Life by Committee (19 page)

But he keeps going, like he has something to prove. He removes Cate from the door and starts picking up empty glasses, asking customers if they want more coffee.

“Stay,” Cate says to me. She points a finger. Not only am I the crappy child they raised all wrong, not only am I their guinea pig preparing them for their
real
baby, I am also, apparently, a dog.

I stay.

Star posts a picture of her feet and what I assume are Moon's feet. Barefoot, pinching blades of grass between their toes. The hope that's been bubbling more and more since I joined LBC rushes into a boil. I can have that. If I power through the unsettled feeling and the intense desire to vomit, I could be that girl.

I'd almost forgotten to take my own picture, but luckily I have my phone stranded out here with me, so I stand next to the joint that Paul discarded into the pile of leaves. I'm in ugly yellow rain boots and I don't know how to make it interesting, so I line everything up in a straight line: my two feet, the joint, the lighter, which I drop onto the ground also.

Snap.

I can't stand Star having doubts. Not now. Not so quickly after she agreed to her Assignment. Not when she only has a few hours to go.

I shiver from the chill but thank the sun for settling in right over my head.

I wish I could say I am simply enjoying the sounds of nature once Cate strands me outside: tweeting birds, the oceanic sound of wind hitting leaves, the occasional crack of twigs breaking in half under the weight of tiny animals. It looks like a woodland November wonderland
out here: the sun breaks through the pumpkin-colored leaves and makes odd patterns on the grass, and there's the persistent optical illusion of close-looking snow-topped mountains that are actually sort of far away.

But. After hanging out on LBC for a few more minutes, all there is to do is listen to Paul and Cate scream at each other.

“You
fuckup!
” Cate yells. Since I can't see her, my mind gives me a moment of relief when I don't have to believe it's actually her. I smirk, like some other family is causing a scene. But then: “Not only are you ruining our business with your ridiculous . . . stoner-ness . . . you've also decided to ruin our
daughter
?”

Yeah, that's me. The ruined one.

I kick a pile of leaves. Grind one under the heel of my yellow boot.

“How many warn—chance—warn-chances did I give you? You really needed me to be more clear about what I wanted? You can't be a father and a . . . a . . . trouble-pot-stirrer.”

Cate makes up words when she's mad. Her level of anger almost always directly correlates to how many nonsensical or cobbled-together words and phrases she peppers her speech with.

“She—Tabitha—she was going to experiment—” Paul
starts. “She finally started talking about some of the things happening in her life—” He stops cold. I am clenching my jaw so tightly, it aches. I am grinding my teeth with such ferocity, I swear I can feel little shards of them coming off in my mouth, like I'm sandpapering them down. I'm wishing the walls were thicker and soundproof. Because next I have to listen to Paul asking customers to please leave. Plus it's freaking cold.

“I'm so sorry,” he says, and I know without seeing his face that it is crimson and grimacing, like mine, but worse. That floating, giggling feeling I had a few minutes ago has tempered, too. It's still there, but only in the back of my head, and I can't crawl inside it. It feels like I got suddenly shoved outside that warm, silly, cloud-insulated place and back into the cold November air. I wish I had a jacket and some headphones.

Cate is silent.

“We'll open back up in a few hours, okay?” Paul says. There's a pause, and I think I can hear Cate's words biting the air. “Or tomorrow,” he corrects himself because of whatever Cate said. “We'll be open again tomorrow.”

I could sneak away, obviously. There's no electric fence or Great Wall of Tea Cozy keeping me locked into the café's overgrown little backyard. But there's nowhere to
go
. I pissed Elise off and weirded Devon out, and my
house is too far away to walk to. I'd like to talk to Joe and see if he likes Stoner Tabby. If we are even more connected now that I've done This Thing. But I don't want him to hear my parents screaming at each other in the background.

“We can put the rest of your hot chocolate in a to-go cup,” I hear Paul saying. Cate must be throwing things around, or at least clanging them together, in the kitchen, because there's a metal-against-metal symphony rocking the little cottage that is Tea Cozy. “. . . I'll throw that cake in a doggy bag,” Paul continues. A little bit of the giggly high sneaks back in, and I have to cover my mouth so as not to let out a big belly laugh at this one. On any normal night, Paul, Cate, and I would eat burgers at home and imitate the cranky old lady who won't leave the café even when the owners are openly brawling.

I know this won't be a normal evening.

The reindeer bells attached to Tea Cozy's front door jangle, and then it's just Paul and Cate inside, and me, forgotten, outside.

“I'm so sorry,” Paul starts. “I wasn't thinking. Obviously. And you have every right to be mad—”

“You
never
think!” Cate screams. “When's the last time you thought? A gatrillion hundred years ago? We said this would be different! We said we'd be adults!
Parents! Real ones! You promised!”

I wonder if I should go in and join the fight. If I'm taking the power out of the Assignment by hiding out here. I try to access that part of me that surges with pride when I complete an Assignment. The part of me that is brave and strong and taking control. It's there, but it does not like hearing Cate and Paul yell at each other.

Paul must be cowering in the corner, because I can't hear a response from him even though I can hear Cate's heavy post-outburst breathing. Music starts pumping through the speakers, and it's loud and clear from out here: Whitney Houston, which Cate only ever resorts to when she needs some serious strength. She sings along at the top of her lungs, and after a few verses, the bells on the door jangle again, meaning Paul's left without me.

I listen to Cate sing the entirety of
Whitney: The Greatest Hits
. Sometimes her voice breaks halfway through a song and she cries in an angry, openmouthed way. I have heard her cry that way when her sister refused to have her over for Christmas, when she thought she might have to close Tea Cozy because a customer reported them to the IRS, and, most recently, when she found me curled up in the fetal position, crying after the dance where Jemma told me I wasn't worthy of being her friend anymore.

But I have never, ever heard her cry that way about
Paul.

When the album's over, the front-door bells ring their Christmas cheer again, and I'm just a forgotten girl in the backyard without a coat. But at least it's safe to reenter.

Back inside, my laptop's right where I left it, but the rest of the café is sparkling clean and tidy. They remembered everything but me. Or the other (even worse?) possibility: they remembered me and chose to leave me.

Joe has chatted me a bunch of times.

For a second, I think I had him. The drama of my parents screaming at each other, the anxiety created by him not being able to get in touch with me, the idea, maybe, that he could help. But then, I assume, Sasha got in
touch and he had to take care of her. Because in the battle between my issues and her issues, hers still win. “Other stuff” means Sasha. It's like the world's worst code name.

At first it's only a theory, but she's got a status up, just Joe's name and a heart, and a bunch of my ex-friends have “liked” it. Joe saves Sasha, again.

When Tea Cozy is empty, I think it's almost louder than when it's full. The building is old and creaks, settling in on itself. I'm rarely here alone, so I want to enjoy it. I lean back in one of the paisley armchairs, slip off my shoes, and try to find something wonderful in the solitude. When I was little, I'd sneak to the Cozy: steal my parents' key rings, hop on my bike, and let myself in at odd hours. I want it to feel like that again.

It doesn't.

Not to mention there's Elise's status,
SOME PEOPLE. UGH
. I know it's about me because I can't think of anyone else it would be about. Elise isn't like me—she doesn't get angry easily, doesn't have a litany of awkward relationships with former friends, doesn't trash-talk or tell people her problems or complain online about her sorry life. But when she wants to tell me something and doesn't want to do it directly, she goes online to vaguely vent. The things she can't say to me out loud, she can hint at in public. I can't even fault her for it, given how
messed up I am.

There's a knock at the window. I want it to be Joe so badly that I take a few seconds before looking up to see who it is. I just want a few moments when I can believe that it's him, that he'll be out there in his red North Face and wind-whipped cheeks waiting to rescue me, or maybe fool around in the empty café.

So there's an even bigger shock when it's Devon's face I see in the window. Big blue eyes and long lashes, a wiry frame, an oversize striped scarf, a furry hat that must be from Russia. And that face: the only word for it is pretty. His face is a perfect, slender oval, and there's something to love about his super-straight nose and freckled cheeks. Not love, but you know, find pretty cute.

He waves. He's more than a year older than me, but the way he moves is more like a little kid. I let him in.

“Hey there,” I say. It doesn't sound like me. It especially doesn't sound like me in the state I'm in right now. I'm sad and stressed and scared, but he has a look on his face like he wants me to smile at him, so I do.

I could do more. I could be the girl Zed is pushing me to be. I could do all my Assignments, go further that I ever imagined. Maybe I could kiss Devon, and Joe could walk by and see us lips-to-lips in the window, and then Joe would burst in and wrestle me from Devon's arms so he can have me for himself.

Or something like that.

But I feel bad that my impulse is to use Devon. He's so cute all bundled up and unsure of how I'm going to respond to him.

“I needed a friendly face,” I say. My nerves are under control, compared to earlier. Or maybe I'm high.

“I came by to apologize,” Devon says, oblivious to the intricate fantasy happening in my head right now. “I mean, that's why I was here earlier too, before you got sort of . . . nervous. Do I make you nervous?”

“Yeah. I mean no,” I try. I sort of shake my head and twirl a strand of hair and shrug at my own silliness. “I'm nervous a lot lately. So it's not you.”

“Anyway. I'm sorry,” he says. He doesn't laugh at how incredibly not smart I sound.

“Why? What'd you do?” I say.

“I guess I want to apologize for Jemma,” he says. “It's partly my fault, I think.” He stares at the tips of his shoes, so I do too. “I kept teasing Jemma about how hot you'd gotten, and I think it sort of freaked her out, you know?” He isn't blushing red like me, but he is sort of shifting from side to side, so he's got to be at least a little nervous.

“Teasing her,” I repeat. I don't want to talk about Jemma. I don't want to ignite the pocket of sadness and nostalgia and confusion I feel when I think too much about what it means that we're not friends anymore. “I
don't think it's your fault,” I say. I mean to dismiss the conversation, but because being around him makes me smile, it comes across flirtatious. Like, it's not his fault that I'm so supercute. How could he help himself?

“Jemma seems younger than you, you know? I mean, she doesn't think so. Jemma thinks she's about forty. But in some ways, she's a kid and maybe in some ways . . . you're not?” He steps closer to me. My heart pounds. Good pounds. But maybe it's the weed.

“I'm not really a kid,” I say. I let myself take a step closer to him. So close my shoulder is an inch away from pressing against his chest. So close it would take nothing more than a little breeze for us to be hugging.

Or kissing.

I wonder what would happen if I leaned into his lips. How would my life change if I completed another terrifying Assignment? If I did something I'd never do without Zed's or LBC's urging?

Mostly I think of Joe and how badly I want him to want me, and I stay put. I stay close to him.

“Are you okay?” Devon says. He touches my shoulder, but I can't decide if it's sweet or pitying. “You're going to hate this, but I sort of . . . heard everything.”