Life by Committee

by Haydu, Corey Ann

  I fall asleep before either of my parents make it home. My new life is wearing me out so much that I can’t even make it to my bedroom, so I curl up on the couch fully clothed with late-night television and a worn green quilt and probably drool all over the pillow, and when I wake up the next morning, it’s only Paul who has returned.

  Elise,

  I am the worst. THE. WORST. I’m so sorry.

  I’ll make sure we have chocolate chip scones every day for the next YEAR if you don’t stop talking to me. I’ll tell Devon . . . something. I’ll make it go away.

  I’m the worst, the worst, the worst.

  I can’t even.

  I love you. You’re amazing. You’re better than me. I will fix it.

  Me

  She doesn’t respond.

  I did not know it was possible to have even fewer people like me than I did twenty-four hours ago, but there you go.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Eighteen.

  Ethics is my least favorite class. Not only because Jemma is in it with me, but also because I never agree with anything the teacher says. Or anything the writers and philosophers we read about say.

  And this morning I hate it even more because I am sleepy-headed and strange, coming off of everything that happened over the weekend. Yesterday, Paul and I stayed in separate corners of the house, not speaking. I didn’t do homework or watch TV or go online. I slept and felt sorry for myself and listened for Cate to walk through the door. She didn’t. This morning, I couldn’t get it together to shower or do my hair or put on makeup, so I’m messy and feel my own grossness under my red cashmere sweater and too-tight black pants. I feel Luke and his cohorts looking at my ass like it’s a freaking hamburger when I’m getting into my chair.

  I haven’t had coffee, either. No stopping by Tea Cozy this morning. No Cate making me a home-latte. Instead, it was me and Paul frowning and pretending to eat cereal and avoiding eye contact.

  Ethics class and the overheating of Circle Community in general are making everything worse.

  “Hey,” Jemma says before Ms. Gilbert has gotten to class. I can’t imagine she’s talking to me. No one is talking to me. I have LBC and that’s it and whatever, that’s all I need, anyway. I make my mouth a steely line so they all know I do not care at all what they think about me.

  “Tabitha,” Jemma says, already full of exasperation.

  I barely recognize her voice. Or the classroom. The whole world is unfamiliar. Conquerable. Mine.

  I’m wearing red shoes today. Shoes like Star’s. With a little heel and a strap over the ankle and a vintage, awkward patent-leather sheen. I am now a girl who wears red shoes and doesn’t care.

  “Oh,” I say, turning to Jemma. “Hey. What’s up?” I look her dead in the eyes. She must not be expecting that, because she blinks, like, a thousand times.

  “What are you doing with my brother?”

  “Huh?”

  “My brother,” Jemma says. Did she always talk to me like I didn’t speak the language, or is this a new mode of communication she’s adopted?

  “You know,” I say, and take a deep breath, “we’re not friends anymore. So you don’t really get an opinion anymore. On my life. You know? I mean, hate me from afar or whatever. But don’t talk to me about it.”

  Other people are listening now. Not a few. All. All of the other people are listening. I cross my legs, my stretchy black pants rubbing against themselves, and my red shoes glinting under fluorescent lights.

  I hate them all. I straighten my back and smile, knowing that they all live their stupid Vermont lives, and I’m doing something Important and Real.

  “That’s awesome, except you are throwing yourself at my brother. You should have heard what he said to his friends on the phone yesterday. I mean, it’s disgusting.”

  Luke snorts out some obnoxious jock laughter. I cannot for the life of me picture Devon talking trash about me on the phone after the hour of time we spent together Saturday. I raise my eyebrows at Jemma, who obviously wanted me to blush and look away.

  I have a shimmer of pride, or a whole flame of it, at being better than that now. At how much I’m growing.

  “Huh. What’d he say, exactly?” I say. I flip some hair behind my shoulders. If she’s going to hate me, she might as well really hate me.

  “That, like, that you, whatever.” Now it’s Jemma who is blushing and looking away. Alison elbows her, like she’s supposed to be doing a better job at making me feel awful about myself. “Don’t make me say this stuff,” Jemma continues after clearing her throat. “Please stay away. Please? You don’t need to go after him, you know? You can get someone else.” She looks around the room at Luke and his cohorts, who are all laughing and chewing gum and drawing pictures of boobs on their notebooks.

  I rub my eyes. The truth is, I’m still so exhausted and I have a knot of anxiety in my stomach that will not untangle.

  “Stop talking to her,” Alison mumbles. It’s not like the rest of us can’t hear, though, so it’s especially lame.

  “Yeah. Stop talking to me,” I say. The smallest, weirdest part of me wants to know what Devon did say about me and who he said it to. Because even though I don’t buy what Jemma’s saying, something has set her off. “I’ve never done anything remotely terrible to you. And you know it, too. That’s why you’re blushing right now. Because you know that I may look like some slut, but you’re a huge bitch.”

  It’s like the words came out of someone else’s mouth. My heart races, and I cover my own mouth for a moment. The room is absolutely still. Luke isn’t laughing anymore. The other girls aren’t whispering. Absolutely no one is doing last-minute homework catch-up.

  I kind of can’t breathe. I’m caught between feeling amazing and terrible about what I said. I can’t decide if it’s a jolt of bliss or regret. It’s like those two things are located too close to each other to tell.

  “I—” Jemma tries, unsuccessfully, to get some more words out.

  “You can’t rewrite history to make yourself feel better about what you’ve done,” I say. “I mean, isn’t that what your therapist would tell you?” Now that I’ve jumped over the line from polite to terrifically, terribly honest I might as well stay there.

  Jemma’s eyes go so wide and wild she looks like a cartoon. She is the Donald Duck version of herself: angry, tongue hanging out, spirals instead of eyeballs, smoke whistling out of her ears. There are some barely disguised giggles.

  “I’m not in therapy,” Jemma lies. She may be my personal mean girl, but she’s still pretty low on the Circle Community Day School totem pole. Plus, now that’s she’s all tight with Sasha Cotton, it won’t surprise anyone to hear she’s in therapy.

  I don’t respond. Like Star says, sometimes it’s best to let someone dig their own grave.

  I feel absolutely full with new knowledge. It’s like suddenly I can do everything in a completely different way than I would have before, and the stability of the Vermont mountains and cold and my scared self are up for grabs.

  My red shoes pinch my toes a little, truth be told, but they are worth it.

  “I’m not,” Jemma says again. “I don’t have a therapist.” Her eyes are pooling with tears. “You should be in therapy. For your problems. With guys,” she says. With the eyes of the entire class on her, she’s getting more and more awkward. I sigh and shake my head, since I’ve heard it all before. “You want attention from all of them. People’s brothers. People’s boyfriends. It’s disgusting, what you’re doing with Joe. Like, completely. Awful. In the worst way.”

  She said his name.

  “Good ole Joe,” Luke says, his smirk back on his face, his eyebrows raised and jiggling when I accidentally look his way. It’s his way of confirming, for everyone else in class, what Jemma’s accusing me of. That I’m hooking up with Joe Donavetti, one half of everyone’s
favorite, super-strange couple.

  Girls wrinkle their noses. This tall, skinny, almost-pretty girl named Ginger tears up. Literally tears up. My mind rushes, waterfalls, with things to say in response. Denials and defenses and comebacks and distractions.

  But before I can choose which one to use, Ms. Gilbert finally enters the room, all flustered and red-faced and apologetic.

  “I didn’t,” I say to the room. None of them are looking at me anymore. Except Ms. Gilbert, who wrinkles her forehead in confusion. “I mean, I’m not. Doing that. With whoever.”

  “Tabitha?” Ms. Gilbert says. I get the feeling, from her tone of voice and the way she’s blushing and watching my classmates, that she knows about my growing reputation. I get the distinct impression that Mrs. Drake has been making the rounds with her thoughts on me, and that the most popular teachers are in on it too now. They have these group meetings to discuss Student Life every week, and I’m suddenly super sure I’ve been on the agenda.

  “It’s nothing,” I say. “Rumors.” I gesture to our ethics book. Like, I don’t know, as a defense against them. As if I’m ethically right and want Ms. Gilbert to know it. I sort of give up on the gesture, though, because I don’t think I know whether I’m ethically sound or whatever.

  Ms. Gilbert shakes off my awkwardness and starts a heated class discussion on the difference between ethics and morals. Jemma keeps looking at me, like I’m the example of someone with neither.

  I make a note in the margin: What about your moral obligation to yourself?

  I tap my pen over the note.

  Zed would like that. I have to remember to post it onto the site later today.

  Ms. Gilbert is saying something conclusive and diplomatic and thought-provoking, and I am putting the pen back to the page. I write the Life by Committee address next to my little margin note.

  It’s not exactly a safe thing to do, but it feels right.

  I smile at the idea of some girl in a few years using my old textbook and needing to discover a new world, the way I needed it. Cycle of life, or something. Sort of beautiful.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Nineteen.

  I curl into a couch at Tea Cozy when school is over and watch my parents make awkward paths around each other. They pass off dishes and shout out orders over the rumble of the espresso machine, but otherwise they avoid eye contact and keep at least two feet of distance between their bodies at all times, which is particularly impressive given how narrow the space behind the counter is.

  It’s hard not to feel doubt at my decisions, seeing them like that. Knowing that I caused it.

  Tiny, tiny seeds of doubt that Zed promises are natural, are part of the process.

  Growing pains, he calls them.

  I type out what I wrote to myself in my ethics textbook, about my obligation to myself, and ask if that’s right, if that’s part of LBC and this new way of living. Zed responds right away, happy to see me back after my day off yesterday.

  ZED: It’s a moral obligation to have us ALL live our best lives. There’s doing the right thing and there’s doing the best thing. They’re not always the same thing.

  The best thing is a challenge. The right thing is often a submission.

  We do the best things here. We do the unlikely things.

  I nod along with what I’m reading, even though I don’t completely understand it. Sometimes when I’m really deep in LBC, I think I am seeing some new shade of life, like a color I didn’t know existed and maybe isn’t as pretty as blue or green or yellow, but is still worth knowing. I’ve never worked so hard to understand something. All those years of math class, I thought I was really pushing myself. Turns out I wasn’t even close.

  I try to picture Zed, and hope, hope, hope that he is tall and strange-looking with light eyes and strong hands and broad shoulders. I hope he wears sweaters. I hope he drinks coffee. I hope he walks barefoot. I hope he reads long books and short haikus and has glasses and a deep but soft voice.

  I rub my eyes and rock back and forth in my seat a little. I sigh too loudly for public, and eventually, Cate comes over with a cup of coffee. At first I think this is a kind of peace offering, but from the shrug of her shoulders when she places it in front of me, I know that it’s actually a sign that she’s given up on me. Up close I can see the redness of her eyes and the frizzy, unwashed texture of her ponytailed hair. She smells like her mother’s outdated, too-floral perfume. I press record on my computer, thinking maybe I’ll post the audio of some of this conversation on LBC.

  “We’re not going to talk about it,” Cate says instead of hello. I almost hit stop on the record. This isn’t the kind of thing I want people knowing about my mother. That she can be cold and harsh and leave the most important things undiscussed simply because she doesn’t feel like addressing them. But it’s real. And Zed says real is the whole point.

  I keep it recording.

  “I think we should talk about it,” I say, angling my words toward the computer. I sort of want to apologize, though it seems like the LBC-ers wouldn’t like that. I am probably supposed to stick by my actions and ride them out fully. “I am so, so sorry. I know I messed up. And I know saying I’m sorry is the lamest, but Jesus I really am sorry.”

  “You know I love you, okay?” she says, but there’s no hiding the fact that she did not accept my apology.

  “I know you love me.”

  “I hate being mad at you,” she says. Which means: I am mad at you.

  “Both of us,” I add, meaning Paul but remembering not to say his name in the recording. She nods.

  “But I am. Mad. Right now. And pregnant.” She looks at me like I’m supposed to know what’s coming, but I don’t. “I’m going to stay with my parents.”

  She doesn’t say for how long. I don’t ask, because I’m scared of the answer. I wait, thinking maybe she forgot to finish the sentence, but nothing else comes.

  “I know why you’re mad,” I say, trying my best to sound Together and Composed. “I don’t want to, like, be a stoner. I’m not going to let the baby smoke up. Or smoke near the baby. Or smoke ever again.” Cate nods, but there are deep worry lines in her forehead, and I’m not sure she believes me. And she definitely doesn’t believe whatever version of that Paul said to her.

  I need to say more. I need to say something unlikely and new.

  “I can’t always be just your daughter and nothing else, you know?” I say. Cate looks at me funny. I can see a sentence forming behind her eyes, but she shakes her head and I guess decides not to say it. She shrugs, like she has no idea what to do with what I’ve said, or what I’ve done, or who I’m becoming. That’s fair. I’m not sure what to do with who I’m becoming, either.

  “Look. I love you more than anything,” she says, too calmly. “I’m right down the street. And here, of course. So it’s not a big thing. Just need some pregnancy space,” she says. “I don’t want to be that crazy, angry pregnant lady, you know?”

  I nod, but I don’t know what it means. Cate kisses my forehead and gets back behind the counter. As soon as she’s back there she nods in my direction, giving Paul the go-ahead to have his part of The Talk with me. We’ve never had family talks in succession like this. We’ve done everything the three of us.

  I check the computer. It is still recording.

  “What you got there?” Paul says, taking the seat that Cate was just in. He has brought another mug of coffee, and when he realizes I already have one, he get flustered, eventually choosing to put it next to the one I’m drinking, like it’s backup.

  “Ethics,” I say.

  “I could have used that class, huh?” He grimaces. He is not so good at this on his own.

  “I think you do pretty well,” I say.

  “I made a huge mistake Saturday,” Paul says, sighing so the words are a kind of waterfall of noise.


  “Isn’t she supposed to kick you out?” I ask. In the two minutes since Cate spoke to me, I’ve thought of seventeen different important questions. Like, isn’t it totally counterintuitive to leave me with Paul after what happened? Shouldn’t Cate be vehemently stepping in to protect me from his influence? Isn’t she concerned about my new rebellious attitude? I look up to catch her eye, but she’s facing the other direction.

  “This new baby . . .,” Paul begins, but he can’t seem to get past those three words, and he starts picking off pieces of my peanut butter cookie and channeling all his energy into that.

  “I know,” I say. “You want to do it all differently. You want to do it right. I got it.”

  “Your mom’s ready to be an adult,” Paul concludes, not answering a single one of my questions, but creating space for more to pop up.

  The line at Tea Cozy is getting longer, snaking past my little table with Paul. He tries to ignore the crowd and turns my papers toward him, checking out what I’m reading and writing with fake interest. “I can look over your paper tonight,” he says. He has not checked my homework for me since fifth grade.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Don’t bother her about this stuff, okay? Let her do her thing for a few days.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’m going to cut back,” he says.

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Definitely will stop before the baby comes,” he says.

  I don’t say yeah, okay again.