I don’t do either. I pour all my attention into listening to the aftereffects of the fight.
The walls are thin, and Paul’s favorite place to smoke is on the hammock right outside the office window. I know all the sounds and smells of smoking up, just not the accompanying feeling, not whatever the thing is that Paul just can’t get enough of. I have no interest in it. I hear the click-click-click of his lighter and then a little hum of pleasure as he inhales.
I mean. I love him, but he’s an idiot sometimes.
My screen lights up with more replies to my posts.
ROXIE: I think you should tell his girlfriend what he’s doing. Make him eat shit. Leave him with no one.
My focus shifts back to the computer, and I try not to hear Cate doing her little weeping bit upstairs. She’s just pregnant, I say in my head, but it doesn’t really help. Hearing Cate or Paul cry is an even worse feeling than what I felt in Mrs. Drake’s office today. Unsettling.
I squint, like that will help me focus more on LBC and less on my parents.
AGNES: No! Bitty has a real connection with this guy. Shouldn’t she go for it? I mean, if it’s real?
ELFBOY: Right.
ZED: Interesting, Ag. So you think she should keep pursuing this?
AGNES: Keep upping the ante, right?
@SSHOLE: Always.
I open the window a crack, and now the smell of pot is floating in and I can hear each and every one of Paul’s sighs. He must know the window’s open, but he’s not breaking the non-wall between us. We have to do this in our tiny house sometimes. Pretend there is privacy where there is not. Act like we’re alone when we’re feet away from each other.
I imagine this will get even harder to accomplish when there is a screaming baby in the little nursery upstairs. I remind myself what the note taker said in The Secret Garden, that change could be a comfort. I want to ask Zed if he thinks that could be true.
I slide my seat in closer to the desk. Let my face drift closer to the screen. I turn some music on, hike up the volume to drown out tears and weed and the memory of my parents fighting.
BITTY: I love him.
I wonder if I mean what I typed. If this thing with Joe is love. I guess if I say it is, then it is, right?
I turn up the volume another notch. The room is shaking a little from the noise, and I sing along.
BITTY: Maybe not love, yet. Something. I don’t just like kissing him. I don’t just think he’s cute. I don’t just hate his girlfriend.
ZED: But if we decided you had to tell the GF?
BITTY: I don’t get a say?
ZED: You’re here to do something better than what you do alone.
Again, a collective pause. The group seems to work like this. Somehow we all are keeping the same call-and-response rhythm, and we all pick the same moments to pause and collect our thoughts. It reminds me a little of Cate’s yoga classes, where everyone is somehow breathing as one unit. That’s the only part of yoga I ever liked. But this time I guess the responsibility is on me. My mouth is dry from the clarity of Zed’s words.
In the stretch of the pause, another post from Star goes live.
STAR: What if I stayed here? What if I just stayed? I’m eighteen. I’m scared to post a secret, because the only Assignment I want is one that keeps me in his arms forever.
I can’t move. I didn’t know it, but this is exactly what I wanted for her. This feels Right in the deepest, craziest, most exciting way. I have a surge of YES that runs through me. She’s a crusader. A romantic. She’s the girl I want to be. The girl I didn’t know I wanted to be until I saw her red heels and her happy knees.
STAR: Don’t worry, Bitty, no Assignment until you tell another secret anyway. And I won’t let them make you tell the GF.
Her words cling to the screen, promise and threat both. And a reminder that I have to dig deep for another secret and steel myself for another Assignment next week. That this whole thing is ongoing. My stomach turns, knowing I’ll have an Assignment bigger than the one before. And that I’ll want to complete it. There was a mini high from typing the words Assignment completed today, and I want that again.
An hour has passed by the time I hear Paul slip back inside. I’m scanning LBC and alternately clicking back to chat and waiting for Joe to sign on, which he hasn’t, again.
“Hey, chickadee,” Paul says, peeking his head in. I click out of LBC so fast, you’d think a gun went off.
“Hey, Paul.”
“Sorry you had to hear that.”
“Wasn’t listening,” I say. I keep my eyes on the screen. I don’t really want to enter into a father-daughter conversation right now.
“Having a baby’s a big adjustment, huh?” he says. Out of the corner of my eye I see him lean against the doorframe and cross one foot over the other. He’s settling in.
“Yeah . . .”
“Been a big year for all of us.”