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 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 constantly 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 IN A MILLION DAYS? 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 say 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 Tuesday 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.