“I made a huge mistake Saturday,” Paul says, sighing so the words are a kind of waterfall of noise.
“Isn’t she supposed to kick you out?” I ask. In the two minutes since Cate spoke to me, I’ve thought of seventeen different important questions. Like, isn’t it totally counterintuitive to leave me with Paul after what happened? Shouldn’t Cate be vehemently stepping in to protect me from his influence? Isn’t she concerned about my new rebellious attitude? I look up to catch her eye, but she’s facing the other direction.
“This new baby . . . ,” Paul begins, but he can’t seem to get past those three words, and he starts picking off pieces of my peanut butter cookie and channeling all his energy into that.
“I know,” I say. “You want to do it all differently. You want to do it right. I got it.”
“Your mom’s ready to be an adult,” Paul concludes, not answering a single one of my questions but creating space for more to pop up.
The line at Tea Cozy is getting longer, snaking past my little table with Paul. He tries to ignore the crowd and turns my papers toward him, checking out what I’m reading and writing with fake interest. “I can look over your paper tonight,” he says. He has not checked my homework for me since fifth grade.
“Yeah, okay.”
“Don’t bother her about this stuff, okay? Let her do her thing for a few days.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“I’m going to cut back,” he says.
“Yeah, okay.”
“Definitely will stop before the baby comes,” he says.
I don’t say yeah, okay again.
“She thinks I’m a lost cause,” I say, clearing my throat before finishing. I take a sip of the coffee Cate brought over, to prove my point. It’s more bitter than usual. “But we all grow, all the time, you know? There’s no such thing as a lost cause.” My voice rises, to make extra sure this last thing has recorded. Life by Committee needs to know I get it.
“You’re my girl, Bitty,” Paul says, which is maybe him admitting that Cate does think I’m already lost to her, the way he is.
“I’m my own girl,” I say, and I don’t mean it cruelly, but his face collapses a bit when the words hit him, and I hear it the way he must have. Like I’m leaving them, like I’m not one of them anymore.
Paul gives a sad little nod and kisses my forehead on his way back to the trenches, and he doesn’t smell like weed, which means he at least hasn’t smoked up today.
I post the audio on LBC that night. I play with the sound levels a little, to distort my voice and my parents’ voices. It’s more fun than anything else, plus this could be my signature style. I want to have artistry in my postings, like Star.
The first response is not a usual supportive message.
STAR: Hey. Careful.
ZED: What’s that?
STAR: Just saying. Anonymity and stuff. Bitty’s new still. Naive.
ZED: We aren’t careful here. Are you being careful? That why you’re past deadline? You have a completed Assignment yet?
STAR: Living life, Zed.
The conversation ends abruptly, after that comment. I stare at it for a while, wondering if I should participate. Wondering if Star is getting into trouble. Wondering what happens next. I consider asking Star what I should be careful about, asking Zed if we are ever allowed to stop, if we ever graduate, proclaiming my devotion to the site, to This Way of doing things. Telling Star to push through and propose already.
I say nothing, though. I listen to my semidistorted audio file again and picture people all over the country doing the same. Only a few people, of course. Only my people.
I start a new post. Because it’s time. I have more work to do.
SECRET: If my best friend would take me back, I’d be her best friend again, even after all she did to me.
ZED: Hmm. Maybe you should destroy her. Get her kicked out of school. Do to her what she did to you. And then stop missing her, because we can’t live in the past. We have to move forward. Thoughts, everyone?
I have a different kind of sick feeling, reading the comment. Not the adrenaline, not the heart-leaping courage. Not even the nauseous fear. I don’t know if it was Star’s strange almost-warning, or the idea of letting go of Jemma for real, or having to do something large and aggressive and destructive, but I feel tired and ill, not inspired.
I don’t reply. I don’t even know what I’d do. I’m sure Zed would have ideas. I’m sure they all would.
Twenty.
“There she is,” someone says to my back when I’m heading into assembly the next morning. I turn around, hoping it isn’t actually being said to me, but there’s Luke, grinning, glowing practically. He raises his eyebrows. Wiggles them. Apparently that’s his signature move. Even more depressing is the knowledge that it is currently working on a good half of the Circle Community population.
“Who’s your next target?” he says.
“Excuse me?”