The Way I Used to Be Page 12

  “No, it’s stupid. You should laugh at me. I’m the reason the town had to put up fences at the end of all the streets in my neighborhood.”

  That makes him laugh even harder. Me too.

  Then I start thinking about everything that came after.

  That was the day I fell in love with Kevin—or what I thought was love, with the person I thought he was. And he knew it too. And he used it to get to me. This was the day I wish I could go back to—the day I need to undo to stop it all from happening. It was so hot, and the air so thick, it felt like my lungs couldn’t even breathe it in. Mara and I were just two twelve-year-olds in our pathetic two-piece bathing suits, which revealed nothing because we basically had nothing, drawing with sidewalk chalk in my driveway, ice-cream-sandwich ice cream dripping down our arms and legs.

  We were drawing suns with smiley faces and rainbows and trees and hideous, artless flowers. We played tic-tac-toe a few times, but it was boring because no one ever won. We made a hopscotch court, but the cement was on fire, too hot to hop on. I wrote in big bubbly pink letters, across the driveway:

  MARA LUVS CAELIN

  I only did it to embarrass her. So then Mara swung her two long braids over her shoulders and hunkered down with a fat lump of pastel blue. In huge block letters she wrote:

  EDY LOVES KEVIN

  Which caused me to scream at the top of my lungs and throw the stick of white at her, which missed, of course, and shattered into a million tiny slivers that were from then on useless, which was all right because white was always boring anyway. And then I said, “Mara, you should really marry Caelin. Then we’d be sisters and that would be so awesome!”

  “Yeah, I guess.” She frowned. “But I think Kevin’s cuter.”

  “He is not. Besides, Kevin isn’t my brother, so if you married him, we wouldn’t be sisters.”

  “You’re just saying that so you can marry Kevin.”

  “Well, I can’t marry my own brother—that would be disgusting!”

  “Oh yeah,” she realized, as if those two were our only options in the entire world. Our world was small—way too small—even for twelve-year-olds.

  “So, you marry my brother and I’ll marry Kevin and then we’ll be sisters and Kev and Cae will be brothers. It makes sense because everyone already thinks they’re brothers anyway.”

  She considered this for a moment, then said, “Yeah, okay.”

  Now that we had our lives all figured out, I asked, “You wanna ride bikes?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  We tried not to let our feet touch the molten pavement as we ran inside the house to throw on our shorts and flip-flops. Mara’s dad finally left for good that summer. There was a lot of fighting going on at home. So she spent most days at my house even though she was the one with the swimming pool. She agreed to almost anything as long as it kept her out of her house and away from her parents. So, when I said marry my brother, she said okay. When I said let’s ride bikes, she said okay. And when I said let’s ride our bikes as fast as we can down the big scary steep hill at the end of my street so that we could see if there was a train going by on the railroad tracks at the bottom, she said okay.

  It was not one of my brightest ideas, I’ll admit. The last thing I remember hearing before plummeting to my near-death was the sound of Mara screaming. The last thing I saw was the rotted gray wood of the railroad ties, flying toward my face at an enormous speed. My skull clunked against the steel rail with a dull thud. And then everything went dark.

  When my eyes opened, I was staring up at an impossibly bright sky and my legs were tangled in my bike. My glasses were gone. And I felt water dripping down my face. I raised the arm that was still capable of moving. It was covered in dirt and hundreds of tiny cuts. I touched my head. Red water. Lots of red water. And then I heard my name being called from far, far away. I closed my eyes again.

  “What the hell were you two doing?” It was Kevin’s voice, loud, close.

  “We wanted to see a train go by.” Mara, innocent.

  “Edy, can you hear me?” Kevin, his hands on my face.

  “Uh . . .” was all I could moan. I opened my eyes long enough to see him take his T-shirt off and press it against my head. I felt his hands on one of my legs. Which one, I couldn’t even tell.

  “Edy, Edy, try to move your leg, okay? If you can move it, it’s not broken. Try,” he demanded.

  “Is it? Is it moving?” I think I asked out loud. I didn’t hear an answer.

  And then I was weightless. He carried me up the hill and then he laid me down on the grass. He called 911, even.

  I decided that night with Mara, I was definitely marrying him. The damage: a fractured left wrist, a sprained ankle, a thousand scrapes and bruises, a broken pinkie, fifteen stitches in my forehead, and one utterly demolished ten-speed bike. And, of course, a severe delusion about the kind of person Kevin truly was. You were very lucky and very, very stupid, I was told over and over and over that day.

  “You’re lucky there wasn’t a train coming!” Josh’s voice says, pulling me back into the present. My eyes refocus on his bedroom ceiling. He’s still laughing. I had stopped.

  “Am I?” I accidentally say out loud. If there had been a train coming, then I would have been killed or at least seriously and irreparably injured. And 542 days later I would have been lying in either a grave or a hospital somewhere, rotting away or hooked up to machines and not in my bed with Kevin in the next room and me thinking he was the greatest person in the entire world, incapable of hurting me in any way, because, after all, he had saved the day. Maybe if that day never happened, maybe I wouldn’t have become so smitten, so pathetically infatuated. Maybe I wouldn’t have flirted with him over a game of Monopoly earlier that night. And maybe I would’ve screamed when I found him in my bed at 2:48 in the morning, instead of doing nothing at all. And maybe it was essentially all my fault for acting like I liked him, for actually liking him.

  “Of course you are,” I hear a dim voice say through the fog in my mind. But now his face has changed to serious. I can’t remember the last thing either of us said.

  “I am what?” I ask.

  “Lucky!” he says impatiently.

  “Oh, right. Yeah, I know.”

  “Then why would you even say that? That’s not funny.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s really not. I hate when you say stuff like that.”

  “Okay, I know!” I snap at him.

  He doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he’s mad. Mad because I’m always getting upset with him for no reason, saying fucked-up things, or just being generally weird. He doesn’t say anything else. He just rolls away and lies there next to me. Now he’s the one staring at the ceiling and I’m the one on my side, facing him, wanting him to look at me. I put my head on his chest, try to pretend things are okay still, pretend I’m not a freak. Reluctantly, he puts his arm around me. But I can’t take the silence, can’t take the thought of him being mad.

  So I whisper, “Tell me another secret.”

  But he’s quiet.

  After a while, a very painfully silent while, I think maybe he has fallen asleep, so I pretend to be sleeping too. But then I feel him press his face into my hair and breathe. Quietly, almost inaudibly, he whispers, “I love you.” His big secret. I squeeze my eyes shut as tight as I can and pretend not to hear—pretend not to care.

  After I’m sure he’s really fallen asleep, I sneak out as quietly as possible.

  “SO WHAT ARE WE gonna do for your birthday this year, Edy?” Mara asks me at my locker after school the next day.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just go out to eat or something,” I tell her as I pack up my things for homework.

  “Oh my God, Edy. Look, look, look,” Mara says quietly, barely moving her mouth, smacking me in the arm over and over.

  “What?” I turn around. Josh is walking down the hall, headed straight for us. “Oh God,” I mutter under my breath.

  “Edy, shut
up, and be nice!” Mara says low, just as he approaches earshot. She looks at him with this enormous smile on her face. “Hi!”

  He gives her one of those winning smiles of his, and she giggles—giggles.

  “Hi!” he returns her greeting with the same level of enthusiasm. Then he turns to me and it’s just a dull, “Hey.”

  I don’t know what to do. Two totally opposite worlds are in the process of colliding right at this moment, and I’m stuck in the middle.

  “So, Joshua . . . Miller, right?” Mara says, as if she doesn’t always refer to him by his full name.

  “Yeah—well, Josh. And you are?”

  “Mara,” she responds.

  “Oh, right, Mara. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “You too.”

  They both look at me, like I’m supposed to somehow know how to shepherd this mess. When I don’t say anything, Mara takes over: “So, Josh, we were just talking about what we’re gonna do for Edy’s birthday tomorrow.”

  “Your birthday’s tomorrow?” he asks, his eyes searching mine.

  Mara frowns at me. “Edy, you didn’t tell him your birthday’s tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, Edy must’ve forgotten to mention it,” Josh answers. “Just like Edy must’ve forgotten to say good-bye before she snuck out of my house last night,” he says in this way that tells me he’s not going to let it go, not going to just sit back and take it this time.

  “Well, um,” Mara begins, uncomfortably, “I guess I probably have somewhere to be, so . . .” Pause. “I’m gonna go there now. It was great to meet you, really,” she tells Josh with a sweet, sincere smile.

  “Yeah, definitely,” he responds, like he genuinely means it.

  As she walks away she looks back at me over her shoulder with her lips tight and her eyes wide, and she just points her finger at me, like You’d better not fuck this up!

  “It was nice to finally meet one of your friends.”

  “So, what are you doing here?” I ask, ignoring his comment.

  “You know, I’m really sick of your rules, okay? We need to talk. And we need to talk now.”

  “Fine. Can we go somewhere a little more private, at least?” I look around, taking note of all the people watching us.

  He takes my hand. I pull away from him involuntarily. He looks at me like he’s hurt, but just holds on tighter, leading us down the hall. We stop in the stairwell and he sits down on one of the steps. I stand more still than I ever have before. I’m scared. Really scared he’s about to leave me. And more scared because I don’t want him to.

  “Will you sit?”

  My heart and thoughts race, bleeding together in a cacophony of why, why, why? “Why?” I finally say out loud, my shaky voice betraying the look of cool, calm collectedness I’m attempting to secure on my face.

  “I told you already. I want to talk. I’m serious.”

  I hold my breath as I sit down next to him. He turns to face me, but I interrupt before he can even begin. “Just tell me now—are you trying to end this?”

  “No! Not at all. I just—I can’t go on like this. I can’t have this be all there is. We have something more. You have to see that, right?”

  “I told you before, I don’t—the whole boyfriend-girlfriend thing—I’m not comfortable with—”

  “I’m saying that I’m not comfortable, Eden!” he interrupts, raising his voice, suddenly upset. Then quieter, “I’m not comfortable with us sleeping together every night and then acting like we don’t even know each other at school. You won’t come out with me and meet my friends. Clearly, you don’t want to introduce me to your friends. We’ve never been anywhere together except my bedroom. I mean, why can’t we at least go to your house sometimes?” He pauses, taking my hand. “Why do I always feel like we’re sneaking around?”

  “I don’t know,” I say quietly, feeling so exposed.

  “Yes, you do, so just be honest with me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, is there a reason that we should be sneaking around?” he asks, his real question finally emerging.

  “What reason?”

  He looks at me like I’m totally dense.

  “What, like another person?” I clarify.

  “Yeah, like another person.”

  I stare at him and wish that I could somehow make him understand everything. Everything that’s happened, everything I think and feel, about him, about me, about us together. How my heart—that stupid, flimsy organ—aches violently for him. But it’s too much for words, so I just utter that one syllable, the one that matters most right now: “No.”

  He exhales as if he was holding his breath. Obviously, that was not at all the answer he was expecting. “Then if there’s no one else, why does it have to be like this?”

  “I don’t know, because then everything gets complicated and screwed up and—”

  “This is complicated, though,” he says, raising his voice slightly. “This is screwed up.” Then quieter, “It is.”

  I can’t argue with that, so I just look down at my hands in my lap.

  “Look, I don’t want to fight or anything, I just—I just care about you. I really do.” He kisses my lips and then, quietly, with his mouth next to my ear he whispers, “That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  I should say it back. I care about you too! I care, damn it, I fucking care—I want to scream it. “I—I—” Care, say it.

  He lifts his head, a small glint of hope in his eyes.

  “Look, you don’t understand. It’s not like this is easy for me, I can’t just—I can’t—” My voice squeaks, mouselike, as I try to make my brain and mouth work in concert. I feel the tears in my throat, filling my eyes. He looks confused, worried, and I think, almost relieved—relieved that I’m really not so tough, not so hard.

  “Okay,” he breathes, dumbfounded by this sudden, unprecedented display of emotion. “Baby, don’t—” he says softly. “Look, I know. It’s okay, come here.” He pulls me into him, and I let my body fall against his side. And I don’t even care who sees us right now. I just hold on to him as hard as I can. Everything that’s been coming between us seems to dissolve, and for once I don’t feel like a complete liar. For once I feel calm, safe. Terrifyingly safe.

  “Hey, let me take you out for your birthday—out to dinner or something.”

  “Okay,” I hear myself answer right away.

  “Seriously?” he asks, pulling away from me, holding my shoulders at arm’s length. “I’m gonna need to get that in writing.” He reaches for his backpack like he’s getting a pen and paper.

  “Stop,” I say with a laugh, smacking him in the arm. “I said yes.”

  “Okay, it’s a date!”

  His hands find their way around my body with a practiced fluency. “You know . . . all this talking,” he mumbles as he kisses my neck. “You wanna come over?”

  “Tomorrow, okay? After dinner, right?” I smile.

  He moans like it’s agony, but then smiles and whispers, “Okay.”

  When I arrive at my locker the next morning, I’m greeted by Mara’s handiwork. She has gone all out decorating my locker. It was tradition. She taped up balloons and crepe paper and bows and curly string and a sign that reads: HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY. I cringe.

  I tear the sign down as fast as I can, but I have a feeling it’s too late, that he’s already seen it. I discreetly slip the piece of paper into the garbage on my way to homeroom. I hear footsteps jogging up behind me and I take a deep breath because I know they belong to him and I know he knows, somehow. He pulls me by the elbow into the boys’ bathroom with this wild look in his eyes.

  “Get out!” he yells at the kid who is peeing into one of the urinals at the wall. To the right of the boy’s head I notice these black letters glaring at me, the fluorescent lights bouncing off the grimy powder-blue tiles: EDEN MCSLUTTY IS something illegible—it had been scribbled out by a marker that was not quite opaque enough. As soon as the kid had scrambled out of there, f
orgetting to even zip up his pants, Josh is in my face.

  “How could you do this? After everything, how can you still be lying to me? You said you were sixteen. I’m eighteen, you knew that! I trusted you!”

  “I didn’t—” I was going to remind him that, technically, I never told him that, but I can see that he’s not about to hear it. He just paces back and forth, ranting, fuming.

  “I mean, fourteen? Fourteen? Fourteen!” he shouts, the volume elevating with each repetition.

  “Calm down. It’s not that big of a deal.” I had never expected him to be this mad about it—age isn’t something we had even really discussed. Besides, there are plenty of senior guys who date freshmen—that would be the same age difference, if not more. Nobody cares about these things.

  “It’s a big fucking deal! All those nights—in my bed—you were fourteen. Right?” His words are so sharp they sting. “Right?” he repeats.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Do you realize that I could be accused of raping you? Statutory rape, Eden, ever hear of it?”

  I laugh—wrong thing to do.

  “This isn’t funny—this is not funny! This is serious, this is my life here. I’m an adult, okay, legally an adult! How can you be laughing?” he shouts, horrified at me.

  How can I be laughing? I can laugh because I know what the real crime is. I know that the kind of wrong he’s talking about is nothing. That people get away with truly wrong things every day. I know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about. That’s how I can be laughing.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I tell him, trying to stop my mouth from smiling, “but you’re being ridiculous. You didn’t”—I lower my voice, inhale, exhale, inhale again—“you didn’t . . . rape me.” There, I said it. The word I’ve been spending so much time and energy not saying, not even thinking. Of course he couldn’t appreciate what it took for me to utter that grotesque four-letter word out loud. He just continues, his tirade only gaining momentum.

  “Yeah, of course I know that, but it doesn’t matter. Your parents could still press charges against me, Eden.”