Life by Committee

by Haydu, Corey Ann

  “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

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  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. As 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 a little 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 always-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 ALL WEEK? 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 smile out 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 Wednesday 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 just 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 sma
llest 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 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 where 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 a plate!” 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.

  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, 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. With a 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 full of 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 lady sitting next to me, a regular I’ve always thought was 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 gir
ls. 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.