Real Live Boyfriends (4 page)

Doctor Z chewed her Nicorette thoughtfully. “I’m glad he makes you happy,” she finally said. “But I do have a concern about your flashlight metaphor.”

“How come?”

“Well,” she asked, “what happens if your flashlight goes out?”

1
No summer job: Most of the kids who go
to Tate Prep don’t need jobs because their
parents are loaded. I go there on
scholarship
.

2
Panic attacks: Episodes of heart
palpitations and the feeling that there’s
just not enough air in the universe to fill my
lungs
.

I sweat
.

I shake
.

It’s just complete badness and I feel like
I’m going to die every time it happens
.

3
P.S. About the panic attacks. If you get
these too, you should tell your doctor to
rule out any physical crap that might be
going on. Then if it’s only mental, the
doctor can send you to the shrink
.

4
Rabbit Fever: My name for the kind of
inadvertent sex mania I suffer from
.

Like, sometimes I think about people
undressed whom I would never, ever want
to see undressed in real life. I mean, if I
saw them undressed in real life I would
run screaming from the room, either
because they’re way old and inappropriate
(my swim coach, Mr. Wallace) or because
they’re deeply unattractive as human
beings (Neanderthal Darcy), or both (the
headmaster)
.

The Revelation About Gay Chinese

Penguins!

What to Do with Your Real Live Boyfriend in the
Dark: for those moments when you’re alone, you
want to make out or you don’t want to make out,
or you’ve just made out and now you don’t know
what to say, or the whole making-out thing is
going too fast—or not fast enough
.

(Instructions given by Meghan, Queen of Real
Live Boyfriends, and transcribed by Roo for
future use)

1.
Just wait. Don’t talk. Don’t leap out of the
car, the room, whatever. Don’t start kissing
him like a kissing maniac, either, just to fill
the time. Be there in the moment. See what
happens next
.

2.
Alternatively, attack him like a kissing
maniac. It is a fair bet that he will not think
this is a bad idea
.

3.
Put your hand on his leg. Just leave it
there. This will probably make
him
attack
you like a kissing maniac
.

4.
If his hand is going where you don’t want it
to go, just move it
.
This is perfectly good
manners in a horizontal situation. If you
have to move it more than twice, you can
interrupt whatever’s going on and say:

“Hello. I am moving your hand for a reason,
you big dodo,” or something of that nature
that is flirtatious and firm at the same time
.

5.
If you’re there in the dark together and it’s
more of a talking situation, don’t ask:

“What are you thinking?” For some reason,
most guys are moronically incapable of
answering this simple question. Instead,
say something like: “I’ve always wanted to
go to India.” Or “I want to bungee jump
someday.” And see what he says
.

In the dark is a good place to talk about
your dreams. Or his
.

6.
If you are getting to the upper or nether
regions, there will be buttons and zippers
and suchlike to negotiate. Do not just let
him fumble around with your bra clasp or
your shirt button for like six hours. He is
not enjoying it. He is feeling superawkward
that he cannot manage a simple button like
a normal person
.

Just undo them yourself, if you want
them undone. Trust me, the guy will be
seriously relieved
.

7.
Likewise, you can just ask him to deal with
his own buttons—so you don’t have to.

Really, everyone will be so much happier
.

8.
If it gets to the nether regions once
,
every

single time
after that, have protection in
your bag. Just in case. Even if you think
there’s no way it’s going to get
that far
.

Because it is way better to be all, “Oh, wait,
I have something in my bag for just this
situation,” than to end up pregnant or with
some nasty disease. Believe me, your real
live boyfriend will not think you are
suddenly a famous slut. He will be majorly
glad you came prepared and the whole
experience will be like a gazillion times
nicer if you are not feeling
worried and
guilty for being so lame as to be doing what
you’re doing without protection
.

9.
And remember: every single time. Every
single single time. Have it in your bag
.

—dictated by Meghan and written by me into
The

Girl Book
,
my sporadically updated journal
.

in the middle of the summer, before everything went bad with Noel, my grandma Suzette died. She was Dad’s mother, and she lived nearby in Bothell. She wasn’t that old—seventy-two—but she had this foot surgery a while ago that kept getting infected and somehow her blood got toxic and blah blah blah I don’t really understand it, but eventually it killed her.

She was a good grandma to me. Always had peppermints

in

her

bag

and

bought

me

monogrammed stationery. She liked to take me shopping at Laura Ashley until I got old enough to put my foot down about
that
business. When I was younger I used to sleep over at her place when my parents went away for the weekend, and we’d rent old movies together and make popcorn in the microwave.

It was Grandma Suzette who introduced me to movies like
The Piano
and
Crimes and Misdemeanors
. And before that, to musicals like
My Fair Lady
and comedies like
The Seven Year Itch
.

She loved her DVD player, Grandma Suzette.

Too much, probably. She didn’t get out a whole lot, and physically she was something of a mess.

Mom, Dad and I used to drive over there fairly often and take her out to this Italian restaurant where they had unlimited garlic bread. She would take any that was leftover home in a doggy bag.

Anyway, she died of this infection thing. I guess old people do that. Their systems are weak, so they get an infection when a young person wouldn’t, and the infection won’t heal, and their blood goes toxic or something and then they’re just dead.

We visited her in the hospital a few times before it happened, and my throat felt completely closed with tears that weren’t coming out because she looked so bony and gray, like her skin was made of crumpled tissue paper. I told her I loved her and brought her a metal box of peppermints and then it was really hard to know what to say—because she was so sick it just seemed wrong to tell her about my day, and we couldn’t make plans for the future because although we didn’t
know
she was going to die, it seemed pretty likely at that point, and generally it was just agony.

The last thing she said to me was “I’m going to take a nap now. Don’t drink my orange juice.” I didn’t drink her juice, but we had to go home before she woke up and thirty-six hours later she was dead.

“Don’t drink my orange juice.”

That was it.

It wasn’t a real goodbye.

It was so unfinished.

I hate it when things are unfinished. When you’re not sure what people meant. Why did she think I would drink her orange juice? I had never tried to drink her orange juice.

Or had I? Drunk some once, back when I was a little kid, and she was remembering that time?

There was going to be a funeral. My sick alcoholic uncle Hanson came up from Portland. He always makes my dad really tense, he’s such a messed-up guy, and he stayed in a hotel but we had to have him over for dinner. He brought his own bottle of whisky and drank the whole thing right in the middle the meal like it was normal. But his mother had just died and it wasn’t exactly the time for an intervention, plus Dad has already talked to him about his drinking like a million times and Hanson never listened. All in all it was a pretty shattering weekend.

The funeral was at this place in Bothel near Grandma Suzette’s condo, and it was surprising how much Bible stuff was in the speeches people gave, given that we’re Christian but we don’t go to church. I was wearing a black dress and a dark blue cotton sweater and sitting in the front row with my parents, but I knew Noel and Meghan and our friend Hutch were in the back because I rode with them to the funeral parlor in Meghan’s Jeep.

I cried at the funeral because people were giving these speeches where they stood up and talked about Grandma. And her friends stood up, these old ladies, and spoke about how much they had loved her and whatever. It was just really sad.

After it was over we all had to drive to the cemetery and I was in the bathroom trying to get my face to stop shining after the tears, putting powder on my nose, when Meghan called in, “They’re making me move my car. Can you get a ride with your parents?” I said yes, but then when I left the bathroom I couldn’t see my parents anywhere. The area in front of the funeral parlor was a sea of people dressed in black, old women with dyed hair putting their hands on each other’s arms, cousins of my dad’s looking faded and balding, a few little girls running underfoot wearing white tights on chubby legs. I ran outside and looked for our Honda. It was gone.

I didn’t want to get into a car with Hanson so I stood up on the porch and surveyed my options. Who else could give me a ride?

There was Nora Van Deusen. Standing by a hedge and not talking to anyone. There with her hands at her sides, staring into space awkwardly.

Nora.

Nora had come to my grandma’s funeral.

She saw me just as I saw her, and loped over. Nora is five eleven and has tremendous hooters. She was poured somewhat awkwardly into a navy dress that she probably got for church a year ago. It no longer really fit. She was holding a bouquet of white roses.

“Hi,” she said when she got to me.

“Hey.” I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m really sorry about your grandma,” said Nora.

“She was such a kind person.” She thrust the flowers into my hands, not meeting my eyes.

Nora knew Grandma Suzette because she and I had been friends from third grade until the end of junior year. You know people’s grandmas when you’re friends for that long. She’d even had sleepovers at Grandma Suzette’s, and the two of us had stayed up late playing with the practically a hundred drugstore lipsticks Grandma had in her bathroom. And freshman year, Grandma took me, Kim, Cricket and Nora to see
The Nutcracker
at Pacific Northwest ball et, even though we were kind of too old for it by then.

“How did you know she died?” I asked.

“Meghan told me.”

“Oh.”

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Nora said. Because that’s the thing to say at funerals, I guess.

We stood there for a few moments in silence.

“How’s your summer been?” she finally asked me.

“Pretty good. Aside from the death,” I said. “How’s yours?”

“Did I tell you I met a guy?”

“You haven’t been speaking to me,” I reminded her.

Nora blushed. “I met a guy.”

Oh.

That’s why she wasn’t so mad at me anymore.

It wasn’t that she missed me so much she decided to forgive me.

She had stopped liking Noel.

“I met him at Sunny Meadows,” Nora went on.