That he hadn’t been bareface lying to me.
I knew Jackson wasn’t the person I’d thought he was when we were going out. But I’d always believed what Kim said: when they got together, they’d been blindsided by love into doing something that was out of character for both of them. And all that stuff that happened during the Spring Fling debacle could be explained if you think (like my dad does) that Jackson was torn and confused by his emotions.
But he wasn’t torn and confused now. He was watching a penguin feeding. He had a girlfriend in Tokyo who had only left town four weeks earlier and who was coming back at winter break.
And he was out with someone else.
When I got home, I called Nora and Meghan and told them I wasn’t going to Kyle’s party.
Nora I had to lie to. I couldn’t tell her about seeing Jackson in the zoo, or how I’d written him back after he wrote me that note.
I had never told her it was Jackson who invited me to Kyle’s in the first place.
So I said I was having an attack of leprosy and had to stay home.
Meghan I told everything. She said there was no way she was going to the party without me and invited me over to sit in her hot tub instead. So we did that, getting cans of pop and looking out at the lake while we soaked. The air was chilly, and steam rose from the tub like a tropical mist.
I explained the whole Jackson scenario in gory detail. It was a relief to put it all into words. But as usual, Meghan’s interpretation was woefully simple. “Forget it, Roo,” she told me. “Jackson is nothing to you anymore, and Kim’s nothing to you either. Just let it go.”
But they weren’t nothing to me. They were still huge, enormous somethings, even after all this time.
“In my Yoga Elective,” Meghan went on, “we do all this tension release. The idea is that you surrender to the pose, whatever stretchy position you’re in, and release into it, letting go of all the stuff that’s making it hurt.”
“But don’t you think if someone is doing something wrong to someone else, even someone you don’t like, you should say something?” I asked, hiking myself up to sit on the edge of the tub.
“You should stay out of it,” said Meghan, taking a drink of Sprite.
I slid back into the water and dunked my head.
Sunday, Nora came over. We watched Hairspray on video and she told me about Kyle’s party. She went with Cricket. This was the news: Katarina scammed with Jackson’s friend Matt. Ariel and Shiv seemed to be having some fight and Nora drove Ariel home. Cricket and Heidi spent most of their time flirting with some senior guys from the basketball team, stud-muffins we’d never noticed last year.
“Josh said something about my boobs,” reported Nora, “and Noel stood up for me.”
“Noel was there?”
“Noel always goes to parties, Roo. He acts like he doesn’t like them, but he always goes. He knows all those guys from cross-country.”
She had a point. “How did he stand up for you?”
“Told Josh to enter the twenty-first century or fuck off.”
Score one for the Rescue Squad.
“Have you ever seen Noel dance?” Nora asked.
I hadn’t.
“He’s hilarious. None of the other guys would dare dance around like that. He told me his brother took him to these gay nightclubs last summer in New York City.”
“Yeah, he told me that, too.”
Part of me didn’t like thinking of Nora and Noel hanging around together without me. But that is the sort of possessive jealous-lady thought I should probably stop having, so I kept quiet on that topic. “What did Josh say about your boobs?” I asked.
“Two things of beauty are a joy forever.”1
I smiled. “You have to admit, that’s a little bit funny.”
“He’s such an asshole,” said Nora. “You’d think I’d have a snappy comeback by now, but I stand there like an idiot, wanting to hit someone.”
“We should think of stuff to say. Like when guys say things to us on the streets or in the hall. So we’re prepared.”
“Genius!” cried Nora.
And that’s how we ended up pulling out The Boy Book, which Nora hadn’t even looked at since March, before the debacle, and starting a fresh page.
Clever Comebacks to Catcalls
Situation: You are walking down the hall, and someone tells you he’s so ready for that jelly. Or you are strolling down the street and some construction worker on his lunch break says, “Come on, baby, lemme see you smile.” What can you answer?
1. Join the twenty-first century.
2. Try to imagine how little I care.
3. Have you had your brain checked? I think the warranty has run out.
4. I can’t get angry at you today. It’s Be Kind to Animals Week.
5. Didn’t I dissect you in Biology class?
6. Did you take your medication today?
7. I’ll try smiling—if you try being smarter.
8. I’m curious, did your mother raise all of her children to be sexists, or did she single you out?
And some extras, for specific situations:
If he says, “If I could see you naked, I’d die happy,” then you say, “If I could see you naked, I’d die laughing.”
And if he says, “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” answer, “Do not enter.”
And if he calls down the street as you ignore him, “Hey, baby, don’t be rude!” reply, “I’m not being rude. You’re just insignificant.”
And if he says, “Can I see you sometime?” say, “How about never? Is never good for you?”
—written by me and Nora, after some serious Internet research. 1Approximate date: October of junior year.
i t felt great to be friends with Nora again, even if there were subjects we couldn’t discuss. Like I wanted to ask her if Kim and Jackson had maybe broken up, and how she felt that Cricket was spending most of her time with Katarina and Heidi and those guys. I wanted to tell her I saw Jackson at the zoo, and that he’d called to invite me to Kyle’s party.
But it was safer not to.
The next week at school, though most of the boob comments had died down, Nora used comeback numbers four and five on Darcy Andrews and one of his cohorts, with excellent and pleasing results. And on Wednesday we went to the B&O with Meghan after sports practice and talked to Finn Murphy, who was waiting tables. We ate cake and drank espresso milk shakes, and I brought The Boy Book and we showed it to Meghan.
“Maybe I need to have a fling,” mused Meghan, after reading the part about scamming. She sighed and rolled her eyeballs toward Finn, who was wiping down some tables on the other side of the café.
“What’s going on with Bick?” I asked, since she had sort of brought it up.
“Aren’t you two really serious?” put in Nora, wide-eyed.
“We’re taking things one day at a time.”
“Finn is cute,” said Nora, checking out his backside as he bent over a dirty table.
“I don’t know,” mused Meghan. “Maybe if Bick and I did it, everything would go back to normal between us. He’s coming home for Thanksgiving.”
“You’re not doing it?” Nora asked.
“They’re just up to the nether regions,” I informed her. “Or down to them. Whatever.”
“You should not be doing it with someone who’s on one-day-at-a-time status,” said Nora decisively. “That’s a recipe for disaster.”