Life by Committee (27 page)

“I kissed Joe Donavetti,” I say.

It's not graceful. My voice cracks like I'm a twelve-year-old boy, and a drop of sweat falls from my chin to the mic, making a terrible
plop
that echoes in the
silence. I exhale hard and try to gain control over my shaking muscles. The ones in my thighs are especially bad, trembling with such intensity I can barely stand. I am not hiding it well, that much is for sure. When I look down to gather the courage to keep going, I get a glimpse of what they are seeing: earthquakes erupting in my legs and causing aftershock tremors all the way up my torso. These are no small shakes; I am swaying from the intensity.

“Uh, Tabitha, I think maybe—” Headmaster Brownser breaks in after way too much time has passed. I shake my head and wave him away with my hand.

“I have to do this,” I say. “I kissed Joe. A bunch of times. Knowing he was with Sasha. So, yeah, some of you were sort of right. Not that I'm slutty, or whatever. But about some of who I am. Some of the things I do. They're not great.”

Mrs. Drake clears her throat from across the room, and I'm not sure if it's directed at me or at the now-paralyzed headmaster. “And! My dad is a huge stoner. Smokes a ton of pot. He's trying to stop, but it might not work. He smokes at work. At Tea Cozy. He's high when he's making your coffee,” I say.

More teachers are moving in on me, but they're coming at me slow, the way you see in the movies when there's a kidnapper with a gun and everyone's
being careful not to upset the crazy person. Mrs. Drake leads the crowd with her long, awkward, slow strides and a fake-sympathetic look on her face.

“Jemma and Alison hate me now, but I still miss them. I miss Jemma. Even knowing what she thinks of me, I still wish she'd be my friend. I want her to like me. So, Jemma, you won. I'm hurt. I'm not okay with it.” I clear my throat, because now that I've cleared the way with the big LBC secrets, now that I'm somehow free, I want to finish the job. “I hate my unborn sister,” I say. “Or I'm jealous of her. But you know, working on it.”

Headmaster Brownser isn't letting anyone get close to me onstage. Sort of like I'm a sleepwalker who it would be dangerous to wake up. And I guess that's right. It would be dangerous to stop me now, in the middle of this dream.

“Um, I am falling for Jemma Benson's brother. I'm a virgin. I know you all think I'm a slut. I consider dressing differently, but then I don't. I hate-love my boobs. I was in love with Joe for no reason at all other than it felt really, really fucking good to be in love with someone. I was a bitch to my only friend. I read other people's margin notes in used books. I trusted a total stranger with my life. I'm not sure yet if I regret it. I do terrible and weird things and I'm scared I'm the only one. But maybe, I
don't know, maybe someone else is screwed up, like me. Maybe.”

Then I remember to breathe. On instinct, my hand rushes to the place below my bra and between my ribs where I have been holding all these unsaid things. I want to put them back in, because when I can't hear my own words thundering in my head and when I'm no longer lost in the adrenaline of secret spilling, I'm
here
. I'm some exposed girl in a weird gold dress who talks too fast and says too much and who no one really likes but now everyone
really
knows.

There are giggles and whispers and uncomfortable coughing and the same squeaking of chairs that haunts every single Thursday assembly. I take a step back, like somehow getting away from the edge of the stage will help anything. And just as Mrs. Drake reaches the ramp to finally get onto the stage and, presumably, carry me off in a straitjacket, Headmaster Brownser at long last
does
something.

“Hey,” he says. I think it's to me, so I turn my face toward where he's standing and start to apologize, but he's looking at Mrs. Drake and her slow-walking cronies. “Hey. It's okay. That's okay. Let her breathe.” Mrs. Drake pouts and her eyebrows dance all over her face in confusion, but she freezes just as she's ordered. “Very brave,” Headmaster Brownser says, so quiet it could just be for
me, but the auditorium has fallen into utter silence, so I'm pretty sure everyone can hear his pronouncement. It feels that final, like if our wise old headmaster with his half-bald head and his sagging wrinkles and still-bright blue eyes says I am brave, then he must be right, even if right now it feels wrong.

I try it on for size: I am brave.

“Quite the speech, Tabitha,” he says, and puts a slender but strong hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for that. I think we all needed that.” He and I stand there, then. Together in front of everyone.

Doesn't he know I said the words
fuck
and
slut
and
screw
in front of everyone?

“I once gave a student a bad grade because his father was a jerk,” Headmaster Brownser says. He looks embarrassed for about a second, but then he chuckles. Chuckles so hard he has to cover his mouth with his hand to regain control. “Never said that out loud,” he muses. “Thought it. Never said it. Thought saying it would make it
more
true. Make it worse than it was. But I did it either way, right?” I'm the only one onstage with him, so I guess he's sort of talking to me. I nod and muster up a smile.

It is the single weirdest moment of my life. And I have had some weird moments in the last few weeks.

“Well, come on,” he says. This time not to me; this
time to the whole school. “Who else?”

Then he nods to me and gestures for me to get off the stage. I don't feel ready to join everyone else, but he's practically escorting me, so I take careful steps down the ramp and climb back into my seat. By the time I've gotten myself settled, there is someone else on stage: a senior guy with clear-framed glasses and clear braces. The kind of guy who could not be trying any harder to fit in.

“That was really . . . cool,” he says. He has a voice so high, I'm sure when he answers the phone people think he's a woman. “Uh, I don't have anything huge. But I shop at the Salvation Army. With my mom. Not, like, by choice. So yeah. People made fun of me for that before and I denied it and whatever, but it's totally true. So, there ya go.” He's beaming. I wonder if I looked that red and sweaty and happy up there. He's too awkward to get offstage gracefully, and he manages to step on his own feet. I do a big inward groan and think this is reflecting poorly on me too. I probably looked just that awkward. He makes eye contact with me on his way back to his seat. Waves, like I'm an inspiring celebrity, and gives me a thumbs-up sign.

It's nice, I know it is, but the worst part of me hates him for it. My ears ring with embarrassment. I'm so busy looking at the floor and feeling bad for myself and the
guy with clear orthodontics that I jump in my seat when I hear the next voice: Jemma.

“I'm not very nice,” she says. “Sometimes I'm a bitch. Like, I sort of know I'm doing it, and then I get home and feel stupid, but then I just do it again. Or I justify it, you know? But sometimes it's hard to really convince yourself that what you did, you know, isn't so bad.” Jemma practically sprints offstage, but it's just as well because without my really noticing it, a dozen or so people have gathered on the ramp leading up to the stage. There's officially a line to get up there, to have all that heat on you, and to own up to everything you hate about yourself or secretly love about yourself but know to hide.

A freshman admits to an eating disorder.

A sophomore says her mom left her dad two weeks ago, but neither of them have told anyone—even the rest of the family—yet.

Two seniors apologize for hacking into another boy's email.

A junior says he cries in the bathroom like a girl. I mean, he actually admits this. To a school of three hundred people.

Headmaster Brownser stays right there on the side of the stage, some pillar of strength, and nods along with the sharing. He makes no move to put a stop to it. The line on the ramp gets even longer: twenty people are in
line, then thirty.

“I knew about a friend's dad hitting her, and I didn't do anything,” a girl says, in tears. Headmaster Brownser nods, and when the crying girl doesn't calm down, he rubs her back until she can breathe enough to muster a smile and a big, healthy exhale.

Mrs. Drake gets onstage.

“I am not always the best at my job,” she mumbles, and then shakes her head and leaves the stage. She doesn't look at me, but she stays in the assembly hall, and whenever someone says something emotional, she checks in with them on their way offstage. All of them. The nice girls. The bad girls. The jocks. The stoners. She looks each of them in the eye when they get offstage.

People keep smiling at me on their way up the ramp, but I am so heart-poundingly stupefied by the response to my outpouring of secrets that I don't smile back. I can't get my head around the way one action done for a totally selfish reason has caused something so large and generous and profound.

Sasha Cotton doesn't move from her seat in front of me. But she does keep looking back at me, and not with hatred. Not with spite or malice or, I think, further plans to destroy me. Her face is wet with tears, no surprise there, but this time they are for a
reason
, they are from real live empathy, and not her own dark place.

Joe is gone.

I lean forward.

“You okay?” I whisper. Normally people would be craning their necks to see a Sasha-Tabitha showdown, but three hundred sets of eyes are glued to the stage. Thursday assembly has never been this captivating. Years of rape-prevention improv shows and organic farming experts and tired local folk bands have programmed us to tune out Thursday assemblies, and I think we are all stunned to be sitting in this room that is suddenly charged with actual feeling instead of just drowning in rhetoric or pretension.

“Yeah,” Sasha says. She wipes her face with her long sleeves. Little pieces of fluffy angora cling to her face after. The downside of beautiful lavender expensive fluffy wool sweaters, right?

“Sorry I did that. It wasn't to, like, make it worse for you—” I start, but Sasha cuts me off with an adamant head shake.

“Did you tell Zed you were doing that?” she says. She looks so scared for a girl who once had everything I wanted.

“I recorded it,” I say. I click onto LBC and post the recording. It's quick and painless. It's a kind of magic, getting my life back so quickly. Sasha closes her eyes for a few moments longer than a blink. “You could go up and
talk, too,” I say. I can't read if she's mad or sad or relieved or what. She shakes her head and gives me a half smile that could mean anything. Turns out, I don't know that much about Sasha Cotton at all.

I like her more than I did even five minutes earlier, and certainly a hell of a lot more than I did two months ago. For everyone else in here, the brave thing is to get up there and cry and expose something soft and vulnerable and hidden. But for Sasha Cotton the bravest thing to do is to sit right where she is, and not be the crying, fragile, perfect disaster that she's always been.

Ninety minutes pass, but Headmaster Brownser doesn't make a move to get us herded into class.

Two hours pass.

Two and a half.

I can't count the number of people who have spoken or the number of people waiting to speak. Once in a while someone says something so powerful we all start applauding, sometimes even standing up and cheering. When a senior boy talks about drunk driving and running over a cat and never telling anyone and worrying about it for a year and a half, we applaud. Solemnly, of course. When a really pretty freshman girl admits to having considered suicide, we applaud the fact that she didn't do it.
When a cute dork from the junior class tells a crazy popular girl from his grade that he is totally in love with her, we applaud, even though we know she probably doesn't love him back.

“This won't be a shock,” Elise says, when she has made it to the front of the line. I try to make eye contact with her now, but I'm sure she can't see me. Or that's what I tell myself. “But I did everything I could to be like everyone else. And I just couldn't hack it. I've been avoiding saying these words for five years, because the second I say them in front of anyone but my . . . um . . . my best friend, Tabby, they'll become unchangeably real. And I know some of you will make fun of me. I know even after today some of you will say totally horrible things or ask me to make out with your girlfriend or call me a dyke, or whatever. But I might as well say it since I think you know anyway, and since this is probably the only moment I'll ever have to come forward with this much . . . uh . . . power. So. Thanks Tabby, for, you know, creating the moment. The moment when I can just fucking say it. I LIKE GIRLS. I have a girlfriend. An awesome one. Okay, everyone? I'm gay.”

People clap. People stand up. So many people that Elise has to bow her head and smile and then wave at us all to sit down.

I clap the hardest. I stand the longest.

Three hours have passed since I first got onstage. I've cried so much my eyes hurt, and if I look around, every single other person in the auditorium looks the way I feel. The whole assembly has taken on this weirdly casual air: people aren't returning to their seats—they are sitting on the floor, sitting on one another's laps, crowding in the aisles to be as close as possible to their best friends.

When a techie chick is onstage, Elise asks the girl next to me to let her switch seats, and the exchange is all smiles and gracious politeness. We are survivors of an attack or a natural disaster or a great tragedy. We are in it together, all of a sudden. And it's the sort of wonderful, warm thing that you just know won't last, but you somehow convince yourself to appreciate anyway.

Elise gives me an awkward sideways hug in our seats.

“I'm sorry,” I say.