The Way I Used to Be (30 page)

Rachael crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. “Just go,” she orders.

“Yeah,” he whispers, “sorry.”

We file out of Rachael's room and into the common area without a word, without eye contact. “I cannot motherfuckingbelieve this,” he says under his breath as he sets the beer bottles down on top of a stack of papers on the table next to the door. Once we get out in the hall, he yells, “What the hell are you even doing here, Edy?” Partially because of the music, but mostly because he's mad, really mad, madder than I've seen him in a long time.

“Apparently, the same thing you're doing here, Caelin.”

“Don't do that. Don't. Fucking. Do. That. Don't be a smart-ass.”

“I'm
fucking
not!” I yell in his face, not sure yet if he's making me want to be mean or funny. I feel my mouth grin. “Or are you just mad because I fucked up your fucking plans. That I fucked up your plans to get fucked, I mean.” Still, that's not what I meant to say. “You know what I mean. You wanted to fuck that girl.” I laugh because the word “fuck” sounds like the funniest word ever.

“You're drunk, Edy. You're really drunk and that guy was trying to take advantage of you! You're lucky I came in when I did,” he says, dead serious, as if getting taken advantage of would be the worst thing that could happen, as if that wasn't something that happens to girls on a daily basis.

“Take advantage of
me
?” I laugh, hysterically. “Me?” It's funny. “Are you drunk, Caelin?” I mean to shove his shoulder, but I just fall into him. “It's more like the other way around, if you wanna know. Don't you get it? I'm not your sweet, stupid, innocent little sister. I'm not—”

“All right, all right, just stop.” He puts his hand up as if he can just shut me up with nothing more than a small gesture. He looks around like he's embarrassed.

“No. What do you think? Do you think that I don't drink and smoke and fuck—”

“Jesus Christ, Eden!”

“Oh, sorry—have sex, or make love—what do you call it?”

“Stop.”

“Do you think I haven't had sex with hundreds of guys, Caelin?”

“Shut up!”

“Okay, maybe not hundreds. More like a hundred, give or take a few, of course.” So, the exact number would have been sixteen had we not been interrupted, but I'll bet if I included all the ones I've messed around with and not actually had sex-sex with, it probably comes close. And one hundred just sounds so much more appalling than a measly fifteen. Sometimes just messing around is enough. Not lately, though. Lately, nothing seems like enough.

“Shut up, Edy, I mean it!” he says under his breath, through his teeth.

“Edy,” I hear behind me. I turn around quickly, lose my balance. Caelin grabs my arm. I shrug it off. “We've been looking for you.” It's Mara, with Cameron and Steve trailing behind. “What's wrong?” she asks, looking back and forth between me and Caelin.

“What's wrong, Mara?” Caelin shouts. “Neither of you should be here!” Then he stares down Cameron and Steve. “And who the hell are you?”

I decide to make the introductions: “Caelin, this is Cameron, Mara's boyfriend, and he's so wonderful and dreamy and he doesn't need to get wasted to have a good time, you'd like him, he's the designated driver. And this”—I throw my arm around Steve's shoulder—“this is Steve. But you don't have to worry about Steve. Don't let his appearance fool you—he may look like an ordinary guy, but he's just a shy little dork underneath, right Steve?”

I turn my head to look at him, but my feet follow and my body sways into his. I grip on to his shoulder tighter, trying to balance, and he pulls me up straight. “See?” I laugh. “What I'm saying is Steve is a nice guy, Caelin—such a nice, decent guy—but—” I shout, pausing to catch my breath. “But he did invite me to his darkroom and he's my date. My date, Caelin. Yes, I came here with a date!” I feel Steve slither out from under my arm, but I don't take my eyes off Caelin's face—I want to memorize everything about his reaction.

“Edy, please, please, please just shut the fuck up!” he screams. I record it, try so hard to brand it all into my brain—his cheeks turning pink, the vein in his temple pulsing, his voice unsteady, his hands shaking—the way he's losing control.

“Hey, hey, now—” Mara starts to defend me.

“No, it's okay!” I scream, louder than I meant to. “Caelin is just having some trouble dealing with the fact that his sister's a big whore. Right, Cae? That is what it is, right? Or is there something else that's bothering you?”

He looks at me, for just a moment, really at me, and he looks so angry, angry enough to hit me, maybe. I almost wish he would, because that would feel better than being eternally ignored by him, better than being made to feel like I'm just some inconsequential speck of dust dirtying up his otherwise immaculate life. But then the moment passes as quickly as it came—he doesn't see me anymore.

“Look, she is way too drunk,” he says, turning to the three of them. “Can you guys get her home, or not?” he asks, pretending I don't exist, a game he plays even better than basketball.

“Yeah, man. Sure. We will, I promise,” Cameron says, nodding his head all serious and responsible-like. I feel like screaming
GO FUCK YOURSELF
to everyone within earshot, Caelin, Cameron, Steve, Mara even, the people standing around staring at us, Rachael, that would-be-sixteen guy, Kevin, if he's around, which I'm sure he is.

Caelin walks away. Doesn't look at me, doesn't say another word. Just walks away from me. Everybody gives me these sideways looks of uncomfortable pity, like I had just lost some really important game. Whatever it was that we were playing, they all seemed to think I was the loser. I wasn't. He lost! He was the loser. They were all losers. Not me.

“Are you okay?” Mara asks me, touching my shoulder.

“Yeah, of course.” I snort. I'm tough. I can take it. So what?

“Honey, you're crying,” she says, looking worried.

“I am not!” That's ridiculous. But I rub at my eyes with the back of my sleeves and it leaves two dirty, black streaks from my mascara.

“She never cries,” she tells Cameron and Steve.

“I can hear you, and I'm not crying! Maybe my eyes are watering from some reason, but not because I'm crying,” I shout.

Nobody really says much the whole way home.

Caelin doesn't speak to me at all the next day. Needless to say, we don't have our special brother-sister outing like he wanted. And he's gone by the time I wake up Sunday morning.

And then nobody really says much to me in school on Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday. I don't care if Cameron doesn't talk to me. I honestly don't care if Steve doesn't talk to me. And Mara, it can't rightfully be said that she's ignoring me, she just doesn't seem particularly happy that I exist.

“All right, so why is everyone being weird?” I finally ask Mara in the hall by her locker on Thursday.

“What do you mean?” she mumbles, not even glancing up at me.

“Ever since the party no one's been talking to me.”

“I'm talking to you right now.”

“Yeah, barely.”

“Well, can you really blame them? You were so mean, Edy.”

“Not to you, I wasn't.”

“No, but you made fun of Cameron.” She pauses, waiting for me to react. “And Steve, you know he actually liked you and you were horrible to him.”

“I was not. Not
horrible
.” If he was stupid enough to actually like me, then that's his problem.

“Edy, you obviously ditched him to go hook up with some other guy. But I guess he's just a little dork, right? So who cares, anyway?” she says, rolling her eyes.

“Well, when you say it like that, it sounds mean, but that's not what I meant—that's not how it happened. Not really.”

She just crosses her arms and shakes her head.

“I was drunk, Mara. I didn't mean anything by it, you know that.”

“Yeah, exactly.” She inhales sharply. “And I really think you have a problem, Edy.”

“What, a drinking problem? I don't drink that much—you drink more than I do.”

She slams her locker shut, all exasperated, like it's such a big project to talk to me. “No, that's not what I mean. Not a drinking problem, but you have some kind of problem. You didn't mean anything by it, right?”

“Yeah, that's what I said,” I snap, getting impatient.

“But you never mean anything.”

“So?” I wish, wish to God, that she would say what she means, instead of having me jump through her psychological hoops.

“So, nothing ever means anything to you. You're just out there lately, Edy, way out there. It worries me.”

“Out where, what are you talking about?”

“Like—I don't know—I just feel like you're about to go over the edge or something.” Her fingers walk an imaginary line through the air, and then she lets her hand plummet downward, like she's enacting her hand falling off a cliff.

“You're completely overreacting.”

She shakes her head firmly back and forth. “No, you're out of control this time. Really. You know, you're acting crazy—crazy for you, even.”

“Where is this coming from? I drink a little too much and then I'm not perfectly polite to your little boyfriend and now all of a sudden I'm crazy?”

“Edy, just stop. You know what I'm talking about. It's everything.”

I feel my face contorting into a smirk—that really condescending way Caelin does it that makes me want to punch him in the mouth just to shatter that stupid crooked line of his lips. “Thanks for the concern,” I snarl, “but I can take care of myself just fine.”

“Edy . . .” The corners of her mouth turn down in that way that means she's trying not to cry but is going to start any second. “I don't like you like this.”

“Like what?” I ask, not nicely. It pushes her over the brink.

“You're not thinking right and you're—you'regoingtogethurt.” She has to say it really fast so she can get it all out before the tears. “Please. Listen. Okay?” Then she takes a breath and just like that, her eyes are full to the brim, just on the cusp of spilling over. Then one drop rolls down, then a whole army of them, like rain on glass. She cries. And then, because I'm such great friend, I just walk away.

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.