also by e. lockhartfly on the wallthe boy book
For my dear old high school friends,
who were (and still are) excellent and hilarious—
and who never did anything like the bad stuff
people do in this book
Here it is, the Boyfriend List. In chronological order.
1. Adam (but he doesn’t count.)
2. Finn (but people just thought so.)
3. Hutch (but I’d rather not think about it.)
4. Gideon (but it was just from afar.)
5. Ben (but he didn’t know.)
6. Tommy (but it was impossible.)
7. Chase (but it was all in his mind.)
8. Sky (but he had someone else.)
9. Michael (but I so didn’t want to.)
10. Angelo (but it was just one date.)
11. Shiv (but it was just one kiss.)
12. Billy (but he didn’t call.)
13. Jackson (yes, okay, he was my boyfriend. Don’t ask me any more about it.)
14. Noel (but it was just a rumor.)
15. Cabbie (but I’m undecided.)
Before anyone reading this thinks to call me a slut—or even just imagines I’m incredibly popular—let me point out that this list includes absolutely every single boy I have ever had the slightest little any-kind-of-anything with.Boys I never kissed are on this list.Boys I never even talked to are on this list.Doctor Z told me not to leave anyone off. Not even if I think he’s unimportant.In fact, especially if I think he’s unimportant.Doctor Z is my shrink, and she says that for purposes of the list, the boyfriends don’t have to be official. Official, unofficial—she says it doesn’t matter, so long as I remember the boy and something about what happened.1The list was a homework assignment for my mental health. She told me to write down all the boyfriends, kind-of boyfriends, almost-boyfriends, rumored boyfriends and wished-he-were boyfriends I’ve ever had. Plus, she recommended I take up knitting.2I still have some doubts about Doctor Z, though by now I’ve been seeing her for almost four months. I mean, if I knew a fifteen-year-old who sat around knitting sweaters all day, I’d definitely think she had some mental health problems.I know it’s weird to be fifteen and have a shrink. Until I had one of my own, I thought shrinks were just for lunatics, tragics and neurotics. Lunatics: insane-asylum candidates, people tearing their hair out and stabbing horses in the eyeballs and whatever. Tragics: people who get help because they’ve had something really bad happen to them, like getting cancer, or being abused. And neurotics: middle- aged men who think about death all the time and can’t tell their own mothers to stop poking into their lives.A lot of my parents’ friends are neurotics, actually, but the only other kid I know who sees a shrink (and admits to it) is Meghan Flack.3 She’s had one since she was twelve, but she prefers to call it a “counselor”—like it’s not a Freudian psychoanalyst her mom pays $200 an hour, but some fun college girl who’s in charge of her bunk at summer camp.Meghan sees the shrink because her dad died, which makes her a tragic in my book. Her shrink makes her lie on a couch and talk about her dreams. Then he explains that the dreams are all about sex—which later turns out to mean that they’re all about her dead father. Ag.Me, I don’t fit into any of my own categories. I’m not a lunatic, or even a neurotic. I started going to Doctor Z because I had panic attacks—these fits where my heart would beat really fast and I felt as if I couldn’t get enough air. I only had five of them, which Doctor Z says isn’t enough to count as a disorder, but all five happened within ten days—in the same ten days I—
lost my boyfriend (boy #13)
lost my best friend
lost all my other friends
learned gory details about my now-ex-boyfriend’s sexual adventures
did something shockingly advanced with boy #15
did something suspicious with boy #10
had an argument with boy #14
drank my first beer
got caught by my mom
lost a lacrosse game
failed a math test
hurt Meghan’s feelings
became a leper
and became a famous slutEnough to give anyone panic attacks, right?4I was so overwhelmed by the horror of the whole debacle5 that I had to skip school for a day to read mystery novels, cry and eat spearmint jelly candies.At first, I wasn’t going to tell my parents. I tend to keep them happy, get good grades, come home by curfew and not angst publicly about my problems—because as soon as I tell them one tiny thing about what’s going on, they act like it’s an earthquake. They can’t bear when I’m unhappy. They try and fix it;
