Page 25 of The Way I Used to Be
“So, where you wanna go?” he asks me, clearly not seeing what I’m seeing. Not living in the world I’m living in.
“Anywhere but here.”
“Okay,” he says with a laugh. “Are you hungry?”
I shrug. I don’t feel like eating after the day I’ve had.
“Okay, movie?”
“Is there anywhere to go where there won’t be other people around?” I try to laugh, even though I’m entirely serious.
“Mostly everywhere has people around these days.” He grins, still expecting an answer. “My parents were doing something tonight so I borrowed my mom’s car just so I could take you somewhere. So come on... just name a place, any place, and we’ll go.”
“What are your parents doing?” I ask, an idea forming in my mind.
He looks at me like I might be crazy. “I promise they aren’t doing anything we’d want to do, if you’re looking for ideas.”
“No, I just mean, what if we went to your house? No one’s there, right?”
He looks confused for a moment, but then a wave of clarity passes over his face. “Um, sure. I guess we could. Isn’t there somewhere else you’d rather go, though?” he asks, putting the car in drive.
“Not unless you know of some uninhabited island we could go to and be back by ten for my curfew.”
He just smiles as he pulls away.
Next thing I know, we’re in the middle of his bedroom standing opposite each other. “So,” he says, shuffling through a stack of CDs on his dresser. “Do you want to listen to anything?” He still listens to CDs—that’s unusual. But my mind is racing too fast to follow that thought any further.
“Sure.”
“What do you like?” he asks.
“Anything.”
He selects one of the CDs. It starts quiet and slow. He stares at me. He puts his hands in his pockets. He takes them back out. I shift my weight. “You like this?” he asks. I think he’s talking about the music, but I also wonder if he meansthisas in being here with him.
The answer is the same either way, so I tell him the truth: “Not sure yet.”
He sits down on his bed and gestures for me to follow. I feel everything inside of me start to race and pulse as I move to the bed. I could never have imagined a year earlier I would be in the bedroom of the guy I so violently had the urge to bludgeon to death that day in the hall. I find myself evaluating every detail of the situation: him, me, the distance between us, the way his comforter feels soft against my legs, and everything smells like clean laundry, the sports posters on his walls, the hardwood floors, the curtains parted just slightly. I try hard to keep breathing as the fear tightens its knot around my heart. His lips are also slightly parted. I wait for him to speak, but he doesn’t. My jaw is clamped so tight my teeth throb.
I study his face closer than I have before. His nose, I thought at first, seemed large, except it’s not actually—aquiline, my brain whispers, flashing back to seventh grade, when I had to look up the word after reading it inSherlock Holmes—but now I can’t imagine a nose that belongs more perfectly to a face. And his eyes again, the colors seem different every time. I look down at my hands in my lap, my fingers twisting around one another, and I wonder if his mind is racing like mine, if his brain is working in overdrive just to understand my face. Somehow, I think not.
“So,” he begins. “You’re Caelin McCrorey’s sister? Or something, right?”
“Yeah, so?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Just conversation. We played together. He was a cool guy. I mean, I didn’t actually know that he’s your brother. I asked around about you. That’s all anyone really could tell me—you’re a mystery.” He grins, raising his eyebrows.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that, though. I’m not such a mystery? Not so hard to unravel? And what about me being a slut all of a sudden, hadn’t he heard that one?
He smiles out of the corner of his mouth and asks me, “What—you don’t wanna talk?”
“Not about my brother.”
He makes a sound likephffshand I can’t tell if it’s a laugh or just an exhale, but then he adds quietly, “Yeah, me neither.” He has this gravelly, running-words-together way of speaking, like he’s not thinking much about how he sounds. Not like Kevin. Kevin always enunciates his words so that they come out smooth and hard and precise and borderline loud. His voice is different. But everything about him is different. This is going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. He smiles again, and reaches out to touch my cheek, so lightly. I think my heart stops. Nodding his head toward the space between us, he says, “Why are you way over there?”
I slide toward him slowly. He leans in. I close my eyes. It’s too intense, too frightening to watch. I feel his lips press against mine. He’s kissing me. I try to let him, try not to think of the last time a boy’s mouth was on my mouth. I try to kiss back like this isn’t my first kiss. Because I have never been kissed, not really.
I force myself to kiss him back, kiss him back with everything I have in me. Because I can. I can. I can do this. Before I even know how he does it, he’s somehow managed to lower me down onto the bed and I’m on my back. He drapes his leg over mine, nimbly shifting his weight; his body slides in right next to mine. But just when I start to feel like this might really be okay, like this might actually have the potential to feel something other than terrifying, I feel his fingers trail down my neck. My stomach clenches because I can’t forget the fact of the matter, that the last time a boy had his hands on my neck he was choking me.
