“Oh, aha,” as I was talking, as if she was planning on writing down shrinky-type things as soon as my fifty-minute appointment was up. Stuff like: “Ruby Oliver, obsessed with getting her period, brings it up at first meeting.” Or, “Ruby Oliver, fixated on bumblebees.”“Shows considerable anxiety about having less money than her friends.”“Needs father’s help to stop her mother from embarrassing her.”“First menstrual period, obviously a traumatic episode.”“Thinking about hot tubs and privacy. Therefore, thinking about sex.”Suddenly, the whole riff seemed weirdly revealing.I shut up.Doctor Z and I sat there in silence for twelve minutes. I know, because I watched the clock. I spent the time wondering if someone made that poncho for her, or she made it herself, or she actually bought it at a crafts fair. Then I looked at my low-rise jeans and the frayed edges of the 1950s bowling shirt I was wearing, and wondered if she was thinking mean stuff about my outfit too.Finally, Doctor Z crossed her legs and said, “Why do you think you’re here, Ruby?”“My parents are paranoid.”“Paranoid, how?”“They’re worried I’ll lose my mind and get anorexic or depressed. They figure therapy will head it off.”“Do you think you’ll get anorexic or depressed?”“No.”A pause. “Then why do you think you had those panic attacks?”“Like I told you, it was a bad week.”“And you don’t want to talk about it.”“I’m still in the middle of it,” I said. “Who knows if Jackson and me are really broken up? Because just the other night he kissed me, or maybe I kissed him, and he keeps looking at me, and he came back to this party I had and was all upset about this thing that happened.”“What?”“Just a thing. It’s too hard to explain. And I don’t know why Cricket and Nora have stopped talking to me, but it’s suddenly like we’re not even friends anymore; and I had a fight with Noel, and I don’t know why Cabbie asked me out, or why I’m going. I think he must want something. Oh, and this other guy, Angelo—he’s probably never talking to me again—but then again, maybe he will. Basically, I’ve got no idea what’s going on in my own life. That’s why I can’t talk about it.”I was not going to reach for that annoying box of tissues, no matter what. I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t end up crying. “Maybe it’s not a bad week,” I joked. “Maybe it’s a bad month. But I can’t explain it—until I can explain it—and right now, I can’t.”“Jackson is your boyfriend?” asked Doctor Z.“Was,” I said. “Until two weeks ago. We might get back together.”“And who is Cabbie?”“Just some guy. Shep Cabot. We’re going out tomorrow night.”“And Angelo?”“Just some other guy.”“Noel?”“He’s just a friend.”“That’s a lot of justs,” said Doctor Z. “And a lot of guys.”Before you know it, she had me promising to write up the Boyfriend List. She said it would give us something to talk about next week—and that our time was up.
1 I think Doctor Z is wrong here. Official does too matter, because having an official boyfriend changes everything: how people treat you at school, how you feel when the phone rings, what kind of gum you chew (mint if you have a boyfriend, because you might kiss him at any moment, but bubble gum otherwise). And that leads me to this problem: How are you supposed to know when it’s official? Do you have to say “boyfriend” in front of the guy and not have him flinch? Or does he have to say it, as in, “This is my girlfriend, Ruby”? Does he have to meet your parents? Or hold your hand in public?
Meghan says, four weeks after the first kiss it’s official—but what if you break up for one of those weeks? That happened to my friend Cricket when she was going out with Tommy Parrish.
I was hoping there’d be a set of guidelines handed out in Sex Ed class, but Sex Ed—when I finally got to take it—was all about biology and birth control and nothing about anything that actually goes on between people. Like how to tell what it means when someone forgets to call you when he said he would, or what to do when someone gropes your boob in a movie theater.
I think there should be a class on that.2 Okay, she didn’t say knitting. She said, “something creative,” some kind of hobby where I make things. But knitting is the kind of thing she meant.3 Meghan was never exactly my friend, but she lives two blocks from me and when she got her license in December she started carpooling me to school every morning. Actually, she’s not really friends with anyone, except her boyfriend, Bick. He’s a senior. Frankly, Meghan’s a girl the other girls don’t like. When Josh Ballard pulled her pants down in eighth-grade gym class (juvenile, I know, but there you have it), she was wearing pink bikini panties and she turned around like three times in shock, showing them off, before she yanked her shorts back up. And she and Bick went into the bathroom of the bus station when we took a school trip to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival and came out twenty minutes later looking hot and sweaty. Plus she just radiates sex appeal even though she’s usually wearing some old flannel shirt, which is very annoying.4 In case you don’t know already, panic attacks are episodes where a person feels a sense of massive anxiety; she thinks she can’t breathe, her heart rate speeds up, that kind of thing. If a person has them all the time, she probably has a panic disorder. Important: Doctor Z says these breathing problems and heart-pounding things can also be symptoms of actual physical problems, so see a doctor, no matter what, if anything like this happens to you.5 One of my all-time favorite words. Debacle: A sudden, complete, ludicrous downfall.6 Ag! Once you start seeing a shrink, everything you say sounds dirty.7 Thank god she let me keep my bra on; no way was I showing my boobs to the mother of my carpool driver.
1. Adam (but he doesn’t count.)
Adam was this boy that I used to stare at in preschool. His hair was too long, that’s why. It stuck out behind his ears and trailed down his neck, whereas all the other five-year-old boys had bowl haircuts. I didn’t have too much hair myself—it didn’t grow fast and my mom was always trimming it with her nail scissors—so I was a little obsessed with hair.
Adam’s last name was Cox, and after I had been eyeing him for a couple of months, I named this stuffed bunny I had after him. All the grown-ups laughed when I said the bunny’s name was Cox, and I didn’t understand why.1
Pretty soon, Adam and I were playing together. Our parents took us to the zoo, and we’d spend time after school in the nearby playground, drawing with chalk and walking up the slide. I remember we went swimming a few times at the YMCA, and hung out in a plastic wading pool in his backyard. His cat had kittens, and I got to help name them because I came over the same morning they were born.
And that was it.
We were only five years old.
When I was old enough for kindergarten, I started at Tate Prep and he went somewhere else.
Doctor Z looked down at the Boyfriend List. She didn’t seem too impressed with my Adam Cox story. Or maybe it was the list itself she didn’t think much of—though it had taken me a lot of work to do. I started the night after our first appointment, in bed in my pajamas, writing on this thick, cream-colored stationery my grandma Suzette got me. It says Ruby Denise Oliver on the top in this great curlicue font—but I never use it, since anyone I’d want to write to has e-mail.
My first draft, I only wrote down Jackson and Cabbie. Then I added Gideon at the beginning, with a question mark next to his name. Then Michael, the guy who was my first kiss—putting him in between Gideon and Jackson.
