Page 60 of The Way I Used to Be
There are too many damn people crammed into this house. As I squeeze through the bodies, people look at me and I wonder if they all know me asthat girltoo. I find Mara in the basement. She’s sitting between Troy and Alex on a dusty old couch. Mara’s talking. Alex isn’t listening. She acts like she likes him when we’re at these parties—lets him put his arm around her shoulder, and she’ll touch his leg with her foot, kiss him good-bye before we leave—but I think she’s just using him too. The only time she even mentions his name is when she’s around Cameron. Still, after all these months of partying, they’ve only kissed.
“Hey,” I call to Mara, barely able to find an empty place to stand. “I’m going outside,” I shout, pointing toward the door.
“Wait,” she says, peeling Alex’s arm off her shoulder, “wait, I’m coming with you.”
We push our way against the wall of bodies, weaving through the cases of beer stacked up on the floor of the kitchen like a maze. As I open the front door and step out into the cold, a welcome silence rushes over us, and I feel like I can breathe again.
“What’s wrong?” Mara asks.
“Nothing.”
She eyes me closely. “No, there’s something.”
“It’s nothing. I was just hanging out with this idiot—he said something kind of mean to me. It’s okay, though. I mean, whatever. I’m fine. I don’t care.” I shrug, taking in a deep breath of icy air, allowing it to fill me before I release it.
“What did he say?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell her, looking up at the sky.
“Let’s go,” she says.
“Really? You don’t want to stay? What about Alex?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t think he’ll even notice, honestly.”
We drive to this twenty-four-hour Denny’s that’s right in between our town and Troy and Alex’s. It’s only ten thirty. I order a big breakfast and Mara gets an enormous banana split.
“Tell me what that guy said to you?” Mara asks me again as she picks the cherry off the top of a swirl of whipped cream. “I really wanna know.”
“Fine. It’s kind of funny, actually. He said he couldn’t tell whether I was really pretty or really ugly,” I finally admit.
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, right?” Her face is caught between a smile and a frown.
“No. Those were his exact words, Mara.”
“That’s heinous!”
“Yeah.” I laugh. “But what’s worse is the way he said it—so sweetly—like it was a compliment or something! Not exactly the kind of thing you want a guy telling you right after you sleep with him.”
“No, I guess it’s not,” Mara agrees, her laughter fading. “Do you—do you do that a lot, Edy?” she asks me awkwardly, looking down at her banana split, like she’s counting the scoops of ice cream over and over: vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry. “I mean, with guys you don’t know?” she finishes.
“Sometimes.” I shrug. “I mean, it depends, I guess.”
“Do you think—I don’t know, do you think that’s such a good idea? I mean, that’s kind of dangerous, isn’t it?”
I bite into a warm buttered toast triangle. I don’t know how to have this conversation with Mara. I don’t know how to explain it. “Is it any more dangerous than getting wasted with a bunch of strangers?”
Her mouth drops open slightly. She’s obviously insulted that I would even attempt to compare the two.
“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that—you know I’ve done that too—I’m just saying it’s kind of the same thing, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think it’s the same thing at all,” she says, sinking her spoon down into the softening mound of strawberry ice cream. “Isn’t sex,” she whispers, “supposed to be special? You know, with someone special?”
“Says who? A lot of things are supposed to be special that really aren’t.”
“I guess, Edy,” she says, not convinced.
“Besides,” I continue, “it’s not like there are all that many special people just hanging around anyway.”
