The Way I Used to Be

IT’S AFTER MIDNIGHT. The snow is falling hard outside, the wind howling. Can’t sleep. Can’t get comfortable. Goddamn lumpy sleeping bag. I turn my head and my eyes focus on my ninth-grade yearbook, sandwiched between the floor and the leg of my desk, leveling it out. I pull on it from the flimsy spine—it releases easily. And the desk rocks forward without its support.

I absently flip through until I reach the clubs and organizations section.

Lunch-Break Book Club.

Miss Sullivan posing behind the circulation desk, her glasses pushed down to the tip of her nose, her index finger in front of her lips, making the shhh face. The six of us stood around her, three on either side, each of us making our most angelic faces and holding out six shiny red apples for her—very nerdy, so very, very nerdy. It was my idea. Steve had set up the tripod with his camera exactly where I had marked with masking tape on the floor. And I was a stickler about the apples, too. Cortland, Empire, Gala, McIntosh, and Red Delicious were permitted, but no Ginger Gold or Golden Delicious, and absolutely no Granny Smiths would be allowed in any yearbook picture I was orchestrating. I even sent out an e-mail to that effect so no one would show up with the wrong apple and fuck up my picture. I guess that was the beginning of the end of Lunch-Break. But if there were a contest for best group photo that year, Lunch-Break Book Club would’ve won by light-years. I compare the grainy gray hues of our apples; they match perfectly. A yellow or green one would’ve thrown the whole thing off, I’m sure of it.

I examine it more closely—everyone’s goofy faces—Steve’s chubby cheeks, Mara’s sincerity, Miss Sullivan playing along, and then there’s me. It’s me in a ponytail and my old glasses. And I have this smile on my face, but it’s all wrong because there’s this look in my eyes—this dull, dead darkness. Like something is missing. I can’t say what. But that missing something is something important, something crucial, something taken. Something gone now. Maybe for good.

I flip to the sports section. Boys varsity basketball. He’d been sitting there in the back of my mind like someone incessantly tapping on my shoulder. Ever since the night I found myself outside his house. I shoved him back into his corner where he belongs. But now I have to look. I can’t ignore him anymore. Not when I’m this close. I trace my finger over the faces. And there he is. In his Number 12 jersey. Josh. My heart thumps hard and fast the way it used to. I force my eyes to close. I force my fingers to turn the page. So I can’t look at his face again, so I won’t see his name listed there, so I can go back to forgetting all about him for the rest of my life.

Instead, I flip to the ninth-grade section to visit the ghost of that girl I used to be. And there she is, right between Maureen Malinowski and Sean Michaels. Glasses and all. A stupid innocent smile plastered on her stupid innocent face. That picture was taken on the very first day—the first day of high school—the day I thought her life was about to begin. How could she have known her stupid, pathetic, flat-chested days were numbered?

I envy her, that awkward, not-quite-ugly-not-quite-pretty girl. Wish I could start over. Be her again. I look deeply into her eyes as if she holds some special secret, a way to get back to her. But her eyes are just pixels. She only comes in two dimensions. She doesn’t know shit. I start out grinning, grinning because of the irony, and then I snicker a few times, shaking my head back and forth. Then I’m laughing, laughing because of the absurdity, and then I have to use both hands to cover my mouth because I’m laughing so hard. And then I have to use both my hands to cover my eyes, because they’re crying, crying because of the atrocity of it all, of regret and time and lies and not being able to do anything about any of it.

Only now I can’t remember, damn it, where the lies ended and I began. It’s all blurred. Everything suddenly seems to have become so messy, so gray, so undefined and terrifying. All I know is that things went terribly awry, this wasn’t the plan. The plan was to get better, to feel better, by any means. But I don’t feel better, I feel empty, empty and broken, still.

And alone. More alone than ever before.

I feel these forbidden thoughts creep in sometimes without warning. Slow thoughts that always start quietly, like whispers you’re not even sure you’re hearing. And then they get louder and louder until they become every sound in the entire world. Thoughts that can’t be undone.

Would anyone care?

Would anyone even fucking notice?

What if one day I just wasn’t here anymore?

What if one day it all just stopped?

What if? What if? What if?