The Way I Used to Be

“WHY AREN’T YOU AT school?” Caelin mumbles at me, still lying on the couch where I left him hours earlier. Not asleep, just staring off into space. He can’t force his eyes away from the nothing to even look at me.

“Cae, I need to talk to you.”

“Edy, please. I can’t right now, okay?”

I actually feel bad for him. I feel bad for the things he found out about his best friend, for the things I’m about to tell him. Feel bad that things are going to get so much worse. “Can I get you anything?” I ask.

He shakes his head and closes his eyes.

I go into the kitchen and pour him a glass of the good cold water from the fridge. “Here.” I sit down on the floor next to the couch with the glass.

He sits up slowly and takes a sip of the water. “Thanks.”

“It’s important,” I find the courage to say, feeling for the first time like maybe this actually is important, like it matters. Like I matter.

It takes him a few extra seconds to hear me. He sets the glass down on the coffee table. “All right,” he says finally, rubbing his eyes, looking totally disinterested.

“Caelin, I have to tell you something and it’s important that you listen and that you don’t interrupt me.”

“Okay, okay, I’m listening.”

I take a breath. I can do this. “All right, this is hard, really hard. I’m not even sure where to start.”

“At the beginning . . . ?” he offers sarcastically, not knowing he’s being helpful in spite of himself.

“Okay. I’ll start at the beginning. There was this night,” I start. I stop. I start again, “I was a freshman—and I never told anyone about it, but this night—okay, there was this night that—everyone was asleep and—Kevin came into my room—”

“For the love of God, Edy, can you just pick one sentence and finish—”

“Please.” I hold my hand up; it silences him for once. “He came into my room in the middle of the night and . . .” I can’t look at him when I say it. I close my eyes and cover them with my hands because it’s the only way I’ll be able to get it out. “And he got in my bed.” I take a breath. “He raped me. He did, okay, Caelin. And I never told anyone because he said he would kill me if I did. And I believed him. So I know that what they’re saying is true because he did it to me, too. And I’m sorry, because I know you don’t want to hear this, but if you don’t believe me, Cae”—I gasp to catch my breath—“then you’re not my brother anymore.” I breathe. And wait. And breathe. And wait.

Silence.

I slowly uncover my eyes. I expect him to be looking at me. But he’s not; his hands are covering his ears, his eyes shut tight. He’s slumped forward, toward me, his body folded in on itself. He doesn’t move; I don’t even hear him breathe. I don’t know what to say next so I say nothing. I leave him be. Let him process. Hope that he believes me, that he picks my side. I wait.

“I . . . ,” he begins, but stops. I look up at him. “I—I just don’t understand what you’re saying, Edy,” he mumbles into his hands. Then he pulls himself up and looks at me. “I don’t un-der-stand how this happened.” He says each word, each syllable, separately—precisely, carefully. He studies my face, searching, but I don’t understand either.

Then he’s on his feet fast. And he’s pacing, like he’s thinking too many things all at once. “No,” I hear him mutter as he walks out of sight around the corner and into his bedroom. I almost call after him, but just as I open my mouth I hear what sounds like a dump truck driving into the side of the house, and Caelin screaming “FUCK” over and over, in this guttural, animal way.

My feet can’t resist taking me to his door. I look at what he’s done, what he’s doing. Everything that was sitting on top of his dresser—all the relics of his high school glory: basketball trophies, medals, certificates, photos, and these model cars that he and Kevin spent eternities working on together—is now just a broken, mangled pile of memory vomit on the floor. And he’s kicking his closet door over and over, with his bare feet.

He always keeps such a tight lid on everything. I mean, I’ve seen him mad, of course, I’ve seen him nasty at times, but never like this. He spins around, now at his dresser again and his hands grip the edges so tight. I put my hand over my mouth to keep from yelling at him to stop, because I know what he’s about to do—he’s about to throw the dresser on the floor. This dresser has to weigh more than both of us combined; it’s old, antique-old, it belonged to our great-grandparents. It’s probably worth something too. I have a vision of it breaking through the floor and crashing into the basement. But I just stand there, bracing myself, and I watch as it teeters forward, the floorboards creaking under its shifting weight.

And then it all stops. The dresser rests again on four feet, and he’s stopped yelling. He just stands there, breathing heavy, square in front of me, and he looks at me like he sees me, like maybe he finally gets it. He pinches the bridge of his nose as his eyes fill with water, and then he shoves his knuckles into each eyeball, trying to thwart the tears. “I don’t understand,” he says again, except this time it’s not measured but messy and trembling. Because he does understand.

I watch as his body melts down to the floor and I start to understand something too. That this isn’t all about me. This thing, it touches everyone.