“Language!” Cate says, and I want to strangle her because she can’t change everything about who our family is. She hands me the water and I gulp it down and Paul gives a sheepish smile because he doesn’t really know how one tiny lie can change everything.
“I was such a di—a jerk. I was a jerk. I forgot to get you a book in New York. It was too short a trip. And you had been so sad and I wanted to give you a lift, you know? So I found that at Recycled Books in town, and it seemed like something you’d love and that you’d love it even more if it was from New York. . . .” He shakes his head, and I well up with tears. A million or so of them.
“I just . . . I thought that book was from far away, you know? And I thought the person who wrote in it was some mysterious person who lived in, like, a loft in the Village and had all this special New York wisdom, you know?” I’m not ready to tell him the whole story, and I’m too breathless with tears and fear and the rush of knowledge and understanding to get more out anyway.
“Hey, maybe it still was! New Yorkers love Recycled Books! And Vermont in general, right? Who knows, right? Where that book came from?” Paul grabs my hands and squeezes and Cate nods along, partly agreeing with him and partly, I think, pleased with the man he is becoming.
“I have to go,” I say, wiping tears and blowing my nose and scrambling to get my stuff back into my bag. My fingers brush against the bag of weed and I have a grip of feeling in my chest. I guess, somehow, I still haven’t totally decided whether I will go through with the Assignment.
I can’t. I know I can’t.
Except: If I leave LBC, I will be really, truly alone. No Elise. No Joe. No Jemma. No Life by Committee. I can’t quite stomach it yet.
“You’re going back to school, right?” Paul says.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, but I’m lying, and as soon as I get in my car, I speed in the opposite direction. To the house with the purple door. Sasha Cotton’s house.
Sasha’s car isn’t here, there’s no sign of Sasha anywhere, so I wait in the driveway. She has to come home eventually.
An hour passes, two, but I don’t even think about giving up. I wait it out, and I can’t feel time passing at all, to be honest. I turn up the music in my car and thank the universe that my phone is out of batteries so I can’t spend the afternoon looking up everything Agnes/Sasha has been saying and posting over the last year that she’s been on the site. I can untangle the whole mess later.
I do sort of halfway consider smoking the weed in my backpack. But that’s not me, and I know that now.
I know that Zed is counting down the last few hours on my Assignment, and that it’s probably strange that I have suddenly vanished. I make my mind veer away from that too, though. I focus on the mountains. I haven’t done that since I found LBC, and I know it doesn’t work as well, it’s not really a solution to all the problems in my life right now, but they’re there and they’re majestic and snow covered and will exist regardless of what happens in the next few hours.
By the time Sasha’s car turns into her driveway, my countdown is over and Zed must be sending out smoke signals, trying to figure out what happened to me. Sasha drives a mint-green super-old convertible that her mother drove around for years before Sasha got it. It’s been a staple in town for as long as I can remember, and it’s either totally lame or completely sexy, depending on whether I am feeling annoyed with or jealous of Sasha Cotton at any given moment.
I get out of my car while she parks hers. She’s all streaky-faced and messy-haired, and I hate her for being such a sexy, sad person. She sighs as she slams her car door, and she tucks her hair behind her ears as she walks toward me.
I had hours to think about what to say, but I didn’t actually make a decision. Every configuration of the sentence “I know all your secrets” sounds ridiculous and soap-opera-y and lame. But I have to say something, because Sasha Cotton doesn’t ask any questions. She shifts one hip to the side and lets her hair fall back over her eyes and waits for me to speak.
“You’re Agnes,” I say, looking at the mountains so I don’t have to look at her face. “I’m Bitty.”
There’s a long pause and I shift my eyes from the mountains to Sasha’s face, but there’s nothing written there. She’s a blank stare, a total and complete lack of understanding.
“I didn’t know it was you,” I say, and hand over her copy of The Secret Garden. There’s a shudder of recognition as she flips through the pages.
“This is mine,” she says. I wonder if Sasha Cotton smokes. If that’s why her voice always sounds like it’s telling a secret.