I nodded. Fraternities were in Happy’s future. There was no denying it.
“Now you have time to run the bake sale,” I said to Nora. “Which, according to you and Varsha, is more fulfilling than having a boyfriend.”
Nora laughed and ate a spoonful of cookie dough. “More filling, at least.”
I said earlier that Hutch and I never spoke about Noel and me. Only now: I wrote him an e-mail explaining the whole debacle. The sordid details of the breakup, the Halloween party, the argument in the parking lot. Plus everything Claude had told me: the accident, Booth, Noel’s wanting to forget.
Because Hutch is my friend.
And he’s my only friend who’s really and truly Noel’s friend.
I needed my friends just then.
I thought maybe Hutch would freak out at the excess emotion and hysteria in my note, and do a typical guy thing and ignore it. But he didn’t. He wrote back three days later.
The thing to consider, said Hutch, is that Noel is one of the most outstanding people on the planet.
Then, after several paragraphs about his Parisian adventures, he wrote:
P.S. After I got your note, I e-mailed DuBoise. Didn’t mention Booth or Claude or you, but said (among many other things) that I heard a rumor he was going out with a sexy college vampire girl.
His reply, pasted in:
Nah. Am single.
True, did kiss a vampire at that guy Hsaio’s Halloween party.
It was okay, but no repeat was necessary.
Confession: I did it to make Ruby jealous.
She was staring at me across the room and it was a doltish move but the situation was tense and I couldn’t deal so I macked on the vampire.
I don’t think it worked. Ruby left with Van Deusen.
I know you’re going to forward this to her, so I’ll just give you my permission to do it and relieve your guilt in advance.
Noel
A Nighttime Escapade!
Noel,
It may have come to your attention that while I have abdicated the dubious throne of the bake sale and let Nora take the damn thing over, I am still yoked into trying to recruit the masculine contingent of Tate Prep to bake stuff for December 20.
Your chocolate croissants, though shockingly late in their delivery last year, were nevertheless enjoyed by both humans and Great Danes alike. Can you repeat the performance? Or pledge some alternate French pastry–type item?
Ruby
the above e-mail may not look like it, but it was a love letter.
Noel had made me the chocolate croissants last June—he had pledged them under serious pressure for the springtime edition of the sale, but then hadn’t delivered them because we weren’t speaking to each other. When he finally did bake them, it was to show me that he wanted me the way I wanted him.
Reminding him of the croissants—asking him to make them again—was asking him to start over with me.
I spent a lot of time thinking about whether to send that e-mail.
Last time we’d spoken, he and I had been yelling at each other in the parking lot.
And if Noel was immature and in denial, like Doctor Z thought, did I really want that kind of boyfriend? Shouldn’t I find someone new, like Meghan said? Or just focus on my backstroke and my college apps, like Varsha and Nora advised?
No.
It might be deranged, but I still wanted Noel. Now that I knew he wasn’t going out with the vampire and in fact had only kissed her to get my attention, there seemed like there might be some hope that he wanted me. Going after him might not be the smart choice, the logical choice—but it was how I felt, and Doctor Z always encouraged me to try to get what I wanted.
To feel I deserved to get what I wanted.
“If I don’t have panic attacks and I’ve flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo,” I said to Doctor Z, “then who am I?”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve thought of myself as the girl with serious mental health issues for, like, more than a year now,” I said. “So if I don’t have them, what girl am I now?”
“You wonder who you are,” she said.
“My point is that I think I’m over my self-loathing,” I said. “I think I might actually be a functioning human at this point.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve let go of this idea of yourself as mentally ill.”
“Um. Yes. I mean, I’m not saying I’ve handled things well or anything, but I don’t think I handled them like a deranged person.”
“Because you’re not deranged, Ruby.”
“I know,” I said. “I think I actually know that. Do you know what Noel said to me once? He said: ‘You’re not mental. You think you’re mental. That’s a different thing.’ ”
“Interesting.”
“I didn’t know what he meant then. I thought, What’s the difference? But I get it now.”
Doctor Z smiled.
“It feels weird,” I went on.
“How so?”
“Like I don’t know what to wear if I’m sane,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Like I’ve been warped, I’ve been certifiable, I’ve been a madman—but if those don’t labels apply to me anymore, I don’t know which ones do. It’s like I’ve worn my neurotic outfit every day for so long, and if I can’t wear it anymore now—I don’t know what to put on.”
“What’s wrong with being naked?” asked Doctor Z.
I fine-tuned the croissant e-mail and hit Send on a Friday night after dinner in early December. I didn’t want to have to look at Noel during Monday’s CAP Workshop or feel his presence in the refectory, wondering if he’d read my note yet and if he’d respond. By sending it Friday night, I could be certain he’d read it over the weekend.
Turns out I didn’t have to angst. Five minutes later, he wrote back:
Ruby,
I was going to say: You overestimate my baking skills.
I was going to say: I still have a scar on my hand from the last time I made croissants.
I was going to say: I’m busy trying to figure out how to get Columbia to accept me despite bad score on History AP.
I was going to say: Coach has me doing extra workouts for my knee.
I was going to say: I haven’t got time.
I was going to say: Maybe I could just donate money straight to Happy Paws, instead of baking.
I was going to say: I only made those croissants to impress you, anyway, back in the day.
And then I realized: I should just say yes.
Yes. I will make chocolate croissants.
Noel
I thought about not answering him until a couple days had gone by, just to show that it didn’t matter to me. Pretending that we were just talking about a bake sale contribution and nothing more.
But I don’t really want to be that girl. The girl who squashes her feelings down. If there is anything I learned in therapy, it’s that squashing is an excellent way to give yourself panic attacks.
So I wrote back:
I was going to act like it didn’t matter much.
I was going to say, Thanks for contributing to Happy Paws.
I was going to say, Good luck with the Columbia app and the knee exercises, like we were acquaintances and I felt a mild interest in your well-being.
But I don’t want to lie.
I am really, really glad you’re making croissants.
Polka-dot is too.
Noel wrote:
List of things to do:
Ask Mom for recipe.
Shop for butter. (Croissants involve lots of butter.)
Shop for chocolate. (You want the chocolate kind.)
Apologize to Ruby for acting like a dolt and kissing the vampire girl in front of her. No matter how long we’d been broken up, that was a warped move and the kind of manipulative crap I usually associate with guys other than myself.
Sorry.
Mom was in
the kitchen doing unspeakable things to slabs of dead pig involving the Cuisinart, a lot of garlic and pieces of washed intestine. Dad was puttering in the greenhouse listening to REO Speedwagon. Polka was thumping his tail quietly on the carpet, looking at me expectantly, hoping for his before-bed walk.
Everything was just as it had been ten minutes ago.
And everything was different.
Noel was making me croissants.
Noel had said sorry.
I wrote back:
Flour. You will need flour.
Also, I suspect, a small amount of salt.
Seconds later, his reply:
Maybe I will need help.
And I wrote:
What?
And he wrote:
Your help.
And I wrote:
My help with the croissants?
And he wrote:
Help me.
I didn’t write back, because I was putting on my coat and brushing my teeth and putting on lip gloss and deodorant and grabbing the keys to the Honda and shouting to Mom that I’d be back by curfew and pushing Polka back in the front door with my foot because he wanted to go out so bad and there was no way I was taking him. Then I was in the car driving to Madrona in the chilly night.
The lights were on in Noel’s kitchen. Through the windows I could see his mom and stepdad doing dishes and wiping down the countertops. The little girls’ rooms in the front of the upstairs were dark, though, and Noel’s lights were out as well, except for the glow from his computer monitor.
I couldn’t ring the bell. Couldn’t just make small talk with his parents and ask if I could come in after all this time without seeing them.
And I couldn’t call. No cell.
So I scootched my bag underneath the porch and climbed the rose trellis on the side of the house up to the porch roof. I edged along it until Noel’s window was in front of me, and then, feeling kind of stalkerish and dumb but also like a girl in a movie about love, I felt around for a pebble to toss at the glass.
No pebbles. I was on the roof.
I felt in the rain gutter.
Nothing but some truly disgusting sludge.
What was I thinking? Of course there were no pebbles on the roof.
I picked at the shingles, hoping a bit of one would come off in my hand.
No luck.
Aha! Tums.
I had a small roll of antacid tablets in the front pocket of my jeans, left over from the misguided ingestion of two cappuccinos in a fifteen-minute period.
I took out a Tum and threw it at Noel’s window.
He didn’t answer.
I threw another Tum.
And another.
And another.
Tum. Tum. Tum. Tum.
Ag. I suddenly got worried that maybe Tums were toxic to birds or squirrels and I was inadvertently poisoning the small-animal population of Madrona.
I collected as many as Tums as I could find from where they’d fallen on the roof, then knocked on Noel’s window.
Looking in, I saw he wasn’t answering because he had headphones on. He was clicking back and forth between his e-mail and iTunes, tapping his fingers on the edge of his keyboard now and then.
He was wearing pajamas.
I had never seen Noel in pajamas.
Actually, they were blue and white striped pajama pants and a white T-shirt so thin and faded you could practically see through it.
I knocked harder, and he turned around.
He stared at me.
I stared at him.
He bolted out of his room.
Where had he gone?
Was he going to tell his parents I was on the roof?
No, he would never do that.
Was he angry I had come?
Was I being a stalker?
Had he left because he couldn’t deal with seeing me?
Should I just go home?
Would I die trying to climb down the rose trellis?
I was turning to attempt it when Noel came back.
He was wearing jeans and waving something at me.
A toothbrush.
He opened the window, leaned out, and before I could even speak—he kissed me. His mouth was cold and minty. I kissed him back and felt dizzy and clutched the edge of the windowsill. He kept kissing me, and I kept kissing him and I was so happy. Then he climbed out the window and we sat on the porch roof with our backs against the house and he waved his toothbrush again.
“You went to brush your teeth,” I said. “You kept me waiting on your roof in the cold so you could brush your teeth.”
“We had scallions at dinner,” Noel said.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” I told him.
“I was!” he protested. “I just—I wanted to kiss you so bad as soon as I saw you, and then I thought about the scallions and I panicked. I thought, She’s come all the way here and she’s going to run away as soon as she smells my breath.”
“I wouldn’t run away from scallion breath.”
“Oh, you might. This was serious.”
I kissed him again. And this time I think we both felt the cold outside and how precarious it was where we were sitting. We held on to each other like we were holding on for our lives on the edge of this precipice
of the roof, of the end of high school,
of college,
of love,
of scary, complicated, adult-type relationships—
and I felt Noel shaking and I realized he was crying. Not sobbing, but crying gently, like his eyes were leaking and he just couldn’t help it.
“What’s wrong?”
He swallowed. “Booth died,” he said. “My friend Booth was riding ahead of me down Seventh Avenue. We were crossing Twenty-third Street and this car was making a left and I saw it coming, this blue car, and it was like slow motion, Booth crossing the path of the car and it swerving and then the bike hurtling through the air with Booth still clinging to it.” Noel wiped his eyes and went on. “I threw my bike on the sidewalk and ran over. People were standing around and I suddenly realized maybe no one had called the ambulance, so I called, and I had to tell them what happened, and then it took so long for them to come.”
I put my arms around him.
“He was riding ahead of me,” choked Noel. “Because I asked him to. The traffic there is crazy. I just felt better with him up front, leading. But then—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I had to call Claude,” Noel went on. “I had to tell him what happened. He kept saying ‘What?’ as if he hadn’t understood me. So I had to say it again and again. ‘There was an accident. Booth didn’t make it. There was an accident. Booth didn’t make it.’
“Finally I told him he had to leave work and come home. Like giving him an order. He couldn’t think clearly and it was up to me to tell him what to do. My brother walked out of the restaurant without telling anyone, still wearing his apron. Leaving his tables without their food.
“For a couple days,” Noel went on, “everything was black and choked and we didn’t sleep and people kept coming by. Claude kept saying, ‘Where’s Booth?’ as if he really didn’t know. I couldn’t answer him. I mean, what do you say when someone asks you that?”
I shook my head.
“My mom flew out and even my dad came, our biological dad, and they tried to make me and Claude come home to Seattle, but Claude wouldn’t go, so I stayed too. I mean, he’s my brother and I wanted to be there for him. But once I was alone with him and all the parents left, I just shut down. It was like Claude was feeling everything and I was feeling nothing. I wanted to feel nothing.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I kept feeling nothing and kept feeling nothing,” said Noel.
“You can’t feel nothing,” I said. “People can’t. Not really.”
He leaned his head on my shoulder and wiped his face on the hem of his T-shirt. He wasn’t crying any longer.
I squeezed his hand.
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Then he kissed my eyelids. Kind of licked them. And if you’ve never had someone lick your eyelids, you should know that it’s not exactly romantic and it’s even a tiny bit gross, but it feels like the other person really likes you and accepts you somehow.
Like he wants your updates. Even your boring ones. Even your mental ones.
“I don’t feel nothing anymore,” he said.
We sat there together for a long while. Holding hands. Thinking about Booth and Claude and everything that had happened.
“Let’s go inside,” I told him finally.
“Yes,” said Noel. “Let’s go inside where it’s warm.”
We crawled in the window. I went first and scraped my arm.
Noel went second and said, “Why are there—what are these? Are there antacids on my windowsill? Why would there be antacids on my windowsill?” And I laughed so hard I couldn’t explain properly.
Then we shut the screen.
Then we closed Noel’s door.
And the rest of what happened is nobody’s business but ours.
A Final List!
Well, not really a final list. I can’t imagine I’ll ever stop making lists. But a final list in this long chronicle of my therapy process, romantic debacles and friendship dramas. A list of Stuff That Happened After.
Mom’s latest performance-art monologue—Elaine Oliver: Meat to the Beat!—had a three-night workshop production at the Empty Space Theatre in January.
Even after it opened, she continued to explore charcuterie—in other words, she continued to perpetrate creative horrors on the bodies of dead animals and then eat them—until I lost five pounds from lack of edible deliciousness at breakfast and dinner and she got reworried I was anorexic; meanwhile, Dad gained ten pounds and she new-worried he would have a coronary.
At this point she agreed we could have pasta or burritos or something else normal for dinner.
My five pounds came back, but Dad’s ten stayed on.
Varsha and Spencer became regulars at the B&O Espresso. We’d go and meet Nora and Meghan there after swim practice. Yes, they were Future Doctors of America, but they were also seriously nice people. It was good to have a group to eat cake and try to figure out the Calc homework with.