The Boyfriend List

It was none of my business, really. He could get phone calls from whatever girls he wanted.

Or maybe it was my business; after all, I was his girlfriend, and wasn’t I entitled to know if there were other girls he had intimate conversations with, conversations that were obviously about important feelings?

“Who was on the phone?” I asked, trying to sound bored.

“Oh? Just now? Heidi Sussman,” he said. Heidi from Katarina’s set.

“What did she want?”

“She’s upset about something or other. I told her I’d talk to her later.”

“Upset about what?” I hoped I sounded concerned for Heidi and not overly nosey.

“Oh, she’s always upset about something. Who knows what it is, this time around,” Jackson said, killing aliens all the while.

What did that mean, always upset about something? What was going on with Jackson and Heidi Sussman? Was he just interested in the video game, or was he deliberately leaving out information?

I tried to be interested in the dying aliens.

I tried to be interested in my math.

I tried to think of another thing to talk about, a movie or something.

“Why is she calling you?” I finally asked.

“We used to go out,” he said. “You knew that.” Still killing aliens.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.” I couldn’t believe I’d been sitting next to Heidi in class for weeks, doing a scene with her in Drama Elective, saying hello in the halls, all without knowing that she had been Jackson’s girlfriend.

Jackson turned to look at me. I’m absolutely certain he knew I didn’t know, and actually meant me not to know for as long as he could hide it from me. “It was in the summer. We were hanging out at tennis camp,” he said. “We broke up before school started.”

“How long before?” I asked.

“I don’t know. A couple of days,” he said. “The day before, I think.”

“The same week we started going out?”

“Yeah, I guess. She keeps wanting to talk about it.”

“What does she say?”

“I don’t know.” Jackson chuckled and put his arm around me. “I wish she’d leave me alone. I’ve got better things to do.” He nuzzled my neck. “I’m not gonna call her back, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I couldn’t blame Heidi for wanting to talk. I mean, Jackson had barely caught his breath before replacing her with a new girlfriend. Suddenly I felt dirty, like I’d been involved in something ugly and mean without my knowledge. “You should talk to her,” I said. “It’s only fair.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. There shouldn’t be any bad feelings.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll call her later.”

I did mean what I said. If I was Heidi, I’d want the boy to talk to me. It would drive me insane if he kept saying he’d call and never did. It would be so unfair. But at the same time, when Jackson told me he was going to the B&O for coffee with Heidi after school on Friday and wouldn’t be picking me up at swim practice, I was completely shattered. He was going out with his ex-girlfriend! The girl he had been kissing and thinking was pretty and special and wonderful only six weeks ago. I felt jittery all through practice, and swam badly. My dad picked me up, and I asked him to take me to a five o’clock movie so I wouldn’t have to think about Jackson and Heidi—so I wouldn’t give in to the temptation to call his cell phone while their big coffee discussion was still going on. But typical Dad, if we were having an afternoon together, he wanted to bond. “Why don’t we go to that B&O place you like?” he suggested. “I’ve always been curious about it.”

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“Really? Aren’t you usually starved after practice?”

“I am, but all they have at the B&O is cake,” I said. “It’s like a coffeehouse.”

“You can have cake,” my dad said. “I won’t tell Mom. Besides, if they brew a serious cappuccino, I want to know about this place.”

He turned the wheel and got off the freeway at the exit for the B&O. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t feel like I could explain the situation to him, but if we showed up while Jackson was having coffee with Heidi, it would look like I was spying on them. And even though I actually did want to spy on them, I knew I wasn’t supposed to want to—and was supposed to be trusting of Jackson and unjealous of Heidi— because that was the cool way to be. Plus this whole thing of them talking was my idea in the first place, so supposedly it would be insane for me to be jealous.

My dad found a parking space and we marched into the B&O, him all beaming and talking about the teen hangouts of his youth, the merits of different coffee beans and the importance of whole milk in cappuccinos. I scanned the room, my heart thumping.

But Jackson wasn’t there.

And neither was Heidi.

Some artist types sat at a table for six, sucking down espresso. Kim was at the counter, writing an essay on her laptop. Finn was behind the register, wearing a black apron and gazing at her with big moony eyes.