The Way I Used to Be

I GET THERE FIRST, before the bell. I’ve been dreading it all day. Study hall. Then the three of them walk in together like a gang, against me. Next, it’s Amanda.

Mara marches up to our table. “You’re not sitting here—no way.”

“It’s okay,” Steve says, setting his stuff down.

“No, it’s not, Steve—I’ve had it with her shit!” Mara yells at him. Then to me: “Move.”

“Fine.” I stand and scan the room.

Amanda nudges the empty chair next to her toward me with her foot. I think she even tries to smile, but it looks more like a facial tic.

“If everyone will take their seats, come on, Edith, take your seat please.” Mr. Mosner smiles at me impatiently. I don’t even have the will to correct him. Edith—I could just die.

I sit next to Amanda, pretending that it’s a free world and I can sit wherever I damn well please. I glance sideways at her. Then I look at her friends: there’s Snarky Girl, of course, and the boy who always looks completely baked, and the girl who looks like a bleached-out, negative version of Amanda—blond to her black, pasty to her tan, blue eyes to her brown. They all look at me like I’m some kind of alien.

I can’t take my eyes off the clock. Only twenty-four more minutes until this period is over and I can get away from Steve and all the hurt feelings he’s throwing my way. Away from Cameron and his words that still ricochet around in my head. And from Mara and this bitterness that lodges itself between us ever deeper.

“Can we talk?”

I turn. It’s Steve.

“What, right now?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he mumbles, glancing uncomfortably at Amanda and her friends, who are all staring. He starts walking away, toward the door. He glances at Mr. Mosner’s back, then motions with his hand for me to follow. I don’t know why I do.

“So, you’re just not talking to me now, huh?” he asks once we’re in the hall.

God, he really hates me. I can feel it in every cell in my body, every nucleus, every fucking ribosome.

“I’m not not talking to you, I just—”

“What?” he interrupts. “You just what?”

“I just don’t have anything to say.” I shrug.

“You don’t have anything to say? How is that possible? How can you possibly not have anything to say?” he almost shouts.

“Okay, well, obviously you have something you’d like to say, so why don’t you just go ahead?”

“Fine. It meant something to me—it means something to me. There. I’m not afraid to admit it.” And then he just stares at me, waiting, wishing for me to spit his words right back at him.

“Okay, Steve. I’ll be honest. It didn’t mean anything to me.” Truth? Lie? I can’t even tell anymore. I know I’m being cold and heartless, but I can’t stop myself. He touched. He got hurt. He comes back for more. He gets it. Not my problem.

“I don’t even believe that. I was there, okay. I know that it did.”

“Look, it’s not your fault, it’s just the—”

“What is this?” he interrupts, all jumpy and irritated, shoving his fingers back through his hair, almost like he wants to rip his hair out.

“What is what?”

“This! This act,” he says, waving his hand at me. He clenches his jaw and his nostrils flare as he starts to breathe heavier. “What’s with this act? What are you doing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Maybe this works with other guys, but it’s different with us, so just stop, okay?” He takes a step closer. I take a step back.

“Why? Because you think you’re different? Don’t lie to yourself. You’re no different. You. Are. Exactly. The same. God, this whole damn thing is so fucking predictable, it makes me want to die!” My words carry through the empty hall, encircling us, holding us motionless in their orbit.

I look at him, turning shades of white, shades of hurt, and I feel my face start to smile.

“You know, I can take weird,” he says quietly, the muscles in his face flexing and twitching. Then quieter, “I can take fucked up.” And his eyes, they fill with water. Oh God, his voice shakes. “But you’re just a . . . slut.”

If words are weapons, if they could wound physically, then he just shot a hundred-pound cannonball through the center of my body. The kind of artillery built to take out a battleship, and certainly equipped to sink a stupid, mean little girl.

In shock and disbelief, I utter the word, “What?”

Steve’s not supposed to say stuff like that to me.

He steps closer. I’m expecting him to scream, which makes it so much worse when he only whimpers quietly, “You’re a fucking bitch. And a slut. And I can’t believe I ever thought you were anything else.” The words come out through his teeth, and he’s unable to stop the tears, like it hurt him to have to say it, even more than it was meant to hurt me.

“I—” I touch his arm. I don’t know what to do. He snatches his whole body away from me, though. “Steve, don’t—” Be mad, don’t be hurt by me, don’t leave angry and destroyed. Don’t you know I’m not worth it? I want to grab him and hold on to him and tell him I’m sorry. I want to do that even more than I want to run. Because Cameron was right, he doesn’t deserve this. “Steve, Steve . . . please don’t—”

“Fuck. Off,” he chokes out, wiping his eyes on his sleeves. He turns around and starts walking off down the hall, past the classroom, getting smaller in the dim light, around the corner, and gone.

I walk in the opposite direction. I slink down the stairwell at the other end of the hall. Into the dirty, forsaken basement bathroom where there are no windows but it’s still okay to smoke because no self-respecting teacher would be caught dead in here. I lock myself in. It smells like sewer. Perfect for a mouse, a little rat, like me. In the stall, I sink into the floor, press my back against the cold tiles, and light a cigarette. My breathing echoes. I flick the ashes into the stained toilet next to my face. I close my eyes and I wait. And wait.

I think about Josh again. Not anything in particular. Just little things, like the way he would smile at me, or the sound of his voice, the way I could sometimes make him laugh, the way he could sometimes make me feel so good, so free, so myself. How I thought things were so complicated with him. But they were so easy compared to this, compared to everything else.

I imagine him coming here. Finding me all the way down here in the basement bathroom dungeon like some knight, like some Tin Man in rusting armor, holding a bouquet of dandelions, ready to slay my darkest, most deranged dragons. He’d bust through the door and say something perfect like, “Baby, what’s wrong? Don’t cry. Let’s get the hell outta here. You and me. I’ll take you anywhere. We can run away. We can start over, we can be—”

But something interrupts the fantasy, and suddenly I feel my body again, gravity pulling me down, anchoring me to the cold cement floor. Something pinches my thigh, bringing me back to reality, pinching harder. And harder, burning, damn—no, not pinching. I open my eyes to see that my cigarette has burned all the way down to the filter, causing the cherry to fall off and burn through my pants like acid, right down to my skin.

“Shit!” I whisper-shout, smacking my leg to try to extinguish the stupidity.

Then the bell rings, screaming through the walls and the ceiling, vibrating through the whole building—through me. I wait until the distant noise of shouting and feet running and lockers clanging has passed.

I walk back into the classroom to find Amanda picking my backpack up off the floor. She’s being so gentle with it, it’s unsettling. Everyone else has gone except for her and Snarky. I linger in the doorway, listening.

“So, you’re what, friends with her now? That’s seriously fucked,” Snarky says under her breath.

“Not friends. Just—I don’t know, I guess I’m trying not to hate her.” The way Amanda says “her,” I know somehow that they’re talking about me because I get this pounding in my chest. I freeze, stuck between fight and flight. “I’m trying to be Zen, okay?” she continues. “Isn’t that what you’re always preaching?”

“Even after she . . . ?” Snarky asks her quietly. “There’s a limit to being all Zen and shit.”

Amanda shrugs. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“After I what?” I ask, stepping forward, the decision made for me. I’ll fight.

Amanda turns to look at me, startled. “Oh! Nothing,” she answers quickly.

“No, what? What the hell did I ever do to you? I really want to know. I would love to know,” I hear myself say, with a little laugh in my throat, feeling close to the edge of something, like I could say anything right now, do anything, and not give a damn about the repercussions.

“Just forget it,” Amanda tells me, shaking her head.

But Snarky pipes up: “You and Kevin.”

“Wh—what?” The word sticks in my throat. Me and Kevin don’t belong in the same sentence, in the same thought, in the same fucking galaxy.

“Shut up!” Amanda snaps at her friend. “I was going to pick up your things for you,” she says to me.

“What are you talking about?” I demand from Snarky.

“I’m talking about you and her brother—”

“Fucking shut up!” Amanda interrupts. “I said I don’t care!”

“Doing it,” Snarky finishes, looking me up and down like I really am a totally slutty disgusting whore.

I can barely hang on to a thought long enough to get the words out of my mouth. “I—I—what? I never—why would you say that?”

“Please,” Snarky says with a laugh, “it’s like, just, a known thing.”

I refocus on Amanda, trying to speak instead of vomit. “You tell people this? Why would you make something like that up?”

“I’m not making it up—he told me!” She starts to get that hateful look in her eye again. “So you don’t have to act like—”

“I never. Never. I never, you fucking liar! I hate him. I would never! I hate him more than anyone in the entire world. He disgusts me. In fact, you disgust me! You disgust me because you make me think of him!” I’m pointing and thrashing my arms around wildly, and they start to back away from me, I realize, because I’m getting closer.

“He said that you and him—” Amanda starts to speak, but I can’t let her have one more word.

“I wish he were dead, okay? I hope. He fucking. Dies. Nothing would make me happier than for something really horrible to happen to him. Do you get that?” I’m inches from her face now. Can’t stop moving toward her. “I mean, do you fucking get that?” I feel something savage and electrical flow through me, like my hands could strangle her, like they’re controlled by some part of my brain that’s immune to logic, the same part of my brain that’s allowing me to say these things, these fucked-up things that are just going to give me away. I could just . . . my hands. Reach out. God. For anything. To hurt.

Next thing I know she’s on the floor.

And her friend is screaming, “You fucking psycho, what the fuck?”

And I’m screaming, “I’ll kill you if you ever say that again.” Amanda looks up at me, tears rolling down her cheeks. It makes her look just like her seven-year-old Mandy self, but still I can’t force myself to stop. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again—do you understand? Not to me, not to anyone. Or I swear to God. I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you.”

I cry the entire way home from school. I just walk down the streets sobbing. Not caring who sees me, or what I must look like, or what anyone thinks. I get home and lock myself in my bedroom.

I just lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

I made Mara cry. I made Steve cry. I made Amanda cry.

Anyone who has ever felt anything for me now hates me—after hours of dwelling on this, I’ve actually made myself physically ill.

I don’t go to school the next day. Can’t face anyone. I’m sick, sick, sick, I tell Vanessa. She feels my forehead and tells me I’m burning up. I just sleep and sleep. And no one bothers me at all. All day and all night, it’s just me in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of consciousness.