The Boy Book (22 page)

Calm down.

Calm down.

Breathe.

In the end, I made myself focus on the llamas. The way one of them was lying on the ground, with its legs tucked under itself. The way their legs were furry and fat-looking. The way they walked, slightly awkwardly. How their ears pricked up at any sound in the woods.

“Mr. Wallace, I need to use your cell phone.” I had found him in the kitchen, eating Oreos straight out of the bag with a guilty look on his face. He offered me one, and I took it.

“Is this an emergency?” he asked. “Because this is a
retreat,
you know, from the outside world.”

“I need to use it, and then I need to get a call back on it, later on,” I said. “Please.”

“How come?” He shoved a cookie in his mouth, whole.

“I just have someone I need to talk to.”

“Can’t it wait?” he asked. “We’re going home on Sunday morning.”

“No,” I answered. “It can’t wait.”

“Is there something I should know? I’m here to help.”

I took a deep breath. “I get panic attacks,” I said. “I haven’t had any in a while, but I just had one, a bad one, and I need to talk to my shrink.”

He took his cell out of his pocket and handed it over. “Give it back when you’re done,” he said. “I have unlimited minutes.”

“This is Doctor Lorraine Zaczkowski. You have reached my answering machine. At the tone, please leave a message with your name and telephone number. You have as long as you need. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you.”

Beep.

“Doctor Z, this is Ruby Oliver. I just really, really need to talk to someone who knows what’s going on. I’m on a school retreat, but here’s the number.”

Then I took the phone and went down to the dock where the boats come in. I curled up in a ball under my jacket, waiting for her to ring.

She called back at seven o’clock. It was dinnertime, and I could see the lights glowing from the lodge a hundred yards away.

“Hello, is this Ruby?”

“Yes.”

“Doctor Zaczkowski.”

It was so good to hear her voice that I started to cry into the telephone. But as I calmed down and laid it all out—about Kim and the llamas and the apology and the argument—I could feel my body unwind. I uncurled from my ball and stretched out on the dock.

“Do you know why you told Kim about Jackson stepping out?” Doctor Z asked. “It sounds like you’re saying that was the moment that changed the course of your interaction.”

“Yeah. We were almost getting along before that.”

Doctor Z was silent. I could hear her flick a lighter open, then inhale.

“I didn’t think she’d get mad,” I said. “I thought she’d be grateful for the information.”

“You were doing something kind?”

“She didn’t see it that way, but yes. I think I was.”

“Oh?”

“She thought I was trying to sabotage her and Jackson. Which I can see, I guess. Since I’ve done it before.”

“Back in September you had some complicated feelings about telling Kim that Jackson wrote you notes. Am I right in remembering?”

I thought back. “I wanted to tell because I wanted her to think Jackson still liked me.”

“Yes.”

“So like it wasn’t out of goodness or kindness at all. It was sour and mean.”

“Oh?”

“Because I’m neurotic bitter breakup lady and I was trying to make a power move.”

“But you didn’t end up telling her, did you?” asked Doctor Z.

“No.”

“So why did you tell her something similar now? Was it a power move this time?”

“No,” I answered honestly. “But I guess coming to Canoe Island at all was. I mean, not a manipulative, evil power move so much as me refusing to lose my friends and not go on the retreat when I wanted to go, just because she was going to be there, too.”

“You were standing up for yourself.”

“Yeah. But that’s not what I was doing when I told about Jackson.”

“No?”

“I wasn’t showing Kim that Jackson still liked me. I was showing that he
didn’t.
That he was with that zoo girl. That in fact, anything between him and me is well and truly over.”

I hadn’t said that out loud yet.

It sounded good.

“What Jackson was doing with that zoo girl was wrong,” I went on. “Plain and simple. And no matter what’s between Kim and me, it’s bad to have your boyfriend cheating on you.”

“You told her out of kindness.”

“Because we pledged to tell each other the truth. To tell each other ‘all relevant data.’ In
The Boy Book,
” I answered. “And even if we don’t have a friendship anymore, and even if it’s not my business, I don’t think Kim deserves to be powerless and ignorant when her boyfriend’s stepping out.”

Doctor Z inhaled cigarette smoke, audibly, and then said the kind of thing she always says. “Is there any way you could tell her that?”

“Duh,” I answered. “I could just tell her.”

“Um-hm.”

“But she might try to kill me. You know that, don’t you? I’ll be axe-murdered by a venomous exchange-program escapee, and it will be all because of your bad advice.”

“Roo,” announced Doctor Z, “our hour is up. Do you want to make an appointment for next week?”

“Yes,” I answered after a pause. “I do.”

I went through the last day of Canoe Island in a daze. I couldn’t speak to Kim because (1) she was never alone, and (2) I was terrified. But I didn’t have any more panic things, and not much happened in general.

When the boat docked in Seattle on Sunday in the late afternoon, and my mom and dad were there jumping up and down in front of the Honda like absolute lunatics, I felt a flood of relief that Canoe Island was over. But I also felt like I had done something, and been somewhere, and proven myself in ways that I hadn’t before.

We gave Hutch a ride home because no one had come to pick him up. He said his parents were away on vacation. “Then come to our place for dinner!” cried my dad. “Wait, no, let’s go out to Chinese. Judy Fu’s Snappy Dragon? Whaddya say?”

Hutch looked at me sideways. “I don’t want to barge in on your family outing,” he said. “That’s cool.”

“You should come,” I said, making my voice sound warm even though I was actually a little unsure because he’s a leper and he sometimes weirds me out—and because for so long, just in principle, I have been essentially anti–John Hutchinson. “They make these excellent fried wontons,” I added.

“Oh,” Hutch mumbled, in that foggy way of his. “If there are wontons involved, count me in. You didn’t say wontons before.”

“Wontons, wontons, wontons!” yelled my dad.

And I yelled it after him. “Wontons, wontons, wontons!”

So Hutch came to dinner with us.

And it was okay.

If this were a movie of my life, I would go on for a couple of weeks in a state of dejection, after which Noel would appear on my doorstep one day begging forgiveness for being so cranky and hopefully bringing some quality gift. We would kiss somewhere cinematic, like outside in a snowstorm (
Bridget Jones
) or on an ice rink (
Serendipity
) or on a fire escape (
Pretty Woman
). And that would be the end.

But as I have learned, to my disappointment, life is never like the movies. And as I have also learned, thanks to what is now nine months of therapy (with one month-long hiatus): if you don’t want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you. Like Doctor Z says, “We can’t know or say what other people will do.
You
have to think what
you
want to do to get the situation where you want it to be.”

Noel wasn’t in school Monday. After swim practice, I got Varsha to drop me in the U District, where I bought a CD of goofy frat-rock songs. Then I caught the bus to Noel’s house, which took an hour. And I rang his bell.

“Ruby!” cried Mrs. DuBoise, wiping her hands on her apron. She was completely covered in tomato sauce and had a blotch of flour on her cheek. “I am attempting to make pizza. Have you ever made pizza? I have this stone that’s supposed to make our regular oven like a pizza oven.”