Page 86 of The Way I Used to Be
God, he really hates me. I can feel it in every cell in my body, every nucleus, every fucking ribosome.
“I’m not not talking to you, I just—”
“What?” he interrupts. “You just what?”
“I just don’t have anything to say.” I shrug.
“You don’t have anything to say? How is that possible? How can you possibly not have anything to say?” he almost shouts.
“Okay, well, obviously you have something you’d like to say, so why don’t you just go ahead?”
“Fine. It meant something to me—it means something to me. There. I’m not afraid to admit it.” And then he just stares at me, waiting, wishing for me to spit his words right back at him.
“Okay, Steve. I’ll be honest. It didn’t mean anything to me.” Truth? Lie? I can’t even tell anymore. I know I’m being cold and heartless, but I can’t stop myself. He touched. He got hurt. He comes back for more. He gets it. Not my problem.
“I don’t even believe that. I was there, okay. I know that it did.”
“Look, it’s not your fault, it’s just the—”
“What is this?” he interrupts, all jumpy and irritated, shoving his fingers back through his hair, almost like he wants to rip his hair out.
“What is what?”
“This! This act,” he says, waving his hand at me. He clenches his jaw and his nostrils flare as he starts to breathe heavier. “What’s with this act? What are you doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Maybe this works with other guys, but it’s different with us, so just stop, okay?” He takes a step closer. I take a step back.
“Why? Because you think you’re different? Don’t lie to yourself. You’re no different. You. Are. Exactly. The same. God, this whole damn thing is so fucking predictable, it makes me want to die!” My words carry through the empty hall, encircling us, holding us motionless in their orbit.
I look at him, turning shades of white, shades of hurt, and I feel my face start to smile.
“You know, I can take weird,” he says quietly, the muscles in his face flexing and twitching. Then quieter, “I can take fucked up.” And his eyes, they fill with water. Oh God, his voice shakes. “But you’re just a... slut.”
If words are weapons, if they could wound physically, then he just shot a hundred-pound cannonball through the center of my body. The kind of artillery built to take out a battleship, and certainly equipped to sink a stupid, mean little girl.
In shock and disbelief, I utter the word, “What?”
Steve’s not supposed to say stuff like that to me.
He steps closer. I’m expecting him to scream, which makes it so much worse when he only whimpers quietly, “You’re a fucking bitch. And a slut. And I can’t believe I ever thought you were anything else.” The words come out through his teeth, and he’s unable to stop the tears, like it hurt him to have to say it, even more than it was meant to hurt me.
“I—” I touch his arm. I don’t know what to do. He snatches his whole body away from me, though. “Steve, don’t—”Be mad, don’t be hurt by me, don’t leave angry and destroyed. Don’t you know I’m not worth it?I want to grab him and hold on to him and tell him I’m sorry. I want to do that even more than I want to run. Because Cameron was right, he doesn’t deserve this. “Steve, Steve... please don’t—”
“Fuck. Off,” he chokes out, wiping his eyes on his sleeves. He turns around and starts walking off down the hall, past the classroom, getting smaller in the dim light, around the corner, and gone.
I walk in the opposite direction. I slink down the stairwell at the other end of the hall. Into the dirty, forsaken basement bathroom where there are no windows but it’s still okay to smoke because no self-respecting teacher would be caught dead in here. I lock myself in. It smells like sewer. Perfect for a mouse, a little rat, like me. In the stall, I sink into the floor, press my back against the cold tiles, and light a cigarette. My breathing echoes. I flick the ashes into the stained toilet next to my face. I close my eyes and I wait. And wait.
I think about Josh again. Not anything in particular. Just little things, like the way he would smile at me, or the sound of his voice, the way I could sometimes make him laugh, the way he could sometimes make me feel so good, so free, so myself. How I thought things were so complicated with him. But they were so easy compared to this, compared to everything else.
I imagine him coming here. Finding me all the way down here in the basement bathroom dungeon like some knight, like some Tin Man in rusting armor, holding a bouquet of dandelions, ready to slay my darkest, most deranged dragons. He’d bust through the door and say something perfect like, “Baby, what’s wrong? Don’t cry. Let’s get the hell outta here. You and me. I’ll take you anywhere. We can run away. We can start over, we can be—”
But something interrupts the fantasy, and suddenly I feel my body again, gravity pulling me down, anchoring me to the cold cement floor. Something pinches my thigh, bringing me back to reality, pinching harder. And harder, burning, damn—no, not pinching. I open my eyes to see that my cigarette has burned all the way down to the filter, causing the cherry to fall off and burn through my pants like acid, right down to my skin.
“Shit!” I whisper-shout, smacking my leg to try to extinguish the stupidity.
Then the bell rings, screaming through the walls and the ceiling, vibrating through the whole building—through me. I wait until the distant noise of shouting and feet running and lockers clanging has passed.
