Life by Committee

by Haydu, Corey Ann

  “Well, sure, that,” she says, before taking a big breath. “Also. Okay. Did you ever actually . . . follow through . . . on your feelings for Joe?” Elise is blushing, which I’ve never seen before, and I choke on my tea and feel the back of my neck go instantly damp and hot. I pull my hair into a ponytail. It’s gotten really long and even blonder— probably another sign of my sluttiness.

  “Act on my feelings?” I say, trying to buy a little time before having to answer. I’m not the best liar, and more importantly, I hate lying.

  “Some people are saying—”

  “Which people?”

  “Well, not Sasha, lucky for you. But some of her friends. People who like her. I dunno.” I can’t figure out the look on Elise’s face. Maybe it’s the unfamiliar flush washing over her that’s making her suddenly unreadable, but for someone I know so well, she’s definitely not knowable right now. I take a sip of tea and try to unblock my mind. It’s all swimming and out of focus in there— can’t make it work for me.

  “Jemma, I assume? I mean, let’s not sugarcoat.”

  “I mean, I guess Jemma, yeah.”

  “I don’t know why she’s all worried about what me and my slutty non-A-cups are up to.” I know I didn’t answer Elise’s question. But I’m thinking about my Assignment and the fact that she should be worried. It’s a terrible thing to feel good about.

  “So the answer is no? To you and Joe hooking up?” she says. They are careful words.

  “Right,” I say. I will myself not to blush. But it feels lonely, to lie to her.

  “Okay,” she says. “Just thought I’d check.”

  “Okay,” I say, and we don’t make eye contact for a while.

  “Hey, if you did do anything . . . You know I’d still effing love you, right?” she says when the scone is mostly a pile of crumbs.

  I didn’t really know that, and it’s so like Elise to tell me what I need to hear, the second I need to hear it, and surprise the hell out of me.

  “I effing love you too,” I say. But I still can’t tell her the truth.

  I excuse myself to go get one more scone, and check LBC while I’m alone in the back kitchen area. I am not all alone with my secrets. There are people in towns with cactuses and lighthouses and palm trees and wheat fields who know something important about me. And are watching me, from afar.

  It sounds weird, but I think this is how people feel about God. Like he’s watching and is in everything and is everywhere, giving purpose to the parts of your life that have started to feel stale or strange or too sad.

  There’s an encouraging comment from Agnes and another from @sshole, reminding me that sometimes doing the wrong thing is actually the right thing.

  ROXIE: We aren’t here to judge. We’re here to get you to the next level.

  I picture a video game where your bikini-wearing avatar moves from a dungeon scene to a poisonous flower scene, where the move to the next level brings a new soundtrack, new dangers, bigger prizes, surprising terrains.

  I guess I am a little tired of my current scenery. I guess I am ready to take a flying leap to the next level.

  BRENDA: We’ll be right there with you.

  Right before eight Elise drives us to school from Tea Cozy, and I try to remember to breathe and talk like a normal person. Of course we run into Sasha and Joe right after our long assembly. Sasha’s sitting in Joe’s lap on the bench outside the auditorium, and she’s whispering into his ear and he’s blushing. No teachers are around, or the cuddling would have to stop. The teachers manage to ignore the sexual harassment, but not the cuddling. Vermont values, at their best.

  I try not to look. The combination of jealousy and white-hot pain is basically unbearable.

  Joe isn’t looking either. He never responded to my email, and he’s looking everywhere but my direction.

  Instead of obsessively watching them, I check LBC once again. There’s that little red exclamation point that means something is happening. There’s a countdown on my page. A countdown from Zed.

  Twenty-four hours from the time the Assignment is given, the message reads. You’re on hour seven.

  My heart’s going batshit crazy in my chest. I think of Joe’s lips and the conversation I just had with Elise and wonder how both things can exist in one world.

  “What if you dated, like, Greg Granger?” Elise says while she hangs her coat up in her locker. “He’s always looking at you. And he’s smart. He’s in my English class.”

  “His name is Greg Granger,” I say. I’d laugh, but there’s too much tightness in my chest to get out even a grunt. “Are you matchmaking now?”

  “Oh! Adam Furlan!” Elise says. I glance up from my phone and raise my eyebrows.

  “I’m not, like, desperate for a boyfriend,” I say. Elise looks disappointed and tries to sneak a glance at my phone. I’m sure she thinks it’s Joe. I’m sure she doesn’t believe me.

  “I guess I’m trying to say there are seriously a million guys you could go for, you know? And I want school to suck less for you. And I want everyone to lay off your shit. . . .”

  Jemma walks by with Alison, and Elise cringes. Jumps in front of me, like she needs to shield them from my sluttiness. Alison’s got on some outfit her mother picked out for her, and Jemma’s in her purple hoodie today and jeans that go all the way up to her waist instead of hanging on her hips. It’s not the height of fashion or anything, but she always looks good to me. Safe. Familiar. Expected. But they look at my beige dress and hot-pink scarf with masterful, practiced hatred. I guess there’s no hiding my C cups anymore. But come on, I want to say.

  “How bad is this rumor, seriously?” I whisper in Elise’s ear. She’s acting like I’m about to get scarlet-lettered or something.

  “I mean, people trust Jemma. She’s not exactly a rampant rumor spreader. So. When she says something’s shady . . .” Elise looks at her feet.

  “Has Sasha heard the rumor?” I don’t know what I want the answer to be. Both answers suck. And are great.

  “No. It’s Sasha. She’s, you know, too busy being Sasha Cotton.” We never clarify what this means, but obviously we all agree that Sasha Cotton exists in some realm above the rest of us, where she doesn’t bother herself with normal human facts like how long it takes for water to boil, or who the vice president is, or which reality show star we are all in love with, or what people at school are saying about her.

  Elise pats my back before heading down the hallway, but I think I can see a flicker of not-believing in the way she looks at me. The particular stiffness of her hand tapping my shoulder. She’s not going to stick by me no matter what. I can tell. She’ll judge me. At the end of the day, she thinks Sasha Cotton is sweeter and purer than me, too.

  I watch the school counselor, Mrs. Drake, walk down the hallway.

  Mrs. Drake is my parents’ age, and I’ve seen her high before. She hates this about me. When you have young parents who like to “socialize,” you see a lot of things you probably shouldn’t. Our town is tiny, after all, and there are only so many people my parents’ age. So there’s a postal worker and a yoga teacher and the gallery owner and, one time, Mrs. Drake, who all come to the house for wine and cheese, but that has on occasion turned into weed in the backyard.

  “Let’s chat at the end of the day,” Mrs. Drake says when she reaches me. I know from the way she looks at the shortness of my dress exactly what our chat will be about.

  “About what?” I ask anyway.

  “Nothing scary, I promise,” Mrs. Drake says with a firm hand on my shoulder. I shrug, which I guess is a tacit agreement, because Mrs. Drake walks away. Jemma and Alison kept their distance during the conversation, but they’re not exactly hidden from view. I meet Jemma’s gaze.

  We hold eye contact, but her face is softer than I would have thought. It’s not a challenge, the weird extended staring. It’s something else. Like wistfulness. I take a step toward them. I have no intention of saying anything at all, but the words come out anyway.
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  “What’s the endgame here? What are you hoping to accomplish?” I say. Jemma is still a few yards away, and I say it quietly, so I’m not sure if she even hears. Alison busies herself with textbooks and her laptop and her shoelaces to avoid eye contact.

  “I don’t—I’m not—” Jemma is not usually one to stutter or stumble over her words.

  “I already feel like I suck, so, you know, mission accomplished. Is there anything else you’d like to do to me?” I regret admitting to that self-hatred. My friend Jemma would have comforted me, but my nemesis Jemma will totally use it against me.

  “That’s not—I’m not even sure—You’re turning it all around.” Jemma keeps shaking her head as she turns a corner into a classroom.

  It’s been so long since I’ve seen the part of Jemma that is unsure and vulnerable that I’d forgotten what it looks like on her. The moment she’s out of view, I miss her. We used to stay up really late and talk about what in the world made us saddest, what embarrassed us most, what we hated about ourselves. For me it was the way I couldn’t help being jealous when other people were happy. For Jemma it was the fact that she sometimes cared what other people thought, even though she knew she was too smart to care.

  I wonder if she remembers all that.

  After math and before bio, I log back on to LBC. I have another countdown announcement from Zed, who informs me of every passing hour.

  Thirteen hours to go. Will you make it?

  There is a sloppy mixture of fear and thrill inside me. I am going to kiss Joe again. I am going to feel his hands in my hair. I am going to change the course of my life and go for what I really want.

  My toes scrunch with anticipation, so I distract myself by reading Star’s latest post from the road.

  STAR: Love.

  When I showed up at his apartment, he was in pajamas and smiling hard. Hugged me harder. Kissed me hardest. Thank you isn’t enough. California Love. Xoxoxoxox.

  Attached to the post is a picture of Star’s feet, sans red heels, tucked under some guy’s thighs. There’s something beautiful about trying to capture a moment without a face, and Star is an expert. Again, her knees are in the shot, and I know from the way they lean against each other, askew, that she is sleepy-eyed and blissful. When Joe and I kissed, our knees touched, and the shock went from that joint to my head, where it made me dizzy and exhausted. I know what knees can do.

  And now, I guess, I know the best of what Life by Committee can do. What Zed can do. I pray again that somehow Star is the one who wrote in The Secret Garden, and that her words are the ones that brought me to Life by Committee. That would shrink my loneliness even further. It could become almost manageable, if that were the case.

  So I’m in. I have to be in. What else do I have?

  Joe and I have a free period together in the afternoon. We could do homework, but Circle Community doesn’t enforce any activity on a free period. You get them because you’ve earned them, and sometimes I’ll read or catch up on math homework. But usually I play Hearts. Hearts has taken over the junior and senior classes, and I’m addicted. So is Joe. I guess it’s maybe when I started falling for him. That competitive sort of sparring that turns into flirtation and then morphs into desperation when you realize how badly you want him and how taken he is.

  Yep. That pretty much sums it up. Hearts. The card game that changed it all.

  It’s two p.m. and the last period of the day, so I’ve got eleven hours left to make something happen, and Joe is dealing cards out. Four people are already gathered around a little table, so I pull up a chair and sidle up next to him.

  “Need help?” I say, smiling.

  “Not really a team game, Tab,” Joe says, keeping his gaze squarely on the cards and not letting his eyes dart even for an instant in my direction. I guess he didn’t like my email. And maybe the avoiding eye contact is supposed to let me know that he’s not interested, but it does the exact opposite. All I gather from that lack of eye contact is how scared he is. And how sad at the prospect of losing me.

  “Then I’ll watch,” I say. I don’t say it sexy or move any closer to him. I don’t think I have to. I can just sit here and watch him and trust in the slow simmer between us leaping into a boil.

  Joe doesn’t respond except to bite his lip.

  I watch. He keeps not looking my way. I lean in from time to time like I want to get a better look at his cards. I steel myself against the girls who look at me funny when they walk by. If I were Sasha I’d seduce him, or write him a sexy poem, or, if last night is any indication, slip him a naked picture of myself. But I can’t do any of that. So I sit, and wait, and watch the game unfold play-by-play.

  Until: The school day officially ends, and everyone puts their cards down, gets up to leave. Joe has to pack his cards back up, and while he does, I take his chin and press on it so that his face has to finally shift toward mine. It does not feel the way it looks when women in movies with hair extensions and diamond earrings do it, I can tell you that much. It’s a lot more awkward, for one thing. He looks at me like I’m going to knock him out.

  “Can we talk?” I say. There’s a shake in my voice. It’s not smooth. It’s not pretty or breathy or low or intimate. And even as the words come out I can feel that head-swell of feeling and the possibility of crying. I am becoming one of those crying girls, but only in theory, because I never actually let the tears out in public. Which is maybe a mistake, since it’s apparently so becoming on Sasha Cotton, but I won’t sink to her level.

  He nods in agreement. I wasn’t expecting it to be so easy. I was amped up for more convincing, so I let out a funny laugh. It’s contextually awkward, but probably better than the crying or vomiting that my body is threatening to do, so I’ll take it.

  “Car?” I say. I need to get this done quickly so I don’t miss my meeting with Mr. Drake.

  “No. That will look weird.”

  “Okay. Where?”

  “Gym,” he says. Which seems much weirder to me. Plus, it’s a hike from here, a good seven-minute walk, since our campus is sprawled out over acres and acres of Vermont’s finest land.

  “Fine,” I say anyway. I can do this anywhere.

  And we start the walk down to the gym.

  We don’t talk. We keep a safe distance between us, like maybe we’re walking together but maybe we aren’t. Halfway there, Joe doesn’t shift his gaze to meet mine, but he finally speaks up. His voice is a beacon in the cold November air. It interrupts the white-noise whooshing of wind.

  “Okay,” he says. “Talk.”

  I shake my head. “You said at the gym. We can have our talk at the gym,” This is an unformed plan. I have never done something like this without a mapped-out strategy, a script in my head about how things will go. I breathe deeply while the silence between us stays put.

  Once we’re at the gym, Joe looks at me like he’s expecting a beating, and for a minute that’s all I want to do. I want to bitch him out, tell him how much I feel for him, how messed up what he’s doing to me is, how ridiculous a human being Sasha Cotton is.

  I want to beg him to be with me.

  And I almost do it. I almost give in to the dizzy about-to-cry feeling and the shakiness of my limbs and the tough handsomeness of his face, and the way the very fact of him makes me feel: unhinged and furious and in the worst kind of love.

  Almost. But I don’t. Instead, I grab his face, feel the stubble on the palms of my hands, and thrill at the way he pulls back a little as I keep pulling his face to mine. His mouth to mine.

  And then there it is. The lips, the berry taste, the heat inside, and even his rough cheeks burning up under my hands. He kisses back. Like he can’t help it, and only with his mouth, at first. His hands don’t reach under my shirt or through my hair. He doesn’t slam himself against me. Until he does. Until the kiss takes over for both of us and we are lost in something warm and crazed and close.

  BITTY: Assignment completed.

  Secret:

  I
ran into the woman who almost married my father. I followed her through the mall for forty-five minutes. She bought a really ugly black dress. She called someone on the phone “baby.” She dropped a receipt on the ground and I kept it.

  —Brenda

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Ten.

  I walk back from the gym alone and keep rubbing my index finger back and forth over my lips. They’re swollen from the last twenty minutes in the gym, and the boatneck top of my dress is stretched out from where Joe tried to pull it down over my shoulders to get at the skinny, freckled blades.

  I’m dizzy and my face hurts from where his stubble rubbed too hard against my chin. I thought I could only feel this way about someone who was actually mine.

  I feel closer to Star, to her supersize romance and bravery. It’s almost like she’s watching me and smiling on. It’s like we did it together, me and her and the rest of LBC and the worn and well-loved copy of The Secret Garden with all the answers to everything inside.

  I start planning the epic poem I will write about the way his lips felt on mine and the beautiful danger of doing the wrong thing that may turn out to be right.

  * * *

  I get back to the main schoolhouse not too late for my meeting with Mrs. Drake. She lets me into her office and motions for me to sit down on the corduroy love seat while she crosses her legs and makes herself comfortable in her pleather armchair.

  “I’m so glad you made it by, Tabitha,” she starts. She’s Cate’s age, early thirties, and was definitely a gawky teenager in her day. She’s got a long floral skirt and wire-framed glasses and curly brown hair. She looks like a preschool teacher. She looks exactly the way Jemma and Alison will look fifteen years from now.

  “I can’t stay for long—”

  “I’m sure you have a little time to chat.” She cocks her head and smiles, like I’m supposed to already know what we’re going to talk about. “So,” she says at last, “I want to start by saying I think you’re very lucky to have so many people who care about you.”