Page 87 of The Way I Used to Be
I walk back into the classroom to find Amanda picking my backpack up off the floor. She’s being so gentle with it, it’s unsettling. Everyone else has gone except for her and Snarky. I linger in the doorway, listening.
“So, you’re what, friends with her now? That’s seriously fucked,” Snarky says under her breath.
“Not friends. Just—I don’t know, I guess I’m trying not to hate her.” The way Amanda says “her,” I know somehow that they’re talking about me because I get this pounding in my chest. I freeze, stuck between fight and flight. “I’m trying to be Zen, okay?” she continues. “Isn’t that what you’re always preaching?”
“Even after she...?” Snarky asks her quietly. “There’s a limit to being all Zen and shit.”
Amanda shrugs. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“After I what?” I ask, stepping forward, the decision made for me. I’ll fight.
Amanda turns to look at me, startled. “Oh! Nothing,” she answers quickly.
“No, what? What the hell did I ever do to you? I really want to know. I would love to know,” I hear myself say, with a little laugh in my throat, feeling close to the edge of something, like I could say anything right now, do anything, and not give a damn about the repercussions.
“Just forget it,” Amanda tells me, shaking her head.
But Snarky pipes up: “You and Kevin.”
“Wh—what?” The word sticks in my throat. Me and Kevin don’t belong in the same sentence, in the same thought, in the same fucking galaxy.
“Shut up!” Amanda snaps at her friend. “I was going to pick up your things for you,” she says to me.
“What are you talking about?” I demand from Snarky.
“I’m talking about you and her brother—”
“Fucking shut up!” Amanda interrupts. “I said I don’t care!”
“Doing it,” Snarky finishes, looking me up and down like I really am a totally slutty disgusting whore.
I can barely hang on to a thought long enough to get the words out of my mouth. “I—I—what? I never—why would you say that?”
“Please,” Snarky says with a laugh, “it’s like, just, a known thing.”
I refocus on Amanda, trying to speak instead of vomit. “You tell people this? Why would you make something like that up?”
“I’m not making it up—he told me!” She starts to get that hateful look in her eye again. “So you don’t have to act like—”
“I never. Never. I never, you fucking liar! I hate him. I would never! I hate him more than anyone in the entire world. He disgusts me. In fact, you disgust me! You disgust me because you make me think of him!” I’m pointing and thrashing my arms around wildly, and they start to back away from me, I realize, because I’m getting closer.
“He said that you and him—” Amanda starts to speak, but I can’t let her have one more word.
“I wish he were dead, okay? I hope. He fucking. Dies. Nothing would make me happier than for something really horrible to happen to him. Do you get that?” I’m inches from her face now. Can’t stop moving toward her. “I mean, do you fucking get that?” I feel something savage and electrical flow through me, like my hands could strangle her, like they’re controlled by some part of my brain that’s immune to logic, the same part of my brain that’s allowing me to say these things, these fucked-up things that are just going to give me away. I could just... my hands. Reach out. God. For anything. To hurt.
Next thing I know she’s on the floor.
And her friend is screaming, “You fucking psycho, what the fuck?”
And I’m screaming, “I’ll kill you if you ever say that again.” Amanda looks up at me, tears rolling down her cheeks. It makes her look just like her seven-year-old Mandy self, but still I can’t force myself to stop. “Don’t you ever fucking say that again—do you understand? Not to me, not to anyone. Or I swear to God. I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you.”
I cry the entire way home from school. I just walk down the streets sobbing. Not caring who sees me, or what I must look like, or what anyone thinks. I get home and lock myself in my bedroom.
I just lie awake, staring at the ceiling.
I made Mara cry. I made Steve cry. I made Amanda cry.
Anyone who has ever felt anything for me now hates me—after hours of dwelling on this, I’ve actually made myself physically ill.
