Life by Committee (12 page)

“So it sounds like you see what I'm saying, about your reputation and the impression you're putting out there. I'm worried about your decisions. Sometimes when
people are lonely, they do things that are out of character. It seems like maybe you have lost a little track of who you are. Does that sound right?”

My jaw literally drops. I wonder if maybe she has gone deaf and heard nothing that I said. I clear my throat really loudly to check, and she responds with an eyebrow raise, so that's not the problem.

I remember Jemma's face the night of the dance. And I guess she wasn't lying. She was actually worried about me. She did want to keep me as a friend. But she wanted to keep some version of Tabitha that didn't exist anymore.

I even know that it's Mrs. Drake, not Jemma, who is the worst right now. Jemma legitimately thinks I needed a talking-to with the school guidance counselor, I bet. Jemma probably thinks V-necks and eyeliner are cries for help.

It's Mrs. Drake who is making me feel like dirt.

“I mean, everyone changes?” I say, as if my ears are not screaming and my eyes are not bulging in disbelief at her response. Mrs. Drake nods, like I've just admitted to doing meth or something. I meant to say Mrs. Drake was
wrong
, not accidentally agree with her.

Mrs. Drake uncrosses her legs and leans forward like she's ready to get out of her seat and let me out the door.

Which she does.

I spend the next half hour crying in the bathroom. And hating myself for crying. Wiping my face and blowing my nose with toilet paper. Vowing never to speak to Mrs. Drake ever, ever again.

Wishing that, like some of the LBC-ers, I'd thought to press record on my iPhone so I could post the conversation online and watch my new friends tear her apart.

Also, there are a million little details that I couldn't tell Mrs. Drake, and I am pulsing with the desire to spill them all now. The tiny injustices. The barely visible omens telling me they were starting to hate me. The cracks in the friendship that became a crumble and then an avalanche until there was nothing left.

I log on to LBC when I get home that night, not sure what to write. I don't want to put down an actual secret, but I want them to know something more about me, something real. I want them to send smiley faces and philosophy quotes and their own anecdotes to make me feel better.

I get goose bumps from the truth of it. The complicated, torn, two-sided truth of how it feels. It's weird, to write something you didn't know was true until the words are on the screen and you have pressed send.

Secret:

I hate someone for the first time.

—Roxie

Hey Tabby,

So, that was weird. Today.

Weird good.

Weird hot.

You're hot.

Crap. What are we doing?

—Joe

I read the email a dozen times, hiding out in Cate's office. I let the feelings that come with it boil inside me a bit.

He said he wants me. He wrote it down. He pressed send.

I mean, he didn't say much
else
, but he said that.

I open up a reply window and watch the cursor blink. It's like hypnotism or meditation: a half hour passes, and I've done nothing but watch the little line on the top of the
email pulse, but at least it's calmed me down a little. I am breathing normally, and the heat in my chest from the phrase “You're hot” has cooled off a bit.

I type in a few words:
Hey You
,
Hey There
,
Hi Joe
,
What ARE we doing?
But none of them sound right, so I keep hitting delete. Hitting that stupid button so hard, the pad of my forefinger starts to sting a little.

I think eating might help, so I make cinnamon toast and try to read Cate's trashy celebrity magazines in the kitchen and avoid the cold stare of the computer. I'm worried what they'll say about my completed Assignment with Joe, or my little revelation about Jemma's brother and the fact that I kind of like people thinking I'm pretty, even if my best friends think I'm evil.

Maybe Life by Committee will start hating me too.

For a moment, I focus only on the sound of the heat clicking on and the way silence sounds even lonelier when the sounds of the heater are cutting through it.

No sign of the parents.

I text Elise, to see if she wants to come over and watch TV or something, and she writes back
WITH HEATHER OMG
.

Distracting myself from LBC isn't working, so I go through their profiles, instead of waiting anxiously for them to say something about my post. I click on Star first,
but she doesn't have any new updates, presumably because she's caught in a haze of love and sex and long, meaningful looks. She'll have to fly back home eventually, so she must be savoring every last breath of being with this guy.

I get a fuzzy feeling of
yes
in my chest. I think about kissing Joe again. I keep returning to the scene of the crime, because the way it makes my organs flip-flop is addictive. I bet that's how Star feels about her guy. Maybe more than that, even.

Then there's Agnes. I've been following her with almost the same intensity with which I've been following Star, but with less gleeful results.

I picture her with stringy hair dyed black and alien-sized eyes. I picture her skinny, with elbows like arrows and a not-ugly but not-sexy mole on one cheek. She half frightens me and half intrigues me. She's smart and strange.

She's the best LBC-er, I think, doing every single Assignment without questioning, and pushing everyone else to do the same.

I like her, because she likes me and Joe, or what she knows about me and Joe.

I still feel a sting on my lips from where Joe's teeth bit into me a little. When the kiss turned from beautiful to violent. It hadn't really hurt at the time, but it's bothering me now, the way a too-hot cup of coffee burns the roof of your mouth, even though you don't really realize it until at least an hour later. I get the feeling the way he kisses Sasha Cotton is gentle and warm. Careful.

I'm about to reply with something deep and meaningful to tell them how grateful I'm feeling, and how there's fear there too, but I like it. I love that they are interested in the tiny movements in my feelings, the little details. I have so many nuances that I've been hiding, since Elise isn't that into feelings and Cate and Paul mostly deal with Cate's pregnant feelings and Joe mostly deals with Sasha's feelings. I have a lot to tell them, and it's about to rush out of me, but Cate and Paul come in the front door without saying hello, and their voices are louder than usual, and it makes me stop.

I cross my legs so I'm tiny in the big swivel chair and lean back to listen in on them.

“Soon there will be a baby here,” Cate says, more shrill than I've ever heard her. Pregnancy has given her a whole new range of vocal expression.

“The baby's not here
now
,” Paul says.

“We have a child already! What, Tabby doesn't
count?”

“Tabby loves it! What teenager doesn't want a dad who smokes some weed?”

“I'm not saying you have to stop completely, but you know, maybe not at work. Maybe not in front of the whole town.”

“It's Vermont, babe,” Paul says. “No one cares. Everyone's doing it.”

“Not everyone's doing it!” Cate says. I pretty rarely take her side in fights, but she's right. Paul is practically becoming the town mascot for stoner-dom. He's on his own level. “It's not cute anymore. It hurts business. Move to Brattleboro if you want to join all the stoners. It's not like that in this town. You know that.”

Paul laughs. It is a huge, huge mistake. Cate storms away, upstairs I assume, and Paul heads outside. The back door slams.

I hover my hands above the keyboard and consider sharing the details of their fight but decide against it for the moment. I pick up my phone to text Elise about it, like maybe I can keep one foot in the real world and one foot in LBC.

I don't do either. I pour all my attention into listening to the aftereffects of the fight.

The walls are thin, and Paul's favorite place to smoke is on the hammock right outside the office window. I
know all the sounds and smells of smoking up, just not the accompanying feeling, not whatever the thing is that Paul just can't get enough of. I have no interest in it. I hear the
click-click-click
of his lighter and then a little hum of pleasure as he inhales.

I mean. I love him, but he's an idiot sometimes.

My screen lights up with more replies to my posts.

My focus shifts back to the computer, and I try not to hear Cate doing her little weeping bit upstairs.
She's just pregnant
, I say in my head, but it doesn't really help. Hearing Cate or Paul cry is an even worse feeling than what I felt in Mrs. Drake's office today. Unsettling.

I squint, like that will help me focus more on LBC and less on my parents.

I open the window a crack, and now the smell of pot is floating in and I can hear each and every one of Paul's sighs. He must know the window's open, but he's not breaking the non-wall between us. We have to do this in our tiny house sometimes. Pretend there is privacy where there is not. Act like we're alone when we're feet away from each other.

I imagine this will get even harder to accomplish when there is a screaming baby in the little nursery upstairs. I remind myself what the note taker said in
The Secret Garden
, that change could be a comfort. I want to ask Zed if he thinks that could be true.

I slide my seat in closer to the desk. Let my face drift closer to the screen. I turn some music on, hike up the volume to drown out tears and weed and the memory of my parents fighting.

I wonder if I mean what I typed. If this thing with Joe is love. I guess if I say it is, then it is, right?

I turn up the volume another notch. The room is shaking a little from the noise, and I sing along.

Again, a collective pause. The group seems to work like this. Somehow we all are keeping the same call-and-response rhythm, and we all pick the same moments to pause and collect our thoughts. It reminds me a little of Cate's yoga classes, where everyone is somehow breathing as one unit. That's the only part of yoga I ever liked. But this time I guess the responsibility is on me. My mouth is dry from the clarity of Zed's words.

In the stretch of the pause, another post from Star goes live.

I can't move. I didn't know it, but this is exactly what I wanted for her. This feels Right in the deepest, craziest, most exciting way. I have a surge of
YES
that runs through me. She's a crusader. A romantic. She's the girl I
want to be. The girl I didn't know I wanted to be until I saw her red heels and her happy knees.

Her words cling to the screen, promise and threat both. And a reminder that I have to dig deep for another secret and steel myself for another Assignment next week. That this whole thing is ongoing. My stomach turns, knowing I'll have an Assignment bigger than the one before. And that I'll want to complete it. There was a mini high from typing the words
Assignment completed
today, and I want that again.