E. Lockhart - The Boyfriend List

“Talking to a boy who liked you made you anxious?”

“Doesn’t it make everyone anxious?” I asked. “Isn’t that a universal sentiment? You know, sweaty palms, shallow breathing, the symptoms of love?”

“Maybe. But we’re talking about you. A person who has panic attacks.”

None of my friends had spoken to me since Spring Fling. I didn’t even know why.

Not exactly. Not really.

I mean, it was obviously about the whole Jackson debacle, but why Cricket and Nora were on Kim’s side, I had no idea.

On the Tuesday after my first shrink appointment, someone finally had spoken to me, and that was worse than the silent treatment. I was in line for a pop and a sandwich that I could take out back to the bench by the library when Nora came up behind me.

I think she would have left if she had seen it was me, but her tray was on the counter and she had grabbed a bottle of juice before she realized I was standing there—so she was kind of stuck.

“Are you mad about something?” I asked her, when the silence was more than I could bear.

She looked at me and sighed. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“About that Xerox?” 5I asked.

“No. Give me some credit already.”

“Then enlighten me.”

Nora’s voice dripped with venom. “You can’t make out with someone else’s boyfriend, Roo,” she said. “That’s so against the rules.”

“What?”

“Rules for dating in a small school? You wrote them yourself.”

“We didn’t make out,” I said. “It was only a kiss.” (This, about the Jackson debacle. It’s a long story. For now, just know that there was ex-boyfriend kissing involved, and that Jackson was now attached to Kim, making him technically off-limits.)

“Same thing.” Nora shrugged. “He belongs to someone else.”

“It was Jackson,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“He’s my boyfriend more than he is Kim’s.”

“Not true.”

“We went out for six months.”

“Well, you’re not going out anymore.”

“He kissed me back.”

“You started it, Roo. People saw you.”

“But there are circumstances!” I cried. “Can’t you think how I must have felt?”

“I never thought you could betray one of us like that. It’s so wrong.” Nora flashed her lunch card and stepped out of the line, walking fast like she wanted to end the conversation.

I followed. “Don’t you even want to hear my side of it?”

“What side could you possibly have?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned away.

“So you’re dumping me as a friend? Without even talking about it?”

“I don’t even know what kind of friend you are, anymore,” she said, turning back.

I couldn’t believe she was saying this. After what Kim had done to me.

“Neither does Cricket,” Nora added.

“What?”

“You always talk about official and unofficial,” Nora went on. “And then you just forget about it when it stands in the way of something you want. It’s like you never even think about how there’s other people, and they have feelings.”

“What about Kim?” I was almost yelling. “What about my feelings?”

“Kim didn’t cross any lines. She kept to the rules, completely.”

“Says her.”

“She did.”

“How do you know?”

“She’d never do anything like what you did. Everyone saw you kissing him. It was humiliating for her, didn’t you think of that?”

“For her?” My throat was closing up and my vision was blurring. I felt like I was going to have another panic attack. “I have to go,” I said, and bolted out of the refectory into the fresh air, where I followed Doctor Z’s instructions and took deep, calming breaths and tried to think relaxing thoughts, even though I felt like I was going to die, right there, leaning against the rough brick of the building.

That afternoon’s appointment with Doctor Z helped a bit, actually. I told her the Hutch story, and a little about how nobody would talk to me, and it suddenly hit me: I had become Hutch. Well, that makes it sound too dramatic (and also insane). But in the course of two weeks I had gone from reasonably popular to a bona fide leper—and when I talked, I might as well have been talking to myself, since nobody seemed to understand a thing I said.

The next day at school, I was determined to face the refectory again. I hadn’t eaten lunch there in more than a week, but even lepers need their calories and somehow learn to stand it, eating by themselves in dark corners with their books propped up in front of them, while everyone else is joking and laughing. I couldn’t keep eating on the bench behind the library forever.

At the salad bar, I took a long time making the same combo I always have for lunch. Lettuce, raisins, fried Chinese noodles, baby corn, cheese, black olives, ranch dressing. I fiddled around adding things here and there until I saw Cricket, Kim, Jackson and Nora all sitting down at our regular table.

Finn, who used to sit with us, was eating with a bunch of guys from the soccer team.

Hutch sat in a corner wearing an iPod and looking very interested in his hamburger.

There was a table full of boys right in front of me: Shiv (#11 on my list), Cabbie (#15), Matt (Jackson’s best friend), Kyle (another of Jackson’s friends), Pete (Cricket’s new boyfriend) and Josh (who was just obnoxious). I couldn’t bring myself to face them.

Katarina and her set would probably tolerate me—I mean, I didn’t think they’d push me off my chair or anything—but I knew that they’d all heard Kim’s side of things, and heard her call me a slut in Mr. Wallace’s class, and that I wouldn’t exactly be welcome at their table. Plus Heidi was there, and she’s Jackson’s old girlfriend, and the last thing I wanted to face was the weird new sisterly sympathy she had started affecting (like the same man hath done us both wrong and we should share our sob stories), when less than two weeks ago she’d been completely jealous and catty because I was the girlfriend of the boy she liked.

Beyond the sophomore/junior tables, over by the window, seniors.

I scanned the room for people I knew from the lacrosse team, but couldn’t see anyone. 6

I could feel Kim ignoring me through the back of her head. Jackson nudged her with his shoulder and she laughed. The inside of my chest felt cold and hollow.

I stood stupidly with my tray of raisin salad, staring at the two of them like I was looking at a train wreck in slow motion. I couldn’t move my eyes away. I felt like everyone at school could see my heart breaking, blood pouring out of my chest and sloshing down across my shoes and gushing under the tables.

And nobody cared, because they thought I deserved it.

Two weeks ag o, back when I had a life and friends and a boyfriend, I had ended up eating lunch with Meghan against my will. She blindsided me at the salad bar, looking unbearably cute in what must have been Bick’s crew T-shirt and a pair of old corduroys. 7“Ruby Oliver, are you deaf? I’ve been calling your name from our table for ages!”

Sticking out her lower lip in that pouty way she has that makes all the other girls love to hate her, 8Meghan had pointed to a table filled with seniors. 9Prime refectory real estate, right by the windows. Meghan is the only sophomore who eats there every day. Actually, she’s the only sophomore who ever eats there, partly because she has no friends in her own year, but mainly because she’s been Bick’s girlfriend since last summer.