Life by Committee (28 page)

“I'm sorry this hug is so awkward,” she says. “I'll give you a real one later.”

And then we're okay again. We're Elise and Tabitha.

“This is like margin notes times a million,” Elise says when the techie talks about how black nail polish doesn't make her goth. “This is like if we had a copy of the Bible and the entire school had marked it up with their own thoughts on everything important, you know?”

I mean, that's why I'm friends with Elise, right? And it's
why she'll get into Harvard. She can take the biggest, craziest day our school has ever experienced and break it down into one perfect sentence.

“It's exactly like that,” I say.

It's one in the afternoon when assembly is over. Five hours have passed, and Headmaster Brownser let every last person talk. Teachers, administrators, and more students than I could count got up onstage to speak.

“I don't think we need to go to classes today,” Headmaster Brownser says when the last kid has spoken and we all have grumbling stomachs and dried-out eyes. He doesn't dismiss us right away, after declaring the school day officially over. I think he must be deeply tempted to
put a cap on the whole day, to give a profound speech and wrap it all up. But there's no way to contextualize that many stories and epiphanies and secrets.

He shrugs. And that shrug says it all.

We don't go straight home. A lot of the underclassmen have working parents who can't pick them up until later anyway, and there's no bus to Circle Community, and those of us with driver's licenses are too worn out to consider driving anywhere.

“I'll make us sandwiches,” Elise says when I collapse onto one of the atrium benches. “You nap or whatever. I'll be right back.” The deli meat bar is one of the only not-disgusting options at the cafeteria, so I nod and close my eyes. Normally, I'd watch myself. Wouldn't want to drool or talk in my sleep or be caught quite so exposed. But today pretty much anything is cool, so I curl into a ball, just like I would do in my bed at home, and get ready to take a power nap.

I'm practically asleep when I feel someone hovering over me. I know who it is before opening my eyes. I can smell his berry ChapStick and his Old Spice deodorant.

Joe.

“That was some performance,” he says. He's looking at me like he's never seen me before, like everything
from my eye color to the shape of my hips is a mystery.

“I wish you'd gotten up there,” I say. I fidget and stretch like I'm just waking up from the world's longest nap. I rub imaginary sleep from my eyes. I find his gaze so he knows I mean it.

“Why?”

“Would have liked to know what you have to say.” I'm still in the gold dress, and he's in pen-stained khakis and a white shirt that hasn't been bleached enough, so it has dingy stains around the collar and sleeves. I run a hand through my hair and hope it looks as messy-sexy-voluminous as it feels.

I hate that I still care if he thinks my hair is sexy.

“I already told you all my secrets,” Joe says. It's a quiet voice, one I haven't heard lately. It's the voice I imagined when we chatted online late at night. It's the voice I heard in my ear, the one that kept me falling for him. The little part of my heart he still occupies lights up, then dims again. Someday soon, it won't flash for him at all.

I expect him to yell at me. The whole hallway is expecting him to yell at me. There's a stream of students pacing the hallways: making plans to head home, hugging one another, hunting for their backpacks in the pile near my bench, walking to the cafeteria so they can enjoy crappy food while they wait for their rides to come. The movement hasn't stopped, but it's slowed while Joe and I talk. Now that my dirty laundry is aired, the whole school knows what might happen.

Joe doesn't yell.

Elise emerges with sandwiches in hand but keeps her distance. Even she is afraid of the explosion.

Joe's eyelashes are so long, I wonder if they've grown over time, a version of Pinocchio's nose. He bats them, and his brown eyes go a little watery and he steps in closer to me. Just that one step brings in another wave of smells. I shut my eyes against the force. When I open them again, his face is close to mine.

“You shouldn't have told everyone everything. But. I'll tell you all my secrets,” he says. Softer. Lower. Closer to my ear.

It feels good, that whisper. I feel it on my spine, his words like a feather sliding up and down the places on my back that tickle. I shimmy against it, a spasm in my shoulders so intense we both laugh. I almost want to kiss him. I think of the silvery font of my Assignment to Kiss Him Again, and wonder what would have happened if that was always my Assignment, if I'd been told to kiss him again and again and again.

I could do it right now. He'd give in, I think. He'd let me pull his face to mine.

But the second his face turns away from my ear, the impulse goes with it. My spine stops tickling and itching with want. My shoulders stop shaking. My heart stops flickering for him.

“You never told me secrets. You only ever told me crap,” I say. I whisper, too. I keep it low. I bat my eyelashes. His face falls, and he knows, he
knows
it's true.

It feels fucking good.

I try to stop myself, but when I climb into my car and ready myself to go to the Cozy, I sign into LBC.

Except I can't sign into LBC.

The site won't load. My password doesn't work. I've been blocked.

Sasha Cotton knocks on my car window and holds her phone up. Her screen is like mine. Blocked. I roll down my window and Sasha Cotton is crying, but the tears look to be a different size and shape than her usual ones.

“They're gone,” she says. “We're out.”

“We're out,” I repeat, and although I suppose I knew that would happen, I thought I'd have the option of logging back on, if I needed it. I don't cry, but I could, if I wasn't swallowing so hard.

“What am I gonna do?” Sasha says. And she's really asking me, not rhetorically. Her eyes are big, and she grips the window frame and bites her lip waiting for my answer.

“I have no idea,” I say. I'd like to tell her to ditch Joe. I'd like to tell her to stop crying and to confront her mom and to become friends with me and Elise and to not take weird photos in front of her house, and to toughen up because life's really hard and you can't go around sighing and weeping all the time, even if you're Sasha Cotton.

But I don't tell her any of that.

“I think we could be friends,” I say. “If you ever want to talk. Or hang out at the bookstore. Or whatever.” It's probably the biggest thing I've done this whole time. I pat her hand, the one on my car, and give a shrug and a smile like Headmaster Brownser did.

“I'm not sure I like you yet,” she says, but I have a feeling she will, sometime. The girl from the margin notes would like me.

I drive away.

Straight ahead are the mountains. I thought they never changed, that they were the most predictable, solid, unchangeable things ever. But a little bit of snow has melted, even in one of the coldest months in Vermont. Cate and Paul love that those mountains are so dependable, but I have never been so happy to see the unlikely green patches near the white, snowy tops.

Little pockets of surprise. Unpredictable and hopeful. Acting of their own accord. Not answering to anyone.

Not a Secret:

Devon kissed me.

I assigned it to myself to kiss him again. And again.

And again.

An extra-large thank-you to Patricia McCormick, a wonderful advisor, mentor, and inspiration. Your encouragement, insight, availability, and kindness gave me the courage to write the first draft of this book and to keep working on it through creative and personal ups and downs. I am insanely lucky I got a chance to work with you and learn from someone I admire so deeply.

To Victoria Marini, spectacular agent and friend. You quell anxieties and hold my hand through disappointments and celebrations. You make both me and my work stronger. I'm so happy we get to do this together.

To my editor, Anica Rissi. Thank you for believing in this book and making it real. Thank you for pushing me to be the best writer I can be. Thank you for teaching me so much about craft and story and the magical other things that make manuscripts into books. You're incredible.

Thank you, Katherine Tegen, Alexandra Arnold, and the rest of the team at Katherine Tegen Books. I'm astounded by the work and love you put into
LBC
.

Special thank-yous to very early readers of
LBC
: Brandy Colbert, Alison Cherry, Caela Carter, Sona Chairapotra, Amy Ewing, Mary Thompson. You shaped so much of this book and helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel. More thank-yous to other readers along the way, who pushed me and selflessly gave time and energy into this project: Alyson Gerber, Dhonielle Clayton, Lenea Grace, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Sarah Weeks, Jess Verdi, Riddhi Parekh, and the New School Writing for Children Class of 2012.

Thank you to my entire family for always supporting me, and especially Mom, Dad, and Andy for a lifetime of encouragement and book loving.

Thank you to Frank Scallon for listening, cheering, reading, and being all-around awesome.

As always, thank you to my incredible friends who build me up with love and fun and long, long talks when I need them. Special shout-outs to Anna Bridgforth, Julia Furlan, and Kea Gilbert. who are leaned on extra hard when things are tough.

And for all varieties of help along the way: Kalah McCaffery, Liesa Abrams, Bethany Buck, Red Horse Café, Victoria Marano, David Levithan, the Lucky 13's, Ian and Nivia Dougherty, Mrs. Scallon, Jennifer Haydu, Ellie Haydu, Judy Ross, BookCourt.

Photo by Navdeep Singh Dhillon of PatakaDesign.

COREY ANN HAYDU
, author of
OCD Love Story
, grew up in the Boston area but now lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she drinks mochas and uses a lot of Post-it notes, habits she picked up while earning her MFA at the New School. Find out more at www.coreyannhaydu.com.

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OCD Love Story

Cover art and design © 2014 by Erin Fitzsimmons

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

L
IFE BY COMMITTEE
. Copyright © 2014 by Corey Ann Haydu. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Haydu, Corey Ann.

Life by Committee / by Corey Ann Haydu. — First edition.

            pages cm

Summary: “A girl puts her heart, reputation, and friendships on the line when she spills her deepest secrets to a website that may not be as innocent—or as anonymous—as it seems”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-229405-0 (hardback)

EPub Edition March 2014 ISBN 9780062294074

[1. Love—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Secrets—Fiction. 4. Web sites—Fiction.] I. Title.