The Way I Used to Be

by Amber Smith

  “So you want to look like a bitch now?” I laugh.

  “I don’t know, maybe. Why not?” She shrugs. “I’m reinventing myself. Everyone else gets to change.” I know that what she really means by “everyone” is her parents—they get to change their minds, change their lives, and hers.

  “I guess.” I can’t exactly protest too much, because honestly, the idea of reinventing myself sounds pretty appealing. I’m not sure who I’d want to be, though.

  “I really don’t care what anyone thinks about me, as long as they don’t think I’m just going to sit back and take it anymore!” She exhales a cloud of smoke with the words. “I’m just sick of getting pushed around, treated like shit. I mean, aren’t you?”

  She shifts her gaze from the mirror to me. I can’t lie. Can’t admit the truth, either. So I say nothing. Instead, I walk over to her and take a cigarette out of the pack. I place it between my lips. Mara doesn’t say a word. She just smiles cautiously and brings the lighter up to light it for me. I breathe in. And then choke on the horrible chemicals. We laugh as I cough and gasp.

  “That’s so gross!” I tell her, choking on my words. But then I bring it to my lips again anyway.

  “Don’t breathe in so deep this time,” she says with a laugh.

  I don’t. And I don’t choke this time. I watch Mara watching me, and I think maybe I can change too. Maybe I can become someone I can actually stand. I take my glasses off, take another drag, and look at Mara. “Seriously, what do you think? Should I get contacts?”

  “Absolutely!” She keeps the cigarette dangling from her mouth as she reaches over and swoops my hair back from my face. “You could do this,” she tells me, her words muffled through the smoke.

  “I could?” I ask her, not sure exactly what she means by “this.” Just my hair. The contacts. Or everything.

  “You could be so hot—so beautiful, I mean—if you would quit hiding.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes, Edy. I know so.”

  I smile again, letting the chemicals go to my head, and imagine what I could be, all the things I could do.

  THE SUMMER TOOK FOREVER to get here and now it’s here and it’s just flying. Mostly, I’ve spent the days thinking a lot about what Mara said to me. About how I was hiding. How I could be beautiful if I would just stop. Mostly, I’ve spent the whole summer trying to figure how you go about not hiding when that’s all you’ve ever done your entire life. Caelin wasn’t around. He was taking some kind of special summer sessions. It was actually better that way anyway. Because it meant Kevin would stay away too.

  “Mom?” I use my I-want-something-and-I’m-such-a-good-girl-so-please-hear-me-out voice. “I was wondering . . .”

  “Mm-hmm?” she murmurs, barely caffeinated, not lifting her eyes from the sales ads.

  “What do you want and how much does it cost?” Dad interferes, trying to hijack the conversation.

  “What, what do you need?” she asks, finally looking across the kitchen table at me.

  I slowly remove my glasses.

  “Don’t you think I look better without my glasses, Mom?”

  “You look pretty no matter what.” She’d already gone back to the paper. Obviously that approach was not going to work.

  “Okay, so school’s starting in what, like, three weeks or something, and I was thinking—I mean, well—Mara got contacts and she thinks—I mean, I think—I think that—”

  “All right, Minnie, come on, just spit it out.” Dad makes this rolling, speed-it-up gesture with his un-coffee-cupped hand.

  “Okay. So, um, I was wondering if I could get contacts too?”

  Mom and Dad share a look, like, Oh God, why can’t she just leave us alone?

  “They’re really not that much more expensive,” I try.

  “I don’t know, Edy,” Mom says, nose scrunched, not wanting to disappoint me, because after all, I really am a very good girl. Except for the small detail about me smoking every single day with Mara, and blowing all the back-to-school money they gave me to buy too many clothes at the mall and makeup and hair products, but not school supplies, like they wanted. Other than that, I really am good.

  “But, please. Please, please, please. I look like such a dork. I look like a loser. I look like I’m in band!”

  “You are in band,” Dad says, grinning, missing the point, of course.

  “But I don’t want to look like I’m in band.”

  “Oh, well, now I see.” Dad rolls his eyes. Mom smirks. He shakes his head in that condescending way he always does whenever he thinks someone is an idiot.

  “Mom?”

  Her stock response to any and everything: “We’ll see.”

  “So no?” I clarify.

  “No, I said we’ll see,” she repeats sternly.

  “Yeah, but that means no, right? This is so unfair! Caelin can get all kinds of new stuff and I ask for one thing, one thing, and you say no!”

  “Caelin got new stuff when he left for college,” Dad says, as if Caelin went off to go cure leprosy. “He needed all those things. You don’t need contacts. You want them, you don’t need them.”

  “I do need them!” I can feel the tears beginning to simmer behind my eyes. “And just so you know,” I continue, my voice falling in on itself, “I’m not wearing my glasses anymore even if you don’t get me contacts!” I throw my glasses onto the table and then I stomp off to my room.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, she has to start first thing in the morning?” I hear Mom say just before I slam my bedroom door shut.

  And I hear fragments of Dad’s response: “Jesus . . . melodramatic . . . girl . . . spoiled rotten.”

  Spoiled? I’m spoiled? I never ask for a thing! I never even ask for attention. That’s it. The last goddamn straw. I fling my door open and march back out there, bracing myself with both hands against the kitchen table. I open my mouth, not caring what comes out, for once not having a plan.

  “I hate you both!” I growl through my teeth. “Sorry, but I’m not Caelin! Sorry I’m not Kevin! Sorry you’re stuck here all alone with me. But I’m stuck here with you too!” The words just tumble out one after the other, louder and louder.

  They are stunned. They’re shocked. I had never so much as looked at them the wrong way.

  Mom slams the paper down onto the table, speechless.

  “Don’t you dare talk to your mother and me that way ever again!” Dad stands up, pointing his finger in my face. “Do you understand? Go to your room!”

  “No!” The word claws its way up my throat. My vocal cords ache immediately, never having achieved this volume before.

  “Now!” he demands, taking a step.

  I stomp away, my feet like bricks. I slam my bedroom door again as hard as I can, then press my ear against it. My chest heaves with frantic breaths as I listen.

  “All right, Conner,” I hear Mom say, her voice low, trying to whisper. “We have got to do something—this is crazy. What are we supposed to do?”

  “It’s hormones, Vanessa. She’s a teenager. They’re all the same. We were like this too when we were her age,” he says, trying to calm her down.

  “I never would have said ‘I hate you’ to my parents,” she argues.

  “Yes, you would have. And I’m sure you did. And so did I. And so did Caelin, if you remember. They never mean it.”

  Except maybe I do mean it. A little, at least. Because I let them push me around just like I let everyone push me around. I let them make me into a person who doesn’t know when to speak the hell up, a person who gives up control over her life, over her body, over everything. I do what they tell me to do, what everyone tells me to do. Why didn’t they ever teach me to stand up for myself?

  Even though they don’t know what happened, what he did to me, they helped to create the situation. In a way, they allowed it. They let it happen by allowing him to be here and making me believe that everyone else in the entire world knows what’s good for me better than
I do. If I hate them, I hate them for that. And I hate Caelin, too. Except I hate him because his loyalties are with Kevin, not me. I know that. Everyone does. Especially Kevin.

  And what about Mara? Why couldn’t she be the kind of friend who would just get it out of me? Why do I feel like after all this time I still can’t tell her, that even she wouldn’t believe me, or that if she did, that she would somehow blame me? Why do I feel so completely alone when I’m with her sometimes? Why do I feel like, sometimes, I have no one in the entire world who knows me in even the slightest, most insignificant way?

  Why do I feel like—God, it makes me sick to admit—that sometimes I feel like the only person in the world who knows me—really, really knows me—is Kevin? That’s sick. Demented sick. Like, I-should-be-locked-up sick. But he’s the only one who knows the truth. Not only the truth about what happened, but the truth about me, about who I really am, what I’m really made of. And that gives him tyranny over everything in this world.

  Most of that hate, though, I save for me. No matter what anyone else did or didn’t do, it was ultimately me who gave them permission. I’m the one who’s lying. The coward too afraid to just stop pretending.

  This is bigger than contacts. It’s not over the clarinet, Environmental Club, FBLA, French Club, Lunch-Break Book Club, Science Club, yearbook, or any of the other things I had checked off the list in my head, things in which I was no longer going to participate. It’s over my life, my identity, my sanity—these are the things at stake.

  When I come out of my bedroom later that night, I force myself not to apologize to them. Because I desperately want to, want their approval—crave it. But I have to start standing up for myself. And it has to start with them, because it was with them that it began.

  The next week I have my contacts. It is my first small victory in the battle over control of my life. No more Mousegirl. No more charades. No more baby games.

  Sophomore Year

  IT’S SURPRISINGLY EASY TO completely transform yourself. I had my contacts. I had new clothes that my mom did not help me pick out at Kmart. I had finally figured out my hair, after fourteen years of frizz and headbands. Finally let my bangs grow out, instead of that perpetual in-between state they had been in for years. I pierced my ears at the mall during one of our back-to-school shopping trips, little rhinestone studs that sparkle just enough to be noticeable. Mara got her second holes done before it was my turn, just so I wouldn’t be afraid.

  I don’t put on much makeup. Just enough. Lip gloss, mascara. I don’t look slutty or anything, just nice. Just normal. In my normal, fashionable jeans that fit me right. A simple T-shirt and cardigan that doesn’t hide the curves I finally seem to have grown into over the summer. I just look like someone who’s not a kid anymore and can make her own decisions, like someone about to start her sophomore year—someone who’s not hiding anymore.

  I slip my new sandals onto my bare feet before I head out the door.

  “Oh my Lord!” Mom shouts, pulling on my arm before I can leave. “I can’t believe how beautiful you look,” she squeals, holding me at arm’s length.

  “You can’t?”

  “No, I can. I just mean there’s something different. You look so . . . so confident.” She smiles as her eyes take me in. “Have a great first day, okay?”

  Mara got a ride with Cameron, whom she started hanging out with again toward the end of the summer. So I wait for her on the front steps of the school. People look at me as they pass. It’s strange. I’ve never been seen like this. As a regular person. I test out a smile on this one girl I’ve never seen before. As an experiment. Not only does she smile back, but she even says “hey.”

  I spot another lone girl walking up the steps. Just as I’m about to try it on a new test subject, I stop short as she looks up at me, her dark, dark eyes burning against her warm, tanned skin, her black hair shining in the morning sunlight.

  “Amanda, hi,” I finally say, taken back by her presence—by the hot sinking feeling her presence leaves in my stomach—by all the memories of the past, of growing up together, of her and Kevin, and Kevin, and Kevin, and Kevin.

  Stop, I command my brain.

  It can’t quite stop, but it slows down just enough for me to try to smile anyway. Because all of that is in the past, I remind myself. It’s not something I need to think about ever again. And Amanda has nothing to do with it anyway.

  “I guess I forgot you’d be going here this year.” Smile.

  She moves in close to me, so close I want to back up. And then quietly, but firmly, she hisses, “You don’t have to talk to me.”

  “No, I want to—”

  “Ever,” she interrupts.

  “I don’t—I don’t get it.”

  She shakes her head ever so slightly, like I’m missing something completely obvious, and then smiles coolly before shoving past me. I turn around and watch in disbelief as she walks away. I hardly have time to worry about it, though, because the second I turn back there’s Mara, shouting, “Hey, girl!” with Cameron following along behind her. Mara kisses me on the cheek, and whispers in my ear, “You look A-MAZE-ING. Seriously.”

  “Hey, Edy,” Cameron says, looking off somewhere past me.

  “Hey,” I mumble back.

  Mara frowns a little, but she’s used to it by now. Cameron and I are never going to be friends.

  “All right, you ready?” she asks me, her face glowing with excitement, her short cranberry hair framing her features perfectly.

  I take a deep breath. And exhale. I nod.

  “Let’s do this,” she says, locking her arm with mine.

  After homeroom, it’s trig, which makes me want to scream already. Then after trig, it’s bio. Stephen Reinheiser is in my class. I can feel him looking at me, staring with his glasses and his fresh haircut and his brand-new clothes—his trying too hard—craning his neck eagerly, begging for me to look up at him when it’s time to pick a lab partner. I quickly turn to the girl next to me and smile, as if to say: I’m friendly, I’m normal, smart—I’d be a great lab partner. She smiles back. And we exchange nods—done. The last thing in the world I need this year is another Columbus project with Stephen Reinheiser. The last thing I need in my new life is a Stephen Reinheiser. When the bell rings, I’m ready to bolt. Because I know he’s dying to say hello and ask me about my summer.

  In the hall I hurry to my new study hall. I’ve never had one before because I’d always had band. There were always lessons, practice, rehearsals. Never just free time. As I walk I keep smiling at random people. And most of them smile back. I even thought I noticed a few guys smiling at me first. No, I definitely don’t need a Stephen Reinheiser holding me back this year.

  Just as I’m floating along, I hear someone call my name. I stop and turn around. It’s Mr. Krause, my band teacher. Suddenly gravity drags me back down just a little.

  “Edy, I’m glad I ran into you. I was really surprised not to see your name on my roster this year. What happened?” he asks, almost looking hurt that I’d dropped out.

  “Oh, right. I just—” I search for the words. “I’ve been in band for so long. I just kind of wanted to branch out this year, I guess. Try some new things,” I tell him. He still looks at me like he doesn’t quite comprehend. So I test out my smile on him. And suddenly his face softens.

  He nods his head. “Well, I guess I can understand that.” But just then the second bell rings. I open my mouth to tell him that I’m late, but he stops me. “Don’t worry, I’ll sign you a late pass.” And as he scribbles his signature on the slip of paper, he tells me “We’ll miss you. You’re welcome back anytime, you know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Krause.” I smile again.

  He smiles back.

  This is the way the world works, apparently. I can’t believe I’m only figuring this out now. I wonder, as I walk to my new study hall, if other people know about this. It’s simple really. All you have to do is act like you’re normal and okay, and people start treating
you that way.

  I arrive at my new study hall late. There’s a buzz of light chatter. Which is good. It’s never easy for me to study if it’s too quiet. I make my way to the front of the room to hand in my late pass.

  Then I scan the room for an empty spot as I pace the aisles of desks. I see that guy—Number 12. He sits in the back of the room, at the tail end of a cluster of jock types, wearing his Number 12 jacket. There are no empty seats anywhere. I start to panic as I notice more and more eyes beginning to look up at me, afraid they might see that underneath my new outfit and hair and makeup and body, maybe I’m really not that normal or okay. I start up the next aisle when I hear a voice behind me: “There’s one back here.”

  I turn around. It’s Number 12. He clears a stack of books off the top of the desk next to his, and looks up at me. And I actually have to look behind me to make sure he’s really talking to me. This is the same guy who so completely didn’t see me that day last year, he could’ve seriously injured me. He points at me and mouths the word you, with a small lopsided grin.

  I walk toward him slowly, half wondering if this is some kind of sick joke to lure me into unfamiliar territory only to do something humiliating, like throw spitballs in my hair. I move into the seat cautiously, trying not to make any noise as I pull out my notebook and pen and planner. I open the planner to today’s date, and make a note: Smile.

  “Eh-hem.” Number 12 clears his throat kind of loud next to me.

  I just trace my pen over the word, over and over, branching out into designs that outline the letters until they’re barely visible. I consider taking out my trig homework, but that would just upset me, and I’m actually feeling okay—normal, almost.

  “Eh-hem-hem.” Number 12 again.

  I pivot away from him.