The Way I Used to Be

THE NIGHT IS A total blur. We didn’t order takeout. We didn’t watch movies. We just sat on Mara’s bedroom floor and drank. And drank. And drank until there was nothing left.

“Morning,” Mara mumbles as I sit up too fast.

“Oh God, my head. Not so loud,” I grumble. I can’t remember whether I fell asleep or passed out.

She gets up from the floor, wobbly, and stands in front of the mirror licking her hand and wiping the mascara stains from under her eyes. I follow her out of her room and down the stairs to the kitchen like a shadow.

“Are you hungry?” she asks me, opening and closing the cupboard doors, trying to find something edible.

“A little, I guess.”

She carries an assortment of cereal boxes to the table. I get the bowls and spoons and skim milk from her fridge.

“So, I have an idea—a plan—if you’ll just please think about it for at least ten seconds before you say no,” she tells me as we sit at the little breakfast nook her father built when we were kids.

I pour my Cap’n Crunch with Crunch Berries. The clinking sounds of the small pinkish-red spheres and the pillow-puff-shaped corn-oat amalgams falling against the ceramic bowl echo through the empty kitchen.

“Edy?” Mara says.

“Oh, what?” I pretend I didn’t hear; I’m much too busy pouring my skim milk.

“I said I want you to listen to this idea I have.”

The spoon dives in; I put it in my mouth. I chew. Chew, chew, chew. I swallow. “Yeah, okay, I’m listening.”

“Good. I want you to come out with us tonight.”

I stop chewing. I stop blinking. I stop breathing. “Uff?” I mumble through my mouthful of cereal. Swallow hard, try again. “Us?”

“Yeah, with me and Cameron. We’re going to the mall.” She smiles as if that’s not the most absurd thing she’s ever said.

It takes me a few seconds to recover. “With Cameron? To the mall? You’re kidding, right?”

“I know it’s lame, Edy, but we’re going to the movies and we would only have to walk through a small, tiny little baby section of the mall to get there, okay?”

“Mara, why? We’ve tried this before. Cameron and I do not like each other. Please accept that.”

“Well, it’s not just that,” she begins slowly. “Steve’s coming too.”

I wonder how Cap’n Crunch would taste with a little splash of vodka, or maybe half the bottle.

“So, will you come, Eeds, pleeease, pwetty, pwetty pwease?” She clasps her hands together and gives me her best doe-eyed pouty face.

“But this is like a date, right? You’re trying to set me up on a date. At the movies. That’s just pathetic. What is this, middle school?”

“Seriously, I think it’ll be great!” She smiles at me like she actually believes what she’s saying.

“Okay, Mara. Look, we no longer party like we used to, or hang out with guys who are trouble. In fact, I barely even get to see you anymore. I’ve done a lot to accommodate you and little Cameron-two-shoes, including putting up with Steve constantly hanging around. So please, please, please, I beg you—not the mall.”

Her smile fades, her face crinkling with frustration. “He’s cool and nice and sweet, okay? And cute, so stop being all judge-y.”

“Oh my God.” I sigh.

“He is,” she whines. “And he’s perfect for you.”

“I don’t know why we’re still talking about this—I told you already—not interested.”

“Why?” she asks, pretending to be surprised.

“Because, Mara, I’m not going to fucking double-date with you and fucking Cameron, okay?” Too harsh, my tone, I know. I can’t help it though.

“Well, excuse me—God, Edy, you can be so mean sometimes! You know, I already promised Steve you would come. And besides, you owe me.”

“How do I owe you?”

“Please, I’ve covered for you more times than I can even count—probably more times than you even know!”

I stand up with my cereal bowl in hand; I walk over to the sink and dump the excess milk down the drain. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks a lot, Edy. Way to be there for me. I never ask you for anything!” She crosses her arms and jerks herself back in her chair, pouting like she’s a twelve-year-old.

I stand there, trying to calculate how serious she is, how mad she would be if I bail. “Oh God,” I moan. “Look, I’ll go with you, but please just make it very clear this is not a date.”

She rolls her eyes. “Fine.”

“I have to go.”

“Wait, don’t go,” she says, standing up like she might actually try to stop me.

“No, I told Vanessa I’d help her do something.” But that’s a lie. I scrape my soggy cereal into the garbage can under the sink. “Just call me later and let me know what time I should meet you.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“I’m sorry.” I relent, realizing how nasty I’m being. “I’m not mad. I’m just hungover, you know, I need a cigarette, my head hurts.”

I don’t bother getting dressed, or brushing my hair or even my teeth. I just grab my backpack and jacket and I’m out the door as quickly as possible. Mara’s house is the one place in the world I’ve never been in a hurry to leave. But things change all the time. As I take steps farther away from her, the sidewalk seems a little unstable under my feet. I cut through two backyards and have to outrun a rabid terrier just to avoid walking past Kevin’s house—Amanda’s house.

I stand outside the food court, sure to be early—a peace offering for Mara—proof that I’m not above going to the mall if it truly means that much to her. I sit on the edge of a big concrete planter near the drop-off area and light a cigarette. I notice my hand shaking as I bring it to my lips. I feel on edge. Nervous. I’m dreading this entire night. It’s just too wholesome and purposeless. I switch my cigarette to my other hand, but this one shakes so frantically, it slips right through my fingers. I have to jump to my feet so it doesn’t fall into my lap and burn me.

Just as I’m brushing the ashes from my coat sleeve, Mara’s voice startles me: “You all right, there?”

“Oh!” I gasp. “Hey. Yeah, I just dropped my—whatever, never mind—hi.”

“Hey.” Cameron raises the hand that’s conjoined with Mara’s, black nail polish peeling from his fingernails. “Glad you could come with,” he lies. The streetlight glints off a metal ball inside his mouth as he talks, off the rings curled around his bottom lip and left eyebrow. “Steve’s parking.”

As we stand there waiting, Mara grimaces through a smile, as if to tell me to play nice. Then I see Steve power walking through the parking lot in his sweater-vest—his wallet chain all shiny, dangling from his back pocket, his Converse sneakers too clean. Like he’s dressed for a date. He hasn’t even arrived and already he’s trying too hard. “Hi, Eden!” He waves as he approaches us, smiling so hugely.

“Hey.” I try not to sigh too loudly.

During the movie Mara and Cameron hold hands. She leans her head on his shoulder. He kisses her forehead, then gives me an awkward smile when he catches me staring. I turn to look at Steve next to me. He smiles shyly and focuses intently on the movie screen. There are few things in this world that will make you feel like more of a loser than this.

The movie’s in French, with subtitles. I guess Mara forgot to mention that part. After the first five minutes I’ve stopped reading them altogether. At some point I shut my eyes instead. And right in that space between being asleep and being awake, I hear my own voice, whining: “No, I wanna be the dog—I’m always the dog, Kevin.”

And it’s like I’m back there, but not as myself. I’m there as someone else, like a bystander sitting at the table with them, watching her slide into the seat opposite him. It’s like I’m watching it in a movie—looking for signs of what’s going to happen in only a few hours. He reaches his arm across the kitchen table and places the little metal dog in front of her with a smile. “Thank you,” the girl sings. She can feel her face turning pink, blushing for him.

“I guess I’ll be the hat.” He’s resigned.

“Be the shoe—the shoe’s better.” Their options were pretty limited. The dog was obviously everyone’s first choice. They had lost the car several summers earlier in an ill-fated outdoor game of Monopoly that got rained out, so they were left with only the wheelbarrow, thimble, hat, and shoe. In the girl’s mind, the shoe was at least a little more relevant than the others—it could walk. Theoretically, anyway. Hat, thimble, and wheelbarrow just seemed too arbitrary to her.

“Okay. If you think the shoe’s better, I’ll be the shoe.” He smiled across the table at the girl. They placed their pieces on the GO square at the same time, and she couldn’t tell if she had made their fingers brush against each other or if he did. “You want me to be the banker, right?” he asked her. She nodded. And her stomach suddenly felt sick, but in a strange, good way. He had remembered that she hated being the banker. And she was flattered. Her face was burning pink like a total idiot’s.

He made it around the board twice while she was stuck in the cheap properties: Baltic Avenue, then Chance, which had her back up three spaces to Income Tax. Monopoly had never been her game, anyway.

“Where’s my brother?” the girl asked him casually. It was unlike him to be detached from Caelin. It was unlike him to be treating her like a human being, to voluntarily be spending time with her like this.

“On the phone.” He rolled an eleven and bought St. Charles Place, giving him a monopoly on the pink properties; he put two houses on Virginia.

“With who?” she asked, desperate to keep him talking to her. She rolled a one and a two and wound up back on Chance: another fifteen dollars for Poor Tax. “Shhhoot!” she said in her good-little-girl voice. She couldn’t possibly have said shit.

Then he smiled at the girl in a way nobody had ever smiled at her before. For the first time, she felt like she should be embarrassed to be wearing that childish little flannel nightgown covered with tiny sleeping basset hounds in front of him. “His girlfriend—who else?” he answered, taking the money from her hand.

“Do you think she’s pretty?” she asked as she watched him roll two fours and scoop up New York Avenue for the orange monopoly.

“I don’t know, yeah, I guess. Why?”

She shrugged. She had only seen pictures of her brother’s college girlfriend, but she could tell the girl was really pretty. She didn’t know why she suddenly cared if Kevin thought the girl was pretty or not. Maybe because she knew deep down that she herself wasn’t. Because she was just all angles and flatness. Because she didn’t look like a girl someone like Kevin might think is pretty, and she was afraid she never would.

She rolled a six and a four. Community Chest: Go to jail. “Oh, come on! I have to go to jail now?” she said, flipping the card over for him to see.

“Oh, shoot!” he mocked in a girly voice.

“Hey!” She grinned, but only once she realized he was making fun of her. And then she kicked his foot under the table.

“Oww, okay, okay.” He put houses on Illinois Avenue and Marvin Gardens while the girl waited to roll doubles to get out of jail.

When it was her turn, she shook the dice in both hands and then unleashed them. A six landed off the board at the edge of the table and the other fell on the floor under Kevin’s chair.

“Oooh, what is it? What is it?” she asked, trying to see.

“It’s a six,” he announced from under the table. He placed the die in the center of the board, six side up. “You’re free.” He grinned.

“Was it really a six?” she asked him. After all, the girl was not a cheater.

“I swear to God,” he proclaimed, holding his hand up in an oath.

She looked across the table at him suspiciously, finally deciding. “I don’t believe you.”

“Ouch. How do you not trust me by now? That hurts, Edy. Really.” He spoke in a strange way, almost seriously, but not really because he was smiling. The girl didn’t quite understand. All she knew is that it made her feel nervous and excited at the same time. Like there was maybe something else happening, but she wasn’t sure what.

“All right, I believe you—I trust you,” I hear the girl tell him.

I want to slap the girl. I want to stand up and sweep my arm across the table, knocking over the little dog and the little shoe, the plastic houses and the paper money. Because as the girl smiles demurely, I look in his eyes and I see now what the girl couldn’t then: that this is the moment. He had been thinking about it for some time and was pretty sure, I could tell, but this was the moment he knew not only that he would do it, but that she would let him get away with it.

“Good.” He grinned again. “It’s your turn.”

She moved her dog ahead, not thinking about anything except the way he kept looking at her, like she was a girl and not just some annoying kid. She pretended to have something in her eye so that she would have an excuse to take her glasses off. “So,” she started, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, “do you have a girlfriend?” And I remember how her heart raced as she waited, taking mental inventory of every pretty girl she’d ever seen him with.

“Yes,” he answered, as if that was the most ridiculous question anyone had ever uttered in the history of the world.

“Oh. Oh, you—you do?” She tried so hard to sound casual, but even she knew she just sounded pathetic and sad. She rolled again and tried desperately to add the two numbers together.

“That’s eight. You only moved seven,” he told her matter-of-factly. She moved her dog one more spot. “Are you disappointed?” he asked, reading her thoughts somehow.

She looked up at him. He was slightly blurry without her glasses. “Disappointed? No. Why—why would I be?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

Her breath caught in her throat. She thought, for sure, he’s making fun of her. “A boyfriend? Yeah, right,” she mumbled, reaching to pick up her glasses. But suddenly the girl felt his hand on top of hers, just for a moment.

“You look good without your glasses, you know that?”

She literally could not breathe. “I . . . do? Really?” She tucked her messy, grown-out bangs behind her ears. She passed GO, she collected her two hundred dollars. Her heart skipped some vital beats.

“Yeah, I’ve always thought that.” He leaned in across the table ever so slightly, looking at her intensely. “You still have that scar,” he said, touching his own forehead in the place where her scar was, the place where my scar is still.

She mirrored him, too bewildered by what was going on to make sentences. She started to get scared she might actually faint.

“You remember that day?” he whispered, smiling through the words like it was something to him, like that day meant something to him the way it meant something to her. “In the emergency room,” he reminded her. “Your bike accident?”

“Uh-huh,” she breathed. It was as if he knew that she thought about that day all the time. How she thought it was probably the most romantic thing that would ever happen to her in her entire life.

“So, do you want a boyfriend?” He narrowed his eyes at the girl. “You finally like boys now, don’t you?”

“I—yeah, I do, but I—” She was confused, though. Because what was he really asking her? It sounded, in a way, like he was asking if she wanted him to be her boyfriend, but no. No, of course not, she told herself silently. She looked down at her flat chest and thought, definitely no, that couldn’t be it. Besides, he had a girlfriend—he’d just told her that. Plus, he was too old, too mature for her, the girl thought. But, still, she couldn’t make sense of that smile.

The girl’s brother emerged from his bedroom, standing at the head of the table, looking at their game. “Kev, you don’t have to babysit her. She can amuse herself, man.” He grinned. The girl didn’t even know that she was supposed to be offended. She was supposed to get mad at her brother when he said stuff like that about her. But she didn’t. Her brother disappeared into the kitchen and returned seconds later with a bag of chips under his arm and two beers in each hand. “Let’s go,” her brother whispered to Kevin, making sure his father wouldn’t see them stealing his beer.

But the girl wanted to keep playing whatever game this was. She wanted to finish. Because this, she thought, could be the biggest night of her life.

“Edy.” Caelin grabbed the girl’s attention. He pointed a finger at her and then placed it against his lips, the universal sign of silence. “Got it?”

She nodded, thinking they were just so cool, feeling so special to be in on their delinquency.

Kevin pushed his chair out and stood up. “Good game, Eeds.”

Then the boys left the room with their bootleg beer and chips. The girl tried to breathe normally, and then she slid her glasses back on her face where they belonged. She cleared away the colored money and the plastic houses, the dog and the shoe. She folded the board up inside of the falling-apart box and set it back on the game shelf in the hall closet where it belonged. But something still felt out of place.

She tiptoed into the living room, kissed her mother and her father good night, and sent herself to bed promptly at eleven. She knew because as she shut her bedroom door, she heard the news say: “It’s eleven o’clock, do you know where your children are?” She tucked herself in tight and pushed all her stuffed animals away, up against the wall—stuffed animals were for kids, and, God, how the girl was so sick of being a kid, that stupid, stupid girl.

As the girl closed her eyes, she was thinking of him. Thinking that maybe he was thinking of her, too. But he wasn’t thinking of her in that way. He was holding her in the palm of his hand, wrapping her around his fingers, one at a time, twisting and molding and bending her brain. I try to whisper in the girl’s ear: “Edy, get up. Just lock your door. That’s all you need to do. Lock your door, Edy, please!” I shout, but the girl doesn’t hear me. It’s too late.

I open my eyes. I’m breathing heavy. My forehead is beaded with sweat. My hands are wrapped tight around the edges of the cup holders. I look around quickly. Mara touches my arm and whispers, “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

I’m okay. I’m safe. It was a dream. Only a dream. And now I’m awake.

I nod my head and breathe the words, “Yeah. I’m okay.”