Life by Committee (7 page)

What's the word for being red-hot-angry and kind of shamefully in love at the same time? That. That is what I am feeling right now, while Belle and Sebastian sing what should be my anthem, “Get Me Away from Here, I'm Dying.”

“Can you bring a replacement cookie?” Sasha says. I hadn't even realized I was still standing here.

“Oh, sure,” I say. Sasha giggles again and blushes. There is no reasonable explanation for the sudden modest flush on her cheeks, but Joe likes it, that much is obvious. He brushes some hair out of her face. He smiles like she is a child and he must take good care of her. All that
and
she's a fragile, emotionally disturbed sex addict, apparently. I am rocked with the understanding that I can never compete, no matter how low my shirt is or how silky and straight I get my hair or how dark and screw-you my eyeliner is. I have the cleavage and the make-up, but Sasha has the little-girl voice and the mystical-creature look and has actual sex. She doesn't need cleavage, I guess. My toes turn in toward each other, and I cannot think of a single word to say or a single move to make.

I clear my throat and hate the fact that I am weirdly shy in any situation that actually matters.

“I'll help you pick one out,” Joe says, unwrapping
himself from Sasha's legs just as I have taken one half step away from Sasha and her watery eyes. It's only a few steps to the counter where we keep the extensive cookie selection, but it feels marathon long. After my seriously heated stare, Cate gets the hint to move to the other end of the counter. Her eyes flit to Sasha Cotton, to Joe, to me, to the cookies, and then to Paul. I stare harder, until she turns away and busies herself with unsticking a bottle of honey.

“I'm sorry,” Joe whispers as we gaze at the oversize cookies and superthick brownies in the display case. “You hate me.”

“I don't hate you,” I say, and roll my eyes at myself. I take a huge inhale and let the exhale out in a perfect slow stream of breath.

“I know this all sucks,” he says. If Sasha strained, she could hear us, I'm sure. “Let me get you a cookie. I'll buy you whatever you want.”

“It's my family's café. You remember that, right?” I pull out our worst cookie for Sasha: it's vegan and overstuffed with dried cranberries. I call it a pregnancy creation, since Cate came up with it to satisfy a craving and is the only person who actually enjoys it.

“Right. Of course,” Joe says. He's squirming, and I like it. Yes, his gaze keeps traveling back to Sasha and the armchair and the fire, but he stalls next to me. Shuffles in
a little closer. Cups a hand over mine and squeezes. “Well, I'll buy you a cookie somewhere else sometime soon, okay?”

His hand is warm and his voice is so low and close, I can feel the breath and vibration of it on my neck.

“Please don't hate me,” he says. His eyes meet mine, and they are coffee brown and watery with feeling. His long lashes look both beautiful and absurd on his stubbly, thick-jawed face.

“I wish I could,” I say at last. Joe's hand leaves mine, and he gives me a half smile before finding his way back to Sasha with the crappy vegan cookie and another smile that I guess is made just for her. What was so full a moment ago is immediately empty when he's not locked on me anymore, and I have to close my eyes for a breath at the counter before returning to the chaos of the café and the rest of my life. I consider logging back onto that website, with the silver font and the freckled knees and the cryptic deep thoughts. I could use some escape.

Sasha squeals like Joe is tickling her, and the sound travels from the base of my spine all the way to my mess of hair.

I'm boiling with how much I hate Joe. Also: how much I love him. And hate myself. And love how he makes me feel. So there's a lot going on inside, and it's starting to show in the way my fingers and arms are starting to
shake.

“I need a break,” I say when Cate slides back behind the counter a moment later. Not that I've been working hard anyway, but she softens her mouth and opens her eyes up wide and nods like I'm the saddest girl in the world and can have whatever I want if it will just maybe make me smile.

And maybe I am the saddest girl in the world. Maybe, right now, I'm even sadder than sad, sad Sasha Cotton.

We have a breakfast bar set up in front of the registers—a few tall, wobbly stools in a line so people can sit at the counter like at an old-time diner. I take a stool and reread conversations Joe and I had over the last month. It's torture and I know better, but I can't stop clicking through them, searching for clues to I don't know what.

At the end of September, a little over one month ago, Joe told me he liked my new haircut and he'd never noticed how blue my eyes were until that very day. He told me Sasha wasn't as much fun as me. He told me he'd had a dream about me.

I glance behind me when I reread that chat conversation, to see if Joe and Sasha are maybe somehow looking this way. But they're not. They're locked in some kind of extensive eye contact, and then Sasha starts breaking pieces of cookie off and feeding them to Joe. He does the same to her, and she giggles every time in total
surprise. This
cannot
be the same guy who told me I'm “incredible.”

This cannot be the same guy who I sort of considered showing my life-changing copy of
The Secret Garden
to.

Anyway, Joe can probably only stomach that shitty cookie because he's high. I have a nose for that particular smell, and it was rubbed into his fingers, wafting off his neck. I don't know what Sasha Cotton's excuse is, but she licks her finger after every bite, like it's chocolate chip and not pregnant-lady vegan-creation. The woman sitting next to me, a regular who seems nice, with thick bangs and a dozen strands of turquoise beads hanging from her neck, smirks. She's noticed how annoying Sasha is too.

In my ideal world, the Red Margin Note Taker looks exactly like Bangs 'n' Beads here.

I email Elise:
Sudden realization. Sasha Cotton has man hands
. Elise probably won't respond, because she doesn't really like when I get bitchy about other girls. Girl power or something, I don't know. She'll probably just send back a smiley face or ask me if I'm okay. I love Elise, but when I need to say terrible things about Sasha Cotton, it's Jemma I really miss. She was jealous and angry and bitter and judgmental too.

I flip back to an old chat with Joe and try to remember what it felt like to have him telling me I was special.

“Okay, no more computer,” Cate says, swooping in and pressing her face close to mine. “You're getting all worked up. We're losing business.” She's smiling, but I know she's serious too, and I can feel my heart going crazy underneath my bulky wool sweater (I still rock the cozy winter wear even if I like a deep V-neck. I mean Vermont in November is no joke). Adrenaline. Serious, heart-pumping, hand-shaking adrenaline. I'm on it. Plus the coffee I keep refilling. I take a deep breath and Cate rubs my shoulders.

“Sorry,” I say. “Got caught up in stuff.”

“They're gone,” Cate says, and I give in to a rush of relief that Joe and Sasha are no longer right behind me, living out some deep and tragic love story. My whole body relaxes.

“Oh, no, I mean, I don't care about—” I try. It's awkward. Cate's face is stuck in that gentle-pity mode.

“Jemma and Alison should really stop coming here,” she continues. “Paul said it the other day and I thought he was just being . . . Paul. But he's right. It's not fair to you. It's mean.” I stare at her blankly for a moment before realizing she actually
isn't
psychic after all. I hadn't even known Jemma had come back today. But Cate's looking at me all proud and expectant, like she is Mother of the Year for figuring out what's gotten me all worked up.

I give a smile that takes approximately as much energy to muster as running a marathon would. Give a quick glance to see that Joe and Sasha are still here, of course.

“You gotta get over those bitches,” Cate says. I love her for it. For the words she chooses and the secret way she whispers them into my ear. But she's looking at me like she
gets
me, and there's nothing lonelier than the fact that she doesn't.

“Thanks,” I say, and Cate closes my computer screen for me and heads back to the counter and I'm alone.

I reach into my bag and make sure
The Secret Garden
is still in there. That there is actual evidence of someone in the world totally getting me.

“I love you,” I hear Joe say behind me. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend he was saying it to me. But then there's Sasha's ridiculous giggle, and the whole fantasy vanishes so fast, I lose my breath.

That night I hole up in Cate's office as usual.

Elise and I chat about the meeting she had Friday with our impressively ignorant school counselor, Mrs. Drake, who passive-aggressively asked her about her dating life before launching into a speech about Elise's chances of getting into an Ivy League school.

I ask Elise if she'd stand up to Mrs. Drake if she had a whole group behind her. If she thinks maybe people can do more if they act together.

There's a long pause, a smiley face emoticon, and a vague
uh sure?
But I was hoping for more.

Elise logs off, and I stare at the screen waiting for Joe for another few, full, heavy minutes. He's never missed this much time, and I feel an inside itch at the thought of him not coming on at all.

I know what to do. I know because I want Elise to approve of me, and I want Cate and Paul to be right about their idea that I am special and good. I know what to do mostly because it hurts too much to sit here waiting for Joe.

I write him an email.

It feels good, writing it out. It's the Right Thing to Do. I'm relieved, thinking I can sit back and cry in the bathroom every time Joe and Sasha kiss or make googly eyes at each other in Tea Cozy. I can be sad and lonely and not have to worry about anyone being angry at me.

I won't be a bad girl anymore. I won't be a cheating immoral person. I'll be regular, comfortable Tabby. The one Jemma and Alison and everyone else want me to
be.

The inside itch doesn't go away after I send the email, though. I'm relieved that I have stopped something terrible and amazing from slowly destroying me, but now the mountains seem even larger, Cate's office is even smaller, and I am even further away from liking my life.

It's that itch that makes me type in the website from the book again. The site comes to life in blue and gold and silver. The freckled knees and Dorothy shoes make me smile even harder than they did the first time.

This is the first time I've seen the site on my computer and have had a moment to really look at it. I click on the “Members” link and hold my breath. There's a list of nicknames, and a picture of each one from the knees down. About a dozen members, apparently.

The spiral logo twists and turns, animated, and the whole site is practically breathing.

I make a profile. Call myself by the nickname my parents have been using since I was small: Bitty. Take a picture of myself from the knees down: worn jeans and gold ballet flats.
No names
, it says.
No locations. We are from everywhere. We are everyone.

I vaguely remember a Morning Assembly we had about how Google can track all our searches and privacy doesn't really exist online. But with a fake name and only, like, a dozen people belonging to the site, it doesn't fit
any of the “red flags” that lecturer talked about (credit cards, identifying pictures, meeting up with people you've never met in real life, webcams).

And then it tells me I have to share a secret. One secret, big or small, to join the group.

Secret:

I kissed someone else's boyfriend.

—Bitty

It's past midnight. Joe hasn't logged on all night, and Sasha's poem is still streaming on an endless loop in my mind. But I'm blocking it out by sifting through random secrets posted on the site, while reading and rereading the list of rules that are firmly stated on every page.

The rules didn't appear until after my secret was posted, which is sort of not the best. It's also too late to ponder them, and besides, according to everything I'm
skimming, these Assignments are intended to better people's lives, and I'm nothing if not in need of some betterment. So I swallow down the little instant of worry, remember they don't have any of my identifying information, and decide that it's fine. And anonymous. So I can stay calm. All Zen-like. Paul and Cate would be so proud.

Also, Joe often talks about taking risks. He wants to go skydiving for his eighteenth birthday and likes snowboarding and meeting new people and really spicy foods. And, of course, weed. He typed fast when he was telling me about all of these passions, and I just reread that conversation earlier today. I think Joe would like Life by Committee, and that makes me less scared of it.

Sort of.

Agnes is one of the more active members, so I zero in on her profile and her secrets. One of her knee-down pictures has her in black leggings that stop with a ribbon of lace just past her knees, no socks, and beat-up, possibly ironic penny loafers. Judging from her collection of faceless photos, she's from somewhere sunny and silly. Everything in the background is usually too green or too blue or too yellow. Never snow. Never the shadows of mountains. I wonder what living in a mountainless world would be like.