Real Live Boyfriends (22 page)

I don’t think it worked. Ruby left with Van
Deusen
.

I know you’re going to forward this to her,
so I’ll just give you my permission to do it
and relieve your guilt in advance
.

Noel

A Nighttime Escapade!

Noel
,

It may have come to your attention that while I
have abdicated the dubious throne of the bake
sale and let Nora take the damn thing over, I am
still yoked into trying to recruit the masculine
contingent of Tate Prep to bake stuff for
December 20
.

Your chocolate croissants, though shockingly
late in their delivery last year, were nevertheless
enjoyed by both humans and Great Danes alike.

Can you repeat the performance? Or pledge
some alternate French pastry–type item?

Ruby

the above e-mail may not look like it, but it was a love letter.

Noel had made me the chocolate croissants last June—he had pledged them under serious pressure for the springtime edition of the sale, but then hadn’t delivered them because we weren’t speaking to each other. When he finally did bake them, it was to show me that he wanted me the way I wanted him.

Reminding him of the croissants—asking him to make them again—was asking him to start over with me.

I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to send that e-mail.

Last time we’d spoken, he and I had been yelling at each other in the parking lot.

And if Noel was immature and in denial, like Doctor Z thought, did I really want that kind of boyfriend?

Shouldn’t I find someone new, like Meghan said? Or just focus on my backstroke and my college apps, like Varsha and Nora advised?

No.

It might be deranged, but I still wanted Noel. Now that I knew he wasn’t going out with the vampire and in fact had only kissed her to get my attention, there seemed like there might be some hope that he wanted me. Going after him might not be the smart choice, the logical choice—but it was how I felt, and Doctor Z always encouraged me to try to get what I wanted.

To feel I
deserved
to get what I wanted.

“If I don’t have panic attacks and I’ve flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo,” I said to Doctor Z,

“then who am I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve thought of myself as the girl with serious mental health issues for, like, more than a year now,” I said.

“So if I don’t have them, what girl am I now?”

“You wonder who you are,” she said.

“My point is that I think I’m over my self-loathing,” I said. “I think I might actually be a functioning human at this point.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“You’ve let go of this idea of yourself as mentally ill.”

“Um. Yes. I mean, I’m not saying I’ve handled things well or anything, but I don’t think I handled them like a deranged person.”

“Because you’re not deranged, Ruby.”

“I know,” I said. “I think I actually know that. Do you know what Noel said to me once? He said: ‘You’re

not mental. You
think
you’re mental. That’s a different thing.’ ”

“Interesting.”

“I didn’t know what he meant then. I thought, What’s the difference? But I get it now.”

Doctor Z smiled.

“It feels weird,” I went on.

“How so?”

“Like I don’t know what to wear if I’m sane,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like I’ve been
warped
, I’ve been
certifiable
, I’ve been
a madman
—but if those don’t labels apply to me anymore, I don’t know which ones do. It’s like I’ve worn my neurotic outfit every day for so long, and if I can’t wear it anymore now—I don’t know what to put on.”

“What’s wrong with being naked?” asked Doctor Z.

I fine-tuned the croissant e-mail and hit Send on a Friday night after dinner in early December. I didn’t want to have to look at Noel during Monday’s CAP

Workshop or feel his presence in the refectory, wondering if he’d read my note yet and if he’d respond. By sending it Friday night, I could be certain he’d read it over the weekend.

Turns out I didn’t have to angst. Five minutes later, he wrote back:

Ruby
,

I was going to say: You overestimate my
baking skills
.

I was going to say: I still have a scar on my
hand from the last time I made croissants
.

I was going to say: I’m busy trying to figure
out how to get Columbia to accept me despite
bad score on History AP
.

I was going to say: Coach has me doing extra
workouts for my knee
.

I was going to say: I haven’t got time
.

I was going to say: Maybe I could just donate
money straight to Happy Paws, instead of
baking
.

I was going to say: I only made those
croissants to impress you, anyway, back in the
day
.

And then I realized: I should just say yes
.

Yes. I will make chocolate croissants
.

Noel

I thought about not answering him until a couple days had gone by, just to show that it didn’t matter to me. Pretending that we were just talking about a bake sale contribution and nothing more.

But I don’t really want to be that girl. The girl who squashes her feelings down. If there is anything I learned in therapy, it’s that squashing is an excellent way to give yourself panic attacks.

So I wrote back:

I was going to act like it didn’t matter much
.

I was going to say, Thanks for contributing to
Happy Paws
.

I was going to say, Good luck with the
Columbia app and the knee exercises, like we
were acquaintances and I felt a mild interest in
your well-being
.

But I don’t want to lie
.

I am really, really glad you’re making
croissants
.

Polka-dot is too
.

Noel wrote:

List of things to do:

Ask Mom for recipe
.

Shop for butter. (Croissants involve lots of
butter.)

Shop for chocolate. (You want the chocolate
kind.)

Apologize to Ruby for acting like a dolt and
kissing the vampire girl in front of her. No matter
how long we’d been broken up, that was a
warped move and the kind of manipulative crap I
usually associate with guys other than myself
.

Sorry
.

Mom was in the kitchen doing unspeakable things to slabs of dead pig involving the Cuisinart, a lot of garlic and pieces of washed intestine. Dad was puttering in the greenhouse listening to REO

Speedwagon. Polka was thumping his tail quietly on the carpet, looking at me expectantly, hoping for his before-bed walk.

Everything was just as it had been ten minutes ago.

And everything was different.

Noel was making me croissants.

Noel had said sorry.

I wrote back:

Flour. You will need flour
.

Also, I suspect, a small amount of salt
.

Seconds later, his reply:

Maybe I will need help
.

And I wrote:

What?

And he wrote:

Your help
.

And I wrote:

My help with the croissants?

And he wrote:

Help me
.

I didn’t write back, because I was putting on my coat and brushing my teeth and putting on lip gloss and deodorant and grabbing the keys to the Honda and shouting to Mom that I’d be back by curfew and pushing Polka back in the front door with my foot because he wanted to go out so bad and there was no way I was taking him. Then I was in the car driving to Madrona in the chilly night.

The lights were on in Noel’s kitchen. Through the windows I could see his mom and stepdad doing dishes and wiping down the countertops. The little girls’ rooms in the front of the upstairs were dark, though, and Noel’s lights were out as well, except for the glow from his computer monitor.

I couldn’t ring the bell. Couldn’t just make small talk with his parents and ask if I could come in after all this time without seeing them.

And I couldn’t call. No cell.

So I scootched my bag underneath the porch and climbed the rose trel is on the side of the house up to the porch roof. I edged along it until Noel’s window was in front of me, and then, feeling kind of stalkerish and dumb but also like a girl in a movie about love, I felt around for a pebble to toss at the glass.

No pebbles. I was on the roof.

I felt in the rain gutter.

Nothing but some truly disgusting sludge.

What was I thinking? Of course there were no pebbles on the roof.

I picked at the shingles, hoping a bit of one would come off in my hand.

No luck.

Aha! Tums.

I had a small roll of antacid tablets in the front pocket of my jeans, left over from the misguided ingestion of two cappuccinos in a fifteen-minute period.

I took out a Tum and threw it at Noel’s window.

He didn’t answer.

I threw another Tum.

And another.

And another.

Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum.

Ag. I suddenly got worried that maybe Tums were toxic to birds or squirrels and I was inadvertently poisoning the small-animal population of Madrona.

I collected as many as Tums as I could find from where they’d fall en on the roof, then knocked on Noel’s window.

Looking in, I saw he wasn’t answering because he had headphones on. He was clicking back and forth between his e-mail and iTunes, tapping his fingers on the edge of his keyboard now and then.

He was wearing pajamas.

I had never seen Noel in pajamas.

Actually, they were blue and white striped pajama pants and a white T-shirt so thin and faded you could practically see through it.

I knocked harder, and he turned around.

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

He bolted out of his room.

Where had he gone?

Was he going to tell his parents I was on the roof?

No, he would never do that.

Was he angry I had come?

Was I being a stalker?

Had he left because he couldn’t deal with seeing me?

Should I just go home?

Would I die trying to climb down the rose trel is?

I was turning to attempt it when Noel came back.

He was wearing jeans and waving something at me.

A toothbrush.

He opened the window, leaned out, and before I could even speak—he kissed me. His mouth was cold and minty. I kissed him back and felt dizzy and clutched the edge of the windowsill. He kept kissing me, and I kept kissing him and I was so happy. Then he climbed out the window and we sat on the porch roof with our backs against the house and he waved his toothbrush again.

“You went to brush your teeth,” I said. “You kept me waiting on your roof in the cold so you could brush your teeth.”

“We had scal ions at dinner,” Noel said.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” I told him.

“I was!” he protested. “I just—I wanted to kiss you so bad as soon as I saw you, and then I thought about the scal ions and I panicked. I thought, She’s come all the way here and she’s going to run away as soon as she smells my breath.”

“I wouldn’t run away from scal ion breath.”

“Oh, you might. This was serious.”

I kissed him again. And this time I think we both felt the cold outside and how precarious it was where we were sitting. We held on to each other like we were holding on for our lives on the edge of this precipice of the roof, of the end of high school, of college,

of love,

of scary, complicated, adult-type relationships—

and I felt Noel shaking and I realized he was crying.

Not sobbing, but crying gently, like his eyes were leaking and he just couldn’t help it.

“What’s wrong?”