ROXIE: Honestly, just telling you guys made it feel more manageable. It’s like Agnes says. You have to really commit to the group if you want it to WORK.
STAR: TRUTH. Gotta go big. Gotta do it for real. Remember that girl, Lucky15? Said she did Assignments, but we found out she didn’t. Told bullshit, unimportant secrets. You just knew there was more underneath the surface. And if she’d really told us, it might have worked out, you know? For her? But she didn’t really DO it.
ZED: I’m proud of you, Roxie.
AGNES: What happened to that Lucky15 anyway?
STAR: I mean, nothing. That’s the point, right? You can have SOMETHING happen, or you can have NOTHING happen. I vote for something, every time.
ROXIE: Staying is an active choice.
ZED: Staying is THE active choice.
STAR: Lucky15 had to leave the group. She tried to reenter a few months later. Everything was a disaster. Like, her life. But rules are rules.
I discard all the little, unimportant secrets I thought I might tell. I decide to write out a real secret instead. The kind of secret that is bigger than me and Joe and ridiculous Sasha. Bigger than Mrs. Drake. Bigger than anything Lucky15 might have said before she failed and left the group. I won’t get kicked out. I won’t let my secrets float around on the internet, without any point. I won’t risk these brave, exciting, boundaryless people turning on me. I won’t become some girl who does nothing and is nothing and lives a nothing life.
I tilt the screen down in case anyone’s peeking. Paul changes the music to Metallica, and the Tea Cozy vibe shifts dramatically away from morning sleepiness and the calming sound of people turning the oversize pages of the New York Times. People sigh and tense up and jiggle their feet. Couples who were just sitting there splitting the paper start arguing. And Paul’s king of it all, frowning even as he serves his favorite regulars. He sings along with the chorus. He keeps looking over at me like he’s expecting me to be gone. Like he’s wanting me to be gone. Like Metallica is enough to get me to do whatever he wants.
Like I’m weak and predictable. Except I’m not. Not anymore.
I wait until he looks at me for the tenth time, and I slam my coffee mug down and raise my eyebrows, like if you have something to say, come over and say it. He waves his hands, like I’m a mosquito and not his daughter, and I make the come over here look even bigger, more obvious on my face.
He does finally come over.
“Seriously. What’s the point of your guidance counselor if she’s only going to make it worse?” he says. “I thought you liked her.”
I can’t quite process what he’s saying. “Mrs. Drake? No one likes Mrs. Drake.”
“You can’t hate everyone, Tabby,” he says. “I thought she could help.”
“That was you? Telling her to talk to me?” I say. I know Jemma and Alison said something too, but Paul must have made it way worse.
“I made her coffee. She had some concerns. I told her she should chat with you. You’ve become some teenager who hates everything and can’t talk to anyone.” Paul rubs his eyes and then his hair and then his scraggly beard. And I know he’s not doing so hot. But I also don’t care.
Maybe I am the angry teenager. But maybe I have a reason to be angry. I give him a dagger-stare and a sigh so loud, it makes people turn to look at us.
“That. Is. So. Messed. Up,” I say. I think I growl a little. Paul takes a step back, then another. He throws his hands up in the air and stomps away. I’m pretty sure I hear him dropping a mug and yelping from burning his hand on something, but I don’t care.
I. Don’t. Care.
I bang on my keyboard.
I can’t say this to anyone I actually know—I’d never want the town buzzing about Cate and Paul. I almost don’t want to say it to myself. But in the anonymous world of LBC, I can say anything.
I can get solutions to problems I’m scared to admit I have. I can change the bullshit things I’ve accepted lately.
I can do something about Paul.
Secret: My dad’s a stoner. Okay: An addict, really. It’s getting bad. And if he doesn’t stop before my mom has a baby, she’s gonna make him move out.
I almost don’t know it’s true until it’s written there, until I’ve made it public to Agnes and Brenda and Zed and the rest of them. Whoever they are. They’re mine.
Thirteen.
After the secret is out there, I decide I can leave Tea Cozy and go to school and forget about Paul for the rest of the day. It’s out of my hands.
My heart’s a little fluttery, but I’m getting used to that. I’m maybe even starting to like it.