Page 79 of The Way I Am Now
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
Mara looks down at her hands. “Edy, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
I open my mouth to answer but change my mind. “You know, I almost just said ‘I don’t know’ again? Because for so long I really didn’t know. I guess saying ‘I don’t know’ is easier to say than to try to list all the reasons.”
“I want to know all the reasons,” she says. “Because I would’ve believed you.”
“That’s probably the biggest one. You would have believed me, and if you knew, then I couldn’t pretend anymore and I would’ve had to do something about it. And I couldn’t. Or at least, I didn’t think I could.”
She nods but chews on the inside of her cheek like she’s trying to not say something.
“And you were all I had. I didn’t want anything to change.”
“It wouldn’t have,” she argues.
“It has, though. You feel it, don’t you? Things are just different now.”
She looks down again. “You never gave me the chance to be a good friend to you. As much as I love you, I’m mad too, and I know that makes me a total bitch. I’m mad because I would’ve been there for you if I’d known.”
“I know.”
“But I understand, too,” she adds. “Who’s to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
I shrug, nod, say, “I guess.”
We sit there for a moment, looking out on this small patch that once held so many things from our childhood, our high school indiscretions. Somewhere in the distance a car horn honks, a muffled reprieve from the bittersweet reverie of this place.
“Can I ask you for a huge favor, Mara?”
“Anything.”
“Will you come to the hearing?”
“Of course,” she says, no hesitation.
“Really?”
“Yes. What do I have to do?”
“Just sit there,” I tell her. “Let me look at you while I’m testifying. Can you do that?”
She nods.
“I’ll have to go over everything that happened. The details. Like, probably everything that ever happened between me and—” I cough, clear my throat. “Me and him. Me and Kevin,” I finally say. “But especially what happened that night, I guess. It’s just that, he’s going to be there, and I don’t want to accidentally look at him and then freeze or break down or fly into a rage or something.”
“Would it help if you told me now?” she asks. “Like as practice?”
“Maybe.”
I tell her about the Monopoly game earlier that night, how he flirted with me, even though I didn’t really understand that was what he was doing at the time. I tell her about how I woke up to him in my bedroom at 2:48 in the morning—I looked at my clock because it didn’t make sense, why he’d be in my room. How I thought at first, he must be playing some kind of joke. How he climbed on top of me and covered my mouth, pinned my arms down. How he was crushing me, hurting me, how he told me to shut up. He put his hand around my throat. He wasn’t laughing. He was serious. It wasn’t a joke.
Mara’s squeezing my hands so hard.
“Then what happened?”
