The Way I Used to Be

by Amber Smith

“What?” he interrupts. “You just what?”

  “I just don’t have anything to say.” I shrug.

  “You don’t have anything to say? How is that possible? How can you possibly not have anything to say?” he almost shouts.

  “Okay, well, obviously you have something you’d like to say, so why don’t you just go ahead?”

  “Fine. It meant something to me—it means something to me. There. I’m not afraid to admit it.” And then he just stares at me, waiting, wishing for me to spit his words right back at him.

  “Okay, Steve. I’ll be honest. It didn’t mean anything to me.” Truth? Lie? I can’t even tell anymore. I know I’m being cold and heartless, but I can’t stop myself. He touched. He got hurt. He comes back for more. He gets it. Not my problem.

  “I don’t even believe that. I was there, okay. I know that it did.”

  “Look, it’s not your fault, it’s just the—”

  “What is this?” he interrupts, all jumpy and irritated, shoving his fingers back through his hair, almost like he wants to rip his hair out.

  “What is what?”

  “This! This act,” he says, waving his hand at me. He clenches his jaw and his nostrils flare as he starts to breathe heavier. “What’s with this act? What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Maybe this works with other guys, but it’s different with us, so just stop, okay?” He takes a step closer. I take a step back.

  “Why? Because you think you’re different? Don’t lie to yourself. You’re no different. You. Are. Exactly. The same. God, this whole damn thing is so fucking predictable, it makes me want to die!” My words carry through the empty hall, encircling us, holding us motionless in their orbit.

  I look at him, turning shades of white, shades of hurt, and I feel my face start to smile.

  “You know, I can take weird,” he says quietly, the muscles in his face flexing and twitching. Then quieter, “I can take fucked up.” And his eyes, they fill with water. Oh God, his voice shakes. “But you’re just a . . . slut.”

  If words are weapons, if they could wound physically, then he just shot a hundred-pound cannonball through the center of my body. The kind of artillery built to take out a battleship, and certainly equipped to sink a stupid, mean little girl.

  In shock and disbelief, I utter the word, “What?”

  Steve’s not supposed to say stuff like that to me.

  He steps closer. I’m expecting him to scream, which makes it so much worse when he only whimpers quietly, “You’re a fucking bitch. And a slut. And I can’t believe I ever thought you were anything else.” The words come out through his teeth, and he’s unable to stop the tears, like it hurt him to have to say it, even more than it was meant to hurt me.

  “I—” I touch his arm. I don’t know what to do. He snatches his whole body away from me, though. “Steve, don’t—” Be mad, don’t be hurt by me, don’t leave angry and destroyed. Don’t you know I’m not worth it? I want to grab him and hold on to him and tell him I’m sorry. I want to do that even more than I want to run. Because Cameron was right, he doesn’t deserve this. “Steve, Steve . . . please don’t—”

  “Fuck. Off,” he chokes out, wiping his eyes on his sleeves. He turns around and starts walking off down the hall, past the classroom, getting smaller in the dim light, around the corner, and gone.

  I walk in the opposite direction. I slink down the stairwell at the other end of the hall. Into the dirty, forsaken basement bathroom where there are no windows but it’s still okay to smoke because no self-respecting teacher would be caught dead in here. I lock myself in. It smells like sewer. Perfect for a mouse, a little rat, like me. In the stall, I sink into the floor, press my back against the cold tiles, and light a cigarette. My breathing echoes. I flick the ashes into the stained toilet next to my face. I close my eyes and I wait. And wait.

  I think about Josh again. Not anything in particular. Just little things, like the way he would smile at me, or the sound of his voice, the way I could sometimes make him laugh, the way he could sometimes make me feel so good, so free, so myself. How I thought things were so complicated with him. But they were so easy compared to this, compared to everything else.

  I imagine him coming here. Finding me all the way down here in the basement bathroom dungeon like some knight, like some Tin Man in rusting armor, holding a bouquet of dandelions, ready to slay my darkest, most deranged dragons. He’d bust through the door and say something perfect like, “Baby, what’s wrong? Don’t cry. Let’s get the hell outta here. You and me. I’ll take you anywhere. We can run away. We can start over, we can be—”

  But something interrupts the fantasy, and suddenly I feel my body again, gravity pulling me down, anchoring me to the cold cement floor. Something pinches my thigh, bringing me back to reality, pinching harder. And harder, burning, damn—no, not pinching. I open my eyes to see that my cigarette has burned all the way down to the filter, causing the cherry to fall off and burn through my pants like acid, right down to my skin.

  “Shit!” I whisper-shout, smacking my leg to try to extinguish the stupidity.

  Then the bell rings, screaming through the walls and the ceiling, vibrating through the whole building—through me. I wait until the distant noise of shouting and feet running and lockers clanging has passed.

  I walk back into the classroom to find Amanda picking my backpack up off the floor. She’s being so gentle with it, it’s unsettling. Everyone else has gone except for her and Snarky. I linger in the doorway, listening.

  “So, you’re what, friends with her now? That’s seriously fucked,” Snarky says under her breath.

  “Not friends. Just—I don’t know, I guess I’m trying not to hate her.” The way Amanda says “her,” I know somehow that they’re talking about me because I get this pounding in my chest. I freeze, stuck between fight and flight. “I’m trying to be Zen, okay?” she continues. “Isn’t that what you’re always preaching?”

  “Even after she . . . ?” Snarky asks her quietly. “There’s a limit to being all Zen and shit.”

  Amanda shrugs. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “After I what?” I ask, stepping forward, the decision made for me. I’ll fight.

  Amanda turns to look at me, startled. “Oh! Nothing,” she answers quickly.

  “No, what? What the hell did I ever do to you? I really want to know. I would love to know,” I hear myself say, with a little laugh in my throat, feeling close to the edge of something, like I could say anything right now, do anything, and not give a damn about the repercussions.

  “Just forget it,” Amanda tells me, shaking her head.

  But Snarky pipes up: “You and Kevin.”

  “Wh—what?” The word sticks in my throat. Me and Kevin don’t belong in the same sentence, in the same thought, in the same fucking galaxy.

  “Shut up!” Amanda snaps at her friend. “I was going to pick up your things for you,” she says to me.

  “What are you talking about?” I demand from Snarky.

  “I’m talking about you and her brother—”

  “Fucking shut up!” Amanda interrupts. “I said I don’t care!”

  “Doing it,” Snarky finishes, looking me up and down like I really am a totally slutty disgusting whore.

  I can barely hang on to a thought long enough to get the words out of my mouth. “I—I—what? I never—why would you say that?”

  “Please,” Snarky says with a laugh, “it’s like, just, a known thing.”

  I refocus on Amanda, trying to speak instead of vomit. “You tell people this? Why would you make something like that up?”

  “I’m not making it up—he told me!” She starts to get that hateful look in her eye again. “So you don’t have to act like—”

  “I never. Never. I never, you fucking liar! I hate him. I would never! I hate him more than anyone in the entire world. He disgusts me. In fact, you disgust me! You disgust me becaus
e you make me think of him!” I’m pointing and thrashing my arms around wildly, and they start to back away from me, I realize, because I’m getting closer.

  “He said that you and him—” Amanda starts to speak, but I can’t let her have one more word.

  “I wish he were dead, okay? I hope. He fucking. Dies. Nothing would make me happier than for something really horrible to happen to him. Do you get that?” I’m inches from her face now. Can’t stop moving toward her. “I mean, do you fucking get that?” I feel something savage and electrical flow through me, like my hands could strangle her, like they’re controlled by some part of my brain that’s immune to logic, the same part of my brain that’s allowing me to say these things, these fucked-up things that are just going to give me away. I could just . . . my hands. Reach out. God. For anything. To hurt.

  Next thing I know she’s on the floor.

  And her friend is screaming, “You fucking psycho, what the fuck?”

  And I’m screaming, “I’ll kill you if you ever say that again.” Amanda looks up at me, tears rolling down her cheeks. It makes her look just like her seven-year-old Mandy self, but still I can’t force myself to stop. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again—do you understand? Not to me, not to anyone. Or I swear to God. I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  I cry the entire way home from school. I just walk down the streets sobbing. Not caring who sees me, or what I must look like, or what anyone thinks. I get home and lock myself in my bedroom.

  I just lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

  I made Mara cry. I made Steve cry. I made Amanda cry.

  Anyone who has ever felt anything for me now hates me—after hours of dwelling on this, I’ve actually made myself physically ill.

  I don’t go to school the next day. Can’t face anyone. I’m sick, sick, sick, I tell Vanessa. She feels my forehead and tells me I’m burning up. I just sleep and sleep. And no one bothers me at all. All day and all night, it’s just me in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of consciousness.

  “CALM DOWN, HONEY, it’s going to be all right, I promise,” I hear Vanessa say in a dream. In it, I’m crying and she’s trying to take care of me, and I’m trying so hard to let her. I open my eyes. A dim light glows through the curtain. My alarm clock says 5:10 a.m.

  “Everything’s going to get straightened out, son, you’ll see,” Conner says, in a voice so tender, I question if I really am awake at all.

  “No, Dad—you weren’t there. I just don’t think so.” It’s Caelin, and it’s him who’s crying, not me. And I am awake, I’m sure.

  “Maybe you should call the Armstrongs, Conner,” Vanessa says, her voice muffled behind my locked bedroom door. The Armstrongs—Kevin—I heard that. I sit up fast, listen harder.

  “No! Don’t call them. Not yet . . . not until we know if—” Caelin pauses and then I hear him sniffling again. But Caelin shouldn’t be here. His winter break isn’t for another week. No, something’s not right.

  I unlock my door, small steps to the living room. No one hears me come in. My brother is sitting in the middle of the couch, head in hands, Vanessa in her bathrobe and slippers sitting next to him, arm draped across his back; Conner on his feet, hovering, a hand resting tentatively on his shoulder. They’re silent. Caelin’s body bobs up and down.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  They all turn their eyes to me. But they don’t say anything. Caelin drops his head back down into his lap. Vanessa’s chin quivers.

  “It’s Kevin, honey,” Conner finally tells me.

  “What—what did he do?”

  “Do?” Caelin spits at me. “He didn’t do anything!”

  “Shhshhshh,” Vanessa coos at him.

  “Okay, well, what happened?” I try instead.

  “It’s all going to be all right, so everybody just calm down,” Conner yells. “Edy, Kevin is . . . in a little bit of trouble, but it’s going to get straightened out soon enough.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I scratch my arm, the anxiety bubbling up under my skin.

  “This girl in our dorm is saying he raped her!” Caelin shouts. And then, at my lack of reaction, he adds, “He didn’t, obviously, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. The police came and—”

  I can’t hear anything else because someone is yelling inside my head, taking a mallet to my brain. Screaming, God, no, no, no, no. I feel like I might fall over, like I might just stop breathing altogether. That old familiar bullet inches its way in deeper. I think it’s headed for my heart this time. No, my stomach. I run for the bathroom. Make it just in time to lift the lid and throw up.

  I sit down on the cold tile floor. My head is pounding, like there’s literally a war going on inside my brain, complete with bombs and cannons and big guns and casualties. He did it. Of course he did it. There’s no question about that. But, did I do it too? I listened to him, I kept my mouth shut, and then he went and did it again, to someone else. Except this girl, whoever she is, she was brave, smart. Not like me. I am just the same sniveling coward I was then. I’m a mouse. I am a fucking mouse.

  On the other side of the door I hear some more sniffling and low, wordless whining. Gurgling sounds from the coffeepot. I emerge, hopefully not looking like someone just kicked my ass.

  “You okay, Minnie?” Conner asks, squeezing my shoulder a little too vigorously. Minnie, I haven’t heard that one in a while. How obscenely appropriate.

  “Not really,” I admit.

  “Don’t worry about school today.” He smiles. “We’re all taking a mental-health day. Sound good?”

  I nod, try to smile back.

  We sit around the house for hours, everyone looking devastated. Caelin’s a mess. Conner tries to act like everything’s okay. Vanessa vacillates between manic fidgeting and sitting too still. I feel like beating my head against the wall.

  I can’t imagine eating, but I help Vanessa make lunch anyway. She says it will help everyone feel better. I seriously doubt that. As we sit around the kitchen table, mostly just picking at our grilled cheese sandwiches and stirring our bowls of lumpy tomato soup, the story comes out disjointed and biased.

  Caelin tells us, “It’s his girlfriend. It just—it doesn’t even make sense—I mean, why would he need to rape someone he was already sleeping with?”

  It made sense to me, of course. He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.

  “She broke up with Kevin for some reason or other—I really don’t know—but it wasn’t a huge deal or anything. And Kevin asked her to come over the one night, because she was upset about the breakup, just to talk, and she says that’s when he ‘raped’ her.” He air quotes, and I want to lunge across the table and break his fingers off. “Kevin admitted to having sex with her—‘consensual’ sex.” He air quotes again.

  I don’t bother telling him that if he’s trying to make her the liar, then he doesn’t want to emphasize the word “consensual.”

  “She didn’t even report it for a couple of days,” he adds, as if this is some important piece of information, as if it means anything. “If it really happened, then why didn’t she report it right away?”

  Compared to how long I’ve waited, two days seems nearly instantaneous, two damn days is nothing.

  “And besides,” he continues, “I was there. I mean, I was right there in the next room. I would have known if something was happening. If she was seriously in trouble, she could’ve screamed, or called for me—I mean, we were friends too. And I didn’t hear anything!”

  Oh, my heart. Stops. If he only knew the things he was capable of not hearing from the next room.

  “Nothing at all,” he repeats. “And that’s exactly what I told the campus police when they questioned me last week. But then out of nowhere, they came last night—the real police, this time—and took him. That’s why I’m here—I didn’t know what else to do. I just can’t believe they can get away with this. They can�
��t just arrest someone for no reason, right? I cannot figure out why she would lie like this. She seemed so . . . normal.”

  “Maybe she’s not lying,” I finally blurt out, unable to hold it in any longer.

  “How can you even say that? Of course she’s lying!” Caelin looks like he’s about to climb over the table at me.

  “Well, they don’t just arrest someone for no reason, and you just said yourself you didn’t think she would lie,” I remind him.

  “No, I said I don’t know why she would lie, not that I didn’t think she was. And I don’t know, Eden, maybe she just decided to invent some fucked-up story because she felt bad—breaking up with a guy and then sleeping with him anyway—for being a slut.”

  “Caelin, we don’t talk like that at the table,” Vanessa scolds gently.

  But he ignores her. Instead he looks at me and mumbles under his breath, “You can understand that, can’t you?”

  My mouth opens. Out of shock or to speak, I don’t know which. I can’t even think in words—can’t breathe, can’t feel—but somehow my voice finds them anyway, and they explode off my tongue, those perfect words: “Fuck. You.”

  “Fuck you too!” Caelin matches me, in flawless reflex.

  Conner slams his fist down on the table, rattling the spoons in their bowls. Rattling my heart. “All right, all right! What the hell is going on with you two? Both of you shut your goddamn mouths right now!” He points his finger in both our faces, alternately.

  Caelin pushes his chair away from the table and storms into the kitchen.

  I follow suit and stomp off to my room, slamming my door hard behind me.

  I sit down on the floor, leaning my back against the side of my bed. I let my head fall against the edge of the mattress. I close my eyes. I can’t keep it out any longer. Can’t hold it back. I feel something break like a levee inside my head.

  WHAT HAPPENED: I WOKE up to him climbing on top of me, jabbing his knees into my arms. I thought it was a joke—unfunny to be sure, but still, a joke. I opened my mouth. I tried to speak, but only got out “wwwh,” the beginning of what. What, what, what is happening, what are you doing?