I shrugged. “He might be having Dude Time.”
“Dude Time?”
“You know, time with the guys. Time where they bond and don’t want their girlfriends hanging on their arms.”
“No,” said Meghan decisively. “They get plenty of that at soccer practice. It is completely unacceptable to have Dude Time when your own girlfriend is in the actual room with you, eating tacos. What kind of guy would do that?”
“Lots of guys do that.”
“What do they say?” asked Meghan. “Hey there, Roo, don’t come near me at lunch today ’cause I’m hurtin’ for some Dude Time?”
“No.” I ate the last of my cake. “They don’t call it Dude Time at all. That’s what I’m calling it. They just give off a Dude Time feeling. Like they want you to leave them alone.”
“That’s dumb,” said Meghan. “No normal guy would do that. You just had a bad experience with Jackson.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes.”
“What’s with this part?” Meghan wanted to know. She was rereading what I’d written. “ ‘You do not wonder if he will call. You do not wonder whether he will kiss you.’ ”
I nodded. “Don’t you ever wonder whether Finn will call?”
“No!” she laughed. “He calls me every morning before I leave for school and every night after dinner.”
I sighed and yelled over to Finn, who was wearing an apron and reading Studs Terkel behind the counter, since the coffee shop was basically dead. “You’re a real live boyfriend, Finn, you know that?”
He looked up. White skin, blond crew cut, big eyes. He’s got nowhere near Meghan’s level of sex appeal, but then, no one does. “I’m a what?” he called.
“Never mind,” Meghan told him, giggling. “Roo just thinks you’re nicer than most guys.”
“I am,” he said. “But she’s only saying that ’cause I give her free cake.”
“Okay,” said Meghan, back to business. “But what is this here, about not kissing? If he’s your boyfriend, wouldn’t you be kissing all the time?”
“Only if he’s your
“Ruby Oliver,” said Meghan, “you are certifiable.”
Yes. That, I thought—that’s the trouble with me.
I am.
Because here’s what I was really thinking about during that whole conversation:
Noel.
Asthmatic, funny, scrawny Noel. He of the combat boots and the cross-country runs, the painting classes and music magazines. Friends with everyone, best friends with no one, secretive, beautiful, witty Noel.
Long story short: I was crazy about him but he wasn’t speaking to me. We’d had one amazing kissing extravaganza, then an atrocious misunderstanding late in junior year, the result of various complicated debacles partly involving the fact that my best friend Nora liked him first and he was therefore officially off-limits to me—and partly involving the other fact that in the eyes of most people at Tate Prep, I am a famous slut.
Noel, Noel, Noel.
It was insane to even be thinking of him.
I forgot that I had written all that stuff about real live boyfriends in my Chem notebook, and when my mother offered to quiz me on formulas for the final, I handed it over.
Mom was lying on the floor with her head on Polka-dot, our dog.4 I was standing at the fridge feeling a wave of ennui because of the severe lack of deliciousness therein.
My mother was on a raw food diet.
We’d had salad for dinner, and our fridge contained two bunches of kale, celery juice, pickled carrots, peanuts soaking in water, and a number of other items too horrible to mention.
“Why don’t we ever have dessert anymore?” I complained, shutting the fridge again. I don’t know why I even bothered to open it. Just habit, I guess, left over from the days when there might have been pie or something chocolate in there. “Just for me and Dad, if you don’t want to have it.”
No answer.
“And don’t tell me a banana makes a nice dessert,” I went on.
“Can’t you be supportive of the raw food way of life?” Mom said.
“I could if you didn’t make me
Mom ignored me. “Kevin, come look at this!” she called. Dad got up from his computer, where he was editing his garden catalog/newsletter, and bent over her shoulder. I figured she wanted him to decipher my writing on some part of the Chem notes.
“Did you read that, Kevin?” said my mother.
