“What?”3
“Like two weeks ago, before she told me she was coming home, Kim asked me what I was doing for November Week. So I told her.”
“And?”
“And I said it sounded cool, and Mr. Wallace was leading it, and there was a swimming pool and a sauna. But I didn’t tell her it was you and me and Noel.”
“You lied?” Nora never lies.
“I left that part out. About you and me being friends again. I didn’t want things to get complicated.”
“So?”
Nora twisted a curl on one of her fingers but didn’t answer.
“She’s coming with us.” My voice sounded heavy in my own ears.
“I’m so sorry,” said Nora. “I had no idea that’s why she was asking. She was in Tokyo!”
“No, there was no way you could know.”
“It turns out Jackson’s doing rafting, which is completely full. And she probably knew Cricket was doing Mount Saint Helens, but Cricket’s been so deep in Katarina-Heidi Land, I think Kim decided she’d rather pick Canoe Island.”
“Did you tell her I was going?”
Nora shook her head. “I was so shocked when I got her e-mail, I didn’t reply.”
“But Cricket might have told her.”
“Yeah, maybe. Cricket knows I’m going with you.”
The whole thing was a certain horror.
“Maybe I can get out of it,” I said. “Maybe my parents can get a refund.”
“Maybe,” she said. “But you were so cranked to go.”
“Not anymore.”
“I’m sorry.” Nora bit her thumbnail.
“I’m going to pull out and do that public school greening project.”
“Really, really sorry,” said Nora.
“Me too,” I said.
But when I told Noel I was pulling out, he said, Don’t. “You can’t let fear run you.”
And then I told Meghan, and she said, Don’t. “Kim is nothing to you. Remember?”
“We’ll miss you,” said Mr. Wallace. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider? No one’s going to take your spot at this late date. You can show up for the ferry tomorrow morning if you change your mind.”
I called Nora that afternoon after my zoo job. “If Kim signed up for Canoe Island knowing I was going,” I said, “that’s awful.”
“How so?”
“Because she can’t actually want to be there if I’m there. It’s obvious the whole thing will be a debacle. She’s forcing me out.”
“I don’t think Kim would do that. She probably doesn’t know.”
“I bet she does.”
“She’s not evil, Roo. You two just don’t get along anymore.”
“I feel like she’s going to come back from Tokyo and steal the only three friends I have,” I said. “I’m going to end up with no one.”
“I never stopped being friends with her,” said Nora. “You know that. And I don’t want to be in the middle. Can’t everyone just be polite?” Nora is always one for people getting along. She likes life to be orderly.
“I doubt it,” I said. “Are you going to tell her I’m going?”
“Not if you’re staying home and doing the greening project.”
“But if she’s as innocent as you think,” I said, “she’ll pull out when she hears I’ll be there.”
“Roo, please, please, please don’t get me more in the middle of this than I already am.”
I sighed. Nora was right.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry.”
“So are you going?”
“Yes,” I answered, surprising myself. “I am.”
The Kaptain Is In
Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,
I gave a boy named Billy my number at a party after he kissed me. So why didn’t he call?
Answer: Don’t angst, he’ll call.
Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,
I think he should call three days after kissing me and getting my number. That’s only polite, plus I read it somewhere online. And now it’s been two weeks. So if he does call, what should I say?
Answer: Tell him you’re busy and you’ll call him back. And then don’t. That’s the best he deserves.
Dear Kaptain,
But I want to talk to him!
Answer: You shouldn’t, though.
But Kaptain, if he calls me, doesn’t he like me? Which means I should talk to him. Blowing him off isn’t going to get me anywhere.
Answer: Sweetie, he’s not going to call. If he was going to, he’d have called already!
But Kaptain, you said he’d call!
Answer: Sometimes the Kaptain tells little white lies to make her friends feel better. Sorry. You’d better forget him.
—questions by me, answers by Kim. Approximate date: summer after freshman year.
we had invented Kaptain Kangaroo1 as The Boy Book advice columnist at the start of ninth grade. Most of the Kaptain’s columns degenerate from the advice format into just notes. Sometimes Kim and I would hand the book back and forth in school, so the exchange lasted a whole day. Other times, we’d sit side by side watching a movie on TV at her house, making entries during the boring parts.
We took turns being Kaptain.
The above entry was written during an insane two weeks in the summer when this boy I kissed at a toga party never called. I couldn’t believe that I could kiss someone and it would seem like the start of something, and he’d ask for my number, and then I’d never see him again. It didn’t seem possible.2 Even the first guy I kissed, a guy at camp who was completely gross, was around for the last ten days of camp, so it wasn’t like a kiss-and-disappear.
Anyway, packing for Canoe Island was boring, and my mind was spinning in a frenzy of nerves, so I pulled out The Boy Book and paged through it, reading old entries and thinking about me and Kim and how we used to be.
Best friends.
It seemed like it would last forever back then.
As I was reading, I came across an entry way at the back of the book where all the rest of the pages were blank. The questions were in Nora’s handwriting, and the answers were in Cricket’s—and I remembered that back in February I had left the book at Nora’s house for several weeks before retrieving it.
Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,
My friend’s boyfriend is annoying and I wish she’d break up with him. What should I do?
Answer: Suck it up, baby. All guys are annoying sometimes. Even most of the time. Unless you’re going out with them.
Dear Kaptain Kangaroo,
What if he’s mean to her?
Answer: Different situation. If he puts her down, makes her do sex things she doesn’t like, or does any of those horrors you read about in magazines, you’re entitled to tell your friend he sucks.
Dear Kaptain,
But what if he’s not tangibly mean, he just makes her feel terrible with all kinds of manipulative weirdness?
Answer: Are you talking about the whole Valentine’s Day thing?
Nora: And the cupcakes and how he talked to Heidi all night at Kyle’s party in December and a million other small horrors.
Cricket: Like how he blew her off for that basketball game and then made her feel guilty for being mad.
Nora: Exactly.
Cricket: I know. It sucks so much. The Kaptain has no answer. You’ve really stumped her this time.
They were writing about me and Jackson, of course.
But I had never had any clue they thought that about the stuff that had been going on. I’d always thought they liked Jackson, and considered me lucky to have him.
And now it turned out they thought he treated me badly.
And I knew it was true. But it was different to see it written down by people on the outside.
Part of me went right into Jackson-girlfriend mode, even though I hadn’t been his girlfriend for almost half a year, thinking: They don’t know him. They don’t know how he is when he’s alone with me. How it is when we kiss. What it??
?s like when we hang out at his house, the way he writes me all those funny notes, the way he laughs at my jokes.
And another part of me was thinking:
I am better off without him.
I am better off without him.
I am really, truly better off without him.
Which I had never thought before.
Saturday morning at dawn, we all had to meet at a ferry dock two hours north in Anacortes, where a charter boat was taking us to Canoe Island. My dad drove me. My hands were shaking so badly whenever I thought of seeing Kim again that I started to wish I had some of the pills Doctor Acorn had been so cranked about.
As we drove, I tried to do a therapy assignment Doctor Z had given me awhile back, which was to acknowledge to myself precisely what I feared, rather than letting it be vague.
Ruby’s List of Canoe Island Paranoias:
1. Kim will repeat her version of the Spring Fling debacle to anyone and everyone who doesn’t already know it, and any small bit of the Canoe Island contingency who were friendly to me will turn cold and mean.
2. Once Kim has reminded the boys what a slut I supposedly am, they will harass me and the whole trip will be one long siege of dick photography–type jokes.3
3. Kim will haze me in some way, like pouring soup on my sleeping bag, throwing out my swimsuit or putting garbage in my duffel bag.
4. Kim and I will get in some completely embarrassing public argument.
5. Kim will make Nora stop talking to me.
6. And Noel, too.
As my dad sped the Honda along the freeway, I massaged my own hands (a therapy relaxation technique) and reminded myself:
Kim is not the devil. She’s a person.
A person you used to love.
Her whole agenda in life is not to torture you. She probably never even thinks about you.
And please. She’s not going to pour soup on your sleeping bag. This is eleventh grade.
You survived May and June sophomore year and the world didn’t come to an end. The two of you saw each other every day in school. So much time has passed since then that seeing her shouldn’t be any big thing.
So why are you freaking out?
Dear Kaptain,
I am guilty. Because of Jackson and the notes and the hiking up my skirt to show off my legs.
And I know he’s stepping out on her.
And Kaptain, in June of sophomore year I had nothing left to lose.
But now I have Nora and Noel. If they ditch me, all I’ll have is Meghan.
Answer: What’s done is done (with Jackson). What you know about the stepping out is none of your business anyway. And if Noel and Nora are really your friends, you won’t lose them. And if you lose them, then you don’t want that kind of friend anyway.
But Kaptain…
Answer: What now?
Kaptain, I’m just getting more and more freaked out the more I think of all this stuff.
Answer: You’re being completely irrational.
Me: It’s how I feel.
The Kaptain in my head didn’t reply.
I breathed as deeply as I could and watched the buildings fly by outside the car window.
When we arrived, Kim wasn’t there yet. The ferry dock was bustling. The air was damp, and seagulls were wandering around looking for snacks. Kids were saying goodbye to their parents, sleeping bags and suitcases piled around them.
Here’s who was there:
Varsha and Spencer from swim team, plus Spencer’s boyfriend (Imari, captain of the boys’ team),
Nora and Noel,
three senior boys who were very studious and hung around together all the time (Kieran, Mason and Grady),
two quiet senior girls I’d never talked to (Mei and Sierra),
Courtney, a senior who used to go out with Jackson when they were ninth graders, and two of her friends (who were basically interchangeable), a posse of giggling sophomores,
Mrs. Glass,
Mr. Wallace and Hutch.4
Ag, Hutch!
He had never told me he was going.
Except Varsha, Wallace, Imari and Mei, everyone was white. Except for Hutch and Noel, everyone was wholesome. They were all wearing jeans and plaid jackets or chambray shirts—typical Tate outdoor activity clothes. They looked like they’d stepped out of some Northwest outerwear catalog. Even Noel had on a dark blue chambray, and Hutch was wearing new-looking hiking boots, though it’s true he sported his usual Iron Maiden biker jacket.
I was wearing a vintage skirt and a beaded sweater, with fishnet stockings and combat boots.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
My dad helped me unload my duffel, plus a sleeping bag we borrowed from a friend of his. I was supernervous and shivering, so I rooted around and found my jacket.
Nora came over (she’s always great with parents) and said, “Hi, Mr. Oliver,” and Noel said hello too. It was the first time he’d met my dad. Hutch held back, but Kevin Oliver was so cranked he leaped over a pile of suitcases and squeezed his shoulders.
“John!” he bellowed. “You’re doing this Canoe Island, then?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought for sure you’d do the greening project at the public school.”
Hutch shrugged. “I wanted to go somewhere.”
My dad nodded knowingly. “Anything to get out of the house at your age. I remember those days.”
“Something like that.”
“Well. Have fun canoeing.”
“We’re not canoeing, Dad,” I reminded him. “We’re reading philosophy.”
“Same difference,” my dad said, laughing loudly at his lame joke. “Okay. I’m gonna motor. Rock on, John! Keep an eye on Ruby for me!”
“Sure, man,” said Hutch, looking at the ground with a smile snaking across his lips.
Having thoroughly humiliated me by making heavy metal devil-horn hand signals at Hutch while the other fathers patted their kids on the back and shook hands with each other, my dad hugged me goodbye, told me he loved me and hoped I would bond productively with my peer group, and left—right as the Yamamotos’ Mercedes pulled up to the dock.
Kim got out, and Nora squealed and ran straight to her.
So that was how it was going to be.
Kim was jumping up and down. She’d had her hair cut into a very short bob. Tokyo chic.
She and Nora were hugging and checking each other out, the way girls do. I could hear them. “You look amazing, I can’t believe your hair!”
Kim was rounder, more filled out, than when I’d seen her at the end of the school year last June. She was wearing her favorite old khaki jacket, but her sneakers looked futuristically Japanese.
“I’m so glad to be back. God, I was so miserable.”
“Did you see Cricket last night? She said she was driving over, but my mom made me have family dinner, so I couldn’t come.”
“Yeah, she came out to Chez Shea with me and Jackson.”
“I’m so jealous.”
“Then we went to the B&O with Katarina and Ariel. We tried to call your cell at like nine-thirty but you didn’t pick up.”
“I forgot to charge it. Did you get my e-mail?”
“No, I never checked.”
“You didn’t get it?”
“No, I told you. Did you bring a swimsuit?”
And blah blah blah.
The Doctors Yamamoto, both of them, were unloading Kim’s stuff from the Mercedes.
“Let’s go buy chocolate,” I said suddenly, thinking Noel was behind me. But it was Hutch, still standing there.
“Okay,” he answered, checking his jacket pocket for his wallet.
So we left the dock and ran across the street to a little general store, where I spent money on caramel bars and jelly candies and mini Toblerones.
Hutch said he wasn’t supposed to have actual chocolate because the dermatologist had told him it was bad for his skin, and he did have very bad skin—he’d had it for years at that point—but it had never
occurred to me he was trying to do anything about it.
It had just seemed like part of him.
And, horrible to say, like it was somehow his fault.
Which is obviously wrong when you write it down, but which is still the kind of thought that can lurk in the back of your head when you don’t really know someone.
So Hutch bought red licorice and sour straws and three rolls of hard candy. And we both got pop.
It was nice getting junk food at seven-thirty in the morning with no parents to tell you no.
The ferry was leaving. We all scrambled to get our stuff loaded on, then lined up so Mrs. Glass could check everyone off a list.
When it became absolutely necessary, Kim looked me in the eye and smiled a tight smile. “Hello, Ruby.”
“Hi.”
“How are you?”
“Good.”
“That’s nice.”
Then she clutched the arm of one of the sophomore girls and started asking her about the crew team. As if I didn’t exist.
Once the boat pulled onto the water, Hutch sat inside on a plastic yellow chair and jacked himself into his iPod. Kim and Nora and the sophomores went out on the deck.
Noel had been adopted by Courtney and her set of senior girls, who clearly judged Kieran, Mason and Grady too geeky to bother with. So I was alone. I pulled out a mystery novel and a Toblerone, found a seat near a window and started to read.
Forty-five minutes later, I went to the bathroom. It was painted yellow and had bits of stray toilet paper all over. Nora was in there, sitting on the gross floor.
She had been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I was still pissed about how she’d ditched me for Kim at the terminal.
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Come on.”
Nora wiped her nose.
“Kim didn’t know you were coming. She’s mad at me because I didn’t tell her.”