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

by E. Lockhart

  Later, he folded his stuff on the kitchen table. He was a good laundry folder. All the corners of his shirts lined up. And I thought:

  Gideon hasn’t gone out with anyone I’m friends with or used to be friends with.

  No one I know is secretly in love with him and saying she’s going ask him out.

  He didn’t make out with Ariel Olivieri and then refuse to speak to her.

  He wouldn’t leave me a note and then say it was nothing important.

  He knows how to fold laundry and has attractive arm muscles.

  Gideon Van Deusen has the sort of qualities I should look for in a boyfriend. He is straightforward and normal. He is outside the Tate Universe.

  Nora, Gideon and I ate a few of the magic cookies and watched Moulin Rouge on DVD. When I handed Gideon a cookie, I silently wished his leg would touch mine during the movie.

  And it did.

  I didn’t second-guess myself, and I didn’t wonder if I really had feelings for him or was just using him as a substitute because I was lonely. I didn’t think about Noel and I didn’t think about Jackson and I didn’t have a panic attack. I just sat there and got us all to make a list of movies besides Moulin Rouge where the heroine is a prostitute with a heart of gold2—feeling Gideon’s warm thigh against mine.

  Very early Monday morning, Meghan and I met Nora at school and set up the CHuBS recruiting table. As people drifted into the main building, Meghan and I tried (as we had on several previous days) to get people to sign up by bribing them with snacks—in this case, the miniature molten cakes and magic cookies. Nora left us with the baked goods and went to the darkroom to do yearbook stuff, printing pictures of sports teams and club members.

  “I need to try the magic cookies right now,” said Meghan. “Who can I try them on?” She scanned the hallway. None of the candidates for Operation Sophomore Love was anywhere in evidence.

  “I’m not saying they definitely worked,” I told her. “I’m saying my leg was touching Gideon’s.”

  “For how much of the movie?”

  “Um…seventy-two percent.”

  Meghan squealed. “That’s a lot! That’s deliberate leg-touching. Was it a long movie?”

  I nodded.

  “Okay, so how did it work?”

  “I gave him a cookie, and while he was eating it, I thought about what I wanted him to do.”

  Meghan crinkled her nose. “But it was Gideon.”

  “So?”

  “So, he’s the one who did Nora’s bidding before. Maybe the magic cookies only work on him. Maybe they won’t do anything to other boys.”

  “Which is why you have to try them on someone else,” I said.

  “There’s no one to try them on.”

  We sat there for a minute. A few geeky freshmen wandered by. Varsha from swim team came and signed up to make pecan-caramel squares. She took a chocolate cake on a paper plate.

  “Maybe,” said Meghan, “we can eat the cookies ourselves and make a wish for something we want to have happen.”

  I doubted it would work, but I didn’t want to squash her idea. All I’d had for breakfast was carrot juice and an apple. “Let’s try it,” I said.

  Meghan took a magic cookie for herself and one for me. “We each make a wish for something we want. Not world peace, just like the stuff Nora wished for—someone will loan you his car, someone will bring you a present, someone will kiss you today. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I looked seriously at my cookie. I knew it was stupid, but it was also kind of like the treasure map I was supposed to be finishing, wasn’t it? Like envisioning what you want in the world, putting your energy toward imagining things the way you’d like them to be.

  “Do we wish while we chew?” I asked. “Or before we chew?”

  “You’re the expert,” said Meghan. “You wished while Gideon was chewing, right?”

  “Right. So decide on your wish, but don’t wish until you’re chewing. You ready?”

  We bit into our chocolate chip cookies, brown-sugary and delicious, and I wished, fervently, that somehow, today, I would know what to do with myself when it came to boys. The treasure map. Jackson, Finn, Noel, Gideon.

  I wished that something, anything, would happen to help me sort out how I felt.

  I wished for a sign. An answer to my questions.

  I closed my eyes while I chewed, and when I opened them—Jackson Clarke was standing in front of me. “Hey there, Ms. Roo,” he said.

  I choked and coughed.

  “I can wait.” Jackson slid into the chair next to me and looked at the Baby CHuBS sign-up sheet. He chuckled. “Finn Murphy is making brownies?”

  I managed to swallow my cookie and answer him. “We have a campaign.”

  “What is it?”

  “Tate Boys Bake.”

  “Baking is the new basketball,” said Meghan.

  “Ha ha.”

  “Seriously,” I said.

  “I do cross-country and crew, anyway,” said Jackson. “I don’t subscribe to the cult of basketball.”

  “The new crew, then,” I told him. “The new thing that’s cool for guys to do.”

  “Roo.”

  “What?”

  “If it involves an apron, guys are not gonna think it’s cool.”

  “There’s no reason girls should be the only ones who contribute. The male population of Tate Prep needs to let go of their antiquated notions of masculinity.”

  Jackson shrugged. “If I give up my antiquated notions of masculinity, can I have a cookie?” He reached over to the plate.

  “Hold it!” I grabbed his wrist. “You not only have to give up your antiquated notions of masculinity, you have to actually bake for the sale. Are you signing up?”

  Jackson pulled his arm away, laughing, took a cookie and scarfed it before I could even think what I’d command him to do as he ate. “Those are amazing!” he said. “Did you make them?”

  “Nora did,” I answered. “But I was sous-chef.”

  “I didn’t think you made them.3”

  “I creamed the butter and sugar,” I said. “I pressed the button on the mixer and kept it pressed until Nora told me to stop.”

  Jackson reached for another cookie “Hey!” Meghan complained. “Are you signing up or not?”

  “I’m not signing up,” he said, biting in. “But I have a proposition for you.” He took off his jacket and unwound his scarf.

  “Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you,” I said.

  “Remember I stopped by the other day and you weren’t here?”

  Yes, I thought. You left me that frogless note.

  “I couldn’t tell you what it was about with Wallace standing right there, but I’m running the Parents’ Day Handicap and I need a covert base of operations.”

  The Parents’ Day Handicap is not a tradition at Tate Prep—not yet. A senior boy who was a friend of Jackson’s started it only last year. On Parents’ Day, all the upper-school parents stroll through Tate looking at science projects, art exhibitions, yearbook layouts and videos of sports victories. Then they cluster into the auditorium and hear speeches from the heads of various departments—science, music, drama, English, etc.—talking about the wilderness programs, the school plays, the new electives on offer. Each department head is only supposed to talk for four minutes, because while the wealthy parent body is well inclined to pony up donations after a day of being assaulted with the wonders of the Tate Prep education, they also get bored if any of it goes on too long.

  However, these are teachers. They are used to filling an hour-and-fifteen-minute class period with musings on the subject of light and dark imagery in Hamlet, causes of the French revolution or emulsions. They tend to ramble on. And Parents’ Day is not like the Academy Awards. No music comes on to tell the long-winded it’s time to shut up.

  So the senior—his name was Sky Whipple, but everyone called him the Whipper—he had this idea to make odds on how long the teachers would talk. You co
uld place a bet, a real money bet, on a particular department head. Depending on general tendencies to blather, the activities of the department and placement in the evening’s program, the Whipper gave you odds. A long-winded teacher, early in the night, whose department had undergone radical changes? He’d be the favorite, paying out maybe two dollars for a dollar bet. A shy teacher speaking last might earn you fifteen bucks on the dollar as a long shot.

  Jackson explained that he was taking bets and wanted a central yet unobtrusive location where people could find him before school. Could he hang for a couple of mornings at the Baby CHuBS recruiting table? Then, on Parents’ Day night, after the speeches, he could sit at the bake sale table and pay out to the winning bettors as if he were innocently making change.

  “What’s in it for us?” asked Meghan.

  Jackson shrugged. “If you’re trying to get guys to sign up, maybe me sitting here would help? You’ve got a very girly operation, otherwise.”

  That was true. “You’d add manliness to the bake sale,” Meghan said.

  Jackson laughed. “Exactly.”

  My heart was pounding, like it always did when Jackson was around.

  Was he flirting with me?

  Was he talking to me to get back at Kim for something?

  Was he trying to be friends?

  “If you’re going to sit here, you have to talk to everyone who comes by about how cool Baby CHuBS is going to be and how we’re going to raise all this money for Happy Paws,” Meghan was saying. “You have to encourage people to sign up.”

  “I could do that.”

  “Guys. Get the guys to sign up,” she clarified.

  “Can I get a commission?” Jackson asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, for every guy I rope in, you give me a free cookie?”

  “No way,” Meghan said. “It’s us doing you a favor. And after what you did to Roo last year, you should count yourself lucky we’re willing to help you out at all.”

  Jackson blushed. “Point taken,” he said. Then he nudged me with his elbow. “I’m older and wiser now,” he told me. “So can I sit at your table?”

  My face was hot. I nodded.

  “Okay, we have a deal. I can give you a tip: Ms. Harada is a long shot with a good chance this year. Wants support for her art and wilderness program.” Jackson popped the last of his second magic cookie into his mouth.

  As he chewed I looked at him hard. If I was over him, why couldn’t I concentrate whenever he was around?

  Why did it hurt so much when he flirted with me?

  Or when he flirted with Meghan?

  Why did I feel guilty for just talking to him, as if I was betraying Kim, who didn’t even like me anymore?

  He was chewing, and digging in his backpack to find his pen, and I wished on the magic cookie.

  I wished for everything to be easy between us.

  To feel relaxed around him.

  For all the leftover pain to disappear.

  Bad move.

  1 Pod-robot: Looks like a person but has no personlike feelings. Possibly a human who has been taken over by an alien life-form, possibly just a spectacularly excellent robot. A relatively complete listing of movies with pod people, humanoid robots or something similar appears in a previous chronicle of the debacle that is my life, but here are a couple you really should watch if you have any pretensions to being a movie aficionado: Westworld; The Terminator; The Stepford Wives (1975 version).

  2 Here’s the list we came up with, with help from the Internet. Movies that make prostitution seem like a glam job in which you might end up falling in love with a supercute and quality guy such as young Christian Slater or Ewan McGregor: Moulin Rouge; Pretty Woman; Trading Places; Milk Money; The Girl Next Door; Risky Business; Irma la Douce; From Here to Eternity; Klute; Memoirs of a Geisha; L.A. Confidential; Night Shift; True Romance.

  3 Ag. What did that mean? This is the kind of statement that makes it exceedingly difficult to talk to your ex-boyfriend.

  I Embark on a Doughnut Enterprise

  Roo,

  It’s been more than a week since Crystal Mountain, and still, Noboyfriend.

  Should I ask him out? Maybe to go watch the boys’ lacrosse game?

  Circle one: Yes or No.

  You will notice I am writing you a middle school-type questionnaire note. I guess I’m desperate.

  Say you’ll still be my friend despite this failing.

  Nora

  —crumpled in a small ball and passed to me during Am Lit while Wallace was trying (and failing) to make his laptop show us a PowerPoint slide show.

  R: Of course I am still your friend.

  N: You didn’t circle Yes or No!

  R: This is 21st century. Hello? So Yes.

  N: But I asked him skiing already.

  R: Not the same thing. That was a group event.

  N: You’re right. I’m going to ask him. I have liked him for way too long to wait anymore.

  R: Yay.

  N: What if he says no?

  R: Don’t angst. He will say yes. You are gorgeous. And he already loves your cinnamon buns.

  N: Cinnamon buns not enough.

  R: Plus you like to watch sports on TV. You are every guy’s dream.

  N: What if he’s busy? Then I won’t know whether he wanted to say yes or no.

  R: At least you will have asked.

  N: Gideon was flirting with you the other night.

  R: A little, maybe. He is out of my league.

  N: Not.

  R: Yah. It was just a mercy flirt.

  N: If you get together with Gideon, and I get Noel, we can all hang out together.

  R: I’ll just hold my breath for that one.

  N: We’d be like sisters!

  R: You know I only date pod-robots.

  Of course, most of what I wrote was a lie. Well, not precisely a lie, because I do think girls should ask boys out and I do think Nora is gorgeous and any guy would be lucky to have her, but what I wanted to write was “Can’t you just move on and like somebody else instead of fixating on Noel, especially when you are a nicer person than I am with better hair and way bigger boobs? Because even though I ate dumplings with Gideon, and even though I wished his leg to press against mine, if Noel starts liking you back, I might die of sorrow.”

  But I didn’t write any of that. I wrote what I wrote.

  Because I loved Nora.

  And I wanted to her to be happy.

  And I had been flirting with Gideon, and it was so nice of her to want me to go out with her brother. It was ridiculous and wrong for me to act like I had the slightest claim on Noel.

  But was it so bad to want Nora to be happy with someone else? Some nice basketball muffin, or a student government type?

  And why was it that I had to lie to my friend in order to do the right thing by her? In order to be a good person, I had to pretend I didn’t feel the way I felt.

  Was that what good people did? Denied their feelings and acted fake?

  Nora didn’t ask Noel out that day anyway. Or the day after that. She kept saying “Today is the day,” but the boys’ lacrosse game came and went without her asking him. So much for the Imitate Nora Van Deusen Program for a Happier Mocha Latte.

  “If you ask Noel to Spring Fling, I’ll ask a sophomore,” Meghan said to Nora at lunch Friday.

  “Spring Fling again?” I said. “Meghan, it’s not even Valentine’s Day.”

  “Which sophomore?” Nora asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Meghan. “Which do you think?”

  “If you don’t know, it doesn’t matter to you like it matters to me,” said Nora. “It’s not a fair trade.”

  Meghan laughed and ate her taco.

  Nora didn’t ask Noel out.

  Thursday night was my night to cook for the Baby CHuBS recruiting table. And yes, I decided to make doughnuts. Call me pathetic, I won’t deny it. Jackson had implied he doubted my baking abilities, and now I was going to
make doughnuts. Just to show him I could.

  I got a recipe off the Internet, rode my bike to the corner store for ingredients and started mixing dough. I expected Mom to throw a fit about deep-frying activities in her raw-food kitchen, but she just said, “I have to go over to Juana’s for a bit now.”

  In case you forgot, Juana is my mom’s best friend—the playwright with thirteen dogs and four ex-husbands.

  “Why?” I asked, trying to figure out which thing in the drawer was a ladle.

  “I have to pick something up.” Mom put on her coat.

  “What?”

  “It’s private,” Mom said, smiling like she was someone special.

  Whatever. I was making doughnuts. I wasn’t going to get dragged into the Elaine Oliver show right then.

  She left. Dad was working at his desk, composing a newsletter about early spring plantings.

  I got out flour, baking soda, eggs, milk, butter, sugar and all that. I created an emulsion of butter and sugar creamed together that would have made Fleischman proud. My batter turned into dough as I added flour. I rolled it into a nice little ball, and…

  Damn. Now I was supposed to chill the dough for two hours. How could I have not read that part of the recipe?

  I stuck it in the freezer for half an hour.

  Now to heat oil in the big pot we used for pasta (back when my mother let us eat pasta). The recipe said 365 degrees.

  How was I supposed to tell when it was 365 degrees?

  I looked at the bottom of the recipe. “Special equipment needed: candy thermometer.”

  I had no candy thermometer.

  Who has a candy thermometer? That’s like a highly specialized item.

  I called Meghan first, because she lives near me, but she didn’t have one, so I called Nora.

  Nora didn’t pick up the phone.

  Gideon did.

  “I thought you were at Evergreen,” I told him.

  “I don’t have classes on Fridays, so I drove home this afternoon,” he said. “Nora’s at a yearbook meeting.”

  “Do you guys have a candy thermometer?”