The Way I Used to Be

“CALM DOWN, HONEY, it’s going to be all right, I promise,” I hear Vanessa say in a dream. In it, I’m crying and she’s trying to take care of me, and I’m trying so hard to let her. I open my eyes. A dim light glows through the curtain. My alarm clock says 5:10 a.m.

“Everything’s going to get straightened out, son, you’ll see,” Conner says, in a voice so tender, I question if I really am awake at all.

“No, Dad—you weren’t there. I just don’t think so.” It’s Caelin, and it’s him who’s crying, not me. And I am awake, I’m sure.

“Maybe you should call the Armstrongs, Conner,” Vanessa says, her voice muffled behind my locked bedroom door. The Armstrongs—Kevin—I heard that. I sit up fast, listen harder.

“No! Don’t call them. Not yet . . . not until we know if—” Caelin pauses and then I hear him sniffling again. But Caelin shouldn’t be here. His winter break isn’t for another week. No, something’s not right.

I unlock my door, small steps to the living room. No one hears me come in. My brother is sitting in the middle of the couch, head in hands, Vanessa in her bathrobe and slippers sitting next to him, arm draped across his back; Conner on his feet, hovering, a hand resting tentatively on his shoulder. They’re silent. Caelin’s body bobs up and down.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

They all turn their eyes to me. But they don’t say anything. Caelin drops his head back down into his lap. Vanessa’s chin quivers.

“It’s Kevin, honey,” Conner finally tells me.

“What—what did he do?”

“Do?” Caelin spits at me. “He didn’t do anything!”

“Shhshhshh,” Vanessa coos at him.

“Okay, well, what happened?” I try instead.

“It’s all going to be all right, so everybody just calm down,” Conner yells. “Edy, Kevin is . . . in a little bit of trouble, but it’s going to get straightened out soon enough.”

“What kind of trouble?” I scratch my arm, the anxiety bubbling up under my skin.

“This girl in our dorm is saying he raped her!” Caelin shouts. And then, at my lack of reaction, he adds, “He didn’t, obviously, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. The police came and—”

I can’t hear anything else because someone is yelling inside my head, taking a mallet to my brain. Screaming, God, no, no, no, no. I feel like I might fall over, like I might just stop breathing altogether. That old familiar bullet inches its way in deeper. I think it’s headed for my heart this time. No, my stomach. I run for the bathroom. Make it just in time to lift the lid and throw up.

I sit down on the cold tile floor. My head is pounding, like there’s literally a war going on inside my brain, complete with bombs and cannons and big guns and casualties. He did it. Of course he did it. There’s no question about that. But, did I do it too? I listened to him, I kept my mouth shut, and then he went and did it again, to someone else. Except this girl, whoever she is, she was brave, smart. Not like me. I am just the same sniveling coward I was then. I’m a mouse. I am a fucking mouse.

On the other side of the door I hear some more sniffling and low, wordless whining. Gurgling sounds from the coffeepot. I emerge, hopefully not looking like someone just kicked my ass.

“You okay, Minnie?” Conner asks, squeezing my shoulder a little too vigorously. Minnie, I haven’t heard that one in a while. How obscenely appropriate.

“Not really,” I admit.

“Don’t worry about school today.” He smiles. “We’re all taking a mental-health day. Sound good?”

I nod, try to smile back.

We sit around the house for hours, everyone looking devastated. Caelin’s a mess. Conner tries to act like everything’s okay. Vanessa vacillates between manic fidgeting and sitting too still. I feel like beating my head against the wall.

I can’t imagine eating, but I help Vanessa make lunch anyway. She says it will help everyone feel better. I seriously doubt that. As we sit around the kitchen table, mostly just picking at our grilled cheese sandwiches and stirring our bowls of lumpy tomato soup, the story comes out disjointed and biased.

Caelin tells us, “It’s his girlfriend. It just—it doesn’t even make sense—I mean, why would he need to rape someone he was already sleeping with?”

It made sense to me, of course. He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.

“She broke up with Kevin for some reason or other—I really don’t know—but it wasn’t a huge deal or anything. And Kevin asked her to come over the one night, because she was upset about the breakup, just to talk, and she says that’s when he ‘raped’ her.” He air quotes, and I want to lunge across the table and break his fingers off. “Kevin admitted to having sex with her—‘consensual’ sex.” He air quotes again.

I don’t bother telling him that if he’s trying to make her the liar, then he doesn’t want to emphasize the word “consensual.”

“She didn’t even report it for a couple of days,” he adds, as if this is some important piece of information, as if it means anything. “If it really happened, then why didn’t she report it right away?”

Compared to how long I’ve waited, two days seems nearly instantaneous, two damn days is nothing.

“And besides,” he continues, “I was there. I mean, I was right there in the next room. I would have known if something was happening. If she was seriously in trouble, she could’ve screamed, or called for me—I mean, we were friends too. And I didn’t hear anything!”

Oh, my heart. Stops. If he only knew the things he was capable of not hearing from the next room.

“Nothing at all,” he repeats. “And that’s exactly what I told the campus police when they questioned me last week. But then out of nowhere, they came last night—the real police, this time—and took him. That’s why I’m here—I didn’t know what else to do. I just can’t believe they can get away with this. They can’t just arrest someone for no reason, right? I cannot figure out why she would lie like this. She seemed so . . . normal.”

“Maybe she’s not lying,” I finally blurt out, unable to hold it in any longer.

“How can you even say that? Of course she’s lying!” Caelin looks like he’s about to climb over the table at me.

“Well, they don’t just arrest someone for no reason, and you just said yourself you didn’t think she would lie,” I remind him.

“No, I said I don’t know why she would lie, not that I didn’t think she was. And I don’t know, Eden, maybe she just decided to invent some fucked-up story because she felt bad—breaking up with a guy and then sleeping with him anyway—for being a slut.”

“Caelin, we don’t talk like that at the table,” Vanessa scolds gently.

But he ignores her. Instead he looks at me and mumbles under his breath, “You can understand that, can’t you?”

My mouth opens. Out of shock or to speak, I don’t know which. I can’t even think in words—can’t breathe, can’t feel—but somehow my voice finds them anyway, and they explode off my tongue, those perfect words: “Fuck. You.”

“Fuck you too!” Caelin matches me, in flawless reflex.

Conner slams his fist down on the table, rattling the spoons in their bowls. Rattling my heart. “All right, all right! What the hell is going on with you two? Both of you shut your goddamn mouths right now!” He points his finger in both our faces, alternately.

Caelin pushes his chair away from the table and storms into the kitchen.

I follow suit and stomp off to my room, slamming my door hard behind me.

I sit down on the floor, leaning my back against the side of my bed. I let my head fall against the edge of the mattress. I close my eyes. I can’t keep it out any longer. Can’t hold it back. I feel something break like a levee inside my head.