I nodded.
Meghan pushed her chocolate cheesecake across the table to me. I hadn’t gotten paid yet for November, so I had only ordered coffee. “Here,” she said.
“Don’t you want it?”
“Sure I want it. I ordered it. But I’m giving it to you.”
“Why?”
Meghan stood up and got me a fork. “Remember what Nora said about love? In your movie?”
“Love is when you have a really amazing piece of cake, and it’s the very last piece, but you let him have it,” I said.
“So it’s really amazing cake,” said Meghan. “And I want you to have it.”
“The thing to consider,” said Nora, “is that boys are not the most important things in life.” She was running the bake sale this year. Varsha from swim team and I were sitting in her kitchen, helping her make “magic cookies” for the recruiting table.
“I mean, I’m sad for Gideon that you don’t want to go out with him anymore,” Nora went on, “but let’s face it. He’ll recover. He always has one girlfriend or another.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And now you’re free to concentrate on what’s really important.”
“Like what?”
“Roo!” Varsha rolled her eyes at me.
“Seriously. Like what?”
“It’s senior year. Hello. College apps?” said Varsha.
“Or the bake sale—raising money for Happy Paws,” said Nora.
“And sports,” said Varsha. “You are like this close to being a serious contender. If you worked out more, you could get your time down.”
Nora added: “Plus you’ll probably make varsity goalie in lacrosse this year if you go back on the team.”
I knew I was supposed to care about these things. I did actually care about them.
I just couldn’t concentrate on them.
I still had a broken heart, I guess.
It wasn’t healing, and the fact that Noel had said he loved me—all right, used to love me—I couldn’t get it out of my head.
“I broke up with Happy, by the way,” said Nora. “In case you are doubting whether I practice what I preach.”
“By the way?” I squealed. “How can you just mention that as a ‘by the way’? That’s a serious thing.”
Nora shrugged. “He’s too much of a party boy. He’s going to get to college and join a frat. You know he is.”
I nodded. Fraternities were in Happy’s future. There was no denying it.
“Now you have time to run the bake sale,” I said to Nora. “Which, according to you and Varsha, is more fulfilling than having a boyfriend.”
Nora laughed and ate a spoonful of cookie dough. “More filling, at least.”
I said earlier that Hutch and I never spoke about Noel and me. Only now: I wrote him an e-mail explaining the whole debacle. The sordid details of the breakup, the Halloween party, the argument in the parking lot. Plus everything Claude had told me: the accident, Booth, Noel’s wanting to forget.
Because Hutch is my friend.
And he’s my only friend who’s really and truly Noel’s friend.
I needed my friends just then.
I thought maybe Hutch would freak out at the excess emotion and hysteria in my note, and do a typical guy thing and ignore it. But he didn’t. He wrote back three days later.
The thing to consider, said Hutch, is that Noel is one of the most outstanding people on the planet.
Then, after several paragraphs about his Parisian adventures, he wrote:P.S. After I got your note, I e-mailed DuBoise. Didn’t mention Booth or Claude or you, but said (among many other things) that I heard a rumor he was going out with a sexy college vampire girl.His reply, pasted in: Nah. Am single.True, did kiss a vampire at that guy Hsaio’s Halloween party.It was okay, but no repeat was necessary.Confession: I did it to make Ruby jealous.She was staring at me across the room and it was a doltish move but the situation was tense and I couldn’t deal so I macked on the vampire.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.”