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Authors: Corey Ann Haydu

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BOOK: Life by Committee
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“That's what I thought. I know what those chicks are like. You're a lucky man, brother. Lucky, lucky man.” Luke sticks out his hand and Joe shakes it; both of them flex their ridiculous muscles as they grip hands.

“You're gonna get me in trouble, dude,” Joe says, his chest all puffed up. I'm full-on watching them now, no longer trying to hide my interest in a book or my coffee or anything. I'm just slack-jawed
staring
at Joe and Luke and the now-applauding football team. They are giving Joe a standing ovation.

I want to die.

And then, of course, Joe sees me and there's no way for me to quickly shift my gaze or anything, I'm just stuck with my mouth open and my eyes pinned to him. His face tries to rearrange itself into something mildly apologetic
or friendly or gentle or something, but it really just looks scrambled and still glowing from stupid pride.

He gives a half wave, not big enough for anyone but me to notice, and I wonder if we'll talk online tonight, or if this is how it ends.

Then Elise is at my side, and I have to turn off that line of thinking for a second.

“Don't kill me,” she says, which means she's done something ridiculous that doesn't affect me at all. This is exactly how she told me about stealing a hundred dollars from her mom to buy a fake ID from some sketchy dude in Burlington.

Not to buy beer, but to get into gay bars. Elise has no interest in drinking; she just wants to be around other lesbians, which I totally respect. Elise is both fearless and straight edge, which is a killer combination. I can only miss Jemma and Alison so much with Elise around.

“I'm not gonna kill you,” I say. She's wringing her hands, though.

“I kinda like the poem.”

“Elise!”

“I
kinda
think it's hot,” Elise says. “I want to be honest. I'll probably tell her I liked it.”

“But it's weird. I mean it's . . . everyone in the whole school knows who her boyfriend is. And everyone in the
whole school knows that she lives near the lake. And now everyone knows what she and Joe
do
in the lake,” I say. I drop my voice to a whisper so that the crowds of people picking up books and making jokes and texting and holding hands don't overhear us.

“But isn't that hot? That she just doesn't care? Like—that she's so into sex or Joe or whatever that she
has
to publicize it? That she can't keep it in, and doesn't care, and all the societal proscriptions fall the fuck away?” Elise is getting all worked up and forgetting to look at my face, which I'm almost certain is turning shades of pink and gray from humiliation and disgust.

“I mean, you're obviously in the majority. Sasha Cotton just became the hottest girl in school,” I say.

“It's also kinda genius,” Elise goes on, this time actually looking me in the face while she talks to me. This time, she's really considering the words.

“Genius?”

“She must have known. About you liking Joe. And Joe thinking you're cute or whatever it is he thinks. Or maybe she could tell he was thinking about breaking up with her or something. She must have felt it coming, and what better way to stake her claim, right?”

“We're talking about my life here, Lise,” I say. I'm still waiting for my best friend to pull me into a hug and tell me it's going to be okay, or to help me hate on Sasha,
but Elise is in a whole other realm with all this.

“Right,” Elise says, and grabs my hands in her own. “Sorry. I know you like him and stuff. And he's a dick for leading you on. But she's upping her game, and I think you need to step out of this one. That's what I really wanted to say. Don't get in some weird girl-fight over stupid
Joe
, right?”

“Yep,” I say. But now it hurts even more, the fact that Joe and Sasha are probably-definitely sleeping together, and that she is so confident in their love for each other that she would put it all out there like that. Turns out Sasha is some mystical nude-swimming sea nymph who needs both saving and screwing, and I'm just Tabitha: freckled and sad (but not depressed). No one is mistaking me for a damaged, alluring daughter of a philosopher like Sasha. The girl wears silk scarves like headbands. She knits her own sweaters. She laughs out of context and is probably right now sculpting a purposely lopsided vase with organic clay. You know, if clay can actually
be
organic. She has deep feelings that the rest of us cannot possibly understand. And though she has friends and a boyfriend and the basic respect of everyone in school, she's somehow the special, depressed one, and I'm just mopey.

“I can't have a crush on her, right?” Elise says,
watching as Sasha walks by, too in the clouds and distracted by her own fragility to overhear the boys catcalling her. She just walks right by, long legs, wide hips, silvery silk scarf tied to her head and trailing a few inches behind her like fairy dust.

Basically: Sasha is a strange, sad mer-creature, and I'm just some virgin-girl who is not even as interesting as her own parents.

Secret:

I listen in on my mother's phone conversations. Especially the ones that are all about me.

—Agnes

Six.

Everything is wrong. I can't get the smudge off the glass counter at Tea Cozy, and most unfair of all, I've seen Alison and Jemma eating cheese sandwiches with Sasha Cotton at lunch, and as far as I can tell, no one's telling her to be careful about giving the wrong impression, even though she just published a porn poem in the school journal. I guess it has something to do with her scrubbed-clean face and feathery hair and the fact that she has hips but no boobs. Since she doesn't
look
like trouble, she can have all the sex she wants and still have friends.

She can even, apparently, publish erotic poetry about it and still be a teacher's pet and Alison and Jemma's new best friend.

I couldn't be more of a virgin, but somehow I'm the one who's changed.

These are the kinds of conundrums that slow down
my shift at Tea Cozy the Sunday after Sasha's poem hit the school. I'm trying to wipe down tables and refill cups of water, but I keep managing to do the same ones over and over. Plus, Cate is playing kids' music on the café's iPod, and the way it jingles out from the speakers is completely distracting.

Everyone around me is struggling to understand the tinny chipmunk tunes, so the only upside of work today is watching all their confused adult faces wrinkle and wonder at the lullaby-chipmunk-princess song playlist while they try to enjoy their hot teas.

I bring my laptop to the counter and log back on to the website from the Red Pen Note Taker. I don't want to click on the links with Cate and Paul watching me so closely, but I can't stop staring at the spinning spiral or the name Life by Committee or the logline underneath the title:
We can do a little alone. We can do a lot together. Be more
.

It sounds like a commercial for the army or for Nike, but it also hits the saddest parts of me. I would like to be more. Especially since right now I am boring Tabby who sits and waits for Joe to pay attention to me and who lets Jemma say horrible things to my face with zero repercussions, aside from my father depriving her of cookies.

Be more
. I turn the phrase over in my head. I can almost see a better version of myself. She has longer legs
and a cute smirk and sends racy text messages and doesn't give a crap what anyone thinks.

She is out of reach right now, but maybe I could, somehow, be more. Be her.

Aside from the title and text and the dizzying spiral, the only other thing on the page is a picture of skinny freckled legs connected to tiny feet wearing shiny red shoes. Patent leather. Thick heels. T-strap. Vaguely reminiscent of a hipster Dorothy in an alternative
Wizard of Oz
situation.

It makes me smile.

In the middle of a rousing rendition of “The Teddy Bears' Picnic,” I notice Joe hiding behind his Spanish textbook. He's in one of the overstuffed armchairs that Cate keeps by the constantly blazing fireplace. He looks sheepish, which means Sasha suggested meeting here and he couldn't come up with a valid reason why not to. It also means Sasha doesn't know about me yet, which is either an enormous relief or a sobering reality. I can't seem to decide.

I inch away from him, doing my best to hide my face from his line of sight so he won't notice that I'm barely keeping it together.
WHY HAVEN'T YOU BEEN ONLINE IN A MILLION DAYS?
I want to yell. But knowing that would be a huge mistake, I say nothing at all. I'm an
all-or-nothing kind of girl today.

“Your friend Joe's visiting you!” Cate says. She saw us chatting outside school one day and has decided he's my hope for friendship. “We're not too busy. You can hang out for a sec.” She gives me an encouraging smile and waves to him. If I hadn't been ditched by all my friends two months ago, she wouldn't be so brimming with joy at the sight of brutish Joe, who she knows is crazy Sasha's boyfriend, but with things the way they are, she's practically panting, golden retriever style, at the prospect of me having someone to talk to.

“That's okay,” I say.

Cate looks at me funny. “Please tell me he's not giving you trouble, too,” she says. “He seems like such a nice boy. And I know you don't
like
him like him, but having male friends can be really—”

I sigh, loudly, before she can finish her thought.

“Cate,” I whine out, and her hand goes to her stomach and her eyes go as deep-down far as they can into my gaze and I have to tell her everything's fine and then bring Joe a peanut butter cookie like the total asshole I am.

“Can we pretend to talk for a minute? My mom's driving me insane,” I say when I get to his chair. Sasha's coming any minute, and there's no way he wants me to sit down at his table or anything. He nods, though, and
maybe a little bit of the way he looked at me Tuesday night in my bedroom is still in his eyes, because I can't seem to stop the flutter in my throat from going batshit crazy.

The better version of Tabitha would take him by the hand and lead him to the backyard of Tea Cozy and grab his face and kiss him like crazy. The better version of Tabitha would tell him he can't even look at me until he ends things with her. The better version of Tabitha probably wouldn't even be at Tea Cozy, actually. She would be doing something fabulous in New York City and not caring at all about anything in Vermont.

“We don't have to pretend to talk,” he says after an awkward pause. “We can be friends, right? We can be . . . something.” It's the pause before the word “something” that causes the big burst of simultaneous hurt and hope. He's not actually letting me go, and I'm not wrong about the intense way he's staring at my lips. I wonder if he's remembering all the things we told each other or thinking about his hands in my hair.

Both of us think mountains are overrated. Does he remember that?

The fire's hitting my back, which is always at first cozy and then turns into a sting that you have to step away from. I slide over a bit, but the second that sting is gone, I miss the warmth. I slide back into place. Screw it. I'll just
get burned.

“We can be something?” I say, and hate myself for repeating his words and for being this girl right now. Belle and Sebastian whistles through the speakers, the sound of sweet indie love, and I could kill Cate for obviously changing the playlist to suit my mood.

“Something,” he says, and now we're caught in a loop of longing and regret and an unidentifiable third thing . . . is that deceit? Danger? I don't know, but it makes Sasha's stupid poem run through my head again. I flush, which Joe must take as a good sign, because he reaches out and brushes my fingers with his. It is the smallest and best gesture imaginable.

“Hey,” he says, and it's so quiet I take a step closer in. The heat from the fire singes the backs of my legs. I'm uncomfortable, but I just can't step away. “Please don't hate me. I couldn't take that. You know I feel—”

But the door opens and I recognize the sound of Sasha entering, because she sighs when she enters a room. She sighs so much, I think it might be her way of breathing, but Tea Cozy is tiny and I don't have to look to know that the pretty, half-vocalized exhale expelled right in time with the chimes on the door belongs to her.

The leap in my chest makes me grab at Joe's fingers, but that of course makes him pull his hand away, and the result is an awkward moment when I lose my
balance a little and my hand grips into a fist and the cookie I never set down on the table falls from the plate to the floor.

“You really couldn't meet somewhere else?” I hiss, choosing
now
to get pissed at him, even though Sasha can probably hear the tail end of what I've said.

“Oh my gosh! You dropped something!” Sasha says in her breathy, always-surprised voice. “Joe, were you buying me a cookie?” She leans over to kiss him on the mouth before he has a chance to answer.

I can't look away.

“Joe knows I love cookies,” Sasha says. Then she giggles, as if what she's said is dangerous or quirky or adorable or in any way even remotely unique.

Doesn't everyone like cookies? Isn't that more or less the actual definition of the word
cookie
?

“Oh,” I eke out. “That's sweet of him.” Sasha bats her eyes like a cartoon-character version of herself and smushes into the armchair with Joe, so that the two of them are piled on top of each other.

Joe's not correcting her, not telling her I brought the cookie over myself, or that it was some other table's cookie or anything. He's actually going to sit there while she rubs his thigh and take the credit. Still looking sheepish at least, but mute, too. He keeps pressing his lips together and opening them again, like a fish who
gets less attractive by the minute.

BOOK: Life by Committee
11.43Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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