From The Boy Book, by E. Lockhart. It's the sequel to The Boyfriend List. In stores September 26, 2006.
The week before junior year began, the Doctors Yamamoto threw a ginormous going-away party for my ex-friend Kim.
I didn't go.
She is my ex-friend. Not my friend.
Kim Yamamoto was leaving to spend a semester at a school in Tokyo, on an exchange program. She speaks fluent Japanese.
Her house has a big swimming pool, an even bigger yard, and a view of the Seattle skyline. On the eve of her going away, so I hear, her parents hired a sushi chef to come and chop up dead fish right in front of everyone, and the kids got hold of a few wine bottles. Supposedly, it was a great party.
I wouldn't know.
I do know that the following articles of ridiculousness were perpetrated that night, after the adults got tired and went to bed around eleven.
1. Someone chundered behind Kim's garden shed and never confessed. There were a number of possible suspects.
2. People had handstand contests and it turns out Shiv Neel can walk on his hands.
3. With the party winding down and all the guys inside the house watching Letterman, Katarina Dolgen, Heidi Sussman and Ariel Olivieri wiggled out of their clothes and went skinny dipping.
4. Nora Van Deusen decided to go in, too. She must have had some wine to do something like that. She's not usually a go-naked kind of girl.
5. A group of guys came out onto the lawn and Nora's boobs were floating on top of the water as she sat on the steps of the pool. Everyone could see them.
6. Shep Cabot, AKA Cabbie, who squeezed my own relatively small boob last year with great expertise but who is otherwise a lame human being as far as I can tell, snapped a photo--or at least pretended he did. Facts unclear upon initial reportage.
7. Nora grabbed her boobs and ran squealing into the house in search of a towel. Which was a bad idea, because she wasn't wearing anything except a pair of soggy blue panties. Cabbie snapped, or said he snapped, another photo. The rest of the girls stayed coyly in the pool until Nora, having got her wits together and wearing a pair of Kim's sweatpants and a t-shirt, came out and brought them their clothes.
I know all this because no one was talking about anything else on the first day of school.
Nobody spoke to me directly, of course. Because although I used to be reasonably popular, after the horrific debacles of sophomore year, in which I lost not only my then-boyfriend Jackson but also Cricket, Kim and Nora--I was now a certifiable leper with a slutty reputation.
Meghan Flack, who carpools me to school, was my only friend.
Last year, Meghan and her hot senior boyfriend Bick had spent every waking minute together, annoying all the girls who would have liked to date Bick, and all the guys who didn't want to watch the two of them making out at the lunch table.
People hated Meghan. She was the girl you love to hate–-not because she does anything mean or spiteful, but because she's naturally gorgeous, extremely oblivious, and completely boy-oriented. Because she licks her lips when she talks to guys, and pulls cute pouts, and all the guys stare at her like they can't pull their eyes away.
But I don't hate her, now. She doesn't even bug me anymore. And she was lost on the first day of school, because Bick had left for Harvard the week before.
So Meghan and I were standing in front of the mail cubbies when we heard a crew of newly-minted senior girls discussing Kim's party and what happened. Then we heard some more from the guys who sat behind us in American Literature, and then from a girl who is on the swim team with me. By the end of first period it was clear that Nora's boobs were going to be the major focus of nearly every conversation for the rest of the day.
Because Nora is stacked.
Really stacked.
She is just not a small girl.
She's on the basketball team, and she keeps those things in line by wearing a jog bra every day instead of a regular, so maybe you wouldn't notice unless you slept over at her house and saw them in the flesh. But once they pop out, they've popped. I don't like to use this language to describe the female body, but the right word for what Nora's got on her chest is hooters.
Nora Van Deusen is actually not the kind of girl guys tend to pay attention to. She's never had a boyfriend. She takes photographs, and watches sports on TV. She laughs a lot, and drinks her espresso black with no sugar. Her family goes to church.
And now, she was walking down the hall with her books clutched to her chest, looking down at the floor while guys called, "Don't hide that light under a bushel!" Or, "Set 'em free, Van Deusen! Twins like that need a regular airing."
God, it was like they had never been forced to take American History & Politics, where we spent nearly half a semester on the history of feminism. Everyone should have known, after that, that it's completely retro and lame to make comments about other people's bodies in the hallway.
"Hey, Nora, can you fly me somewhere with those hot air balloons?"
It was like they'd never seen a boob before.
And maybe they hadn't.
Besides the info Meghan and I got eavesdropping, the main person who filled me in was Noel DuBoise. He turned up in my Art History class and then again in Chemistry, where we decided to be lab partners as a way of lightening up what promised to be a painful semester of scientific suffering.
Here's Noel: blond, spiky hair that probably requires quantities of gel; non-drinker, clean-liver, vegetarian, but heavy smoker; pierced eyebrow; underweight; funny in a mutter-under-your-breath way. I'd known him forever, because everyone at Tate Prep has known each other since Kindergarten, but I really only made friends with him in Painting Elective last year, and then he stood by me during all the debacles of sophomore spring, when everyone acted like I was covered with the strange blue spots of leprosy.
Noel is one of those people who doesn't have a clique–-but he isn't a leper, either. I used to wonder if he was gay, but he's completely not, though he definitely holds himself aloof from the rabidly hetero merry-go-round of our high school.
Noel looks at the Tate Universe as if he finds it all mildly amusing and sometimes a bit sickening, but he's willing to participate for purposes of research so that he can bring back interesting tidbits of information to the ironic, punk rock planet where he really lives.
People like him for this quality. They invite him to parties. He can sit at anyone's table. But he never really seems committed, if you know what I mean.
Noel and I hadn't seen each other all summer. I had been traveling with my mom during the first half. Then in August, he went to New York City to visit his older brother Claude, who goes to Cooper Union.
Even when we were both in Seattle, Noel and I had never been the make-plans level of friends. More like Painting Elective friends, who sometimes put notes in each other's mail cubbies.
We didn't call each other, or anything....
But on that first day of school he asked me to be his Chem lab partner. Even though we didn't have to do a lab until Thursday.
I nodded. After class, we headed toward the Refectory for lunch, and Noel lit a cigarette, not caring if any teachers could see him.
I looked at his pale skin and his bony hand clutching the smoke, and he'd written "through page 40" on his knuckles in blue ink. I was thinking how good it was to see him, and how even though we hadn't seen each other all summer, maybe we'd be friends, at least of the hanging-out-at-school sort, and also that he was really quite cute in an anemic sort of way--when Noel tossed his cigarette in the garbage and grabbed my arm. We were ten yards from the Refectory entrance.
"Just a sec," he said. "You can come with me if you want--" and he pulled me around the side of the building, behind a bush where no one could see us from the path.
I thought for a second he was going to kiss me
and I didn't know if I wanted him to
because I hadn't thought it was leading to that
even though we had held hands that one time at the Spring Fling after party
but maybe I did want it to lead to that--
and his pale neck looked beautiful
and his gray-green eyes had a sparkle
and yes, I did want to.
But would he really kiss me right here in the middle of the Tate campus, half-way to lunch?
And was it a good idea for a person (me) with a bad reputation to be making out in the bushes on the first day of school?
Then Noel pulled an orange plastic tube out of his jacket pocket, inhaled, stuck it in his mouth, and pressed the top down. He breathed in and out a few times, then put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, looking at the ground.
I could see the white skin of his back, between the top of his cords and his coat.
He stood up, and puffed again.
He wasn't going to kiss me, at all.
I felt like an idiot.
"Don't angst," Noel said, looking at my shocked face. "It's not crack."
"I know," I said, though I hadn't been sure. Not being a crack-smoker, myself.
"I probably should have explained ahead of time. It's kind of creepy to drag you into the bushes and force you to watch me inhale controlled substances. Sorry." He stood up and shoved the tube back in his pocket.
"You're asthmatic," I said, after a second.
"Since I was four. It's just been acting up lately."
"But you smoke cigarettes."
"Yeah."
"That can't be good."
"No."
"Then why do it?"
Noel sighed. "Because it annoys me. 'Noel, don't forget your medicine. Noel, stay inside--it's dusty out today. Noel, don't work yourself too hard. Noel, check in with the nurse. Noel, don't do this, don't do that.'"
"Harsh."
"It's like--I hate having restrictions. The doctor said I shouldn't go on overnights without a parent. I shouldn't go to summer camp. I shouldn't travel to dusty or pollen-y locations. She even said I shouldn't run cross country. That I should pick something that doesn't push the lungs for such a long time."
"But you do run."
"Exactly. And I went to summer camp. And I travel without regard to the pollen count. Because I want to prove I can."
"The smoking is like that?'
"In a sick way, yeah," he laughed. "I don't want them telling me I can't."
"You're a madman."
"So they tell me." Noel changed the subject. "Hey, it's pizza day. You getting that, or salad bar?"
"What I want is one of those sticky buns," I answered.
We left the bushes and went into the Refectory.
Had we just had some kind of moment? Not a kissing moment like I'd thought, but a little intimate thing where he was letting me in, somehow?
Maybe Noel had told me a secret.
Or maybe he took all his friends--sophomore girls and Painting elective people, whoever (he was always hanging around with someone) -- maybe he took all of them in the bushes, too. In fact, maybe I was the last person in the Tate Universe to have the Noel DuBoise bush/puffer experience.