The Way I Used to Be

SO THAT NIGHT HE smuggles me past his parents and up the stairs to his bedroom. And the next night. And practically every night for the past week. And each day things seem to go just a little further, his hands wandering over my body with just a little more freedom, like he’s testing the limits.

But this is it—the night. I decided before I even got to his house. He told me earlier his parents are out of town at his cousin’s wedding. Perfect. Because I can’t stand the anticipation of it anymore. It needs to just happen already. So I can stop being scared every second we’re together. Worrying about what it will be like, what he’ll do, how he’ll act, if he’ll hurt me. And me—what I’ll do, how I’ll feel.

Except tonight, with my mind all made up, I’m more than scared. I’m so terrified I’m almost unable to breathe. I think I feel a rash working up my fingers to my hand to my wrist to my forearm to my whole body to my brain, and, oh God, I have this bullet stuck inside of me and I might throw up.

We stand next to his bed. He moves in to kiss me.

Be normal. Be normal, Edy, I tell myself. Be normal, I repeat in my head. Now. I take a breath and pull away from his kiss. I start unbuttoning my shirt—one, two, three, four, five, six buttons. My hands are shaking. They barely work. God, why did I pick a button shirt, anyway? I look up. He’s staring at my new bra. It’s lacy and purple and matches my underwear. I let the shirt fall off my shoulders. I try, inconspicuously, to glance at my arm. It looks fine, no rash. I’m fine. I’m fine and this is fine—I exhale—everything is fine, fine, fine. I coax the heels of my sneakers off with my toes and nudge them to the side. I unbutton my jeans, unzip them, slide them down over my hips, my butt, my thighs.

I look down at my feet. Socks. You can’t have sex in socks—that’s idiotic. I try not to tip over while I pull them off and stuff them in my shoes. The floor feels like ice on my feet. He’s still fully dressed, just staring, making me feel ugly and stupid.

I start thinking maybe he’s disappointed with what he sees; I know, of course, I’m not the prettiest, not the sexiest. I feel my arms twist together in front of my chest. I suddenly want to run. Run far and hard and fast, away from him, myself, my life, my past, my future, everything.

He snaps out of it right away. His shirt brushes against my skin as he pulls it up over his head and lets it fall on top of my pile of clothes. His socks pull off with his sneakers. The space between us rapidly closing in—his hands, on my waist so suddenly, make me flinch, no jump, no lurch away from him like some kind of wild, deranged rabid animal. I stumble over my shoes and my legs crash into the bed frame. He pulls back, looking confused. I’m so stupid. My face burns. I want to die-hide-disappear.

“Sorry,” we both say at the same time.

“Are you okay?” He extends an arm as if to help me stabilize, but doesn’t dare touch me again.

“I’m fine,” I snap.

He takes a step back, puts his hands in his pockets, and tries very hard not to stare at my bra. “Listen, you don’t have to—I mean, we don’t . . . have . . . to . . . if—”

He stops talking because I’m unbuttoning his pants. He stops thinking because now I’m unzipping them. He stops breathing because I pull his hands out of his pockets and put them on my waist again. And then my heart and lungs and brain stop too because my underwear are suddenly around my ankles and so are his and I feel his body against mine and then we’re in the bed and our legs are tangled and things are happening so fast and his hands are all over me and my hands are shaking and I don’t know where to put them and I hope he doesn’t notice.

He stops kissing me. I open my eyes. He’s looking down at my naked body. I, too, look down at my body. But all I can see is just one huge, gaping wound that somehow seems to still hurt everywhere sometimes. I hope he doesn’t notice that, either.

He touches my skin lightly like it’s something that should be touched lightly, and he speaks slow when he says, “Eden, you’re really—”

“Shhh, please, please.” I stop him before he can finish. “Don’t say anything.” Because whatever he thinks I am, I’m not. And whatever he thinks my body is, it isn’t. My body is a torture chamber. It’s a fucking crime scene. Hideous things have happened here, it’s nothing to talk about, nothing to comment on, not out loud. Not ever. I won’t hear it. I can’t.

He looks at me like I’m crazy and mean and rude. “I was just gonna say that you’re—”

And since maybe I am crazy and mean and rude, I interrupt him again, “I know, but just don’t. Please don’t say it, whatever it is, just—”

“Fine, okay. I won’t.” He looks like maybe he thinks this has just officially stopped being worth it.

I concentrate hard on doing this nicely. And I try not to look at his body because his body terrifies me. But I take my arms and wrap them around his back, my fingertips tremble against his skin, tracing outlines of bone and muscle. I pull him down so that his chest and stomach touch mine. He kisses me carefully, like I might be this fragile thing that needs to be handled with caution. But it feels too nice, too sweet, too meant for someone else, someone more like who I used to be, or rather, who I would have been.

He reaches for something from the nightstand next to his bed. I only realize what it is when he tears the wrapper open. The sound rips through my brain. It shakes something loose inside of me. And it’s from this shaken place deep within that I want him to know. To know everything. I want to stop time and tell him every moment of my life right up until this one. Because he has no idea who I really am. I want him to know how innocent I still feel right now, somehow. To know exactly what I’m entrusting him with. But it’s all too much to be held in this small, urgent space.

I can’t keep my thoughts still long enough to even understand them.

My heart races dangerously fast. My skin burns. My chest tightens, my lungs seem to go rigid. I’m not breathing quite right, I know that much. My fingers and toes tingle. Things begin to go out of focus, then back in, and out again. Like looking through a kaleidoscope, it makes me dizzy—the room, the way it’s spinning—the way the world ceases to make any sense at all. I hear this buzzing in the background, like static. Static pulsing through brain waves, electric currents floating around in this strange place, making the air feel nervous, activated somehow.

“You okay?” he asks softly. I nod. Of course I’m okay, of course. “Okay,” he breathes in my mouth, as he moves in to kiss me again, stroking my face and hair so gently. This, I’m sure, is the way he always kissed his perfectly respectable, perfectly normal, well-adjusted ex-girlfriends—those soft, breakable creatures that never harbored secret bullets in their guts.

He shifts his weight off of me. In all my planning and preparing and imagining, the realness of this moment had escaped me. Just a year earlier, I was still wearing those damn days-of-the-week underwear and now I am lying on my back, naked in a bed, watching a guy I barely know put on a condom. This is real. This is actually my life. And it’s happening. It’s happening right now. No turning back. Not that I want to. There’s nothing to turn back to—nothing good, anyway. I want to get as far away from the past as possible, be as different from that girl as I can.

“Okay, you’re sure?”

I nod.

I’ve only been this terrified once. I can feel my heart pumping. I can feel the blood, at first, rushing through my veins, but then I get the distinct feeling that it’s stopped rushing, stopped pulsing, stopped coursing, and is just seeping out, uncontained, flooding my whole body and I’ll surely be dead soon.

I focus my eyes on this tiny crack in the ceiling. It starts in the corner by the door and branches out like a lightning bolt, frozen in that one nanosecond of its existence, ending directly above the center of his bed. I try to calm myself down, try to not be afraid. I focus on him, on the way he breathes. And then I count all the ways he is not like him, the ways this is not like that, the ways I am not like her. And then someone switches off the circuit breaker in my mind and everything just stops. Like wires are cut somewhere. I am disconnected, offline. And then things fade to this still, calm, quiet nothingness.

I’m vaguely aware when it’s over. Vaguely aware of him touching my face, vaguely aware of words coming out of his mouth. I am alive. I did it. I’m okay.

“You were so quiet, baby,” he whispers softly.

It’s like I’ve suddenly opened my eyes, except they were already open. And there’s that lightning bolt I’m supposed to stare at, so I do.

“I didn’t know if you . . . you know?” He runs his fingers up and down my arm; I pull the sheet a little tighter to my body. I can’t tell if it feels good or not.

I can sense him staring at me, waiting for me to say something, looking hopeful. “Yeah,” I whisper, trying to sound sure of myself. I know it’s the right thing to say. He tries to put his arm around me, I think, but I don’t budge. I don’t move. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next.

He seems to study my face longer than feels comfortable, and then finally says, “I don’t know . . . you seem weird or upset or something.”

“I’m not upset,” I contest immediately. Although, as I listen to the edge of panic in my voice, I do sound upset, so I add, softer, “Really, I’m not.”

“Why are you acting like this, then?”

“Like what? What am I doing?”

“Nothing,” he says quickly.

“Then why are you getting mad at me?” I feel my heart pumping faster again.

“No, I mean you’re doing nothing.”

“What do you want me to do?” I sit up fast, suddenly aware that he could take something from me that I hadn’t given. And apparently I hadn’t given something he wanted. I grope around the bed frantically for any article of my clothing. “I don’t know what else you want from me, but—” I’m not going to wait around to find out.

Now he sits up too. “Wait, what are you doing? Are you leaving?”

I find my bra. “Yes. Can you turn around?”

“What?” He laughs.

“Can you not watch me get dressed?” My hands are shaking. I can’t get the clasp.

“Are you serious?” he asks, a dumbfounded grin on his mouth.

“Yes. Can you please not watch me?”

“Not watch . . . what are you talking about? Just wait. Wait a minute, okay?” he says, placing his hand over mine, uncurling my fingers. “Just stop. For just a second. What’s happening?” he asks, his eyes locked on mine.

I can’t say what kind of expression I must be wearing—indifference, smug hatred, maybe.

“It’s time for me to leave,” I say, my voice sounding really flat and unaffected. “Is that all right with you?” I can taste the meanness in my mouth as the words pass across my lips. And I’m not even sure why.

“You’re mad?” he asks in disbelief. “You’re mad at me?”

Am I mad? Maybe, but that’s not all. I’m sad. And still scared. And confused, because I don’t understand why I’m still scared, why I’m still sad, why I’m angry. This was supposed to fix things. This was supposed to help.

“Wow. Well, this is just perfect, isn’t it?” he mutters to himself, smirking, but clearly pissed. “What, are you using this against me or something?”

“What are you talking about? I’m not using anything against you!”

He crosses his arms over his stomach, looking oddly vulnerable; I pull my knees into my chest and wrap my arms around them. “Look, I don’t—I’m not—I don’t know what this is.” He’s stumbling over his words. “I mean, is this like some sick game to you or something? Like some test, or something? Or is this just what you do with guys? Because that’s really fucked up.” He’s short of breath, his voice shaking like he’s actually upset.

“Sick game? No.” Test? Okay, maybe. “I thought I was doing you a favor, okay?” I tell him, even though that’s a total lie.

“Doing me a favor how? By making me feel like I’m forcing you to do something you don’t want to do?” Then he adds, quieter, “It’s more like the other way around, if you really wanna know.”

It takes me a second to untangle the insult. “Wait, so I’m forcing you? Oh my God, I don’t believe this!” It feels like my mind is being turned inside out, this situation getting completely backward.

“That’s not what I’m saying, okay. I just—I mean—you act like—”

“I have somewhere to be,” I lie, interrupting him. I stand up and pull the sheet around me, getting dressed as fast as I can. “I’m not going to sit around for this!”

I pull my shirt on over my head as I step into my shoes. I look down at him, sitting so still and quiet, just watching me. Then he says, not yelling, but almost whispering, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Nothing’s wrong with me!” I hear the volume of my voice mounting; I feel all my muscles going tense and heavy. “I just don’t like wondering what you’re really thinking, what you really want from me!”

“How the f—” he starts, but then stops. “How do you think I feel?”

“Forget it!” I try to stay calm even though I’m so furious I’m shaking. I head for the door, but turn around to look at him, feeling some kind of pressure building up in my throat—pulsing words wanting to be screamed: “Just fucking forget it!”

This is this first time I’ve ever said the f-word at another person, out loud like this. As I look down at him, staring up at me like I’m insane, I feel my eyeballs boiling in their sockets. And then his image before me begins to blur and wrinkle like a mirage—I have to leave because the tears, I know, are on their way. And I don’t cry in front of boys. Not anymore. Starting now.

I storm out of his room. He calls my name once, halfheartedly, like out of obligation, not because he actually wants me to come back. I slam the door behind me as hard as I can. I wipe at my eyes. I walk home.

The next day at school I see him walking down the hall in the midst of his herd. So, of course, I pretend to be absorbed in finding something in the very depths of my locker, pretend not to even notice. They’re the kind of people who always have to be drawing attention to themselves—talking just a little too loudly, taking up just that extra bit of space, laughing like goddamn hyenas in that way that always makes me wonder if they’re really laughing at me. I hate those kinds of people and yet I can’t quite force myself not to look as they pass.

There’s no chance of salvaging the wreckage of last night. I watch him say something to this Jock Guy he walks next to, and then Jock Guy looks at me. Looks at me as if he’s calculating some unknown criteria in his mind. I let my eyes meet Josh’s for just a fraction of a second. But I feel like I might die or throw up, so I promptly return to examining the contents of my locker, trying to remember how to breathe.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly leaning against the locker next to mine, incredibly close. People were certainly staring now.

“Hi,” I reply, but I feel so stupid, stupid, stupid—the way I screamed at him, the way I left. The way he sat on his bed looking at me.

We just stand in front of each other with nothing to say, both of us trying to pretend we don’t notice the eyes of every passerby on us. I shut my locker, forgetting the one thing I actually needed for my next class. I fidget with the dial of my combination, spinning it around and around, unable to stop.

“So . . . ,” he finally begins, but doesn’t follow up with anything.

And more silence.

“Oh, just kiss and make up already!” Jock Guy shouts from across the hall. Josh waves his arm at him, in a get-the-hell-out-of-here kind of way.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Look, I know you’re still mad, but—”

“What did you say to him?” I interrupt.

“What?” He turns around to look at his friend walking away. “Nothing.”

“Well, not nothing; obviously you told him something. I saw the way he looked at me just now.”

“Eden, I didn’t say anything. Look, I’m just trying to apologize here.”

“Don’t. Don’t apologize, it’s fine, it’s just—it’s whatever.” The truth is that I don’t want to have to apologize.

“Well, I am sorry.” He pauses, waiting for me to tell him it’s okay, waiting for me to apologize right back. After it becomes clear I’m not going to, he adds, “I’m not sure what for, but anyway . . . here.” He holds out a folded-up piece of paper for me to take.

“What is it?” I ask.

He rolls his eyes; he’s getting really good at that. “It’s not anthrax. Jesus, Eden. Just take it.”

I take it.

He walks away without another word, without so much as a glance back at me.

Eden,

I feel bad about last night. I still don’t really know what happened, but I’m sorry. My parents are still out of town, so if you want to come over later, you can. I want you to, but I’ll understand if you don’t. You could even stay over. We wouldn’t have to do anything, I promise. We could just hang. It doesn’t matter to me. . . . I just want to see you. We have a game tonight, but I’ll be home by eight. I hope I’ll see you later.

J