Life by Committee

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Life by Committee Page 18

by Haydu, Corey Ann


  ZED: Did you propose yet, Star? By my calculations you are way, way behind on your Assignment.

  STAR: Getting married is, like, real. Big. A decision. Not an impulse.

  ZED: I assume that’s a no?

  STAR: I’m taking life seriously. That’s it. Bitty should too. We all should.

  ZED: What do you think we’re doing here?

  STAR: I sort of don’t know anymore. Did you hear Bitty’s post? Her parents? We, like, destroyed a family.

  I wait for Zed to reply, and explain how destroying something ultimately fixes it. Creation from destruction, or something. I think that’s from the Bible. Or science. Zed doesn’t reply. I have about a million questions for Star, mostly: Why are you hating on LBC when it got you everything you want?

  BITTY: I thought we had to take risks to move forward. I thought that’s how you ended up in L.A. with pretty shoes and long kisses and a guy who wears Converses and loves the craziest parts of you.

  STAR: I’m homesick.

  BITTY: Homesick seems small compared to everything else.

  STAR: Not every decision can be bigger than the one before. And not every decision is better because a dozen other lost people are telling you what to do.

  Still no Zed. No one writes anything more. I turn Star’s words around in my head, and I can’t quite decide if they’re true or not. I think I hate her, for saying it. I want to see her on bended knee. I want to see the bottom of her lacy, linen-y, beachy wedding dress. I want the world’s strangest, quirkiest fairy tale. I want something I can believe in.

  A half hour later, Star says one more thing:

  STAR: Where does it end?

  I’m dizzy from the question. From all my questions, too.

  I’ll complete my Assignment. I have to. I want to. I need to see this through. I click around LBC for another few minutes and the rules follow me onto every page, and that third rule, the one I’m the most scared of, seems to be getting larger and larger. “An active membership is the only way to protect your secrets.” I don’t see how Zed could ever follow through on that threat, but Star is right that I should at least be careful with identifying details. Especially since I’m pretty sure what I’m about to do to Jemma breaks the law.

  I sign out of LBC. It doesn’t feel like enough. I turn off the computer. My heart won’t stop racing. I unplug the computer and leave the room, and a really illogical part of me feels safer, less overwhelmed.

  If Cate were here, I’d ask her to go on another late-night walk, but without her around I have to go by myself, which I’ve never done.

  I bring a flashlight and pay attention to where I’m walking this time. Without Cate I don’t want to get turned around, especially if it means finding myself in front of Sasha Cotton’s house again. When I reach a fork in the road, I take a step toward town, but then backtrack and go left instead. It’s not some huge diversion. Turning left isn’t exactly bringing me to the next dimension or anything. But it’s not leading me to Tea Cozy or Elise’s house or any of the places I usually go.

  It’s cold. It’s always cold, but tonight it feels like it’s about to snow again. I forgot a scarf, so the chill hits my neck. There’s not a single car on the road, and animals and birds rustle in the treetops. I didn’t even bring my phone, so I’m especially alone.

  I take another turn, one I haven’t taken for a while. I’m warming up, walking at a clipped pace like I have somewhere to go, which I guess I do. Because I find myself in front of Jemma’s house. Which is Devon’s house. It’s too late to knock on the front door. Her parents may miss me, but they won’t be pleased to have me waking them up. I’m not sure which window is Devon’s. I’m not even sure I want to see him. But there’s a light on in their third-floor TV room, where I used to hang out all the time. I imagine that Devon’s in there. That he’s as awake as me. I imagine he’s even worried about me. That he’s the kind of guy who would have held me and rubbed my back if he heard something in my life had been dismantled.

  It’s not like I can’t comfort myself. It’s not like I need some guy to hold me and tell me I’m pretty or whatever it is I think Devon might do. It’s not like what they think about me is right. I’m not boy crazy. Except that maybe I am, because now that Joe has turned out to be a total Sasha Cotton–loving asshole instead of my kind, caring soul mate, I find my mind occupied by what it would feel like for Devon to look right in my eyes and tuck my hair behind my ears and kiss the place where my earlobe meets my neck. It’s been, like, a few hours, and I’m looking for another guy to fix everything.

  I’m clearly messed up. I’m clearly not capable of taking care of myself in any real way.

  Maybe Jemma and Alison and Mrs. Drake were right about what kind of girl I am. I wish I had my phone, so I could check in with LBC. I shouldn’t be out here alone. Not in the cold Vermont night and not in my life.

  But it feels like it’s too late to walk home, like I can’t turn around and forget it. My legs hurt, my nose is hurting from the cold, and I can’t stomach the idea that I did this all for nothing. I step onto the lawn, and that step feels bigger than all the little ones that came before it. I take another tiny little step, but nothing clicks into place. Without LBC I’m just a girl on the lawn filled with the worst kind of indecision.

  I don’t want to be that girl.

  And that is when I decide to go into Jemma’s house.

  It goes something like this: When Jemma and I were friends, she was really into photography. Actually, everyone was really into photography. There was a new photography teacher at Circle Community a couple of years ago. He had long hair, which normally could be kind of gross, but he tied it back in this messy-sexy way, and had just enough light brown stubble, and I liked the way a few hairs would escape his artist ponytail. The other girls liked his forearms and the way he smelled like toxic chemicals and woods. He was young. He let us call him by his first name. He swore sometimes. He called us all artists.

  I was one of Jemma’s many subjects. We’d go into the woods behind her house and I’d roll around in the leaves or stare pensively at the sky and she’d tell me to move my head or shift my weight or stop giggling, and she’d take dozens of photos. Sometimes she’d set the self-timer and get us both in there. We’d press our cold cheeks together so we could fit into the frame, and each look in slightly different directions to make it artsy.

  Alison hated having her picture taken, so she’d talk about light and shadows and then disappear into the house and come back out with snacks. Like a mom would.

  This went on for over a year. Jemma took every class available with Tony. But the photographs were almost two years ago now, so I was still slim all over, flat and straight and into worn-in T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts and Dove soap and ChapStick instead of makeup. I was the kind of girl Jemma and Alison approved of.

  I want to see that girl now. Cate and Paul aren’t into photographs, so we don’t have albums of nostalgia in the living room or on the computer or anything. I’m sure for the new baby they’ll buy a new camera and plaster the fridge with snapshots and set up a blog to show off her sure-to-be-adorable face, but it wasn’t like that for me. If I want to catch a glimpse of the Life I Used to Have, those black-and-white fake-artsy photos are my best bet.

  Jemma’s parents keep their key in a fake rock, like every other family in every other neighborhood in this ridiculous town. It doesn’t take long to figure out which rock is hollow and fake.

  The sound of the door unlocking is monstrous in my head. It echoes, and the door screeches, and I’m positive the whole Benson family is going to run down the stairs with flashlights and stricken faces, but nothing happens. I try not to breathe on my walk from the front door to the living room. There are bookcases filled with Jemma’s and Devon’s accomplishments, and there, knee-height, is a leather binder. Label-maker label glued onto the spine. JEMMA. PHOTOGRAPHS. AGE 13–15. Exactly as I knew it would be. Because Jemma and Devon have the kind of parents who label and display ev
ery single accomplishment.

  Heart pounding, I reach for it. I close my eyes, like that will help me escape the sheer intensity of anxiety in the moment. My fingers twist my thumb ring, something I do when I get nervous. But my hands are so sweaty and my fingers shaking so tremendously that it slips from my knuckle to the ground. It’s a heavy silver thing, and it hits the hardwood floor with a crash. I gasp, and forget to quiet that sound, too. The sounds cause other sounds in the house. A creak upstairs. A shuffling of feet. My own heartbeat’s acceleration.

  I’m so scared I can’t move. My arm is stuck in midair, reaching for the book of photographs, but not actually grabbing it. I tear up, but don’t move a muscle. And that is how Devon finds me.

  “Hey,” he whispers. He looks confused, but maybe not as stunned as he should be. Which tells me I have been acting pretty weird the last few weeks and people are noticing.

  “Yeah. Hi,” I squeak out.

  “It’s, uh, late.”

  “Oh my God, I know. I know. Yeah.” It’s nice to whisper. Intimate. I manage to get my hand to my side and my back straight so that at least I’m standing upright and facing him head-on.

  “Did . . . Jemma . . . invite you?”

  I so want to say yes. I want to say yes so badly that I start to say yes, get out the initial y sound, and then clamp my mouth shut and shake my head no.

  “So you just . . . thought you’d stop by?” Devon is trying so hard to make sense of this moment. I can see the effort on his face. He grimaces and blinks a lot and rubs his eyes and moves his chin in little circles, like he is caught between a head shake and a nod and a total seizure.

  “I was looking for something?” I try to stop myself from up-speak, but now that I’ve started, there’s no way I’ll stop.

  Devon takes a huge breath in. So large and deliberate that I watch his whole abdomen fill, watch his lungs expand under his almost-tight-but-not-quite gray T-shirt. I notice his red plaid pajama pants for the first time and get an unexpected surge of pleasure. One side of my mouth lifts into what could almost be considered a smile, which is an epic feat, considering.

  “Are you okay, Tabby?”

  “Yes?”

  “You seem a little . . . off. Lately. Not in a bad way. But in a . . . noticeable way.”

  “Life changes?” I say.

  “Right.”

  We stand in silence. There’s eye contact. The extended kind, where you almost don’t want to blink, so as not to break the connection. I’m afraid if I look away, even for an instant, we won’t ever find this steady gaze again.

  I love the slow, unsurprised way he reacts to my total insanity. Like it’s okay that I’m a little crazy.

  “So. What were you looking for? Let’s at least make it worth your while,” Devon says at last. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He smiles. He has a tiny dimple in his chin and one in each cheek. He smiles like he’s holding in a laugh. Maybe it’s the pajama pants or the fact that he isn’t calling the police, or maybe it’s the rockiness of his voice this late at night, but he is gorgeous. All of a sudden.

  “It’s dumb.” We’re both still whispering, but I go even quieter now that we’ve started this portion of the conversation.

  Devon shrugs and flashes that smile again. Lets out a hushed chuckle. A bit of my heart lights up. It’s strange how easy it is for me to feel this way, pretty and alive.

  I think a thought that makes me hate myself: Maybe if Joe got jealous, he’d realize he could love me, not her. I swallow. I have no idea what to do. Those photographs are so close to me, and maybe if I could get even the quickest glimpse, I’d have some vague idea of who I am.

  “You don’t seem like the breaking-and-entering type,” Devon says at last, trying, I guess, to help me figure out how to explain myself.

  “You can call the cops. Seriously. I probably need the consequences, you know? It’d probably be good for me or something.” My voice is shaking so much I barely recognize it.

  “Naw, I’m an accomplice now,” Devon says. He takes a step closer to me, looks at the bookcase, like maybe he’ll be able to figure out what I wanted. “Helping you steal. Aiding and abetting. I don’t know all the legal jargon, but it’s a serious offense.”

  “Well, as long as we go down together,” I say. I don’t blush. I flame.

  Devon does his low breathy chuckle again and picks out one of the family Bibles. “This what you wanted, I assume?” he says. I am going to kiss his dimples if his face gets any closer to mine. I’ve never kissed a dimple before. I giggle, but it comes out all choked.

  “The photographs,” I say, and point at the binder. “I mean, I could just look at them. I don’t need to take them.”

  “Don’t come this far and then give up,” Devon says.

  The words make me shiver. He’s right. He doesn’t know how right he is.

  Devon grabs the binder and opens it, and there I am. Me, but not me.

  The me I used to be.

  The very first picture is me in a pile of leaves. I could be six, but I’m fourteen maybe. I’m sitting, and the leaves cover most of my lap. I’ve thrown half the pile in the air, and they are raining down on me as I look up at my hands, still lingering in the air. I am grinning. My ears look bigger than I think they do now, like I grew into them a bit, but not enough. In the photograph I’m wearing an oversize sweater and French braids and my eyes are squinting and mascara-less.

  “That’s you,” Devon says. It’s almost a question.

  “It used to be.”

  The tears come back. I sniff and bite my cheeks and blink really fast to try to keep them inside, but they are the reckless kind, and by the time we’re on the next page, they are running down my cheeks. My face next to Jemma’s stares up at me. My mouth is wide open, my nose scrunched, my hands blurry with movement. I must have been telling some story. Jemma’s mouth is open too, and I can almost hear the laughter.

  Then I’m sobbing. Into Devon’s T-shirt. He is not a perfect boy. He pats my back awkwardly, and I know he has no idea how to deal with a crying girl. “Shhhh,” he tries.

  I take the binder from his hands and hold it to my chest, like maybe it will help me gain control of my breathing. It doesn’t, so I let myself outside, and he follows. I can’t risk Jemma finding me here. As much as I want to not care, I can’t take things at school getting any worse. So we stand on the porch. There is a not-quite-full moon and a cold wind rustling the trees. Devon puts his hands in his pockets. I can see his fingers moving beneath the fabric, and I like that he can’t completely hide his nerves. I look up, tilt my head back a little, and try to maintain eye contact for as long as my heart can handle it. He takes a step closer and I think maybe he will kiss me and maybe I want him to, but maybe I don’t. Yet. There’s a breath where I could move toward him too, but I don’t take it. I let my chin drop, my eyes drift to the trees instead of his mouth, and the moment’s over.

  For some reason, this is the Assignment I cannot complete.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” he says. I take a step from his porch back to his lawn. I look up at Jemma’s bedroom window, and for a split second wonder if I could plant the weed in there. Direct her parents toward its hiding place.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’ll figure it out,” I say.

  “We?” Devon says.

  I’m so dizzy from the crying and the overwhelming weirdness of tonight that I’m not watching my words carefully enough.

  “Like, me. And my friends.”

  Devon looks at me funny. Like Jemma has told him that I have no friends. Which I’m sure she has.

  “Maybe I’ll come by the Cozy tomorrow?” he says.

  But tomorrow I will be busy ruining his sister’s life. So I shake my head no.

  “I have an Assignment I have to do,” I say. I take a few steps farther away from him, and it’s sad to know the night’s basically over, that whatever adventure I was on is over, and all I’m left with is my own failure and a book full of pictures of a person I used
to be. Devon’s eyes are the kind that make me want to say all kinds of things, and I have too many things I’m not allowed to say.

  “Hey, Tabby?” he says, before I am totally in shadow on the street.

  “Yep?”

  “Don’t give up on us. On me. Or Jemma. Or just people, you know?”

  “Why would I?” I say.

  “I don’t know,” Devon says, taking a big breath and focusing those incredible blue eyes on me like he knows I already have. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  Secret:

  It wasn’t love.

  —Star

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Twenty-Two.

  The next morning, eight hours to go, I treat myself to and three cups of coffee at Tea Cozy. It does not help me forget about the weed in my backpack. For something so light, it is unusually heavy. I wait to go into school. I skip first period. Paul is working, but there’s no sign of Cate. For all I know, Paul thinks it is Saturday. His beard is neat and trimmed, though, and his flannel shirt tucked into his pants. His eyes and hands are steady, and he’s listening to Aerosmith, which I know he can’t handle when he’s high.

  Still, he doesn’t see me. Not enough to do any more than wave at me and ask me to clean up a table.

  I stare at LBC until my eyes hurt and my father starts to get a look on his face like maybe he has realized it’s not the weekend and I should be at school.

  BITTY: I would rather stay home and read.

  AGNES: I would always rather stay home and read.

  ZED: Cold feet on your Assignment? Don’t trust us yet?

  BITTY: I’m scared.

  ZED: That’s great! You should be scared! Life is scary if you’re doing it right.

  STAR: That’s where we’re different, ladyfriend. I’m not so much a reader.

  @SSHOLE: Too busy having sex.

 

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