The Way I Used to Be (20 page)

Later, after I am a no-show at family-dinner theater, where we play the parts of a loving, functional family (sans little sister—no understudy), after Mom and Dad (reading for the roles of doting mother and father) go to bed, Caelin (wholesome, caring big brother) lures me out of my room with my favorite food in the entire world. Caelin McCrorey's famous pizza sandwich, which is exactly what it sounds like: a sandwich filled with pizza toppings—sauce, tons of cheese, pepperoni and mushrooms, and black and green olives—grilled in the sandwich maker to buttery golden perfection. Sinfully delicious and a time-tested, never-failed peace offering. I can't resist.

We stay up late like we did when we were kids, with the TV on low, mocking infomercials and horrible nineties music videos, genuinely entertained by ridiculously corny children's cartoons. And when I fall asleep on the couch, he covers me with the old, scratchy, dusty-smelling but incredibly warm blanket from the hall closet. It is a temporary truce, anyway.

I finally see Josh at school the next day. He looks pretty roughed up—purplish green under his right eye, left cheekbone scraped, a yellowish bruise fading from his jaw. He watches me intently as I walk toward him, like I'm speaking and he's trying really hard to listen to what I'm saying. I'm going to tell him that I didn't have anything to do with what my brother did to him. I want him to tell me he had nothing to do with what his friends did to me. I want to say sorry. I want to make up. I want, even, to tell him how much I've missed him and how much I want to be with him again, but really with him this time. I'm going to tell him all these things. I am.

But suddenly Jock Guy appears next to him, sneering at me. He cups his hand over his mouth and coughs “slut,” nudging Josh in the ribs with his elbow. Grinning wide, he looks to Josh, then to me, then back to Josh. I stop walking. I wait for his reaction, like Jock Guy waits for it. Please don't laugh, please don't laugh, I silently beg.

I barely hear his voice carry through the jungle of noise, but I see him glaring at Jock Guy, see his mouth taking the shape of words: “Don't fucking do that, man—that's so stupid!” Jock Guy looks embarrassed, mad—mad at me. Mad as hell at me. He exits, stage left, a rabid dog with its tail between its legs.

Enter stage right, beautiful brunette in a miniskirt and tight sweater, inexplicably tan for the dead of winter; interlacing her French-tipped fingers with Josh's, standing on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, her smile dripping with honey. I guess she's my replacement—an upgrade, clearly. She nuzzles her face into his arm like some kind of adoring pedigree kitten, but when her eyes meet mine, that sweet smile is all feral and fanged. It scares me more than slut coughs, almost as much as secret after-school ambushes.

Obviously, I have stumbled onto the wrong side of the invisible but ever-present velvet rope. Even Josh isn't immune to these cruel taxonomies. He opens his mouth like he's going to say something, call out to me, like he's been waiting to say something, just as I have. But then, remembering the order of things, he stops himself, looks down at the girl latched to his side. Things would have to stay unsaid. And so I put on my game face, my new face, my tough face, and just walk away.

“YOU REMEMBER THE PLAN
, right?” Mara asks me as we pull into the gas station in her brand-new old car. Her dad gave her his beat-up brown Buick for her sixteenth birthday. It was the one he'd had since we were kids. But basically it was a guilt gift for being such a crappy father, for having a girlfriend, for canceling his weekends with Mara all the time.

“You really think this will work?” I check my lipstick in the rearview mirror just once more.

“I think so. I mean, if that sophomore can pull it off, we sure as hell can,” she reminds me. We'd overheard this girl bragging on the first day of school about how she'd been scoring beer from some guy who works weeknights at this particular gas station—all you have to do is flirt a little, she'd said. “Just act natural,” Mara whispers as we push through the door.

A bell dings over our heads. The air-conditioning blasts down on us and the fluorescent lights blare overhead. I meet eyes with the guy behind the counter. He grins, looking us both up and down, simultaneously, then down and up, from our heels, up our legs still tan from our summer spent in Mara's pool, to our skirts, to our too-tight shirts.

“Hey,” Mara says in his direction, a little too casually. “Just a minute,” she says to me, “I have to grab a couple of things.” She walks toward the back of the store to the freezer section and casts a look at me over her shoulder.

I walk up to the counter, as planned. “Can I get twenty on pump four?” I ask him, sliding the bill across the counter. Mara said we need to make sure he knows we're driving, that way we'll seem older. “Can I also have a pack of menthol lights in the box, please?” I add, remembering to smile.

He looks at me closely, a knowing smirk, but reaches up over his head and pulls out a pack of cigarettes from a shelf I can't see. “Anything else?” he asks, tossing the box onto the counter in the space between us.

I look behind me as Mara makes her way up the aisle with a six-pack in each hand.

“It's all together,” Mara tells him as she sets the beer on the counter. “Oh, and these too,” she adds, picking up a packet of little foam tree air fresheners from the impulse-buy row of random merchandise littering the counter. She is still thinking the car is the key to all of this, and not our breasts and lips and bare legs. Still, he doesn't ask any questions. He just reserves the right to gawk at us without needing to hide it.

I can feel Mara holding her breath as we pay. I can feel her holding her breath as she slips the trees and the pack of cigarettes into her purse. Holding her breath as she hurriedly ushers us out of the store. We don't dare speak or even look at each other until we're back inside the car. “Oh. My. God. Edy.” Mara says to me, barely moving her lips as she drives past the storefront windows and waves to the guy behind the counter, still watching us.

“Holy shit, I cannot believe we just pulled that off!” she says with a laugh as soon as she pulls out onto the road. “You were amazing!” she yells, wide eyed.

“So were you!”

“I was good, wasn't I?” Lavishly, she stretches her arm out the window. “This is going to be the best year, Edy!” she shouts, looking over at me with an enormous smile. She turns the radio up so loud, I can't even hear myself laughing.

“So where are we going again?” I yell.

“What?” she yells back.

“Where are we going?” I repeat, my voice straining.

“A surprise!” And then she turns down all the familiar roads we've been turning down our entire lives, past the churches and the fast-food chains and the car wash. And at the town-limit sign, just when I expect her to turn left, she keeps going straight. Every time we meet an intersection, I expect her to make a U-turn and go back. But she doesn't.

I lower the volume on the radio. “Okay, really, where are we going?” I ask her again.

“It's a surpri-i-ise,” she sings.

“I'm positive there is nothing in this town that will be a surprise! It's literally a copy of ours, except it takes about eleven minutes to drive from one end to the other instead of ten.” I laugh. “It's just as dull and boring as—”

“Not so fast, my little cynic,” Mara interrupts, shaking her finger at me with a grin, as she turns the wheel again and again, steering us down short, dark streets. “Okay.” She finally turns the radio off. “Look familiar?” she asks as she slows the car over the gravel parking lot.

“I can't believe it—I completely forgot about this place, Mara,” I tell her, opening my car door before she's even come to a complete stop.

I once believed this was the most magical place on the planet. I walk closer. It's smaller now, it seems, than when we were kids, but still wonderful. The giant wooden playground is what we always called it, but it's so much more than that. It's a wooden castle the size of a Hollywood mansion, with towers and bridges and turrets and secret passageways. Elaborate swings in the shape of life-size horses with black rubber saddles.

“I knew you would love this.” Mara trudges up behind me with the beer. “Okay, how many rules are we breaking right now?” she asks as we approach the park-rules sign. “It's past dusk so the park is officially closed—number one. No smoking—number two. We're bringing in alcohol, number five, while simultaneously breaking rule number seven—no glass containers. That's not too bad, actually.” Mara laughs.

We take the wooden drawbridge across the sand moat, climbing to the upper level. We sit down on one of the bridges that connect the two highest towers of the castle. We rest our backs against the wooden slats that form the sides of the bridge, and I look up as our eyes adjust to the star-filled sky.

“Remember how we would beg our parents to bring us here when we were little?” Mara asks, opening a beer for each of us.

“Yeah, and they would always, always say it was too far away! I had no idea how close this place was. It took, what, like fifteen minutes to get here? I always imagined it was hours and hours away!”

“Another lie.” Mara snorts, taking a swig of beer. “Just like Santa, the tooth fairy.” Swig. “Marriage,” she adds, staring into space. “Anyway.” She segues. “Yeah. I had no clue this place still existed—my dad brought me here to practice driving in the parking lot.”

“My parents still won't even talk about letting me get my learner's permit. So at least you have your license and a car—they get points for that, right?” I try.

“Whatever.” She shrugs, lighting a cigarette.

I want to remind her of the fact that her parents were never happy. That they made each other miserable—and her, too. That it's been more than three years. And she needs to accept it. But I know these things are off limits, so I light a cigarette too, and look out over our little kingdom.

“You know, when we were kids I would climb up there”—I point with my bottle—“to the highest tower. Pretend I was some kind of princess. Trapped, waiting,” I tell her, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

She turns and smiles. “Waiting for what?”

“I don't know. Life to begin? For something to happen!” I shout, hearing my voice echo.

“What are you talking about? We're still waiting for that!” she shouts back, into the night sky.

“Okay, well, maybe we're still waiting, but now we're doing it with a car!” I laugh, raising my beer in the air.

“And alcohol!” Mara shouts, as we clink our bottles together. She falls forward with laughter, her beer sloshing out everywhere. And I laugh along with her, for no reason, louder than I think I've ever laughed in my life. Until it feels like my lungs might burst. Until it feels like freedom.

“Hey! Who's up there?” someone yells from down below. Footsteps crunch through the cedar chips that line the ground, getting closer.