Page 15 of The Way I Used to Be
“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 TOcompletely 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.
