STAR: Not anymore. You not see my last post?
BRENDA: Don’t have to be in love to have sex!
ZED: Star, we need to talk. You were supposed to complete your Assignment.
STAR: It sort of stopped being relevant.
ZED: That’s not how it works. It’s always relevant.
STAR: I’m not proposing to some guy I don’t love.
ZED: But you DID love him. You probably still would if you’d followed what we said.
AGNES: It’s not fair, if we’re not all doing it.
This happens sometimes. A thread will start off as mine or Zed’s or Elfboy’s or whatever, but it will shift and turn into another conversation entirely, before it circles back around to the relevant secret or Assignment. So at first I’m only skimming the comments, but when I realize what a tense, massive conversation it is, I go back and read more carefully.
It’s the least interesting part of the whole conversation, except that it’s everything.
Star doesn’t like reading.
And whoever made notes in The Secret Garden loved reading.
BITTY: You don’t like reading, Star?
STAR: God, I haven’t actually read a book since, like, elementary school. Cliff Notes, girl.
It shouldn’t be a big thing. I never knew for sure that Star was my note taker, I only ever hoped. And assumed.
ZED: We can’t all slack on our Assignments. It’s not fair to the group.
@SSHOLE: Agree. I told off my principal in front of the entire school. I’m suspended for three weeks. I can’t be out here alone.
STAR: But dude, what did you get out of that, you know?
@SSHOLE: Respect.
AGNES: He doesn’t know yet. He doesn’t know how it will all play out. None of us do. But his principal was a jerk. And @sshole got to speak the truth. It’s like, opening doors and letting the good stuff come in, you know?
BITTY: I need to hear something good before I do this.
STAR: I don’t think you should do it.
ROXIE: Me! You guys said I should crash that audition, and I did, and I have an actual professional paid gig now. Like, I’m an actress. A real one.
There’s a chorus of support for Roxie, and I relax enough to eat half of a raspberry ricotta scone Paul likes and Cate hates. It’s not so busy at Tea Cozy right now and Paul keeps looking over here, so I don’t have much time. I’ve got on cords and a turtleneck sweater of Paul’s. I could not look like less of a slut, so I’m ready, I guess, to do this. I pretend to be typing something very official and school-like, but Paul’s not an idiot, so I have to scan through the rest of the conversation quickly so I can log off. He’s ringing up the last three people in line and raising his eyebrows at me.
ZED: I’ll give you one last try, Star. You do it in the next three days, and you get a free pass. Since you’re such a longtime member.
STAR: We BROKE UP. Like, we aren’t even together. Much less getting engaged.
ZED: Just to see what will happen.
STAR: That’s not okay!!!
ZED: Because you trust us. Because you believe in what we can do together. Because life’s really hard and we’re figuring it out as a team.
AGNES: Bitty and I are a team, both doing our Assignments today. Feels better knowing we both are taking risks. Like we’re holding hands or something. Cyber hand holding.
STAR: You don’t have to do it. You too, Bitty. You don’t have to do it.
There’s more to read, but Paul reaches over me and closes my laptop. My heart jumps, and it’s amazing that I can get so sucked in by LBC that I forget where I am and who’s there and what I’m supposed to be doing.
“It’s a school day,” he says.
“Yes,” I say, and give him a shared Paul and Tabby smile, but he’s not buying it.
“You have any idea how much trouble I’m in with Cate? And now you want to get me in even more trouble? What’s going on with you? Get to school.” Paul has new wrinkles around his mouth and eyes and streaking across his forehead. He’s older than I thought he was, older than he used to be. He’s not joking.
“You’re really getting yourself . . . together,” I say. He’s retying his apron and getting ready to bake another round of scones, and I know he wants me to be on my way, but I want to stare at him, this man who used to be a friend and is now my dad.
“You didn’t give me much choice,” he says, and I try to place what the smell is, coming off of him, that’s replaced the skunky sweet smell of weed. It’s chocolate and flour and coffee on his breath, and nothing else. Soap, maybe. “I believe that is what they call reaching your own personal rock bottom.”
“Plus the baby,” I say.
“I think we did pretty well with you,” Paul says. “You like the right books. And the right bands. And you don’t play sports. And you don’t spend too much time on your hair or anything. I’d call it a win.”
Paul packs my stuff up for me. I guess he can tell I’m sort of paralyzed. He offers to drive me to school, but I can get myself there. I can do what I need to do. I have to. Because my last Assignment made Paul get his act together. It’s working. LBC is working.
AGNES: Assignment completed.
I want to read more—I missed her secret and Assignment yesterday in the buzz and fury of my own life—but I’m already shaky behind the wheel today, shaky in my whole life today, so I decide to not look at my phone and drive at the same time.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Twenty-Three
I have the Ziploc of weed in my backpack and my hurt from how Jemma has been treating me and Jemma’s locker combination. I have Life by Committee on my phone, in my pocket, and unlike the rest of the kids at Circle Community living their boring drone lives, I have purpose.
And, like, justice.
And for a few glorious moments my head is held high and my shoulders are back and I think I am doing something dangerous and earned and powerful that will change the entire structure of the world.
Dictators must feel this way. And scientists maybe. The supersmart ones. And gods, I guess too. I seriously doubt people feel this way from yoga or self-help books or meditation or even love. Because love didn’t end up making me feel powerful at all. I felt small in its shadow. It was bigger than me.
Yes. Yes, this is much better than love.
The feeling vanishes the instant I walk into the lobby.
Artsy photographs are hanging in the hallway that leads from the front door of the school to the assembly hall. They are oversize and framed in gold, making the whole thing look like a New York City gallery instead of a lame private school started by a bunch of tree-hugging vegans.
Which means upon first glance I’m loving it.
Upon first glance I’m thinking: Sweet. Maybe Circle Community isn’t totally lame. Maybe I’ll make it through the next year here.
Then I see a nipple.
It is that nipple that forces everything to click into place.
Two nipples, actually, and small breasts, but all so perky and smooth it does look, legitimately, like art for even an instant longer. Sexy art, art that shouldn’t be hanging in a high school, but art nonetheless. That’s the first picture or two.
But the third one has a face, and a body, and a nipple, and some gauzy skirt that is all too familiar. And Sasha’s honey hair and long lashes on top. Sasha, in the nude, biting her lip. Sasha, half-covering her breasts with crossed arms that still show basically everything. Sasha crawling toward the camera like Victoria’s Secret models do in commercials for the newest lacy, structured, push-up bra. Except there’s no lace, no structure, no push. Just the expanse of her body and the total joy she seems to have at exposing it.
And the fairy wings.
Holy. Shit.
I sit on the floor. Collapse onto it, practically. Cross my legs. Put my head in my hands.
And I’d scream at the pictures if I could, I’d deface them, I’d draw mustaches on them. But the more pressing issue right now, the much, much, bigger problem, is that I have clearly been an idiot.
Didn’t I see Sasha taking these photographs of herself late at night?
Didn’t I squirm with discomfort at her poem?
Doesn’t this seem like something no normal person would choose to do to herself?
Didn’t Agnes say we BOTH had big, scary Assignments today?
NO, my mind yells at my body. NO. AGNES LIVES IN FLORIDA OR SOMETHING.
My phone’s low on batteries, so I practically sprint to the computer lab and hold my head in my hands while I wait for LBC to load. I don’t care who sees. I don’t care about anything right now except learning that Agnes and Sasha Cotton are not the same person because they can’t be the same person because the world is not that tiny and I am not that stupid.
I hit the mouse a million times—’m shaking so hard that I keep clicking the wrong links. But when I’m on Agnes’s page, staring at her sad-girl avatar and the hundreds and hundreds of posts she’s written over the last year, I start to see it all.
Agnes, talking about suicide and falling in love, and jealousy and sexuality.
Agnes, testing the boundaries of herself, her family, her boyfriend, her schoolmates.
Agnes, writing a poem about sex and printing it in her school’s literary journal. An Assignment, of course, from before I joined.
Agnes, doing a nude photo shoot a few weeks ago, admitting it to her LBC friends last night, and then being assigned the task of hanging the photos, in frames, in the school’s lobby.
Secret: My BF thought the naked pics were weird. I freaked him out. Big-time.
ASSIGNMENT: Get a second opinion. Hang them up in school.
— Agnes
It’s right there. It’s been there all along.
Now that I see it, it’s impossible to un-see. I can hear her breathy, uncertain voice speaking the words on her page. It’s all there in the dense writing of her storytelling and the Sylvia Plath worldview. I review every interaction we’ve had online, and bile rises from my spinning stomach to my squeezing-tight chest to my now dry, jaw-dropped mouth. She’s been advising me on Joe. She’s been supporting me and telling me I should go for it and read along.
I swallow down the vomit that is insisting it come out. I’m sitting, but I couldn’t get up if you paid me. Everything from my knees down has gone numb, and everything from my knees up is trembling.
I put my head between my legs, the way I’ve seen people do on TV and movies but that I’ve never actually witnessed in real life. I’m not sure what exactly it’s supposed to do, but it gives me vertigo, a blood rush to the head, and makes me heave. Nothing comes out, but I cover my mouth with my hands anyway.
And then I step out of the glass cave of the computer lab and into the buzzing, laughing, high-five-giving world in the hallway. I stagger my way through to find Elise, who is bright red and watery-eyed next to Heather. Both girls look at the photos with something way too close to awe.
“I need to talk,” I say, slipping my hand into Elise’s. She cringes a little and pulls away. Heather clears her throat, and I know they’ve been talking about me.
“Tab. It’s not all about you, you know?” She’s looking at the photographs. More and more students and teachers gather around them, but I don’t see Joe or Sasha.
“There’s, like, a whole reason she did this,” I say. I’m begging Elise with my eyes to be my best friend again, if even for just a few minutes.
“I know there is. You. Going after her boyfriend. Making her feel like she had to do something insane to keep him.”
Heather clears her throat again. Elise shakes her head, and I try to un-hear those words. The things Jemma and Alison and Mrs. Drake and Luke think about me—those are the same things Elise thinks about me. It’s all over her face: disappointment, disgust, distance.
“How did I—” I try.
“You pushed her. Excuse us, Heather.” Elise takes my elbow and moves me away from the photographs and Heather. We’re just a few feet away, so Sasha’s big eyes and smooth skin are still haunting the whole conversation. “Did you sleep with him? With Joe? You did, right? I mean, you must have. And she knows. Or suspects. And is trying to compete. Why couldn’t you just let her have him, you know? You could be with some other hockey-playing guy.”
“I’m not—”
“What if a college hears about her doing this? What if she gets kicked out? I mean, look at those douches, staring at these pictures like it’s porn. She’s going to have to live with that. That’s who she is now. Because of you.”
I glance to Elise’s left and catch sight of Luke feeling up the photograph. He cackles while pretending to grab her breasts, his grubby fingers circling the nipples. Elise is wrong about a lot of things, but she’s right about something: Sasha shouldn’t have to see this.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I say, but the words are weak and small and sound ridiculous when I can hear the boys in the background talking about how her boobs are too small and her stomach too round. It’s hard to see how this could be a good thing.
“I literally have no idea what you’re talking about anymore,” Elise says. “I don’t recognize you or understand anything you’re saying or doing at this point.”
“I mean, we don’t know what the future holds, and maybe this somehow will turn out to be a good thing? Or, like, her life will change and shift because she did something scary and strange and special?”
Something happens while I watch Elise’s face respond to my words. Zed’s words. The words I’ve been relying on the last few weeks.
They sound all wrong.
I grip my backpack. The Ziploc full of Paul’s weed is in there, begging me to bring it to Mrs. Drake, or plant it in Jemma’s locker, or do something shocking and daring and LBC-worthy. My mind is in some strange tug-of-war with itself, on one side thinking maybe LBC is a terrible idea, and that Zed is a dangerous dude or at the very least a total stranger, but the other side still needing to believe in something bigger than my own pathetic life.
Elise’s face tells me I should be afraid of what LBC has done to me. She looks not only disappointed or angry or annoyed. She looks scared. Scared of the person I’m becoming, and scared of the possible reasons I have become this person instead of the one she loved looking at books with.
“I have to go,” I say, and fly out the door, hoping maybe I’ll run into Sasha Cotton, but her car is already gone, so I hop into my own car and drive away.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Twenty-Four
I drive in circles for an hour before ending up back at Tea Cozy.
My mind’s not working that fast, and I couldn’t think of what to do or how to understand what’s happening until I remembered how it all began: with Paul. With The Secret Garden.
“Tabitha! I told you to go to school!” Paul says. He and Cate are at the counter with coffee and cookies and no customers. “I told her to go to school,” he says to Cate. They are sitting close enough that their knees touch, and I’m happy to see that, but I want him to see that I am sweating and crying and fighting back more dry heaves, so obviously school is so not the point.
“Where did you get my book?” I say, and I’m out of breath even though I haven’t been running or anything. I didn’t know I could get out of breath from living life and nothing else.
“You need water,” Cate says, running behind the counter to pour me a huge glass.
“I need to know where you got that book,” I say again, and I rummage through my backpack, because I can’t keep talking and explaining, I need to get answers. I throw my copy of The Secret Garden at him, and he blushes the second he sees it.
“Oh shit, Tab,” he says.
“
Language!” Cate says, and I want to strangle her because she can’t change everything about who our family is. She hands me the water and I gulp it down and Paul gives a sheepish smile because he doesn’t really know how one tiny lie can change everything.
“I was such a di—a jerk. I was a jerk. I forgot to get you a book in New York. It was too short a trip. And you had been so sad and I wanted to give you a lift, you know? So I found that at Recycled Books in town, and it seemed like something you’d love and that you’d love it even more if it was from New York. . . .” He shakes his head, and I well up with tears. A million or so of them.
“I just . . . I thought that book was from far away, you know? And I thought the person who wrote in it was some mysterious person who lived in like, a loft in the Village and had all this special New York wisdom, you know?” I’m not ready to tell him the whole story, and I’m too breathless with tears and fear and the rush of knowledge and understanding that I can’t get more out anyway.
“Hey, maybe it still was! New Yorkers love Recycled Books! And Vermont in general, right? Who knows, right? Where that book came from?” Paul grabs my hands and squeezes and Cate nods along, partly agreeing with him and partly, I think, pleased with the man he is becoming.
“I have to go,” I say, wiping tears and blowing my nose and scrambling to get my stuff back in my bag. My fingers brush against the bag of weed and I have a grip of feeling in my chest. I guess, somehow, I still haven’t totally decided whether I will go through with the Assignment.
I can’t. I know I can’t.
Except: If I leave LBC, I will be really, truly alone. No Elise. No Joe. No Jemma. No Life by Committee. I can’t quite stomach it yet.
“You’re going back to school, right?” Paul says.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, but I’m lying, and as soon as I get in my car, I speed in the opposite direction. To the house with the purple door. Sasha Cotton’s house.
Sasha’s car isn’t here, there’s no sign of Sasha anywhere, so I wait in the driveway. She has to come home eventually.
An hour passes, two, but I don’t even think about giving up. I wait it out, and I can’t feel time passing at all, to be honest. I turn up the music in my car and thank the universe that my phone is out of batteries so I can’t spend the afternoon looking up everything Agnes/Sasha has been saying and posting over the last year that she’s been on the site. I can untangle the whole mess later.
Life by Committee Page 19
