Free Real Live Boyfriends by E. Lockhart Page A

she stops pouting.”
    “Could that be a form of apology?”
    “Kind of. But also not .”
    “Noel apologized to you. Didn’t you say that he did?”
    “Yeah, but ‘Sorry I was so hard to reach’ isn’t a real sorry.”
    “Why not?”
    “He made it sound like the whole thing was out of his control. He didn’t say, ‘Sorry I didn’t call you back.
    Sorry I didn’t write you. Sorry I hurt your feelings. Sorry I didn’t run after you.’ ”

    “It didn’t feel like a real sorry,” Doctor Z said. She does that a lot. Repeats what I’ve said.
    “And when he said sorry he was hard to reach, I said, ‘It’s okay.’ But only because that’s what you’re supposed to say when someone says sorry. Not because I meant it.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “Or maybe because I wished it was okay. But—” She looked at me.
    “—it was a complete lie.”
    “Oh.”
    “I was basically acting fake the whole night, trying to pretend I was just letting everything go. Or like I hadn’t even minded how he’d disappeared on me and not called me and all that. Like I was some extra-mell ow relaxed girlfriend who didn’t care about anything. Like those two poems made up for everything.” I bit my nails. “I kept thinking—all night I kept thinking that if I had never gone over to his house after work, he might never have even called me.”
    “Really?”
    “He would have just gone about his life, avoiding me, or forgetting about me, or meaning to call me but not just yet—whatever he’s been doing since halfway through the New York trip.”
    “Mm.” Doctor Z popped a piece of Nicorette out of its packaging and put it thoughtfully in her mouth.
    “What did you two talk about?”
    I shrugged. “The movie we saw. Whether or not Christian Bale is deranged. Why there aren’t more female action heroes.”
    “Ah.”
    “Why did we have to go to a movie? For once in my life, I didn’t want to go to a movie.”
    “No?”
    “We didn’t talk that much, even.”
    “Oh.”

    Noel and I had kissed in the front seat of the Honda when I drove him home, and we had held hands in the theater—but whenever I spoke I had this sense that I was chattering at him. Like some part of his brain was elsewhere.
    He wasn’t truly listening. So I didn’t tell him anything.
    You have to have someone listening if you’re going to really talk.
    1 Go ahead and laugh, but sometimes I listen to Dad’s Queen albums even when he and Hutch aren’t rocking out in the greenhouse. Okay, and sometimes Guns N’ Roses. And sometimes Aerosmith. And once AC/DC .
    Retro metal is very good for diverting panic attacks .

    The Waketastic Adventure!
    a video clip:
    Roo’s parents sit on their couch. Polka-dot is there too, his head on Elaine’s lap. Kevin has garden dirt on his T-shirt. Elaine is wearing black, her frizzy hair puffed out around her head.
    Roo: (behind the camera) What’s your definition of friendship?
    Elaine: I don’t know why we’re doing this, Kevin. She still hasn’t taken back what she said. I told you I wasn’t outputting energy toward her until I had a full apology .
    Kevin: It’s for her college applications. We agreed to be supportive of her college applications, even though the two of you are going through a difficult time .
    Elaine: It’s not a difficult time. She just owes me an apology. (Looking directly at the camera.) That’s what friendship is, Ruby.
    Apologizing when you know you should .
    Roo: I did apologize .
    Elaine: Not fully. I don’t know why we have so much trouble being friends. A mother and a daughter should be the closest friends .
    Kevin: My mother and I weren’t friends. She was my mother. She mothered me .
    Elaine: Are you saying something about my mothering?
    Kevin: No .
    A couple of days before school started, Meghan was with Finn per usual and I didn’t have to work at the zoo and Noel had to go shopping with his stepdad for school clothes and cross-country shoes, so I helped Dad in the greenhouse