Life by Committee (23 page)

“I'm really not,” I say, hoping he will see me and hear me.

“I think you're so awesome, you know? And I love hanging out with you and not worrying about anything.” Joe closes the little space between our bodies and comes in for another kiss. One hand snakes around to my ass and squeezes.

“I think I should go,” I say. It takes everything in me to say it, because those strong hockey-player arms are tight around me and kissing is the only thing I can think of to distract myself from the mess I've been making. I don't know how I force the words out, except that the way he's talking to me is suddenly so
not
the way you talk to the girl you are going to leave your girlfriend for.

“Come on . . .”

“I mean, you're already sleeping with Sasha, right? And, like, comforting her and being at her beck and call and having sexy poems written about you. So I'm not really sure what you actually need me for, now that I think of it.” I'm saying it to the floor, mostly, but at least I'm saying it.

“I have feelings for you—” Joe sounds flustered, and
his voice cracks on the word
feelings
.

“But not like your feelings for her,” I finish for him.

“I'm in love with her. It's different.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and sighs, and I know that this is it, this is the place where we end. It might be the place where my heart stops beating, too. Everything stops, for thirty seconds following that statement. Then the hurt comes, fast and hard and shocking as hell.

“Right. Cool,” I say. I cannot believe I am able to say anything at all. He reaches for me again, even after that, but I don't hug him good-bye. If I step into his arms and let my nose find the place near his collarbone that feels like some kind of home, I will forget why I have to go.

I listen to “Rainbow Connection” on the way home. Maybe most girls wouldn't have the Muppets on every playlist on their iPods, but I am not most girls.

There are some replies, but not many. Agnes has
posted a secret; the LBC spiral lights up to inform me that I can check in on her Assignment, but I don't. I'm sick of Agnes, and I have enough going on in my own life.

I'd love an update from Star, so I can, like, believe in love again.

I wait for Zed to reply, and explain how destroying something ultimately fixes it. Creation from destruction, or something. I think that's from the Bible. Or science. Zed doesn't reply. I have about a million questions for Star, mostly:
Why are you hating on LBC when it got you everything you want
?

Still no Zed. No one writes anything more. I turn Star's words around in my head, and I can't quite decide if they're true or not. I think I hate her, for saying it. I want to see her on bended knee. I want to see the bottom of her lacy, linen-y, beachy wedding dress. I want the world's strangest, quirkiest fairy tale. I want something I can believe in.

A half hour later, Star says one more thing:

I'm dizzy from the question. From all my questions, too.

I'll complete my Assignment. I have to. I want to. I need to see this through. I click around LBC for another few minutes and the rules follow me onto every page, and that third rule, the one I'm the most scared of, seems to be getting larger and larger. “An active membership is the only way to protect your secrets.” I don't see how Zed
could ever follow through on that threat, but Star is right that I should at least be careful with identifying details. Especially since I'm pretty sure what I'm about to do to Jemma breaks the law.

I sign out of LBC. It doesn't feel like enough. I turn off the computer. My heart won't stop racing. I unplug the computer and leave the room, and a really illogical part of me feels safer, less overwhelmed.

If Cate were here, I'd ask her to go on another late-night walk, but without her around I have to go by myself, which I've never done.

I bring a flashlight and pay attention to where I'm walking this time. Without Cate I don't want to get turned around, especially if it means finding myself in front of Sasha Cotton's house again. When I reach a fork in the road, I take a step toward town, but then backtrack and go left instead. It's not some huge diversion. Turning left isn't exactly bringing me to the next dimension or anything. But it's not leading me to Tea Cozy or Elise's house or any of the places I usually go.

It's cold. It's always cold, but tonight it feels like it's about to snow again. I forgot a scarf, so the chill hits my neck. There's not a single car on the road, and animals and birds rustle in the treetops. I didn't even bring my phone, so I'm especially alone.

I take another turn, one I haven't taken for a while. I'm
warming up, walking at a clipped pace like I have somewhere to go, which I guess I do. Because I find myself in front of Jemma's house. Which is Devon's house. It's too late to knock on the front door. Her parents may miss me, but they won't be pleased to have me waking them up. I'm not sure which window is Devon's. I'm not even sure I want to see him. But there's a light on in their third-floor TV room, where I used to hang out all the time. I imagine that Devon's in there. That he's as awake as me. I imagine he's even worried about me. That he's the kind of guy who would have held me and rubbed my back if he heard something in my life had been dismantled.

It's not like I can't comfort myself. It's not like I need some guy to hold me and tell me I'm pretty or whatever it is I think Devon might do. It's not like what they think about me is right. I'm not boy crazy. Except that maybe I am, because now that Joe has turned out to be a total Sasha Cotton–loving asshole instead of my kind, caring soul mate, I find my mind occupied by what it would feel like for Devon to look right in my eyes and tuck my hair behind my ears and kiss the place where my earlobe meets my neck. It's been, like, a few hours, and I'm looking for another guy to fix everything.

I'm clearly messed up. I'm clearly not capable of taking care of myself in any real way.

Maybe Jemma and Alison and Mrs. Drake were right about what kind of girl I am. I wish I had my phone, so I could check in with LBC. I shouldn't be out here alone. Not in the cold Vermont night and not in my life.

But it feels like it's too late to walk home, like I can't turn around and forget it. My legs hurt, my nose is stinging from the cold, and I can't stomach the idea that I did this all for nothing. I step onto the lawn, and that step feels bigger than all the little ones that came before it. I take another tiny little step, but nothing clicks into place. Without LBC I'm just a girl on the lawn filled with the worst kind of indecision.

I don't want to be that girl.

And that is when I decide to go into Jemma's house.

It goes something like this: When Jemma and I were friends, she was really into photography. Actually, everyone was really into photography. There was a new photography teacher at Circle Community a couple of years ago. He had long hair, which normally could be kind of gross, but he tied it back in this messy-sexy way, and had just enough light-brown stubble, and I liked the way a few hairs would escape his artist ponytail. The other girls liked his forearms and the way he smelled like toxic chemicals and woods. He was young. He let us call him by his first name. He swore sometimes. He called
us all artists.

I was one of Jemma's many subjects. We'd go into the woods behind her house and I'd roll around in the leaves or stare pensively at the sky and she'd tell me to move my head or shift my weight or stop giggling, and she'd take dozens of photos. Sometimes she'd set the self-timer and get us both in there. We'd press our cold cheeks together so we could fit into the frame, and each look in slightly different directions to make it artsy.

Alison hated having her picture taken, so she'd talk about light and shadows and then disappear into the house and come back out with snacks. Like a mom would.

This went on for over a year. Jemma took every class available with Tony. But the photographs were taken almost two years ago now, so I was still slim all over, flat and straight and into worn-in T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts and Dove soap and ChapStick instead of makeup. I was the kind of girl Jemma and Alison approved of.

I want to see that girl now. Cate and Paul aren't into photographs, so we don't have albums of nostalgia in the living room or on the computer or anything. I'm sure for the new baby they'll buy a new camera and plaster the fridge with snapshots and set up a blog to show off her sure-to-be-adorable face, but it wasn't like that for me. If I
want to catch a glimpse of the Life I Used to Have, those black-and-white fake-artsy photos are my best bet.

Jemma's parents keep their key in a fake rock, like every other family in every other neighborhood in this ridiculous town. It doesn't take long to figure out which rock is hollow and fake.

The sound of the door unlocking is monstrous in my head. It echoes, and the door screeches, and I'm positive the whole Benson family is going to run down the stairs with flashlights and stricken faces, but nothing happens. I try not to breathe on my walk from the front door to the living room. There are bookcases filled with Jemma's and Devon's accomplishments, and there, knee-height, is a leather binder. Label-maker label glued onto the spine.
JEMMA. PHOTOGRAPHS. AGE 13–15
. Exactly as I knew it would be. Because Jemma and Devon have the kind of parents who label and display every single accomplishment.

Heart pounding, I reach for it. I close my eyes, like that will help me escape the sheer intensity of anxiety in the moment. My fingers twist my thumb ring, something I do when I get nervous. But my hands are so sweaty and my fingers shaking so tremendously that it slips from my knuckle to the ground. It's a heavy silver thing, and it hits the hardwood floor with a crash. I gasp, and forget to
quiet that sound, too. The sounds cause other sounds in the house. A creak upstairs. A shuffling of feet. My own heartbeat's acceleration.

I'm so scared I can't move. My arm is stuck in midair, still reaching for the book of photographs, but not actually grabbing it. I tear up but don't move a muscle. And that is how Devon finds me.

“Hey,” he whispers. He looks confused, but maybe not as stunned as he should be. Which tells me I have been acting pretty weird the last few weeks and people are noticing.

“Yeah. Hi,” I squeak out.

“It's, uh, late.”

“Oh my God, I know. I know. Yeah.” It's nice to whisper. Intimate. I manage to get my hand to my side and my back straight so that at least I'm standing upright and facing him head-on.

“Did . . . Jemma . . . invite you?”

I so want to say yes. I want to say yes so badly that I start to say yes, get out the initial
y
sound, and then clamp my mouth shut and shake my head no.

“So you just . . . thought you'd stop by?” Devon is trying so hard to make sense of this moment. I can see the effort on his face. He grimaces and blinks a lot and rubs his eyes and moves his chin in little circles, like he is caught between a head shake and a nod and a total
seizure.

“I was looking for something?” I try to stop myself from up-speak, but now that I've started, there's no way I'll stop.

Devon takes a huge breath in. So large and deliberate that I watch his whole abdomen fill, watch his lungs expand under his almost-tight-but-not-quite gray T-shirt. I notice his red plaid pajama pants for the first time and get an unexpected surge of pleasure. One side of my mouth lifts into what could almost be considered a smile, which is an epic feat, considering.

“Are you okay, Tabby?”

“Yes?”

“You seem a little . . . off. Lately. Not in a bad way. But in a . . . noticeable way.”

“Life changes?” I say.

“Right.”

We stand in silence. There's eye contact. The extended kind, where you almost don't want to blink, so as not to break the connection. I'm afraid if I look away, even for an instant, we won't ever find this steady gaze again.

I love the slow, unsurprised way he reacts to my total insanity. Like it's okay that I'm a little crazy.

“So. What were you looking for? Let's at least make it worth your while,” Devon says at last. He doesn't take his
eyes off me. He smiles. He has a tiny dimple in his chin and one in each cheek. He smiles like he's holding in a laugh. Maybe it's the pajama pants or the fact that he isn't calling the police, or maybe it's the rockiness of his voice this late at night, but he is gorgeous. All of a sudden.