The Way I Used to Be

CAELIN COMES HOME FOR Thanksgiving as planned. He tries to act like things are fine between us, but we both know better. After dinner on Friday he comes to my room, knocking on my door. He pokes his head inside, and says, “So, Edy—tomorrow? You and me. We still on?”

“I guess.” I shrug.

“Great.” He smiles, then stands there awkwardly. “Well, I’m heading out, so . . .” He raises his hand to wave, starts to walk away.

“I’m heading out too,” I call after him, like it’s some kind of competition.

He reappears in my doorway. “You are?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Nothing,” he says, but he gives me this grave look. “Just, you know, please be careful, okay, Edy?”

I roll my eyes and go back to picking out clothes from my closet.

There’s a buzz, a vibration in the air, as Mara and I, and Cameron and Steve, drive to this party at the dorm of a friend of a friend of a roommate of a friend who knows Steve’s cousin. Which is almost like being invited. And that’s good enough, because everyone has been trapped in small, confined spaces with their families for more than two days and is about to spontaneously combust. Or maybe that’s just me. We hold a one-two-three-not-it contest in the car to see who will be our designated driver. Cameron was the slowest; thus he must remain sober.

“I don’t care, I just want to be with Mara,” he announces. “I don’t have to get wasted to have a good time.”

Steve opens the damn car door for me. I ignore him.

“That’s nice, Cameron. I, however, do have to be wasted to have a good time, so can we just get in there already?” I start walking ahead, toward the music. Steve laughs. It wasn’t a joke, I almost tell him. In fact, I couldn’t fucking be more serious. Not only do I need to be wasted to have a good time, I need to be wasted to even be conscious right now, knowing I still have the whole weekend ahead of me before Caelin leaves, and Kevin along with him. I feel like I need to go shoot heroin or something. If only I knew where to get some, I just might.

Mara catches up with me. “All right. So, are you interested or not?”

“In him?” I nod my head back at Steve. “No, of course not.”

“Come on, Edy, why not?” she asks, looping her arm in mine so our elbows are locked.

“Because he’s so . . .” I glance behind us, and he waves an arm in the air at me. “He’s so—”

“What, so nice? He’s too nice for you, too smart, too adorably cute and sweet?”

I kick a loose chunk of pavement down the pathway in front of us. “Just don’t expect me to sleep with him, all right?”

“I don’t!” she shouts, rushing ahead a few steps to kick the rock before I can, jerking my arm, making me stumble forward.

“Yeah, well, he does!” I take a big step and give it one last good kick, launching it into a row of hedges lining the sidewalk and putting an end to our little diversion.

“He does not—” She stops, then whispering, pulling herself closer to me, says, “Expect you to sleep with him.”

“He expects something, I can tell.” I look back at him and Cameron again; they’re laughing, shoving each other’s arms as they catch up with us.

“You’re hopeless, you really are,” she says with a laugh. “He’s a nice, decent guy who’s interested in you. Can’t you just let it happen?”

Four and a half red plastic cups later, I’m standing in a crowded, alcohol-drenched, bass-filled hallway with Steve asking me inane questions about myself.

“So, have you decided where you’re going to school next year?” he shouts above all the other noise.

I’m not going to school next year, but it’s not worth saying. So I just take another sip and let Steve keep talking.

“Have you thought about going here?” he asks me. “I know it’s a state school and all, but it’s close to home—so that’s good, right?”

“Uh-huh.” I take another big gulp; it burns on the way down. Caelin could’ve gone here, stayed home. But he was too good for state school. He could’ve had a free ride—full scholarship and everything. I’ll never have anything like that, never know what that must feel like, but it wasn’t enough for him. He had to leave. Leave me here to rot. Leave me to take on Vanessa and Conner all by myself. Asshole.

“I’m stuck between . . . ,” Steve begins. But I have no idea what he’s saying because two guys are running shirtless through the hall screaming at the top of their lungs, and he doesn’t even seem to notice. “So . . . basically . . .” I catch bits and pieces. “They have this amazing liberal arts program, but it’s just so expensive, so I don’t know. It’s not like my grades are that wonderful that I could get scholarships.”

I nod along, pretend I’m listening.

“So, do you like photography?” he shouts.

“Huh?”

“I said do you like photography?” he repeats even louder. I had actually heard him the first time, I just couldn’t figure out where that came from. Maybe it was part of what I missed before. I remember he did photography for the yearbook freshman year.

“Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“You should come by my house this weekend. I’ll show you my darkroom.”

I laugh. That’s a new one. He gets at least a couple of points for creativity.

“What’s funny?” he asks, his mouth in a confused smile.

“Nothing, it’s just—your darkroom—what is that supposed to mean?”

“My darkroom. I turned my bedroom closet into a darkroom. You know, to develop pictures.”

“Oh, a darkroom.” Literally.

“Right.”

“Right.”

“So?” he asks.

“So . . . ,” I repeat, “what?”

“So, do you want to?”

“Want to what?”

“Come over.”

“Oh.”

“No?”

“No, I said oh,” I tell him, louder.

“Oh. So, yes then?”

“Um . . .”

“What?”

“Fine.”

“What time?” he asks. “I don’t know, whenever you want, I guess. I work mornings, so . . . I don’t know, maybe, like, in the afternoon?”

And this is why people don’t have conversations at parties like these. I finish off what’s left in my cup. Goddamn talking. “Hey, Steve?” I smile sweetly, manipulating his wholesome little heart. “Would you mind getting me another drink?” I’m going to need it.

“Yeah! Yeah, of course. Yeah, I’ll be right back.” And he happily disappears with my red plastic cup into the sea of faces.

“Hey, looks like you need a drink there?” says a guy who just sauntered up and is leaning against the wall next to me, holding a brown beer bottle in each hand.

He’s not particularly attractive. But then again, he’s not particularly anything. And that’s kind of exactly what I’m looking for. “Maybe,” I answer.

“You don’t live in this building, do you?” he asks as he hands me the bottle.

“No.” I take it. It’s opened, though. I hope I’m sober enough to keep remembering not to drink from it. Although he wouldn’t have to drug me to get me to leave with him; I’m ready to go right now.

“Didn’t think so, I’d remember seeing you.” He smirks as his eyes travel down. I’m definitely sober enough to see what this is all about. “Where do you live?” he shouts, reluctantly meeting my eyes.

“Off campus.” Which is not a lie.

“Listen, I can barely hear you. . . . You wanna go down the hall . . . there’s a room. . . .”

I take a huge sip of the beer he just placed in my hand.

Next thing I know, I’m following him down the hall, him dragging me along with a limp, dead-fish grip on my hand. He leads me into one of those suites like you see on TV with a common room and then separate bedrooms off to the sides. There are all kinds of people everywhere, laughing, shouting, making out on couches and chairs and coffee tables. We go into a room that has a RESERVED FOR RACHAEL—ALL OTHERS WILL BE TOWED sign on the door. There’s a lava lamp casting creepy purple and blue underwater shadows over everything. Rachael could be back anytime. He takes the bottle from my hand and sets both of our beers down on Rachael’s computer desk.

Stepping closer, he runs a couple of fingers down my arm, “So, uh, what’s your major?”

“We don’t have to talk,” I tell him, kicking my shoes off.

“Right on,” he says through beer breath.

We waste no time with pretense. He rips a button as he clumsily gets my shirt off. At this rate, Steve won’t even know I was gone. In just four steps, we’re tumbling into Rachael’s tiny bed. He unbuckles, unbuttons, and unzips his pants. “God, you’re fuckin’ hot,” he murmurs into my mouth while trying to simultaneously kiss me, get my pants off, and get his hands inside my bra. I reach into my back pocket for my just-in-case-Steve-turned-out-to-be-not-just-a-dull-polite-guy condom. He takes his shirt off. His body feels soft and flabby against mine. That’s fine. I don’t care about that. I care only about this moment—about forgetting, about leaving myself behind.

Just as he’s sliding my pants down over my butt, the door opens. I look at the doorway. Two bodies: Rachael, I presume, and the guy whose hand is attached to her hand.

“Dude, what the fuck?” the guy who’s on top of me shouts at the two dark figures.

“This is my room, asshole!” A very tiny Rachael marches in and flips the light switch on; I cover my eyes with one hand, my body with the other.

“What the fuck?” I hear a strangely familiar voice say very slowly.

I spread my fingers and peek through. No. No, no, no.

“Eden, get up!” he shouts. “Hey! Get up right now, you fucking asshole, that’s my sister!” he yells at the guy.

“Get out of my bed—this is disgusting!” Rachael screams at us, with her skinny jeans and faux-punk haircut, near tears. She could pass for cool, or at least interesting, out on the street. Too bad in here, her tweenie magazine centerfold posters of steamy, shirtless celebs give her away. She’s more of a poser than I am, even. I start laughing. I want to ask her if her nose ring is magnetic, but I can’t seem to remember how to use my voice at the moment. The guy hovers over me, looking down at me like I’m nuts.

“I’ll kick your fucking ass”—Caelin charges the bed—“if you don’t get the fuck off my sister right now!”

“Dude, chill the fuck out,” the anonymous guy on top of me says as he tries frantically to zip his pants back up so he can get off me.

“Everybody needs to get the hell out of here now!” a high-pitch-voiced Rachael shouts, hands on hips, looking not at all threatening, just comical.

Finally the guy is standing and I struggle to button and zip my jeans. “Caelin, whaddaareyou . . .doing—” Here, I was going to say. It surprises me how much I’m slurring, how slow I’m talking, how dizzy I suddenly feel, as I brace myself against the desk.

“What the hell are you doing?” he screams in my face. I can barely stand without falling over—I’m definitely drunker than I thought I was.

“And you,” he says, pushing the guy up against Rachael’s wall, knocking over a stack of books on the floor. “She’s sixteen years old, you pervert! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Stop it!” Rachael yells. “You’re destroying my room.”

“Dude, chill—I didn’t know that, okay? I don’t want any trouble, really.” He holds his hands up in the don’t-shoot-I’m-innocent way. He seems genuinely scared of my brother.

“I’m not six—” Teen, I try, but Caelin’s eyes flash over to me and he has this look of disgust and hate in them that makes me freeze. Just freeze. Because my brother just caught me almost having sex with some guy in a room that he was supposed to be having sex in, with the girl whose room this actually is, and now I’m standing here in my lacy black bra and it’s obviously hard for him, my own brother, not to look at my breasts.

“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Edy! Would you put some fucking clothes on?” He looks down and backs away from the guy.

“I’m outta here,” the guy says, scooping up his shirt as he stumbles out into the noise.

“Were you actually going to have sex with that guy, Eden? Do you even know him?”

I finish buttoning my shirt and pick the unopened condom up off the bed, shoving it back into my pocket. “So what, do you even know her?” I ask, gesturing to Rachael, who’s inspecting her things to make sure we didn’t steal or ruin anything.

“You know what, I really just want you both to get the hell out of here now—right now,” Rachael says, thrusting the two beer bottles into my brother’s hands.

“I’m so sorry about this,” Caelin says, pulling her aside.

Rachael crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “Just go,” she orders.

“Yeah,” he whispers, “sorry.”

We file out of Rachael’s room and into the common area without a word, without eye contact. “I cannot motherfuckingbelieve this,” he says under his breath as he sets the beer bottles down on top of a stack of papers on the table next to the door. Once we get out in the hall, he yells, “What the hell are you even doing here, Edy?” Partially because of the music, but mostly because he’s mad, really mad, madder than I’ve seen him in a long time.

“Apparently, the same thing you’re doing here, Caelin.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t. Fucking. Do. That. Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“I’m fucking not!” I yell in his face, not sure yet if he’s making me want to be mean or funny. I feel my mouth grin. “Or are you just mad because I fucked up your fucking plans. That I fucked up your plans to get fucked, I mean.” Still, that’s not what I meant to say. “You know what I mean. You wanted to fuck that girl.” I laugh because the word “fuck” sounds like the funniest word ever.

“You’re drunk, Edy. You’re really drunk and that guy was trying to take advantage of you! You’re lucky I came in when I did,” he says, dead serious, as if getting taken advantage of would be the worst thing that could happen, as if that wasn’t something that happens to girls on a daily basis.

“Take advantage of me?” I laugh, hysterically. “Me?” It’s funny. “Are you drunk, Caelin?” I mean to shove his shoulder, but I just fall into him. “It’s more like the other way around, if you wanna know. Don’t you get it? I’m not your sweet, stupid, innocent little sister. I’m not—”

“All right, all right, just stop.” He puts his hand up as if he can just shut me up with nothing more than a small gesture. He looks around like he’s embarrassed.

“No. What do you think? Do you think that I don’t drink and smoke and fuck—”

“Jesus Christ, Eden!”

“Oh, sorry—have sex, or make love—what do you call it?”

“Stop.”

“Do you think I haven’t had sex with hundreds of guys, Caelin?”

“Shut up!”

“Okay, maybe not hundreds. More like a hundred, give or take a few, of course.” So, the exact number would have been sixteen had we not been interrupted, but I’ll bet if I included all the ones I’ve messed around with and not actually had sex-sex with, it probably comes close. And one hundred just sounds so much more appalling than a measly fifteen. Sometimes just messing around is enough. Not lately, though. Lately, nothing seems like enough.

“Shut up, Edy, I mean it!” he says under his breath, through his teeth.

“Edy,” I hear behind me. I turn around quickly, lose my balance. Caelin grabs my arm. I shrug it off. “We’ve been looking for you.” It’s Mara, with Cameron and Steve trailing behind. “What’s wrong?” she asks, looking back and forth between me and Caelin.

“What’s wrong, Mara?” Caelin shouts. “Neither of you should be here!” Then he stares down Cameron and Steve. “And who the hell are you?”

I decide to make the introductions: “Caelin, this is Cameron, Mara’s boyfriend, and he’s so wonderful and dreamy and he doesn’t need to get wasted to have a good time, you’d like him, he’s the designated driver. And this”—I throw my arm around Steve’s shoulder—“this is Steve. But you don’t have to worry about Steve. Don’t let his appearance fool you—he may look like an ordinary guy, but he’s just a shy little dork underneath, right Steve?”

I turn my head to look at him, but my feet follow and my body sways into his. I grip on to his shoulder tighter, trying to balance, and he pulls me up straight. “See?” I laugh. “What I’m saying is Steve is a nice guy, Caelin—such a nice, decent guy—but—” I shout, pausing to catch my breath. “But he did invite me to his darkroom and he’s my date. My date, Caelin. Yes, I came here with a date!” I feel Steve slither out from under my arm, but I don’t take my eyes off Caelin’s face—I want to memorize everything about his reaction.

“Edy, please, please, please just shut the fuck up!” he screams. I record it, try so hard to brand it all into my brain—his cheeks turning pink, the vein in his temple pulsing, his voice unsteady, his hands shaking—the way he’s losing control.

“Hey, hey, now—” Mara starts to defend me.

“No, it’s okay!” I scream, louder than I meant to. “Caelin is just having some trouble dealing with the fact that his sister’s a big whore. Right, Cae? That is what it is, right? Or is there something else that’s bothering you?”

He looks at me, for just a moment, really at me, and he looks so angry, angry enough to hit me, maybe. I almost wish he would, because that would feel better than being eternally ignored by him, better than being made to feel like I’m just some inconsequential speck of dust dirtying up his otherwise immaculate life. But then the moment passes as quickly as it came—he doesn’t see me anymore.

“Look, she is way too drunk,” he says, turning to the three of them. “Can you guys get her home, or not?” he asks, pretending I don’t exist, a game he plays even better than basketball.

“Yeah, man. Sure. We will, I promise,” Cameron says, nodding his head all serious and responsible-like. I feel like screaming GO FUCK YOURSELF to everyone within earshot, Caelin, Cameron, Steve, Mara even, the people standing around staring at us, Rachael, that would-be-sixteen guy, Kevin, if he’s around, which I’m sure he is.

Caelin walks away. Doesn’t look at me, doesn’t say another word. Just walks away from me. Everybody gives me these sideways looks of uncomfortable pity, like I had just lost some really important game. Whatever it was that we were playing, they all seemed to think I was the loser. I wasn’t. He lost! He was the loser. They were all losers. Not me.

“Are you okay?” Mara asks me, touching my shoulder.

“Yeah, of course.” I snort. I’m tough. I can take it. So what?

“Honey, you’re crying,” she says, looking worried.

“I am not!” That’s ridiculous. But I rub at my eyes with the back of my sleeves and it leaves two dirty, black streaks from my mascara.

“She never cries,” she tells Cameron and Steve.

“I can hear you, and I’m not crying! Maybe my eyes are watering from some reason, but not because I’m crying,” I shout.

Nobody really says much the whole way home.

Caelin doesn’t speak to me at all the next day. Needless to say, we don’t have our special brother-sister outing like he wanted. And he’s gone by the time I wake up Sunday morning.

And then nobody really says much to me in school on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. I don’t care if Cameron doesn’t talk to me. I honestly don’t care if Steve doesn’t talk to me. And Mara, it can’t rightfully be said that she’s ignoring me, she just doesn’t seem particularly happy that I exist.

“All right, so why is everyone being weird?” I finally ask Mara in the hall by her locker on Thursday.

“What do you mean?” she mumbles, not even glancing up at me.

“Ever since the party no one’s been talking to me.”

“I’m talking to you right now.”

“Yeah, barely.”

“Well, can you really blame them? You were so mean, Edy.”

“Not to you, I wasn’t.”

“No, but you made fun of Cameron.” She pauses, waiting for me to react. “And Steve, you know he actually liked you and you were horrible to him.”

“I was not. Not horrible.” If he was stupid enough to actually like me, then that’s his problem.

“Edy, you obviously ditched him to go hook up with some other guy. But I guess he’s just a little dork, right? So who cares, anyway?” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds mean, but that’s not what I meant—that’s not how it happened. Not really.”

She just crosses her arms and shakes her head.

“I was drunk, Mara. I didn’t mean anything by it, you know that.”

“Yeah, exactly.” She inhales sharply. “And I really think you have a problem, Edy.”

“What, a drinking problem? I don’t drink that much—you drink more than I do.”

She slams her locker shut, all exasperated, like it’s such a big project to talk to me. “No, that’s not what I mean. Not a drinking problem, but you have some kind of problem. You didn’t mean anything by it, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said,” I snap, getting impatient.

“But you never mean anything.”

“So?” I wish, wish to God, that she would say what she means, instead of having me jump through her psychological hoops.

“So, nothing ever means anything to you. You’re just out there lately, Edy, way out there. It worries me.”

“Out where, what are you talking about?”

“Like—I don’t know—I just feel like you’re about to go over the edge or something.” Her fingers walk an imaginary line through the air, and then she lets her hand plummet downward, like she’s enacting her hand falling off a cliff.

“You’re completely overreacting.”

She shakes her head firmly back and forth. “No, you’re out of control this time. Really. You know, you’re acting crazy—crazy for you, even.”

“Where is this coming from? I drink a little too much and then I’m not perfectly polite to your little boyfriend and now all of a sudden I’m crazy?”

“Edy, just stop. You know what I’m talking about. It’s everything.”

I feel my face contorting into a smirk—that really condescending way Caelin does it that makes me want to punch him in the mouth just to shatter that stupid crooked line of his lips. “Thanks for the concern,” I snarl, “but I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Edy . . .” The corners of her mouth turn down in that way that means she’s trying not to cry but is going to start any second. “I don’t like you like this.”

“Like what?” I ask, not nicely. It pushes her over the brink.

“You’re not thinking right and you’re—you’regoingtogethurt.” She has to say it really fast so she can get it all out before the tears. “Please. Listen. Okay?” Then she takes a breath and just like that, her eyes are full to the brim, just on the cusp of spilling over. Then one drop rolls down, then a whole army of them, like rain on glass. She cries. And then, because I’m such great friend, I just walk away.