E. Lockhart - The Boyfriend List

I know I got the answers wrong.

You can sit me on the bench,

You can call me “stupid wench,”

You can raise a giant stench,

But I can’t remember French.

That kind of thing. That’s the one he recited for us. Anyway, summer came, and Hutch went off traveling for most of it with his family, and when he got back in seventh (when Jackson was in eighth), he found himself frozen out. “I got zits over the summer,” he said to me and my dad, staring down at his Popsicle stick. “I looked like hell, and I was still completely short. And they’d all been to sports camp together while I’d been away.

“First week of school, I trailed after them, sitting on one end of our table, not much part of the talk. Still showing up for kickball. Something seemed off, but I couldn’t tell what. These guys were my friends, you know?

“Then one day, I wrote a rhyme about Mr. Krell—remember, the middle-school gym teacher? And I stuck it in Jackson’s cubby like we did the year before.” 3

“Oh man,” said my dad. “I can see it coming. Children can be so cruel.”

“I got my same note back with something scrawled across the top in Jackson’s writing,” Hutch went on. “‘Joke’s long over. Loser.’” He stood up and tossed his Popsicle stick in the trash can.

“That’s all it said?” I asked.

“‘Joke’s long over. Loser.’”

“Wow.”

“He never talked to me again. Like we’d never been friends. Like we’d never even met. And when Kyle and those guys filled my locker with ball bearings in eighth, 4and they poured out all over the floor-Jackson didn’t say a word. Just stood there, changing his shirt like nothing was even happening.”

“Jackson would never do that,” I said.

“Well, he did. Who knows?” Hutch shrugged. “He might have put the bearings in himself.”

“No way.”

“I’m just telling you what happened.”

“He’s not like that anymore,” I said. “If he ever was.”

“Dream on,” said Hutch. And then, like he was singing: “Dream on!”

“Dream on!” 5squeaked my dad, in a stupid rock ‘n’ roll falsetto.

Hutch joined him, and they kept squealing “dream on” like stuck pigs until, simultaneously, they yelled, “Dream-a make-a dream come true!” 6They both sang, and stopped for a little air-guitar duet.

With this additional evidence of (1) Hutch’s creepy tendency to make references to antique heavy metal songs that no one else knows about and (2) my dad actually knowing them and liking it and (3) a complete lack of dignity on both their parts, the moment was over. No more sharing was going to happen. My dad hit Play on the old cassette deck, and the entire dock of houseboats was bombarded with retro metal.

Was Jackson truly the kind of guy who would fill someone’s locker with ball bearings? Or even just stand there, saying nothing, when his friends were humiliating someone? Had he really written “Joke’s long over. Loser” on that poem? It didn’t seem like the kind of thing Hutch could invent.

But it didn’t seem like the guy I knew, either.

Maybe Jackson had done those things but wasn’t that way anymore. We all grow up and regret the mean things we did in middle school.

Or maybe I never knew him that well in the first place.

I grabbed my bike, rode to the nearest store (ten blocks) and bought two large bunches of basil, a box of pasta, walnuts and a wedge of Parmesan cheese. Then I boiled noodles and made pesto sauce in our blender, before my mom got back to tell me it wasn’t macrobiotic.

The next morning, in the Jeep, I asked Meghan if she wanted to go to the movies. I felt like I was inviting her on a date. A Woody Allen festival was playing at the Variety.

“Can I bring Bick?” she asked, honking her horn at some idiot driving an SUV.

“No. I think it’s a girl thing.” I didn’t want to be a third wheel with Meghan and her boyfriend.

“We’re supposed to go over to Steve’s house and shoot pool on Saturday.”

“Oh.”

“But I don’t want to go. Those guys are always drinking beer and nobody talks to me,” she said. And then to the drive-thru window: “Two vanilla cappuccinos, grande.” And then to me: “It’s not that fun. I usually go out on the porch by myself, actually.”

“So blow him off.”

She didn’t say anything for a minute. We paid for the cappuccinos and she pulled out into traffic. “Yeah. Okay. I can see him Friday.”

“It’s a plan, then?”

“Uh-huh.”

We might be friends.

1 Movies where the apparently hopeless dorky guy who’s been there all along eventually gets the girl: The Wedding Singer. Dumb and Dumber. When Harry Met Sally. There’s Something About Mary. Beauty and the Beast. While You Were Sleeping. Revenge of the Nerds. Lots of Woody Allen movies.2 The Breakfast Club: Movie where popular kids and lepers all get detention together and learn to appreciate each other’s inner beauty and personal differences.3 A couple of days after this conversation, I asked Hutch what the Krell rhyme was, Mr. Krell being this enthusiastic blond man with pink cheeks who really was a most tempting subject for ridicule. Hutch still remembers it, so here it is:

Mister Krell, oh, how you smell!

I think it must be aftershave!

The smell gets stronger every day.

Our gym is sinking in a wave

Of Krell’s old smelly aftershave.

Mr. Krell, why don’t you wait,

And wear that stuff out on a date? 4 A locker full of heavy metal. Ha ha ha.5 Dream On: I asked my dad. It’s a song by Aerosmith, from way back when they didn’t have any wrinkles.6 That’s what it sounded like.

14. Noel (but it was just a rumor.)

My mom decided to go on tour with her one-woman show. 1The producer said she could still book it, even though the Seattle run had ended in October, so Elaine Oliver: Twist and Shout would be going around the country starting the end of next month (June). My dad was upset, but my mom said, “Kevin, I have to give the public what it wants. Besides, we can use the money to go on vacation in August.”

“You can’t leave Roo.”

“Oh, she’s a big girl.”

“She’s a teenage girl. She needs her mother around.”

“Dad, I’m standing right here.”

“Will you miss me, Roo?” asked my mom.

“She will!” cried my dad. “Even if she won’t admit it.”

“Not that much,” I said. “You should go.”

“She can come with me, Kevin. After finals.”

There was no way I was spending the summer watching Twist and Shout every night and living in hotel rooms. “It’ll be fun,” my mom went on. “I’m going to San Francisco in July.”

“Elaine.”

“Kevin.”

“Elaine.”

“What? It’ll be good for her. She’s never been anywhere except summer camp.”

“Didn’t we go over this before?” sighed my dad. “We decided you wouldn’t go on tour unless I could go with you, and Roo could stay with Grandma Suzette.” (Grandma Suzette, my father’s mother, lives nearby. But she was scheduled for foot surgery, so I couldn’t stay with her.)

“I changed my mind,” snapped my mom. “I refuse to stay here and watch you greenhouse every weekend when gay men all across the nation are clamoring to see my show. They even have Elaine Oliver T-shirts in San Francisco; some fans sent me a photograph.”