be paying it off for at least a month, and I couldn’t believe he let me get excited about the dance and buy a dress, when he was going to dump me.
My parents could hear me sobbing though our paper-thin walls. Mom kept knocking on the door. “Roo, come out here and have dinner with us. I made tofu with diced cauliflower!”
“Elaine,” my dad said, “let her have her privacy.”
“She’s been in there for two hours, Kevin.”
“Roo?” asked my dad. “Don’t you want to share? Maybe we can help.”
“She’s not going to talk to us. Get with it. She’s a teenager. The best we can hope for is to get some protein into her.”
“Sweetie, do you want to talk to just me? Mom doesn’t have to come in.”
“Kevin!”
“Elaine, you know you make things worse. Maybe you should stay out of this one.”
“Ruby,” squawked my mom. “If it’s a girl thing, you know I’m here for you.”
And so on. And so on. I finally put my headphones on to block out the noise.
Tuesday night,5 my parents took me to a dinner party at Juana’s. She lives in this ramshackle house that is so covered with dog hair you have to wear old jeans when you go, and definitely no black, because you will be insanely furry when you leave. My mom made me go. I wanted to stay home and stare at the phone hoping Jackson would call, but she said I had to socialize.
It was one of the first warm days of spring, and Angelo was out on Juana’s front lawn throwing sticks for seven dogs at once. He had this system of three sticks in rotation, so he was throwing constantly. The dogs were going berserk. He was taller than the last time I saw him, and he’d let his hair grow out, so you could see the curls. He was wearing an oversize football jersey and baggy jeans. “Ruby’s suffering from a broken heart,” my mother announced. “Her boyfriend dumped her. Angelo, you cheer her up. Roo—help him throw the sticks.”
“Elaine!” snapped my dad. “When will you learn to give the girl some privacy?”
“People shouldn’t have secrets,” my mom said. “Besides, he probably already knows. I told Juana everything on the phone.”
“Elaine!”
“What?” My mother put her hand on her chest as if to proclaim innocence. “She’s my oldest friend!”
“Hey, Roo,” said Angelo. “I’ve got a system going on. Check it out.”
“See?” said my mom. “He wants her to help him. Go on, Roo. We’ll see you inside.”
They went up the steps, my dad muttering at my mother in a low voice.
Angelo and I threw sticks for a while. My hands got covered with dog slime. We didn’t say much, but he did show me how the little mutt named Skipperdee would never drop a stick unless you picked her up and squeezed her. Whenever she brought one back he’d scoop her up with his left hand and squeeze her under his arm while throwing another stick with his right to get the other dogs out of the way; she’d drop the stick, he’d pick it up with his right, put her down with his left, throw the stick and she’d be off again. Also, he had a system of throwing two sticks at the same time, so that the smaller dogs would have a chance against the Labradors, who went for it hardcore.
After a while we went in for dinner. My dad and I ate until our stomachs were sticking way far out, because Juana is a great cook and we’d been eating the macrobiotic-sludge-and-breakfast-cereal diet for weeks.6 My mother ate a lot, too, bare-faced acting as if fried plantains, spiced shrimp (which I didn’t eat), vegetable jambalaya and ice cream with sugared pecans were all part of her normal regime.
“Roo doesn’t have a date for the big dance Saturday night,” my mother said, as we were all eating dessert on Juana’s porch while the dogs roamed around peeing on the grass. “It’s on a boat. And she has the most beautiful dress. But no date.”
“Mom!” I wanted to die.
“Angelo could take her,” Juana said, picking up my mother’s cue. “He’s not doing anything Saturday.”
“Mom!” (This, from Angelo.)
“What, honey?” said Juana. “You could take Ruby to her dance. She went with you to homecoming last year. I bet it would be fun.”
I looked at Angelo, sure he was thinking what a nightmare it would be to be trapped on a boat with a bunch of prep school kids he didn’t even know. “Sure,” he said, smiling. “Sounds good.”
“Oh. Um. Thanks.”
“I should wear a suit, right?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Okay. What time?”
“Eight-thirty. The boat leaves at nine.”
“No, no, Roo,” interrupted my mother. “You two should go to dinner first. It’s Roo’s treat.”
Angelo laughed and gave me a look, like “Ag! Our moms are such freaks.” But he said “All right”—and would I like to get Italian, because he’d heard of a good place?
“I’ll loan you two the station wagon,” said Juana.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” said Angelo.
