Real Live Boyfriends (20 page)

themselves.

Finn: “Love is when you give someone else the power to destroy you, and you trust them not to do it.” Mom, rudely: “That’s what friendship is, Ruby. It’s apologizing when you know you should.” Nora: “Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it.”

And Noel, saying: “I want
your
updates. I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.” Even the boring ones, he’d said. Even the mental ones.

Plus that clip of us together when I first got my camera. Laughing. Flirting. Him kissing my neck.

I watched them over and over.

I was so happy back then.

And so was Noel.

I never thought he was the kind to shut down the way he did.

I mean, except about his asthma.

And when he was jealous of Jackson.

What I really mean is, I thought he wouldn’t shut down
with me
.

Once we were together.

Because I was different.

Someone I had loved—someone I still loved—had gone through something awful. He was shattered. He needed people around. And maybe there was some way I could help.

I wanted to wrap my arms around him and listen to anything he had to say.

I—

I spent three hours editing the video of the two of us to try to show him how I felt. Maybe if he saw us together, I thought, maybe he’d remember. Maybe he’d feel something for me again.

Then I watched what I’d made and thought: If a guy I didn’t like anymore gave this to me, it would make me feel completely creeped out.

I shut down iMovie.

Then I spent another hour writing Noel a long e-mail.
I ran into Claude at the zoo, and he told me
about Booth and the accident, and if there’s anything
I can do to help, if you need an ear, blah blah blah
.

When I read it over, though, the note seemed creepy too.

If he wanted to talk to me, he would simply talk. It was useless begging him to confide in me when he hadn’t even done so when we were together.

I deleted the e-mail.

Then I thought: I should make him brownies or some other deliciousness and give it to him with a very short note that says I’m sorry about Booth. That’s what I would do for Nora or Meghan.

I pulled out all the cookbooks and scoured them for a recipe I could make with whatever was in the house

—since at this point it was after midnight and my parents had long since gone to bed.

Sugar cookies: no.

Maybe butter lemon?

Cocoa?

What was delicious enough?

What did Noel even like?

I couldn’t remember.

Did I even deserve to have him back if I couldn’t remember what sweets he liked?

This line of thinking was psychotic. I put the books away. It was two in the morning, and as I ate the last of Dad’s stash of spearmint jelly candies, I finally had an idea.

It wouldn’t solve anything, but at least it was a start.

I called Gideon’s cell phone. He picked it up before I called Gideon’s cell phone. He picked it up before it went to voice mail and said sleepily: “Ruby? It’s two a.m. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “But I can’t go out with you anymore.”

1
A turducken is a boned chicken stuffed
into a boned duck stuffed into a partly
boned turkey, all layered in with stuffing
and—well, it’s a triple-crown meat
extravaganza, that’s all you need to know
.

2
Movies where the safe responsible guy
is revealed as a jerk—thus freeing the
heroine to leave him for someone more
exciting:
Desperately Seeking Susan; The

Wedding Singer; The Holiday; Legally

Blonde; Sliding Doors; French Kiss; Bring

It On; Working Girl; Sex, Lies, and

Videotape; George of the Jungle
.

3
Movies where a brooding, even sulky guy
seems like a good idea for a quality
boyfriend:
Twilight, 10 Things I Hate About

You, Edward Scissorhands, Pump Up the

Volume, Heathers
(until the end)
,
The

Breakfast Club, The Bourne Identity,

Grosse Pointe Blank, Angel Eyes, Jane

Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the

Beast, Reality Bites, Donnie Darko,

Wuthering Heights, Good Will Hunting, The

Piano, Rebecca, Rebel Without a Cause
.

4
Like me, not knowing about Noel’s
witnessing that car accident. Not knowing
Booth had died, at all
.

5
Because he’s busy brooding
.

Emotional Breakdown in the Parking

Lot!

Peer Questionnaire

Please fill out this form by November 22 for the

peer or peers who have requested your help with

their college admissions process
.

Reminder: Please take your responsibilities as

a peer commenter seriously. A helpful response

can assist someone in finding the right college!

What are your peer’s strengths?

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She gets so stoked about
things. A camera. A film she’s seen. An idea in
her lit class. She waves her hands and jumps
and talks, and no matter how you’re feeling, you
can’t help but get excited about it too—whatever
it is
.

Also, she’s amazing with animals
.

Also, she is the wittiest person I know
.

Also, she cares. About doing a good job.

About how people feel
.

What are your peer’s weaknesses?

Self-loathing
.

In what career do you imagine your peer

excelling?

Ruby could run a bake shop. Ruby could be a
zoologist. Ruby could be a swim coach or a
charity fund-raiser or a cinema historian or a
controversial feminist. But she wants to be a
filmmaker
.

And what Ruby wants, she usually gets
.

I think that’s what she’ll be
.

What does your peer do in his or her free time?

She makes films. She makes doughnuts
.

She makes people laugh
.

She looks after pygmy goats and potbellied
pigs
.

She makes the world seem shiny and sunlit
.

My family survived Thanksgiving by inviting Meghan and Dr. Flack over to eat with us. It’s just the two of them in that big house, and I think usually they go visit a relative, but this year they were going to be home.

Meghan said they were planning to eat at a restaurant,

which

sounded

sad

to

me

on

Thanksgiving, so I invited them.

Before dinner, we watched
Hannah and Her
Sisters
, because that’s the perfect Thanksgiving movie, in my opinion, and Meghan had never seen it.

Dr. Flack let Dad pontificate about bonsai plants and winter blooms as he showed her through the greenhouse. My mother made the turducken, and I made a thing with butternut squash and like six pounds of cheese that I read about in a cookbook, and also a thing with green beans and almonds, so there were actual good-tasting vegetable dishes.

Dad made apple pie and wept about Grandma Suzette and pies she’d made throughout his childhood, but otherwise he kept it together. I ate a

small slice of the turducken to make Mom happy.

Hanson drank from a flask and slurred his words before we even got to the dessert—but we all just breathed deeply and tried to be nice to him.

There was nothing else to do, really.

Dad had a long talk with him before he left on Saturday, telling Hanson that the drinking was a serious problem and he needed to get treatment.

Hanson probably wouldn’t go, Dad said.

He hadn’t gone the other times they’d talked.

Sometimes, you just can’t help people. You can only offer to help.

Or say you’re there if they want it.

And you do that. You offer, even if it seems hopeless. Because you can’t give up and do nothing.

Think how you would feel if you didn’t try.

Gideon and I talked again over the holiday weekend. I called him, and when he picked up, his voice was flat. He basically grunted at me while I uttered the following inane remarks:

1. “I’m really sorry.”

2. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

3. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

4. “I’m just going through a complicated time in my life.”

5. “Maybe if things were different, it would have worked out between us.”

6. “I hope we can still be friends.”

7. “You’ll make some other girl really, really happy.” I felt like a complete Neanderthal. Because even though Gideon and I hadn’t been going out very long, I knew he deserved better. These were stupid clichés

that had been said a hundred thousand times to a hundred thousand people being dumped, and they were completely meaningless.

I just didn’t know what else to say.

I
didn’t
want to hurt him.

It
wasn’t
him. It
was
me.

And I did hope we’d be friends.

Though I could tell from the hard sound of his

“goodbye” that we probably wouldn’t be.

When I got back to school on Monday and showed up at CAP Workshop, Dittmar handed back our application packets with comments and suggestions for colleges we might like. As I flipped through my papers, reading his notes in red pen, I came across my peer questionnaire.

She cares
, Noel had written.
About doing a good
job. About how people feel … She makes the world
seem shiny and sunlit
.

He wrote those things after we broke up.

Dittmar gave us the questionnaire the same day Noel and I had made that awful scene in workshop.

Noel had handed it in recently. The date said November 20.

He had written that I was witty.

That he thought I’d be a filmmaker.

That I made him feel excited and interested in the world.

As the class filed out of Dittmar’s office, I tapped Noel on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Same old, same old.”

“I. Um. I heard about Booth and the accident,” I said. “I ran into Claude at the zoo.”

Noel shrugged as he headed down the stairs.

“Yeah, well. That was a long time ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It just happened, okay?” said Noel. “It was an accident. It was awful for my brother, but you know, I moved on. I didn’t let it bother me.”

“How can you say that?” I said, following him as he headed out of the math building and toward whatever class he had next. “You were behind him on your bike, weren’t you?”