way, either, 2with me realizing he’s got a heart of gold under the Iron Maiden motorcycle jacket, and him realizing that I’m not the slut everyone thinks I am. Yes, that happens onscreen. But forget it. This is real life. He creeps me out. We have nothing in common besides leprosy.

“Roo, good to see you looking cheerful,” said my dad. “Isn’t it nice to see her cheerful, John? It’s been taking her a while to process her feelings about the breakup with Jackson. He was her first serious boyfriend, you know.”

“You’re better off without that guy,” said Hutch, his mouth full of Popsicle.

“You think so?” I said. “I don’t.”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Huh?”

“Not a nice guy, Roo. He’s mean inside.”

“Why do you say that?”

Then Hutch told this story. I’m not sure why he told it, except that he and my dad had been doing some heavy manly rocker bonding. Or maybe he felt sorry for me, even though I was such a bitch to him most of the time. Hutch said that he and Jackson had been friends in sixth grade—the year when, at Tate, you start moving from room to room for each class instead of staying all day in one place with one teacher. Jackson was a year ahead, but they had gym together, and French, and the same free periods—so they started hanging out. As a sixth grader, Hutch was friends with all the cool seventh-grade boys: Kyle, Matt, Jackson and a few others. They played kick-ball after school. They had their own table in the refectory. They made a lot of noise in the hallways. Jackson and Hutch were friends in particular: Hutch used to ride his bike over to Jackson’s house on weekends, and Jackson stayed at Hutch’s when his parents had to go to Tokyo on business one week. When the two of them were bored in class, they’d write funny rhymes about the teachers and stick them in each other’s mail cubbies. Mean Madame Long,