The Way I Used to Be

FOR THE SECOND MARKING period, Mara and I are placed in the same study hall. Which is the only way I am going to be able to spend any time with her at all. Of course, Cameron and Steve come with the package, a bonus feature I could do without.

Me, Mara, Cameron, and Steve all sit at one table. And as luck would have it, Amanda sits at the table next to ours, giving me evil looks anytime I so much as glance in her direction. On the first day I waved and tried to smile at her, tried to silently tell her that I really don’t care if her lies turned me into the school slut. No big deal. I’m fine with it. In fact, I owe her one. She’s given me someone to be, after all, someone interesting and reckless, someone who doesn’t have to care so damn much. About anything. But her coal eyes just stare right through me, unchanging.

She even trains her tablemates to shoot eye daggers at me as well. One of them, I know; that snarky girl who added “totally slutty disgusting” to my epithet on the bathroom wall. I try to be cool, ignore it, let it roll off me. Plenty of girls at school hate me, think I’m trashy, worry about their boyfriends. I’m not blind, I’m not deaf, either. I see the way they watch me like I’m dangerous, hear the way they talk about me, their smirks behind cupped hands and their whispers. I’m used to it. The other girls, they don’t matter. But Amanda’s different. Because what right does she have? I should be the one hating her. If I cared enough, that is. Which I don’t.

Mara places her fingers against her lips and kisses them, and then lays her hand flat in front of her mouth, palm side up, and blows. The kiss is sent across the room. Cameron stops sharpening his pencil, catches her kiss in his fist, and then smacks his hand against his mouth.

“So, you really haven’t—you know—yet?” I whisper to Mara.

“Not yet, but soon. I think,” she says sedately, gazing dreamily at Cameron, who continues sharpening Mara’s drawing pencils like nothing in the world could make him happier.

She’s been so busy with Cameron and dreaming about their future, she hasn’t even asked about my birthday. Every year we’re supposed to go out to eat, just the two of us. It’s tradition. This year’s pick, I’ve decided, is going to be the Cheesecake Factory, but she doesn’t know that yet because I haven’t had a chance to tell her, mainly because she hasn’t asked.

“Mara, you do remember that tomorrow—”

“Shhh.” Mr. Mosner, our study hall teacher, places a finger against his mouth. “Ladies, please . . . this is called study hall for a reason—it’s for studying, not talking.”

“What were you saying?” Mara whispers to me.

“Nothing.”

That night I wait for my annual midnight happy birthday phone call from Mara. I wait and wait and wait. Maybe she just fell asleep. Or maybe we’re getting too old for midnight birthday calls.

The next morning when I get to my locker there are no birthday decorations. That’s fine, maybe we’re also getting too old for birthday locker decorations. But then when I see her in math and lunch and study hall and four times in between classes, she never says anything that gives me any indication she knows it’s my birthday. And when she drops me off at home after school, she doesn’t ask where we’re going for dinner, she doesn’t say when she’ll be back to pick me up.

“Edy? I thought you’d be out with Mara,” Vanessa says, walking in the house to find me lying on the couch. She sets down her purse and keys and the mail that was tucked under her arm, and then looks at me, almost too concerned. “We haven’t seen too much of Mara around here lately. You two haven’t had some kind of falling-out, have you?” she asks in that pseudocasual, too-high tone, which lets me know she’s trying really hard to do the whole worried-parent bit.

“No, she just has this boyfriend she’s been spending everywakingminute with.”

“So you’re still going out for dinner then? ’Cause I could make something—I don’t mind.”

“No, yeah, it’s fine. I mean, we’re still going out.”

“Well, good. Where are you going?” she asks as she thumbs through the envelopes, tossing them into junk and bill piles.

“Cheesecake Factory,” I lie. “I have coupons,” which is technically true, even if I won’t technically be using them.

“Good.” Junk. Bill. Junk. Junk. Bill. “Looks like you got a card from Grandma and Grandpa, oh, and one from your aunt Courtney in Phoenix,” she says, handing me a red envelope and then a purple one. She always does that—Aunt Courtney in Phoenix, Uncle Henry in Michigan, Cousin Kim in Pittsburgh—as if I have more than one Aunt Courtney, Uncle Henry, and Cousin Kim.

I open the purple one first. From my grandparents. The front of the card has one teddy bear giving a balloon to another teddy bear; on the inside: “I hope your birthday is beary special.” The card was probably meant for a five-year-old, but it also contains a check for seventeen dollars, and on the memo line, in my grandmother’s shaky cursive, it says: “Happy 17th Birthday, Eden.” Last year it was a sixteen-dollar check, next year it will be eighteen. Aunt Courtney sent a twenty, which I graciously stuff in my pocket.

Heaving my body off the couch, I go into my room, change my clothes, and make a big show of getting ready for my great birthday celebration. I have no clue where I am actually supposed to go for the next two to three hours.

“Have fun,” Conner calls to me from the kitchen as I’m leaving.

“Edy, wait, just in case we’re in bed when you get home, happy birthday again.” Vanessa proceeds to give me an awkward hug in the doorway. “We love you,” she adds at the last moment.

They’re trying—I give them credit for that.

I just can’t anymore. It’s too hard.