If your friend has no date for Spring Fling (which is the sort of dance where you need a date, and you get a corsage, and all that) and you already have one, you must do reconnaissance work and find out who might be available to take your friend.4
Never, ever, kiss someone else’s official boyfriend. If status is unclear, ask around and find out. Don’t necessarily believe the boy on this question. Double-check your facts.
If your friend has already said she likes a boy, don’t you go liking him too. She’s got dibs.
That is—unless you’re certain it is truly “meant to be.” Because if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, and who are we to stand in the way of true love, just because Tate is so stupidly small?
Don’t ignore your friends if you’ve got a boyfriend. This school is too small for us not to notice your absence.
Tell your friends every little detail! We promise to keep it just between us.
I was happy for Kim. She had never had an official boyfriend before—and Finn seemed to do all the right things. He called her, he took the bus over to her house to watch movies on TV, he left her notes in her school mail cubby —the place where we usually got notices about assemblies or sports events. He also sat around on the quad with us, and at our lunch table lots of days—which meant that suddenly I was hanging around with this boy that I pretty much didn’t speak to.
I could have started speaking to him, of course. That would have been the normal thing to do. I could have tried to make friends with him, like Nora and Cricket did. Not close friends, but goofing-around friends. Cricket called him Blueberry and wouldn’t tell him why, and Nora went with Kim to watch soccer games and took action pictures with her Instamatic. But some part of me felt scared of talking much to Finn—or of being seen with him. I could still hear Katarina’s singsong voice, “Ruby and Finn, sitting in a tree …” and it was hard to break that old habit of avoiding any seat that was open next to him.
Also, I didn’t want Kim to think I was trying to steal her boyfriend, if rumors did start up again.
So I was civil. I said hi, and all that, but I basically didn’t deal with him if I could avoid it—and he basically didn’t deal with me. It was easier that way.
In late October, after Kim and Finn had been going out about six weeks, Kim nailed me on it. “Do you have a problem with Finn?” she asked me. We were eating ice cream bars and sitting on my deck. It was probably the last warmish day before the heavy Seattle rains set in for fall.
“Not at all, he’s great,” I said.
“Because you hardly even talk to him.”
“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”
“You give him the cold shoulder.”
“I don’t mean to, Kim. I have a lot on my mind.” (I didn’t, though. It was an excuse.)
Kim looked concerned. “Like what?”
“Like how Mr. Wallace will never be my husband,” I joked. “I’m pining away for him, but he’s such a Marxist, he’ll never marry me.”
“Roo.”
“All I want is to be Mrs. Wallace and have little South African-accent babies—”
“Roo!”
“… and look at him in his Speedo swim trunks every morning before I go off to work, while he stays home with the kids. But he’ll never go for it.”
“He’s already married.”
“Oh, yes. That’s another problem. My love is unrequited. Must you add to my misery?”
“Roo, seriously—”
“Mr. Wallace doesn’t love me. I need some more ice cream.”
“—what is the deal with you and Finn?”
Now, the intelligent girl would not have told. The intelligent girl would have said, “Nothing, I swear on my life,” and started talking to Finn like a normal person.
But me, no.
I decided to spill my guts about this minor weirdness from second grade that clearly no one remembered except me and him. I told Kim the whole story. How we had fun looking at the wildlife book, how Katarina and Ariel teased us, how he’d save swings for me and had still given me that sweet, shrimpy look as recently as last semester.
Kim was my best friend. I wanted her to understand why I had been so weird with Finn. I figured I could tell her everything.
But now, I wish I hadn’t.
1 The refectory is Tate Prep’s pompous way of saying lunchroom. Or rather,
