The Way I Used to Be (23 page)

“We got a live one!” Keg Guy whistles.

“I didn't know,” he says, his face changing from amused to intrigued. “Sorry.” He finally hands me the cup. His eyes narrowing on me, he asks, “You go to school with my brother?”

“No. We just met. He told us about this party. Thought we'd check it out. Not impressed,” I add, looking around like I'm completely uninterested in anything that's going on here.

“How old are you—the truth?” He grins.

“Jailbait!” Keg Guy coughs under his breath, smacking him on the shoulder before he runs off, leaving us alone in the kitchen.

“The truth,” he repeats.

The truth. I take a big sip from the cup. His words echo in my head. Truth. What is that, anyway? No such thing.

“What's your problem?” I ask, sure to sound positively bored out of my skull. “I'm eighteen.” Except that is a total lie. Not the truth at all. “Calm down.”

“All right, all right,” he says. “Just bustin' your chops.” And then he smiles his smile from the doorway. “So, not impressed, huh?” he asks.

“Not particularly.” I shrug.

“Don't you wanna join your friend out there?” he gestures beyond the sliding door to the patio, where Mara sits between Alex and Troy, her head thrown back in laughter.

“That's not really my thing,” I tell him.

“Oh, really? Well, what is your thing?” he asks, looping his arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him.

I feel my heart race, and the corners of my mouth turn upward, somehow, as I look at him. “I don't know,” I answer. And that is the truth.

“Well, how 'bout a tour of the house?” he asks. “What kind of host would I be?”

“Okay,” I agree. I look at Mara once more before I follow him out of the kitchen. She's having a great time. She's fine. He leads me up the staircase to the second floor.

“Maybe we can find something a little more exciting for you?” he says, looking over his shoulder at me.

“Maybe,” I reply, not sure who is doing my talking right now. He grabs my hand when we reach the landing, and takes me down to the end of the hall, past people in rooms smoking and drinking, laughing and kissing. Then we go up another flight of stairs. My legs feel like they're jelly by the time we reach the top. There's a short hall with only two doors on either side, both closed. There's no one on this floor.

“It's quiet up here,” I say, feeling my confidence slowly beginning to drain as I realize just how far away I am from everyone, just how far this has already gone.

“Exactly. This is only for special guests,” he says, taking a key ring out of his pocket as he approaches the door.

“Special guests, huh?” I repeat, standing close behind him.

He turns around and puts his hands on my waist, and suddenly I'm up against the door, and he's kissing me fast and moving his hands all over me. I feel this rush of energy flow from my toes up to the top of my head and out through my fingers, the confidence flooding back through me. And now I kiss him the same way he kisses me. Move my hands over him the way he does to me. Careless, hard, dangerous. He fumbles to get the door unlocked. We tumble inside the darkened room. I barely have a chance to even look around to see where we are, because it's all happening so fast. There's a bed, a dresser, a mirror. That's all I can make out before he slams the door behind us and locks it, turning back to me before I'm even able to take a breath.

We're in the bed. The weight of his whole body on top of me. Cold metal belt buckle pressing against my stomach. Hands pushing my skirt up. Underwear peeling down my legs. Belt buckle comes undone, scraping against my skin. The sound of a zipper. Heavy breathing.

It's over before I even fully believe it's happening. Before I've even fully decided I'm going to do it. And I lie here staring up at the ceiling fan, this guy panting next to me. I don't even know his name. He doesn't know mine. We stay like this for what feels like a long time, but I can't be sure how much time actually passes.

He finally lets out a sigh, and sits up slowly. Smoothing out his shirt and buttoning his pants, he looks over at me like he's forgotten I'm here. “Thanks,” he says quietly. “This was fun.”

“Yeah,” I whisper, slipping my underwear back on.

We don't speak as we make our way back downstairs to rejoin the party. And I realize I feel a little strange, like, out of my body in a way I've never been before. In a way that feels so much better than drinking too much, or even that night at the playground when we got high. Better than any feeling I've ever had. Empty and full, all at the same time.

I somehow find my way to Mara, still sitting outside, laughing just like she was when I left. It's like I was never gone, like time just stood still. They call me over, my name echoing through the thick air. I shake my head and walk to the edge of the crystal blue pool instead. Sitting down slowly, I take my shoes off and dip my feet into the cool water. I swirl my legs in figure eights over and over again as I look up at the stars, the warm breeze floating through me. I don't know who I am right now. But I know who I'm not. And I like that.

IT BECOMES DIFFICULT TO
avoid someone while simultaneously using them. That's Troy. I know he's had a crush on me these past three months. And I've been trying not to lead him on. Not too much, anyway. Still, he tells us about every party that's happening in a thirty-mile radius. And I don't tell him about how I had sex with his older brother back in September.

Not that I enjoy the parties all that much. But I enjoy losing myself. And there's always someone there. Ready, waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Just like me. I've gotten good at picking them out right away. Finding that someone. Not a bad person. Someone who just wants what I want. To disconnect. For a little while, anyway. From themselves, mostly. I think. I wouldn't really know, though, because it's not like we ever talk about these things. It's not like I really care, anyway.

That's what I'm thinking about, lying on this lumpy futon next to some guy. The bedroom window is open, and the winter air flows in easily, cooling my whole body. I can almost see my breath.

“You're that girl,” he tells me, propping himself on his elbow as he lights up a joint. “I didn't even realize it when we first started talking.”

I turn to face him, and see that he's looking down at me with a grin.

“What girl?” I ask.

“Let's just say people know who you are at our school,” he tells me as he exhales a cloud of smoke. “People talk about you,” he says, his words slowing down. “A lot.” He offers me a hit, but I shake my head. I haven't smoked pot since the playground with Troy. It turns out getting high really isn't my thing. This is my thing.

The smoke begins to fill the room, making me feel dizzy. I close my eyes, and try to sink down into this moment a little deeper—into my body, my mind—so deep I can come out the other side and forget how I even got here. I can hear the muted shouting and music on the other side of the door. But it can't touch me in here, somehow.

“You know,” the guy says, reaching over to brush my hair back away from my face, his voice pulling me away from this feeling. I open my eyes and try to focus on him. “I can't tell if you're really pretty,” he continues so sincerely, a soft smile on his face, “or really ugly.”

It's like when you're falling in a dream and you wake up, shocked back into reality by your body hitting the bed with a crash. That's what his stupid, clumsy words do to me.

And in that instant an image forms in my mind, quick and fleeting.

Josh. I see his smile. Feel his sweetness. His arms around me. For just a moment—just a flash. It disappears almost immediately. As soon as my consciousness kicks in, he's gone. But he was there just long enough and just clear enough to jolt me, to shock my system with a surge of fresh heartache. It leaves me with this sick underwater sensation, something dangerously close to drowning. Josh would never, ever say anything like that to me, not even after the way I treated him.

I sit up fast. I find my shirt and my pants. I get dressed. This guy lies there, watching me, smiling at me.

“Where you going?” he asks, taking too long to realize what I'm doing.

“Where do you think?”

“I don't know,” he says slowly.

“Look, I realize you're stoned, but you don't say fucked-up things like that to a girl you just had sex with!”

“What did I say? I said you're really pretty, didn't I?”

“No, actually that's not what you said!” Leaving in a hurry was easier in the warmer months. Now I have layers to keep track of—I pull on my boot laces with force as I tie them in a double knot.

“Oh.” He laughs.

I look at him before I leave. He's just lying there shirtless, grinning, and oblivious. “You know, I can't tell if you're really mean or really stupid!”

He cracks up at that. “You're so funny,” he's saying as I'm closing the door on him, stepping out into the noise again.

Fuck off.

There are too many damn people crammed into this house. As I squeeze through the bodies, people look at me and I wonder if they all know me as
that girl
too. I find Mara in the basement. She's sitting between Troy and Alex on a dusty old couch. Mara's talking. Alex isn't listening. She acts like she likes him when we're at these parties—lets him put his arm around her shoulder, and she'll touch his leg with her foot, kiss him good-bye before we leave—but I think she's just using him too. The only time she even mentions his name is when she's around Cameron. Still, after all these months of partying, they've only kissed.

“Hey,” I call to Mara, barely able to find an empty place to stand. “I'm going outside,” I shout, pointing toward the door.

“Wait,” she says, peeling Alex's arm off her shoulder, “wait, I'm coming with you.”

We push our way against the wall of bodies, weaving through the cases of beer stacked up on the floor of the kitchen like a maze. As I open the front door and step out into the cold, a welcome silence rushes over us, and I feel like I can breathe again.

“What's wrong?” Mara asks.

“Nothing.”

She eyes me closely. “No, there's something.”

“It's nothing. I was just hanging out with this idiot—he said something kind of mean to me. It's okay, though. I mean, whatever. I'm fine. I don't care.” I shrug, taking in a deep breath of icy air, allowing it to fill me before I release it.

“What did he say?”

“It doesn't matter,” I tell her, looking up at the sky.

“Let's go,” she says.

“Really? You don't want to stay? What about Alex?”

“It doesn't matter,” she says with a laugh. “I don't think he'll even notice, honestly.”

We drive to this twenty-four-hour Denny's that's right in between our town and Troy and Alex's. It's only ten thirty. I order a big breakfast and Mara gets an enormous banana split.

“Tell me what that guy said to you?” Mara asks me again as she picks the cherry off the top of a swirl of whipped cream. “I really wanna know.”

“Fine. It's kind of funny, actually. He said he couldn't tell whether I was really pretty or really ugly,” I finally admit.

“You've gotta be fucking kidding me, right?” Her face is caught between a smile and a frown.

“No. Those were his exact words, Mara.”

“That's heinous!”

“Yeah.” I laugh. “But what's worse is the way he said it—so sweetly—like it was a compliment or something! Not exactly the kind of thing you want a guy telling you right after you sleep with him.”

“No, I guess it's not,” Mara agrees, her laughter fading. “Do you—do you do that a lot, Edy?” she asks me awkwardly, looking down at her banana split, like she's counting the scoops of ice cream over and over: vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. “I mean, with guys you don't know?” she finishes.

“Sometimes.” I shrug. “I mean, it depends, I guess.”

“Do you think—I don't know, do you think that's such a good idea? I mean, that's kind of dangerous, isn't it?”

I bite into a warm buttered toast triangle. I don't know how to have this conversation with Mara. I don't know how to explain it. “Is it any more dangerous than getting wasted with a bunch of strangers?”

Her mouth drops open slightly. She's obviously insulted that I would even attempt to compare the two.

“I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that—you know I've done that too—I'm just saying it's kind of the same thing, don't you think?”

“No, I don't think it's the same thing at all,” she says, sinking her spoon down into the softening mound of strawberry ice cream. “Isn't sex,” she whispers, “supposed to be special? You know, with someone special?”