Real Live Boyfriends

by e. lockhart

RUBY OLIVER NOVELS

The Boyfriend List

The Boy Book

The Treasure Map of Boys

Real Live Boyfriends

Fly on the Wall

Dramarama

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-

Banks

How to Be Bad
(with Sarah Mlynowski and
Lauren Myracle)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2010 by E. Lockhart

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/teens Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lockhart, E.

Real live boyfriends : yes, boyfriends, plural. if my life weren’t complicated I wouldn’t be Ruby Oliver / E. Lockhart. –1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Now a senior at her Seattle prep school, Ruby continues her angst-filled days coping with the dilemmas of boyfriends, college applications, her parents’ squabbling, and realizing that her

“deranged” persona may no longer apply.

eISBN: 978-0-375-89758-0

[1. Self-perception–Fiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)–Fiction.

3. Interpersonal relations–Fiction. 4. High schools–Fiction.

5. Schools–Fiction. 6. Seattle (Wash.)–Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L79757Re 2010

[Fic]–dc22

2009041988

Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v3.1

For Daniel

contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Real Live Boyfriends!

The Insanity of My Parents! And Romance!

Panic Attacks and Rabbit Fever!

The

Revelation About Gay Chinese

Penguins!

Agony and Love Poems!

Distraction Caused by a Bare Chest!

Humiliation at Snappy Dragon!

Surprise Kissing!

The Waketastic Adventure!

An Agonizing Public Scene! With Violence!

The Wenchery of Cricket and Kim!

Secrets of the Panda Bear!

The Mysterious Disappearance of Kevin!

Shocking Disclosure in the Zoological
Gardens!

Emotional Breakdown in the Parking Lot!

A Nighttime Escapade!

A Final List!

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Real Live Boyfriends!

a definition:

A real live boyfriend does not contribute to your angst.

You do not wonder if he will call.

You do not wonder whether he will kiss you.

And he does not look at his phone while you are talking, to see if anyone has texted him.

Of course he calls. He’s your boyfriend!

Of course there will be kissing. He’s your boyfriend!

And of course he listens. He’s your real live boyfriend!

You can sit down next to him at lunch whenever you want. There’s no need for mental gyrations such as: Will he want me there when he’s hanging with his friends? Or will he half ignore me in order to seem golden in front of them?

Of course you can sit with him. He’s your boyfriend!

You can assume you’ll see him on the weekend.

You can call him just to chat. You can expect he’ll be nice to your friends.

Contrary to some rumors, however, you don’t have to be in love. You don’t have to engage in any horizontal action beyond what you’re in the mood for.

You don’t even need to stay together after high school. But you have to like him and he has to like you

—and everyone has to know you’re together.

He’s your real live boyfriend!

The Insanity of My Parents! And

Romance!

from seventh grade to ninth, I had a real live boyfriend named Tommy Hazard.

Tommy was perfect. He had clear skin, he was never obnoxious in class, and he was excellent at sports. He had beautiful strong shoulders and a secret mysterious smile. Tall but not too tall. Great teeth. Smoldering eyes.

In fact, he was superhot and could have any girl he wanted. And the best thing was—he went weak whenever he saw me.

He was also imaginary.

I told my best friend, Kim, all about him. He changed according to my mood. Sometimes he was a surfer boy in board shorts and a bead choker, tossing the water out of his hair as he smiled down at me. Sometimes he was a skate punk. Other times a mod guy in a narrow tie who took beautiful black-and-white photographs.

Then I started going out with Jackson Clarke, sophomore year, and Tommy Hazard disappeared—I guess because I finally had a real live boyfriend with a real live heart pumping in his chest.

Only—then it turned out he didn’t.

Have a heart.

And he didn’t want to be my real live boyfriend anymore—

He wanted to be Kim’s.

Flash to end of junior year.

When I wrote the above definition of a real live boyfriend, it was fourteen months since Kim and Jackson got together and shattered my heart, plunging me into an abyss of bad mental health. I wrote it sitting in the B&O Espresso, where Meghan and I were supposed to be studying for finals. We were hopped up on dobosh torte and coffee drinks, and I couldn’t think any more about chemistry formulas.

I flipped to a new page in my notebook and wrote something else, just to give myself a break.

Meghan crinkled her sexy little freckled nose when she read it. “What do you mean, real live boyfriend?”

“Exactly what I wrote.”

“But—” Meghan looked perplexed.

“What?”

“Isn’t this just what a boyfriend
is
?” she asked. “Any boyfriend?”

Just to be clear, Meghan has had a pretty much continuous cycle of serious boyfriends since seventh grade. Me, I had been in the state of
Noboyfriend
since April of sophomore year, when the Kim/Jackson debacle made me pretty much dysfunctional.