“Yeah, I guess so,” I sigh out. It’s funny how much I said to Mrs. Drake this afternoon and how little I want to say to Paul right now. “You really should cut back,” I say.
“Et tu, Tabby?” I hear him grinning. I don’t like it.
“Or whatever you want. I don’t know.” It seems like anything I say is going to turn into some long talk with him, and I really can’t right now. There’s a pause, and I almost wonder if he’s left his place on the doorframe, so I turn at last, taking my eyes fully off the computer for the first time. But he’s still there, and when my eyes are finally on his bloodshot ones, I see just how crazy-sad he looks.
“You really seem so different lately, kitty cat,” he says, his mouth turning down into a frown. “You’ve really changed.”
It sounds so much like what Jemma said to me at the dance in the spring, so much like what Mrs. Drake said this afternoon, that it turns me cold. My arms, inside my stomach, the space between my shoulder blades—all icy.
“That’s what I’ve heard,” I say, giving him one pinched look before turning all the way back to my computer screen.
Paul sighs, the way other fathers do, then he’s gone from the doorframe.
ZED: We need another secret from our newbie. You’re having fun with us, right?
I think of the way Joe looked at me after we kissed—like I was brave and bold and sexy—and know I wouldn’t have gone for it without the extra push. I wouldn’t have been able to be that girl. I think of Brenda’s wedding dress photo, and Agnes’s story about interrupting a phone call between her mother and her therapist and admitting she’d been listening in on them for months while they spilled her secrets to each other. I think of the perfect shapes the red script in the margins of The Secret Garden makes. I think of Star’s knees.
I can’t quite bring myself to post another official secret. I have a week.
BITTY: Soon.
ELFBOY: The tattoo hurt.
I mean, damn, it’s needles and ink drilling right into your skin, you know? Of course that shit’s gonna hurt.
Got it on my shoulder. Not the blade, in the back, but the rounded part in front, the place where you get sunburned. Figured that part of my body would be hearty enough to take it.
Not to mention I’ll be able to cover it up with a T-shirt anytime, but it isn’t so hidden that it’d be pointless. So you know, a lot of thought went into it.
The biker dude with the leather dog collar around his neck knew I was a kid and too young, but when I told him what I wanted, the word PRIDE in rainbow colors on my shoulder, he took pity.
“I hear you, dude,” he said. “I got a brother who, you know.”
“Is gay?” I said. Not to be obnoxious, but cuz I didn’t want him to feel like he couldn’t say the word around me.
He nodded, kinda like a Buddha, all wise and slow and contemplative. Don’t know how I found my way to a gay-friendly, totally Zen biker tattoo artist, but there you go. These things happen and you just gotta go with it and say thank you to the universe or whatever.
Yeah, that’s something the biker dude said, actually. We had a good long talk while he was drilling needles into my body.
I didn’t exactly come out to my parents, but I did as much as I could. I hope that’s okay, Zed. I’m doing the best I can here. I told them I got a tattoo. Sat them down and said, you know, don’t be mad, blah blah blah, but I got a tattoo.
My dad kept shaking his head. My mother covered her mouth with her hand and started to tear up.
“Oh, honey,” she kept saying, over and over, just like that. “Oh, honey.” I’ll hear that in my head on repeat for a while, I think.
They asked me what it was. What the tattoo was.
And I showed them.
Up in my room now.
So, there you go.
Assignment completed?
Twelve.
I open the café alone the next morning.
It’s not something I do often, but Paul slept on the couch in the den, and Cate’s not feeling well, and I’m in need of a coffee after staying up so late last night that I can feel the space behind my eyes. And that space hurts.
This morning, Tea Cozy is drenched in that early-morning sunshine, the kind that seeps in all soft and eventually goes hard and overbright, surprising you in the way only violent natural light can.
I have a constant stream of nerves now. They haven’t subsided really since Joe and I kissed at the gym. Maybe even before that, when I got the Assignment. Nervousness is becoming part of my blood, and I could probably lift a car from all the adrenaline.
My stomach grumbles. I think my body knows I’m at Tea Cozy, and it wants a muffin and a coffee and a moment to actually wake up. So I pump up the tunes over the shitty speaker system. The Beach Boys. Not even the really respected stuff. I go for “Kokomo,” knowing nothing else will even make a dent in my foul mood.