Life by Committee (8 page)

Nice, I think.

I'm so happy to be transported out of my head, I actually smile, which is a ridiculous thing to do when you're all by yourself. I can't help it: Cate says it's the mountains that make me feel trapped. Sometimes it's cozy, like the perfect nook in the expanse of the world, but right now, when everyone hates me, it's more like a crawl space I can't properly stretch in.

Poking around LBC makes me feel like I found a trapdoor, Tabitha-sized, to let me out of here.

I click through a bunch of the secrets the Agnes girl shared, then Roxie and someone going by Elfboy, and the leader, Zed, who always gives the official assignments. It's like reading someone's diary, except other members can comment on each secret.

Agnes has this strange, lonely, squirrely life that I pity so much, it's almost uncomfortable to keep reading.

After every one of the secrets, there's a discussion with all the other members, a list of comments ranging from the brief (smiley face) to the lengthy (an in-depth retelling of Roxie lying to her boyfriend about her age when she was fifteen and he was twenty). After the comments, there's always a silver-fonted post from Zed titled
ASSIGNMENT
. He seems to take the conversation of the members into consideration, then construct an Assignment that addresses the secret and the members' feelings about the secret.

Zed posts secrets too, but he lets the community discuss his options and come up with an Assignment. If a majority of members agree, he'll do what they've come up with.

I guess that's what Life by Committee is. And with a mother like Agnes's, who steals her books and her journals and anything she decides is “too troubling” or “informative about her emotional state” and takes them to Agnes's doctor, it's obvious LBC is a serious safe haven.

I wonder if Agnes will do it. If she'll work in an orphanage in Romania and become a bigger, better person before college. I wonder how seriously they take these Assignments.

It must be pretty serious. She posts a link to a service program and says she's filling it out immediately. I am watching someone change her life, just like that.

Sometimes there are only written descriptions of how Assignments went, but often Zed seems to require “proof.” Without faces and with so much anonymity, “proof” only really goes so far, but it looks like everyone takes it seriously.

This chick I am totally girl-crushing on, Star, posts pictures of her Assignments, filtered with some kind of vintage-y green look, and they all look vaguely magical and strange. There's one of her feet, and each toe is wearing an expensive-looking ring. Diamond. Emerald. Sapphire. Ruby. I guess she's sort of this major klepto. I like that she has her own style of picture taking. Agnes's pictures are more straightforward. Roxie uses audio files. Elfboy obviously has some crappy old-school camera and an even crappier scanner, because his photos are all blurry and pixelated. @sshole draws pictures, which
isn't proof exactly, but he's been a member for years, so no one is questioning it, I guess.

A girl named Brenda (seriously? Brenda is your magical nickname?) has amazing photos. Like every photograph on the site, they are faceless. Usually knees-down, sometimes neck-down, expertly anonymous. Hers are black and white, classically beautiful, and obviously taken on a real camera, not a phone. One Assignment Zed gave her was to crash her estranged father's wedding, and she did it in an actual wedding gown. Her
mother's
old wedding gown. She managed a photograph of the cumbersome gown and its long train as she stepped off a horse-drawn carriage she hired for the event.

I'm dying to see her face. I'm dying to see all their faces. It's strange, entering into their faceless universe. Unsettling. Cool.

In the best photo she's lifting the gown, so we can see her sneakers underneath.

It's in black and white, except for the purple sneakers. I mean, it's basically the best photograph I've ever seen. Her description of completing the Assignment is great too. I can't stop cringing, reading it. She says she could see every realization on her father's face: the fact that his daughter was there, the fact that she was wearing a wedding gown, the fact that it was the wedding gown of the woman he last married.

It was bad for a while. Her dad was obviously pissed. Like, shaking-with-anger, wouldn't-return-her-phone-calls-for-months pissed. But he ended up not marrying the obviously evil would-be stepmother, because she flipped out when Brenda made a scene. And from what I can gather, when the anger faded, he realized that he'd been ignoring Brenda and started making an effort to see more of her.

A few days later, Brenda posted a picture of steak and pancakes on a huge ceramic plate. I laugh out loud. My eyes go a little watery.

It's like dipping a pinkie toe in the waters. The picture is from a week ago, and I'm not exactly adding to the conversation, but it's something. It's saying, I don't know, maybe I'm ready. Maybe I'm one of you.

I click over to Star's profile, to see if she's as
ridiculously cool as what little I've seen of her so far suggests. She's in college, which about half the members seem to be. She uses a lot of caps locks and comments on other people's posts pretty often. Her picture is barefoot and barelegged. Freckled knees and red toenails stretched out in the sand. Her most recent secret (posted just an hour ago) intrigues me:

When my eyes start to hurt, I turn away from the computer for just a moment and notice my hands are clenched and my toes are cramping from the way I am scrunching them up in my slippers. It feels like my whole body is one huge fist with nothing to punch.

My screen reloads, and I see that a few people commented on Star's secret, and that Zed has already decided on an Assignment based on just an enthusiastic
Go for it
or two.

ASSIGNMENT
, silvery bold font screams across the screen.
Go get him. Book a flight. Find him. Tell him you can't stop thinking about him.

I smile.

Not because I think it's a great idea; I don't. But it is something someone in a movie would do, and it's scary
and delightful and hopeful and sweet. And I guess everyone needs something hopeful. It may be a crazy-person thing to do, but at least it's powerful and optimistic.

I tear up, the way I do watching the end of
Pretty Woman
, when Richard Gere climbs up the fire escape and Julia Roberts lets him meet her up there, and her smile is so big and toothy and absurd that life seems like it might actually be mostly good instead of mostly annoying.

I look around the room like maybe she's hiding somewhere in here. The words popped up and the whole story is unfolding in front of me, but it's
not
a movie, and Star is
not
Julia Roberts, although Zed is basically Cupid, apparently. A laugh rises from my belly straight to my mouth, but I hold it in and let it hum on my lips. Between the buzz of the unsurrendered giggle and the head-swirling tears, I'm temporarily just a snow globe of feelings and not a person at all. And that feels
good
. Because it's hope, mostly, that's coursing through me.

It's weird that I care at all. For all I know, Star's not even telling the truth. She can pretend to be on some romantic transcontinental journey and really be sitting in
some sad bedroom in some sad city far away.

There's a shiver inside me.

I'm surprised at how badly I want Star and her Assignment to be real. I need it to be happening. I need there to be a whole mess of craziness and loveliness and unexpected steak and pancakes and red Mary Janes and plane tickets and secrets beyond the snowy mountains.

My screen scrambles again. Life by Committee is telling me I have new comments on the secret I posted.

Underneath my confession about kissing someone's boyfriend, a few people have asked how I feel about the guy, and some others have expressed concern for the poor, wronged girlfriend.

And underneath all that, Zed has infiltrated with his thick, silvery font.
ASSIGNMENT
, it reads. I rev into heartbeat overdrive. Which is silly—it's a game. If I don't like what he has to say, I just won't do it. I guess I'd pictured my secret dropping into the void, but something is happening and I'm too tired to stop it. I read what comes next:
Kiss Him Again
.

Secret:

I eat alone most nights. If I eat at all.

—Zed

I'm not going to do it.

I've totally decided.

I can explain to the group that I've ended things with Joe, and that maybe losing me will bring him back to me eventually, and that I'm okay with that.

I can explain to them how I won't get to really appreciate the kissing until Joe has left Sasha. I'm a new member—they'll understand. They'll come up with a way for me to get Joe and Sasha to break up, and then I will happily, joyfully, ecstatically kiss him again.

I can explain that I can't kiss him again now and still
be Bitty.

I fall asleep dreaming of the post I'll write to let them know I'll need a new Assignment, and I wake up at four in the morning and open the computer, to see if Joe responded to my email.

He didn't.

I log on to Life by Committee, but before I ask for a new Assignment, I find myself back on Star's page, and even though it's only a few hours later, she's updated.

There's a picture attached, neck down this time. A delicate silver necklace hangs far past her collarbone. Some kind of butterfly. Pretty and innocuous. Maybe Tiffany's. The airport in the background is a blur of bodies. There's a plaid suitcase in the bottom left corner. It could
belong to anyone. She could be anywhere. Airports all look the same. But she's glamorous and messy and absurd, and I can tell, without seeing her face, with only really focusing on her stockinged knees, that she is happy. Reckless, but happy.

The other members post
X
s and
O
s and smiley faces and quotes from old romantic movies, which I only recognize because Cate has those movies on in the background when she's ironing.

I realize I'm licking my lips over and over in anticipation. They're dry now, and stinging a little. It's not like Star can show up on the other side of the country instantaneously. As of now she's just hours early for a morning flight, and reporting on every flutter of her heart as she waits for her life to change.

I try to decide what to type. I want to be part of whatever this moment is about to become. I want to be front and center, cheering her on. I tap words out but erase them. One step forward, two steps back, I guess.

Also, it occurs to me that maybe Star is my red-penned stranger. And it occurs to me that I want her to be.

I press send on the message, even though these strangers will now be the first people to ever know what a romantic I am, aside from Cate and Paul. No one really knows what a good poem can do to me. I got into poetry the way I get into everything else I read, by looking at the margins. I have a book from a guy named Henry to a girl named Alice. He inscribed it. For their anniversary. Then, on the last blank page of the book, he wrote the lyrics to “Rainbow Connection.” You know, the one Kermit the Frog sings. He said that was the most romantic thing he'd ever heard, and that every poem in there
plus
“Rainbow Connection” couldn't accurately describe how much he loved her.

I listened to “Rainbow Connection” on repeat for hours after I found that. And even now, I consider texting Joe to tell him to listen to the song or read a Neruda poem that reminds me of the way I feel about him, but I know better. No one's ready to see that side of me.

Except, apparently, a bunch of strangers from around the country who are taking over my computer.