The Way I Used to Be

“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, forgetting 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.”

“They won’t, though. They don’t even know about—” You, I was going to say, but he interrupts me again.

“You don’t get it,” he continues. “I’m talking about Actual. Criminal. Charges. I could get arrested, go to jail even, I’d lose my basketball scholarship and everything. Everything could get completely fucked up.”

He stops. I watch him take a few shallow breaths, watching me, waiting.

“Well?” he finally says, sweeping his arm in my direction.

“What do you mean, ‘well’?” I ask, my voice as harsh as his.

“I mean, don’t you care?” he yells. Then quieter, “Don’t you care about anything? About me?” His stare pierces me, searching to see if I remember any of what happened yesterday in the stairwell. Of course I remember, but since I’m really good at pretending, I just look right back at him—right through him. My face is a stone. My body is a stone. My heart is a stone.

“No.” That one syllable. The biggest lie. The worst lie.

“What?” he breathes.

“No,” I tell him calmly. “I don’t.” My words like knives destroying everything we had created. “I. Don’t. Care.” I repeat with icy precision.

You would think I just punched him in the face the way he looks at me. But that only lasts for about one, two, three . . . and a half seconds, and then he quickly resumes his anger. “That’s fine—great, actually! That’s great. Because we can never see each other again, I hope you know that, Eden. We can’t—”

“Puh-lease.” I laugh bitterly. “Listen, you know I had fun, but this was pretty much over anyway, don’t you think?” Some other person has taken over my brain and I’m screaming at her to shut up—stop talking now. But if it’s ending anyway, and it is, I can’t let him think he is in charge. I’m in charge, damn it.

His face sort of caves in a little around the edges. He looks so defeated I almost start apologizing, almost start begging him not to leave me, begging because I’m so fucking alone, and I do care about things, about him, especially. But then he straightens himself up and chokes out, “Yeah. Definitely over.”

I leave him in the bathroom. I push through the door effortlessly, walking tall and calm, and he stands there shaking his head at me.