The Treasure Map of Boys: Noel, Jackson, Finn, Hutch, Gideon—and Me, Ruby Oliver

by E. Lockhart

  “Guys will do almost anything for a chocolate chip cookie,” said Nora. “I have a brother. Trust me, I know.”

  “Like what will they do?” I asked.

  “Once I got Gideon and his friends to clean my room.”

  “Gideon cleaned your room?”

  “He wouldn’t do it now. He was like thirteen.”

  “What else?”

  “He’s loaned me his car. And his iPod. Stuff like that, just if I make him cookies.”

  Nora’s brother, Gideon, is a freshman at Evergreen State College nearby in Olympia. It’s one of those colleges where you make your own major. He’s extremely hot in a messy, bohemian way, and I had a ginormous crush on him in sixth grade.

  “Those must be magic cookies,” put in Meghan. We had finished poster making and gone in the Jeep to the Pike Place Market to buy ingredients and baking paraphernalia. The Market is a big open-air craft and produce thing. Cobblestone streets. A view of Puget Sound. Fishmongers. Smells waft from the crumpet shop, Three Girls Bakery and the dumpling place I don’t know the name of.

  “If Nora made the magic cookies now,” Meghan mused aloud, “I could give a cookie to Mike and have him do my horizontal bidding.”

  I cracked up. “What about Mark, Dave, Dan and Don?”

  “Whichever,” said Meghan.

  “You are a bad, bad woman,” Nora said.

  “You’re the one making the magic cookies,” said Meghan. “I’m just planning to use them to their fullest potential.”

  Nora looked at her. “I thought you wanted true love before Spring Fling.”

  Meghan shrugged. “Sure. But that was before I knew you could make magic cookies.”

  We entered a kitchen-supply store, and as we trolled the aisles, I wondered what I would do with magic cookies.

  Make Kim and Cricket forgive me?

  Make Noel fall in love with me?

  Make Jackson want me?

  I couldn’t decide.

  Nora didn’t like any of the cookie cutters at Sur La Table. Archer wanted us to make rabbits and Easter egg shapes, but when we looked at them they were just so cutesy and Christian-centric we couldn’t deal. So we gave up on baking supplies and followed Meghan over to the Birkenstock store. She’s obsessed with those sandals, which is such a completely odd thing to be obsessed with, given that they are neither attractive nor practical. But there is no reasoning with that girl when it comes to footwear.2

  Granola Brothers Footwear Emporium is in a corner of the Market devoted to stores selling Hmong tapestries, inexpensive cotton print blankets and silver jewelry. Inside the shop, Nora and I fingered batik shirts and tie-dyed dresses while Meghan debated earnestly between a pair of brown sandals and—another pair of brown sandals.

  After a few minutes I noticed a sign on the counter saying HELP WANTED, so I asked the hippie man who was ponytailing around behind the counter what the job was.

  “Working the register, selling Birks, restocking the sock wall”—there was a wall of colored socks—“and helping customers,” he said. “We’re a laid-back operation. Where have you worked before?”

  I told him about the zoo internship and babysitting, leaving out the part about Robespierre and the drunk guy and being fired.

  “And how do you feel about feet?” the guy asked.

  Feet?

  Ag. Who has strong feelings about feet?

  “I think it’s superimportant for people to have comfortable footwear,” I told him. “I think happy feet make a happy person.”

  “Can you work Saturdays?” asked the guy. “Saturday is when it’s really busy in here.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Come in tomorrow at nine. You’ll get an hour of training on how to fit the shoes and work the register,” he told me. “We open at ten. You’ll need to wear Birks to work, but otherwise, consult your own personal style genie.”

  Suddenly, life was sweet.

  I had a job!

  Hello, use of the Honda!

  Hello, no more debt to my parents!

  Hello, cash flow!

  And hello, Birkenstocks.

  Hippie sandals and an anchor coat. My personal style genie was having a seriously horrible month.

  1 Except llamas. Sometimes llamas are bitchy.

  2 Movies in which the romantic heroine sports Birkenstocks: none.

  I Unleash the Powers of Magic Cookies

  Thirteen Reasons Not to Look at Photos of Your Ex-Boyfriend

  His smile lights up the picture. No one has a laugh like him.

  He looks good without his shirt on. Really, phenomenally good.

  Why did the two of you never get naked again? Why didn’t you rip off his clothes the moment you had a chance? Because the way you are going now, in an apparently permanent state of Noboyfriend, that was the only opportunity you are ever going to get to touch a guy’s naked chest. Which you really want to do before you die.

  Look at the way he’s got his arms around you in that photo. That was something real. No one could fake that. So how could he change from loving boyfriend into pod-robot1?

  Maybe he didn’t change into a pod-robot. Maybe he still has buried feelings. After all, he did give you a Frog Laden with Meaning.

  Remember how you two did that lollipop taste-test? Look, there he is making a funny face at the yucky grape flavor.

  And remember how when you took that photo on the roof, he left you a note with mysterious instructions saying where to meet him and when, and then he kissed you up there and you looked at the view and took snapshots with the self-timer?

  Remember, remember, remember…

  What you had with this boy, for the time that it lasted—that is what you want out of love. The giddiness, the silliness, the comfort. That feeling is the whole reason to leave the state of Noboyfriend.

  But will you ever be able to have that feeling with anyone but him?

  Look, there he is with your ex-best friend. The two of them are holding pieces of sushi in their chopsticks and pointing at each other’s food. Were they into each other then?

  Were they holding hands under the table when you went to the bathroom? Were they laughing behind your back?

  You will never know.

  —from The Girl Book, written mid-February, junior year.

  saturday I worked at Granola Brothers. The other salespeople were college students helping pay their way through the U. They were devoted to an earthy, tie-dye aesthetic and a diet that included the voluntary consumption of sprouts. Meghan had given me a hand-me-down pair of Birks, and I wore them with black tights and a vintage dress. Fletcher, my boss, trained me—and as I spent the day organizing socks and ringing up sales, I had to admit the shop was a friendly and cheerful place to work. I can’t say I was interested in feet—everyone there talked about feet a lot—but being there and helping customers did keep my mind off my declining mental health, my precarious friendships and my parents’ insanity.

  When I got home I tried to make the treasure map Doctor Z wanted me to do, even though I didn’t feel like it. (I doubted it would cure me of panic attacks, and I wanted to spend the evening eating take-out pizza and watching Notting Hill again. So romantic.)

  But since I was afraid of the way Doctor Z would look at me if I went back on Tuesday without it, I started the map as soon as I was done writing my Chem lab. I cleared off my desk; found a big sheet of paper left over from Advanced Painting Elective last term, some watercolors, scissors and a glue stick—and dug out my pile of photographs of Jackson, from back when we were going out.

  They were hard to look at.

  They made me remember things I didn’t want to remember.

  What did I want from my “relationship” with him? That’s what Doctor Z wanted to know in the treasure map. Think of what you want from a situation, she was always saying, and then try to get it.

  Except I didn’t have a relationship with Jackson. I only used to have a relationship with Jackson. Then we broke up and spent
a whole summer and first term junior year not having a relationship. Him being a pod-robot and me being a wreck. Then bit by bit, I got over him. Until he broke up with Kim and sent me the Frog Laden with Meaning.

  What did I want?

  Nothing.

  No, that wasn’t honest.

  To be friends, nothing complicated. No frogs, no flirting.

  No, that wasn’t honest either. I wanted frogs! I wanted flirting. I wanted to have him love me again so I could humiliate him by rejecting him.

  No. To have him love me again so I could prove to Kim and to myself that I was better than she was.

  No. To have him love me again so I could experience true love.

  No. Ag. No. There was not going to be true love with Jackson. He was a massive flirt and a cheater and generally bad news.

  So what did I want?

  Did I want him to love me?

  Did I want to rip his clothes off?

  Did I want redemption?

  Revenge?

  I painted the background of the treasure map with a thin wash of blue watercolors, dark water fading into pale sky.

  Jackson Clarke.

  When the paint was dry enough, I pasted a picture of the two of us holding lollipops right in the center of the map. It was a picture of happiness. Romantic happiness.

  Whether I wanted it with Jackson, whether I wanted it with Noel, whether I just wanted it in the abstract, I didn’t know. But I wanted it.

  Then I wrote: “Do not think about guys who have broken your heart six ways. It is mentally deranged to chase after heartbreak.”

  I looked through some old Tate directories and found a photo of Nora’s brother, Gideon Van Deusen, looking bohemian, even in a school photo. I cut him out and pasted him on there. “Wanting guys you can’t have is a recipe for unhappiness,” I wrote, remembering sixth grade. “Do not fall for people who hardly know you exist.”

  Then I found a picture of Finn Murphy and wrote: “Liking a guy just because he likes you: Immature and pitiful? Or a smart interpersonal relationship strategy likely to result in true happiness?”

  The note Noel had written me on the first day of school was in the front pocket of my backpack.

  Say you’ll be my partner true

  In Chemistry, it’s me and you.

  I glued on a picture of Noel I’d taken during November week earlier that year. He was standing on a dock with a stretch of water behind him, doubled over laughing. Then I took a thick black marker and wrote those last two lines of his poem on the left side of the map.

  That was what I wanted. Someone who wanted me. Someone who wanted a partner. Not a life partner, but a girlfriend. Someone who wanted there to be a “me and you.”

  Only, Noel didn’t seem to want that anymore. If he ever had.

  I mean, he wrote that note the morning after he had no doubt touched the pink sweatered boobs of Ariel Olivieri and pressed his lips against hers.

  Ag.

  Plus, he couldn’t even figure out why I was mad about the bodyguarding thing. Plus plus, he had spent the weekend skiing with Nora, and he liked her cinnamon buns.

  More ag.

  I realized that as I’d been thinking, I’d written his name over and over in one corner of the map: “Noel.

  Noel. Noel. Noel.”

  I crossed it out. Instead, I wrote: “Someone who doesn’t care if my hair looks stupid.”

  I wrote: “Something uncomplicated.”

  I wrote: “Something real.”

  Then I wrote: “But is it real if it’s uncomplicated?”

  I opened this history of cinema book Dad got me for Christmas and paged through to see if I could find an image to use on the map. Movie stills flipped by. Beautifully lit, gorgeous Caucasian people in black-and-white. Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis. Then near the end of the book, in color. People looking more disheveled, perhaps, but still—no one’s hair looked stupid. Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Gwyneth Paltrow.

  There was kissing in those movie stills. A lot of kissing.

  But none of it looked like anything real.

  And yes, “real” was what I had just said I wanted. But now, fake and glam was looking a lot better than anything that was ever going to actually happen to me.

  Fuck it. This whole therapy project was making me more depressed and confused than ever. I shoved the unfinished treasure map in my closet, called out for pizza and put Notting Hill in the DVD player.

  Sunday around eleven-thirty, I was kneeling on the carpeted floor of Granola Brothers putting shoes back in their boxes when a pair of feet in gray rag socks and very, very old Birks stopped right in front of me. I looked up. Dark jeans. Belt with beads on it. Ancient plaid shirt. Flat stomach. Corduroy coat. Shell necklace. Hair shaggy enough to almost be considered long. Lovely thick eyebrows. Gideon Van Deusen.

  “Ruby Oliver,” he said. “Is that you?”

  I stood up. “Gideon.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m selling Birks,” I said. Most Tate Prep students don’t have jobs. They don’t need the money.

  “What a coincidence. I need some Birks!” he said.

  I laughed and looked at his feet again. “Yours are old, yeah,” I said. “Do you want the same kind again?”

  “Wait,” said Gideon, sitting down on an upholstered bench and crossing his long legs. He was at least six foot three. “I want to hear what you’ve been up to. Nora never tells me details. Are you still painting?”

  Painting. He remembered.

  “I have Art History this term. But I was using my watercolors just last night,” I said.

  Fletcher came over. “Is this a friend of yours?” he asked me.

  Gideon answered, “Yes.” Even though I was Nora’s friend, not his. “But I came in for Birks,” he added.

  “Since your friend is here, Ruby, why don’t you guys go have some chai?” Fletcher suggested. “It’s quiet now. You can take a break for twenty minutes.”

  Fletcher was sending me out for chai with Gideon Van Deusen.

  “I’ve got time,” said Gideon. “But actually, I could use some dumplings. Do you want to get dumplings?”

  Now I was getting a meal with Gideon Van Deusen. For a second, I forgot to feel neurotic and sorry for myself.

  I was a girl to eat dumplings with, a girl with a job, a girl going for a meal with a boy she’d crushed on since sixth grade. I felt lucky and pretty.

  Gideon and I walked through the Market to the Chinese snack stand. We each got a paper dish of vegetarian dumplings and doused them in soy sauce, rice vinegar and hot oil, then strolled to a bench and sat down. I could hardly look at Gideon’s face, I was so nervous.

  Not because I liked him, exactly.

  But because he was older.

  And because the way his dark eyebrows framed his chocolate eyes made him seem thoughtful.

  And because not very long ago I was a silly middle-schooler who wrote “Ruby loves GVD” on her sneaker.

  “How’s the zoo job?” Gideon asked, his mouth full of dumpling.

  He remembered I had a zoo job! “I got fired for defending the rights of a pygmy goat,” I told him, and explained about Robespierre and the drunk dad. “So now I am reduced to selling Birkenstocks.”

  “Why reduced?”

  “No offense, but they’re not my idea of an acceptable fashion statement.” I stuck out my feet and wiggled them.

  Gideon stuck his feet out too. “Homely, but you can’t deny the comfort,” he said.

  I shrugged. “My toes get cold.” Here we were, talking about feet. Had a day and a half working at Granola Brothers brainwashed me so much that I considered feet an interesting topic for conversation? I changed the subject. “What are you studying?”

  Gideon told me how he was taking guitar lessons and writing an essay on carvings by the Native Americans of the northwest coast. When he talked, he moved his hands a lot, and looked me in the eye, as if
he really wanted to share his ideas.

  I half listened while I stared at him. Gideon had lived outside the Tate Universe for a year and a half. He no longer concerned himself with bake sales and parents’ nights and the flower deliveries on Valentine’s Day. He didn’t think about where to sit in the refectory or read old gossip about himself on the bathroom walls. He was nearly an adult. We finished our dumplings and he walked me back to Granola Brothers. I sold him a new pair of the same exact sandals he owned, without him even trying them on. “I’m so glad I ran into you,” he said, smiling. Making his thoughtful eyes light up.

  The next weekend, I went to Nora’s place and helped make the magic chocolate chip cookies she’d told us about. The ones that had made Gideon clean her room and loan her his iPod. But first we made miniature molten chocolate cakes in ramekins. Nora taught me how to beat egg whites until stiff and then fold chocolate into them. I kept yelling, “It’s an emulsion, people!” even though I wasn’t sure it really was an emulsion, technically.

  We were dumping the chips into the cookie batter when Gideon walked in.

  “What are you doing here?” Nora asked him.

  “I brought my laundry home.”

  “You kidding me.”

  “No. It’s cheaper, even figuring in the cost of gas. Plus my sister is making cookies!” He came over and stuck a finger into the batter. “Hi, Ruby. How’s the job?”

  “Good,” I told him. “A little smelly sometimes.”

  “Feet,” said Gideon.

  “Exactly.”

  While Nora and I baked, Gideon trotted from his car to the basement several times. I couldn’t help looking at his bare arms as he lugged his basket through the kitchen.