Real Live Boyfriends

I couldn’t remember.

Did I even deserve to have him back if I couldn’t remember what sweets he liked?

This line of thinking was psychotic. I put the books away. It was two in the morning, and as I ate the last of Dad’s stash of spearmint jelly candies, I finally had an idea.

It wouldn’t solve anything, but at least it was a start.

I called Gideon’s cell phone. He picked it up before it went to voice mail and said sleepily: “Ruby? It’s two a.m. Is everything okay?”

“Everything’s okay,” I said. “But I can’t go out with you anymore.”

1 A turducken is a boned chicken stuffed into a boned duck stuffed into a partly boned turkey, all layered in with stuffing and—well, it’s a triple-crown meat extravaganza, that’s all you need to know.2 Movies where the safe responsible guy is revealed as a jerk—thus freeing the heroine to leave him for someone more exciting: Desperately Seeking Susan; The Wedding Singer; The Holiday; Legally Blonde; Sliding Doors; French Kiss; Bring It On; Working Girl; Sex, Lies, and Videotape; George of the Jungle.3 Movies where a brooding, even sulky guy seems like a good idea for a quality boyfriend: Twilight, 10 Things I Hate About You, Edward Scissorhands, Pump Up the Volume, Heathers (until the end), The Breakfast Club, The Bourne Identity, Grosse Pointe Blank, Angel Eyes, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the Beast, Reality Bites, Donnie Darko, Wuthering Heights, Good Will Hunting, The Piano, Rebecca, Rebel Without a Cause.4 Like me, not knowing about Noel’s witnessing that car accident. Not knowing Booth had died, at all.5 Because he’s busy brooding.

Emotional Breakdown in the Parking Lot!

Peer Questionnaire

Please fill out this form by November 22 for the peer or peers who have requested your help with their college admissions process.

Reminder: Please take your responsibilities as a peer commenter seriously. A helpful response can assist someone in finding the right college!

What are your peer’s strengths?

Ruby, Ruby, Ruby. She gets so stoked about things. A camera. A film she’s seen. An idea in her lit class. She waves her hands and jumps and talks, and no matter how you’re feeling, you can’t help but get excited about it too—whatever it is.

Also, she’s amazing with animals.

Also, she is the wittiest person I know.

Also, she cares. About doing a good job. About how people feel.

What are your peer’s weaknesses?

Self-loathing.

In what career do you imagine your peer excelling?

Ruby could run a bake shop. Ruby could be a zoologist. Ruby could be a swim coach or a charity fund-raiser or a cinema historian or a controversial feminist. But she wants to be a filmmaker.

And what Ruby wants, she usually gets.

I think that’s what she’ll be.

What does your peer do in his or her free time?

She makes films. She makes doughnuts.

She makes people laugh.

She looks after pygmy goats and potbellied pigs.

She makes the world seem shiny and sunlit.

   My family survived Thanksgiving by inviting Meghan and Dr. Flack over to eat with us. It’s just the two of them in that big house, and I think usually they go visit a relative, but this year they were going to be home. Meghan said they were planning to eat at a restaurant, which sounded sad to me on Thanksgiving, so I invited them.

Before dinner, we watched Hannah and Her Sisters, because that’s the perfect Thanksgiving movie, in my opinion, and Meghan had never seen it. Dr. Flack let Dad pontificate about bonsai plants and winter blooms as he showed her through the greenhouse. My mother made the turducken, and I made a thing with butternut squash and like six pounds of cheese that I read about in a cookbook, and also a thing with green beans and almonds, so there were actual good-tasting vegetable dishes.

Dad made apple pie and wept about Grandma Suzette and pies she’d made throughout his childhood, but otherwise he kept it together. I ate a small slice of the turducken to make Mom happy.

Hanson drank from a flask and slurred his words before we even got to the dessert—but we all just breathed deeply and tried to be nice to him.

There was nothing else to do, really.

Dad had a long talk with him before he left on Saturday, telling Hanson that the drinking was a serious problem and he needed to get treatment.

Hanson probably wouldn’t go, Dad said.

He hadn’t gone the other times they’d talked.

Sometimes, you just can’t help people. You can only offer to help.