Page 43 of The Way I Used to Be
“This is complicated, though,” he says, raising his voice slightly. “This is screwed up.” Then quieter, “It is.”
I can’t argue with that, so I just look down at my hands in my lap.
“Look, I don’t want to fight or anything, I just—I just care about you. I really do.” He kisses my lips and then, quietly, with his mouth next to my ear he whispers, “That’s all I’m trying to say.”
I should say it back. I care about you too! I care, damn it, I fucking care—I want to scream it. “I—I—”Care, say it.
He lifts his head, a small glint of hope in his eyes.
“Look, you don’t understand. It’s not like this is easy for me, I can’t just—I can’t—” My voice squeaks, mouselike, as I try to make my brain and mouth work in concert. I feel the tears in my throat, filling my eyes. He looks confused, worried, and I think, almost relieved—relieved that I’m really not so tough, not so hard.
“Okay,” he breathes, dumbfounded by this sudden, unprecedented display of emotion. “Baby, don’t—” he says softly. “Look, I know. It’s okay, come here.” He pulls me into him, and I let my body fall against his side. And I don’t even care who sees us right now. I just hold on to him as hard as I can. Everything that’s been coming between us seems to dissolve, and for once I don’t feel like a complete liar. For once I feel calm, safe. Terrifyingly safe.
“Hey, let me take you out for your birthday—out to dinner or something.”
“Okay,” I hear myself answer right away.
“Seriously?” he asks, pulling away from me, holding my shoulders at arm’s length. “I’m gonna need to get that in writing.” He reaches for his backpack like he’s getting a pen and paper.
“Stop,” I say with a laugh, smacking him in the arm. “I said yes.”
“Okay, it’s a date!”
His hands find their way around my body with a practiced fluency. “You know... all this talking,” he mumbles as he kisses my neck. “You wanna come over?”
“Tomorrow, okay? After dinner, right?” I smile.
He moans like it’s agony, but then smiles and whispers, “Okay.”
When I arrive at my locker the next morning, I’m greeted by Mara’s handiwork. She has gone all out decorating my locker. It was tradition. She taped up balloons and crepe paper and bows and curly string and a sign that reads:HAPPY 15TH BIRTHDAY. I cringe.
I tear the sign down as fast as I can, but I have a feeling it’s too late, that he’s already seen it. I discreetly slip the piece of paper into the garbage on my way to homeroom. I hear footsteps jogging up behind me and I take a deep breath because I know they belong to him and I know he knows, somehow. He pulls me by the elbow into the boys’ bathroom with this wild look in his eyes.
“Get out!” he yells at the kid who is peeing into one of the urinals at the wall. To the right of the boy’s head I notice these black letters glaring at me, the fluorescent lights bouncing off the grimy powder-blue tiles:EDEN MCSLUTTY ISsomething illegible—it had been scribbled out by a marker that was not quite opaque enough. As soon as the kid had scrambled out of there, forgetting to even zip up his pants, Josh is in my face.
“How could you do this? After everything, how can you still be lying to me? You said you were sixteen. I’m eighteen, you knew that! I trusted you!”
“I didn’t—” I was going to remind him that, technically, I never told him that, but I can see that he’s not about to hear it. He just paces back and forth, ranting, fuming.
“I mean, fourteen? Fourteen? Fourteen!” he shouts, the volume elevating with each repetition.
“Calm down. It’s not that big of a deal.” I had never expected him to be this mad about it—age isn’t something we had even really discussed. Besides, there are plenty of senior guys who date freshmen—that would be the same age difference, if not more. Nobody cares about these things.
“It’s a big fucking deal! All those nights—in my bed—you were fourteen. Right?” His words are so sharp they sting. “Right?” he repeats.
“Yeah, so?”
“Do you realize that I could be accused of raping you? Statutory rape, Eden, ever hear of it?”
I laugh—wrong thing to do.
“This isn’t funny—this is not funny! This is serious, this is my life here. I’m an adult, okay, legally an adult! How can you be laughing?” he shouts, horrified at me.
How can I be laughing? I can laugh because I know what the real crime is. I know that the kind of wrong he’s talking about is nothing. That people get away with truly wrong things every day. I know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about. That’s how I can be laughing.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I tell him, trying to stop my mouth from smiling, “but you’re being ridiculous. You didn’t”—I lower my voice, inhale, exhale, inhale again—“you didn’t... rape me.” There, I said it. The word I’ve been spending so much time and energy not saying, not even thinking. Of course he couldn’t appreciate what it took for me to utter that grotesque four-letter word out loud. He just continues, his tirade only gaining momentum.
“Yeah, of course I know that, but it doesn’t matter. Your parents could still press charges against me, Eden.”
