Page 35 of The Way I Am Now
“Hey, don’t yell at me,” she said, standing from the table. She walked over and stood directly in the path of my pacing, studying me. “Why are you freaking out over this?”
“Bella, just give me some space. You don’t understand. Something is seriously wrong, okay?”
“Well, help me understand, then.” So practical, she waited, standing there in front of me, like I couldexplainEden to her. Like this was one of our Advanced Calculus problems we could figure out if we just put our minds together. But I could never explain Eden to anyone, not even myself.
“Okay,” Bella said, crossing her arms as I stood there, silent. “I can’t believe I have to ask you this, but is there something going on with you and her?”
“Bella, come on” was the best defense I could muster. Because of course there was something going on with us, there always had been. We never ended. We barely began.
“It’s not a trick question, Josh, just tell me the truth,” she demanded.
The truth was too complicated, though, to be able to tell Bella, who, I was just realizing at that moment, didn’t understand thatIwas complicated too.
But the truth about us was also simple. Eden was angry and I was sad, and we shouldn’t have worked but we did. We worked like we weren’t too damaged to work. Maybe only sometimes, when other things weren’t getting in the way. Like all that sadness, all that anger. And other people and bad timing and petty teenager shit. Of course, there were also her lies. The secrets I always knew she was keeping from me.
But in spite of all that, I called her back anyway. I left my girlfriend in our new apartment in the middle of the night—in the middle of a fight—anyway. I remember thinking, even at the moment, I shouldn’t be willing to throw everything away for her. I shouldn’t be able to not listen when my girlfriend cries actual tears, pleading with me to stay. To feel her pulling my arm and to keep going anyway. To hear her, and believe her, when she gives me the first and last ultimatum of our relationship: “Don’t you dare go to her, not if you want to come back here.” And to not even be able to say I’m sorry and mean it. To close the door on her and get in my car anyway.
All because she called me. All because I was scared. Scared because it had suddenly occurred to me that maybe I was now the one who was angry and she’d turned sad—toosad, maybe.
I left her a voice mail while I stood here at the gas station, in this spot, freezing, in the middle of the night. I told her I was coming and then I prayed to all the gods in all the universes that by the time the tank was full, she’d have called me back and told me to turn around. I wanted her to be lying. I wanted her to call me back and tell me she was fine. She didn’t need me. She didn’t care. She never did.
I wanted to believe that her phone call was not her saying goodbye—in a permanent way. Because, of the many things I was not sure about when it came to her, I was sure about that. She was capable of it. I don’t know why I knew that, but I just did. And even though I’d gone without her for so long, I didn’t know if I could go on without her in the world.
“Please, Eden,” I whispered, the words coming out in a white cloud of cold. “Just fucking call.”
The gas lever pops, and I’m suddenly thrust back into the daylight, into the heat, the sun beating down on my neck and shoulders. I look down at my arms, goose bumps rising on my flesh, a shiver running down my spine.
I transfer the pump back into the cradle and watch as the numbers on the screen flash and reset to zero. I take a breath and try to shake off the cold I didn’t realize was still lingering in my bones from that night.
I get in the car and pull out my phone to text Bella back:
I don’t think meeting up would be a good
idea for me. But I hope you’re doing well,
Bella. I’m sorry.
EDEN
The applications were garbage, I knew that. I submitted identical materials to every school, complete with a stupid boilerplate cookie-cutter essay my guidance counselor practically wrote for me, checking all the boxes, she said, of what these schools are looking for. I remember thinking, fleetingly,What about what I’m looking for?
All except for the one application I didn’t think would matter.
For that one, I wrote something that probably should’ve been locked in a journal somewhere away from the world. It was part apology to myself, part love letter to Josh, part victim impact statement to anyone who would listen . . . all in the form of my essay to the admissions office at Tucker Hill University. It was overly precious and overly honest and dripping with metaphor and too many shiny words, but I was proud of it. All about second chances and lost time and regrets and feeling hopeful about the future. And I believed, I wrote with such confidence, that my future was there.
I meant it when I wrote it. It was a shot in the dark, a wish that was unlikely to come true. And the improbability of it actually happening made me feel brave enough to try.
It was the very end of January, and I was flying high off the knowledge that Kevin had been arrested and people seemed to believe me and I still thought that counted for something. I thought he’d soon be locked up and out of my life—out ofallour lives— for good. I felt free. Josh and I had been talking again, before I left school, before Steve, before things got so much harder. And so I cranked out that essay in the eleventh hour. I had no idea that months later, still nothing would’ve happened to move anything forward with the trial or that I’d be feeling less free, less hopeful, with every day that passed.
I had no idea how any of this legal stuff worked, so when DA Silverman and our court-appointed advocate, Lane, explained that it wasn’t going to just be a trial that consisted of me, alone, against him, that it was the state against him and I was just one piece of something bigger, I felt so relieved. Almost powerful. Protected even. Because it was three against one—me and Amanda and Gennifer—finally the odds felt fair. Strength in numbers. I imagined the three of us walking into some fancy courtroom like a gang or something from a movie poster: the ex-girlfriend, the little sister, and the girl next door, all tough and strong, arms locked in solidarity.
It was a nice dream.
But that feeling didn’t last. Because, as DA Silverman and Lane made abundantly clear when they explained the whole evidence collecting, hearing, and trial process: under no circumstances were we allowed to talk to each other about anything related to the case, Kevin, or what happened to any of us. Because we could be accused of . . . I’m not sure what, lying, I guess, creating some mastermind narrative. Didn’t they realize Kevin was the real mastermind behind it all in the first place?
I barely remember the person I was when I wrote that essay. I thought about it twenty-four-seven, for weeks, until the cold, blissful realization washed over me: I could stop hoping. One look at my transcripts would ensure no one would ever read it.
Which is why I’m having trouble processing the email I’m staring at on my phone. It says I’ve been taken off the wait list and am being offered admission. I read the words ten times, but I still don’t understand them. This has to be some kind of mix-up.
