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?”
“Yeah. I just didn’t dwell on it and fall apart like some people,” he said, still moving fast. “I walked away.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?” I said. “You’re walking away from this conversation?”
“I wanted to be happy,” he nearly barked at me. “Is that such a hard thing to understand?”
“But how could you be happy? Booth died right in front of you!” I cried.
Noel winced. “Why are you bringing all this up, Ruby? It’s history.”
“Because you and I had something,” I said, on the edge of tears. We were walking through the parking lot now. Noel headed toward his Vespa and unlocked his helmet. “We were close,” I went on. “I mean, I thought we were close—but you didn’t tell me this horrible, horrible thing that happened.”
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted to forget,” said Noel. “And I still want to. Can you please just leave it alone?”
He sat on the scooter but he didn’t put the helmet on.
“How can you forget that?” I said. “You can’t forget that. You have to deal with it.”
“Listen,” said Noel. “I came back and I wanted to be with you. It was you who kept being unhappy all the time. You were always complaining that things weren’t right.”
“Because things were obviously not right!” I cried. “How could you not trust me enough to tell me what happened?”
“I didn’t tell anyone, okay, Ruby? I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t even talk about it with my parents. Like I said, I wanted to forget.”
“But I’m not a forgetting person,” I said. “I’m not an ignoring person. You should have known it wouldn’t work.”
“What?”
“I can’t forget things, or ignore them—bad things that happen,” I said. “I’m a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.”
“Okay. That’s you,” said Noel, tapping his helmet with his fingers. “That’s not me.”
“Well, if you wanted some forget-about-it girlfriend, you should have stuck with Ariel Olivieri, or found some freshman who would think it was cool you were so emo and would never ask you anything about anything,” I said heatedly. “But you picked me, and I have to understand things. It was like torture to me that you had this huge secret, even though I didn’t know you had it, because somehow I could feel it there, distracting you, hurting you and—” I started crying then, and clapped my hand over my mouth.
“I didn’t mean to torture you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry I went out on the lake with Gideon, I’m sorry I didn’t know how to be there for you—”
Noel interrupted. “I didn’t want anybody there for me.”
“I know it’s so stupid,” I went on, the words gushing out. “But when I saw what you wrote on the peer questionnaire just now, I thought maybe you could love me again. I mean, not love, maybe not love, because we never said love, so that’s not the right word, but—oh crap, all this is coming out wrong—you wrote such nice things, about me caring and about how I was witty. You said I made the world seem shiny—so I thought—I thought maybe you still felt the way I do and—”
My throat closed up and I felt so, so stupid I could barely talk. I rubbed my sleeve across my face and tried to get my breathing under control.
Then, as we stood in silence for just that quick moment, I realized I didn’t have to be there anymore. I didn’t have to humiliate myself this way, begging for Noel to want me again.
I could just end this horrible situation right now.
“I have to go,” I said, and spun around.
“Bye.”
I walked on shaky legs to the trail that led from the parking lot back to the main campus of Tate. My pack felt heavy on my shoulder.
It was only as I started down the path that I heard Noel’s Vespa pull up behind me.
“Ruby,” he called.
“What?” I turned. He had his helmet under his arm still, and his face was extremely pale in the cold November light. We were about six feet apart.
“Love was the right word,” he said.
I stared at him.
“It was definitely the right word,” he said. “For what we used to have.”
Then he drove away.
“It sounds to me as if he’s immature,” said Doctor Z, chewing a piece of Nicorette. “And possibly limited.”
“What do you mean?”
“Has he had a girlfriend before?”
I shook my head. “Not a serious one, anyway.”
“He’s inexperienced.”
“We’re seventeen. Of course we’re inexperienced.”
“Well,” said Doctor Z. “You have more history than a lot of teenagers do in terms of having a romantic relationship that lasts more than a couple weeks.”
Oh. “What do you mean, Noel is limited?”
“It sounds like there are limits to what he’s willing to risk. To where he’s willing to go, emotionally,” said Doctor Z.
“The whole parking lot debacle was completely humiliating,” I told her. “When we started talking, I meant to be sympathetic about Booth and thank him for the nice things he wrote in the peer questionnaire. But as soon as I got near him and we were talking, all these feelings started spilling out uncontrollably.”
“The thing to consider,” said Doctor Z, “is whether a relationship with a limited person of this type is something you want to pursue.”
“The thing to consider,” I said, “is why I don’t seem to be able to keep my mouth shut when it would really, really be to my advantage to do so.”
“The thing to consider,” said Meghan, the next day at the B&O, “is who else you can go out with.”
“What? I don’t want to go out with anyone else. If I did, I wouldn’t have broken up with Gideon.”
“Gideon obviously wasn’t doing it for you,” said Meghan, licking her coffee spoon provocatively.
“Gideon is a great guy.”
“Yawn. I’m sure he is. But you need to fall in love with someone other than Noel, and obviously you couldn’t fall in love with Gideon.”
“I think I need to be Noboyfriend if I can’t be with Noel.”
“How much fun is that?” said Meghan.
“It’s not fun. It’s just—” I broke off.
“He’s the one you want,” said Meghan. Suddenly understanding.