“Just for now,” Gideon said. “I don’t need it for the drive home.”
“But I have sweatshirts in the house,” I said. “I don’t need it either.”
Gideon jumped into the boat and started the engine. “Keep it,” he repeated, over the noise. “This way, I have to come get it back from you.”
Noel and I did go get ice cream that night. It was okay. It just seemed like he was—not a pod-robot, but maybe a recent lobotomy patient. Like part of his brain had been cut out by surgeons in an experimental procedure that left him with only a section of his former personality intact.1
Either that, or he didn’t like me that much anymore.
I tried to ask him about it, but the conversation just went like this.Roo: Hey. Um. Is there anything wrong?Noeclass="underline" What?Roo: Is there anything wrong?Noeclass="underline" No.Roo: It seems like something’s wrong between us.Noeclass="underline" I don’t know what you’re talking about. Everything’s fine.
So I shut up and ate my ice cream. Then later, Noel stopped his mom’s car in front of my dock, and he seemed so cold. Like he was just expecting me to hop out, without a kiss goodnight or anything. This huge awkwardness loomed between us, and I freaked out a little and couldn’t help but break one of Meghan’s rules for what to talk about when you’re alone in the dark with your boyfriend.Roo: What are you thinking?Noeclass="underline" Until a minute ago I was thinking about parallel parking.Roo: So everything’s okay?Noeclass="underline" Yeah.Roo: Things seem a little odd is all.Noeclass="underline" They do?Roo: It’s hard to talk to you.Noeclass="underline" I don’t know what you mean.Roo: You don’t think anything’s wrong?Noeclass="underline" Nothing’s wrong, Ruby.Roo: Forget it, then.
I was about to get out of the car when he leaned in and put his hand on my boob. He didn’t even kiss me first. It was like the least romantic boob fondle in the history of all boob fondling. I might even go so far as to call it a grope.
Actually, if he hadn’t been my boyfriend I would have slapped his hand away and called him a Neanderthal. As it was, I let him grope it. Then we kissed goodnight for a while, but all the time I was thinking: Excuse me, but that’s my boob; it’s not yours to just grab because you want a conversation to be over.
While we were kissing, I could tell Noel was really getting into it—you know, in the nether regions—and I was wondering how a guy could want to make out with me so much—he was all over me, really—and still not call me the way he used to, or send me e-mails, or even really talk to me when I was trying to have a serious conversation. I didn’t really touch him back, the way I usually did, because my brain was going:
Why do you say nothing’s wrong when there’s obviously something wrong?
And if you don’t like me that much anymore, why do you like grabbing my boob?
In fact, I think you like grabbing my boob more now than you did before you left.
And oh, actually, that feels amazing.
And oh, I think I love you.
I do love you, Noel.
At least, I love the you who used to be here.
But now, that you is somewhere else.
Like maybe New York City.
Or maybe just closed off to me.
And was it something I did?
Or something I said?
And oh, that neck-kissing thing is—
No one ever did exactly that before.
I do love you.
But hello, I don’t really feel like kissing when everything’s so weird with us.
And I don’t know if you get to touch my boobs and kiss my neck that way when you wait so long to call me back and you never seem to hear what I am trying to tell you.
It was really quite a complicated situation to be in, and not anywhere near as fun as getting horizontal had been, back when everything was cheerful and simple between us. Eventually when his hand roamed up my dress toward my butt, I pulled away and said, “Something’s wrong with me, then, Noel, if nothing’s wrong with you.”
He crinkled his forehead. “What?” It was like he’d forgotten the whole conversation we’d just been having.
I didn’t want to repeat myself. “I have to go,” I said.
“Ruby, wait!” he called as I got out of the car. “Are you mad?”
“No,” I turned. “I just have to go. We have school tomorrow.”
Noel didn’t get out of the car. He didn’t chase after me. Just like at Snappy Dragon, he didn’t chase after me.
1 Lobotomies: For real, they used to do this to people from the 1930s to the ’50s. Just chopped out a bit of the brain to see if it solved a person’s mental health problems, including anxiety disorders and just inconvenient behavior like moodiness or defiance. The procedures involved either drilling holes in the scalp or going in through the eye with an ice pick. And get this: the doctor didn’t need to get the patient’s informed consent, so you could completely just go to bed in the mental hospital and wake up with a section of your brain having been removed.
Needless to say, it’s good I wasn’t born back then, or I’d have had an ice pick through the eyeball ages ago.
An Agonizing Public Scene! With Violence!
a video clip: Meghan, leaning against the front of her Jeep, which is parked in front of the Olivers’ dock. She’s holding her usual thermos full of vanilla cappuccino and wearing a golf team T-shirt, a jean skirt and Birkenstocks.Roo: (behind the camera) It’s the first day of school, so I want to ask you about popularity.Meghan: I used to think I was popular, and then later I realized I wasn’t.Roo: What do you mean?Meghan: Back when I was going out with Bick. He was a senior, and he had all these friends, and we went to lots of parties. I hung around with all these senior girls. I thought I was popular.Roo: Then what?Meghan: You didn’t invite me to your Spring Fling party, remember?Roo: I’m so sorry.Meghan: Well, I was upset at first, but then I realized. I had been to all these other parties, all year, but no one had ever invited me. I just went. Because Bick was invited. In fact, not one of those people I ate lunch with every day ever called me. Or e-mailed me. Or put a note in my mail cubby. I never saw them if Bick wasn’t around.Roo: Ag.Meghan: I know. Then you and Nora started actually calling me, and we were like, friends for real and went to the B&O and wrote in your notebook and hung around on the weekends. I thought—Oh. Those people, all those seniors, they aren’t my friends. They were never my friends. So actually I’m more popular now than I was when I went to all those parties.Roo: You feel popular now?Meghan: Sure.Roo: But I’m a complete roly-poly. Being friends with me is like the opposite of popularity.Meghan: Get over it, Roo. If you have friends who actually like you, you’re popular enough.
When school started, Mom was barely speaking to me. Since her Snappy Dragon duck temptation, she had started buying and eating cooked food—not to please me, but because she had practically been starving herself for a year eating only things like celery juice and peanut goulash. She was probably ten pounds under her natural weight and had a serious hunger buildup. I came home one day to find her heating up barbecued ribs in the oven and mashing potatoes.