Real Live Boyfriends

But she never did.

“Uniboob?” I said innocently. “What uniboob?”

“I don’t know. I mean, how can she be mad at my boobs?” Nora wailed. “They never did anything to her.”

“Your boobs are fantastic,” I told her. Which was true. It was just her bras that were bad. “Maybe they stole attention from her. Maybe she’s jealous of the way all the guys look at your chestal profile.”

“Ugh.” Nora grimaced. “Only guys like Neanderthal Darcy. Not quality guys.”

“Maybe Cricket’s in love with Neanderthal Darcy,” I said. “Did you ever think of that?”

“I still haven’t told you the worst part.”

“Tell me.”

Nora sipped her coffee and shook her head. “First, before I do: Roo, I want to say sorry.”

“What for?”

“For not talking to you over the whole Noel business. For letting a guy come between us. For just—we’ve been friends a really long time and I should have acted different. When I was mad at you, I should have talked it out.”

“Thanks,” I said. It was good to hear her apologize, and I’d really never thought she would. But it did not escape my notice that she was saying all of this to me now, when not only did she have Happy but I had lost Noel. It’s a lot easier to stop being jealous and mad when the girl who supposedly stole your guy is a heartbroken puddle of angst and everyone knows it.

“Yeah, well.” Nora shook her head. “I feel like a third wheel with Cricket and Kim all the time. At lunch, at yearbook, out for coffee. It’s like the two of them have something together that I don’t have, like it doesn’t matter whether I’m there or not, most of the time.”

“Really?”

“My mom says three is just a difficult number,” Nora went on, “but when I hung out with you and Meghan I never felt like a third wheel, ever. I just felt like we were all three friends. Like it was natural.”

“It was,” I said.

“Anyway, the thing I haven’t told you yet is that Cricket said to Kim they should decide on a code word to use with each other when they want to get rid of me.”

“A what?”

“Like, she said they should still be friends with me, but they didn’t want me hanging around with them all the time. So whenever they wanted to ditch me, they’d say ‘jog bra.’ ”

“And Kim agreed?”

Nora nodded. “She talked about how she didn’t want to hurt my feelings but yeah, she was sick of me too. So if, like, they wanted to go to Top Pot Doughnuts after school—”

“Is that where they go now?” I said. Because neither of them had set foot in the B&O since the debacles of sophomore year.

“Yeah. Anyway, if they wanted to go without me, because apparently I’m too controlling and boring and obsessed with my boyfriend, and my boobs are just so annoying Cricket wants to scream, then one would say something like, ‘At crew practice my jog bra was cutting into my side in the worst way.’ Then the other would know that they should both make excuses and leave me behind.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No.”

“Ag.”

Nora reached over, picked up my fork and helped herself to a bite of my chocolate cheesecake. Just the way she used to. Before all the badness happened.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Nothing. I started crying so I had to hang up the phone in case they heard me. Then I came to find you.”

“We should make a code word for what complete wenches they are,” I said.

“Like what?” Nora sniffed.

“Like mushrooms. I hate mushrooms.”

“I like mushrooms.”

“Okay, then what about soybeans?”

“Ugh.”

“We can see them in the refectory and say things like, ‘Oh, you know what really makes me ill? Soybeans!’ And no one will know what we’re talking about.”

Nora kind of started laughing but then her face crumpled and she was crying. “I can’t believe this happened,” she said. “They’ve been my friends since forever.”

“Mine too,” I said. “Or were.”

“How am I ever going to show my face at Tate again?” sobbed Nora. “Am I supposed to just go there and act like everything’s okay, and smile at them and even sit with them, pretending like we’re friends when I know they want to get rid of me? Or am I supposed to stop hanging around them, since they don’t want me anyway, and act