The Boyfriend List

“I guess,” he said. “What’s up?”

“Well, you probably know Jackson dumped me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And, um, I—can we go somewhere?” Two brainy-looking committee members were standing right next to us in the hall.

“Okay.” Shiv shrugged as if he didn’t care what we did.

“I don’t mean go somewhere go somewhere,” I said, remembering that he surely thought I was a slut, and after all, last time the two of us had been alone we’d been all over each other. “I mean, outside on the steps.”

“I got it.” He looked at me like I was an idiot. We went outside and sat down.

I looked at my shoes. They were scuffed.

I fiddled with my fingernails, and chewed on one of them a bit.

I got out my pencil, and tapped it on my knee.

“Roo,” said Shiv. “I don’t have all day.”

“Okay. Do you remember you once asked me to be your girlfriend?”

“It wasn’t that long ago.”

“But then, somehow, it never happened?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I, well—I wondered why you changed your mind. I’m not mad or anything. Only, I’m trying to figure stuff out, since the Jackson thing, and I know it wasn’t a big deal, and maybe you don’t want to explain, but I’ve been thinking about it, I guess, and …” Blah blah blah. I went on for some ridiculous amount of time, sounding completely lame and saying “like” just about every other word.

Eventually, finally, I got it all said and shut up so he could answer.

“Roo, you were laughing at me,” Shiv said, looking down at his own shoes now. “I heard you on the quad.”

“What?”

“I heard you, with Cricket and Kim and those guys, cracking up over what a jerk you thought I was.”

“That’s not true!”

“I was there.”

“I didn’t.”

“You yelled ‘Gross!’” he said. “I know I’m not wrong. And you were laughing all over the place, like I was some big joke.”

“Ag!” I said. “That’s not how it happened.”

“And something about I smelled like nutmeg? Like you were disgusted by kissing an Indian or something.” His voice was bitter. “I wasn’t going to go out with you after that. I didn’t even want to look at you for months.”

“Nutmeg is good, Shiv,” I said. “Nutmeg smells good.”

“You made me feel like a loser, Roo,” he said. “Like a complete outsider.”

Shiv, the golden, the popular, the perfect. Saying this to me.

“I didn’t say what you thought I said,” I whispered. “At least, I didn’t mean what you thought I meant.”

“Okay, then,” he said.

“I liked you. They were asking me what it was like to kiss you. That’s all. It’s how girls are, together. No one said anything bad.”

“All right.”

“The gross thing was about ear licking. Cricket asked if we did ear licking, and I’d never heard of it before.”

He laughed a little. “I guess that’s nice to know.”

“All this time I thought it was something wrong with me that made you stop talking to me,” I said.

“It was,” he pointed out.

“I mean with my kissing, or my body, or my personality.”

“It was your personality.”

“Oh.” I tried to crack a smile. “But it was a mistake. Please believe me. I would never say that stuff about you.”²

“Yeah, okay.”

“The Indian thing is not a thing. I mean …”

“I got it, Roo.”

“I’m all messed up now.”