The Way I Used to Be (9 page)

“Well, I was.”

And we just stand there staring at each other.

Finally he says, turning his head at me suspiciously, “Do you not like me or something?”

“No,” I tell him right away. “I mean, not no. I mean I do. I mean, I don't not like you.”

“Okay. I think,” he says, laughing. “Well, now that that's all cleared up. I was thinking maybe we should do something sometime?”

“Like what?” I ask.

“Like what?” he repeats. He grins that grin of his again. “Oh, I don't know, I thought we'd knock over a couple of ATMs, do a little vandalism, steal some identities, and then head for the border. Carrying illegal substances, of course.” He laughs. “Or we could get really crazy and go see a movie. Possibly even eat at a restaurant.”

I can't help but smile.

“Is that a yes?” he asks.

“I don't know,” I tell him. “Maybe.”

He looks at me more seriously now. “What, do you have a boyfriend or something?”

“No.”

We just stand there, saying nothing.

“All right,” he finally says with an exhale. “I guess, let me know then.”

As I watch him walk away, God, I wish I would've just said yes. I step out from the aisle to see if I can still catch him. But just as he walks out the door, I see Amanda standing there at one of the shelves, absently touching the spines of books. She's looking back and forth between me and Josh. This time I glare at her. Pretending she doesn't see me, she pulls a book and starts randomly thumbing the pages.

SITTING IN THE GRASS
next to the tennis courts, I pick those fuzzy white dandelions, absently blowing the little seeds off into the wind. Almost October, this is probably one of the last truly nice days of the year. There's a chill, but the sun feels so warm, it makes the actual coldness of the air inconsequential. I want to breathe it in. Hold it there in my lungs forever.

Mara's staying after with Cameron to work on something for their art class. I guess I could go home, but I really don't want to be there, either. So I wait for her instead, whether she wants me to or not.

“I hope you're making wishes when you do that,” I hear someone call out behind me. I turn around, shielding my eyes from the sun. It's the silhouette of a boy, and a blazing pink and orange sky behind him. A tall boy in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and a knee brace, toting a duffel bag and a water bottle. He's wearing this old, beat-up black cap that makes it hard to see his face, but as he steps closer, his features gradually come into focus. “Otherwise you're just making more weeds,” he finishes.

I clear my throat, try to sound casual. “You're always sneaking up on me, aren't you?”

“Not
always
—just twice.” He smiles.

It had been almost two weeks since I'd seen him at the library. I'm shocked he's even talking to me. I figured I'd pretty much blown it.

“So, what are you wishing for?” he asks, taking off his hat as he drops down on the ground next to me, uninvited. His face is flushed, hair damp. And his eyes are slightly glazed, like he's really tired. I remember my brother always having that look when he came home from practice.

I think about my answer for a second while I watch him settle in next to me.

“I don't wish,” I decide. Not for things that can be taken care of by delicate white pixies surfing aimlessly on haphazard currents of air, anyway. He looks disappointed—I'm not playing right. I'm supposed to make up some cute thing I want more than anything in the world. And then he's supposed to spin me a web of bullshit about all the ways he could make that thing happen. Of course, he couldn't. And I wouldn't. So, we're left to our own devices.

“Everyone wishes,” he insists.

“Not me.” I would look so much tougher if I had a cigarette hanging out of my mouth. I'm not to be messed with, that's the impression I want to give him. I'm not naive or stupid. In fact, I'm not even nice.

Now he looks more than disappointed. He looks like he wants to wish on a weed that he hadn't just sat down next to me. He doesn't say anything as he looks out at the nothing, at all the people who are not here, and thus will not rescue him.

“Well, okay—” I start. Out of the corner of my eye I can see that he's stopped sweeping the deck for a life jacket and faces me now. “Even if I did wish for something—and I'm not saying that that's what I was doing—I still wouldn't tell you what it is.” I steal a glance. He's grinning. He's cute, and he knows it too. The sun filters through his irises, pulling out all these kaleidoscopic caramel and mahogany colors that had been hiding behind chocolate. I have to force myself to stop looking. He inches closer. I feel my heart accelerate.

“Because then it won't come true, right?” he asks.

I nod. “Exactly.”

“Yeah, but do they ever really come true anyway, even when you don't tell?” Interesting tactic—playing to my cynicism. He's good.

“You have a point,” I admit. I can see his mind working as he looks at me, deciding which move, which play to make in order to win, to beat me.

“You know, I did a project once on the life cycle of dandelions,” he tells me, nodding toward the now empty stem in my hand. “Second grade or something like that.”

I don't think this is in the script. I rack my brain. No, I don't have anything to say to that. He reaches somewhere behind us and picks something out of the ground; I hear the flimsy stem snap. I just silently tap my shoe against the yellow weed at my foot.

“Well, you know how they're yellow at first? And then after the petals fall off you get that white, fluffy stuff so the seeds can float away?” he asks, examining the one he just plucked from the ground.

I nod.

“See, this one . . . is sort of in between.” He holds it close to my face so I can get a better look. “The yellow petals are gone, and the white's starting to come through, but they're not really light enough to start flying away yet.” He blows at it, but nothing happens.

We are so close, I can feel his breath on my skin, feel the warmth radiating from his body. He looks directly into my eyes as he waits for some kind of response on my part. But his breath and warmth and eyes undermine my ability to think or speak or understand anything other than his breath and warmth and eyes. I finally force myself to just look away.

“Well,” he continues, after I don't respond. “They're pretty hard to find—I had to track down a dandelion at every stage of growth for that project. And you'd be surprised how rare these ones are.”

I dare myself to look him in the eye again, but I can't hold it for long, so I refocus on the dandelion.

“I guess that's not very interesting, is it?” He rests his elbows on his knees and lets the weed dangle between his fingers.

I smile. I did actually think it was a little interesting, but I'm not about to tell him that.

“Nice out,” he says, looking up at the sky.

“Yeah,” I agree.

“Yeah.” He sighs.

I feel bad for him; he is probably really good at making small talk with girls. This isn't his fault.

“So, what are you still doing here?” he asks, the silence rapidly becoming unbearable.

“Just waiting for my friend. You?”

“I'm waiting for my ride—I just got out of practice.”

“Did you, like, get hurt or something?” I gesture to the bandage around his knee.

“No, it just acts up sometimes. It's fine, though.” He smiles slowly as he stares at me.

“Oh.” I nod, looking away, careful not to appear too concerned about him—or anything for that matter.

“So,” he says, nervously twirling the dandelion between his thumb and index finger. “You have me in suspense, you know that, right?”

“Oh,” I say again. “Sorry.”

“So, should I just take that as a no?” he asks, still smiling. “It's okay. I just don't wanna keep feeling like such an idiot.” He laughs.

And I want to laugh at the fact that he's the one feeling like an idiot here. I wish I could somehow make him understand that I want to say no as much as I want to say yes. “No, that's not it. I just—” But I can't finish because I don't even fully understand it myself.

“Well, what is it?”

“I don't know,” I mumble.

The shape of his mouth looks a little confused, uncertain if it should smile or frown. “Are you doing this on purpose? I really can't tell.”

“Doing what?”

“Screwing with me—not giving me a straight answer.”

“No, I'm really not. I swear.”

His eyebrows pull together, a vertical line forming in the center of his forehead. He looks at me appraisingly. “Forget it,” he finally says. “I just can't seem to get you right, I guess.” With this sad, awkward smile and a wave of his hand. “Forget it, really.”

“Yes,” I hear myself say. Because maybe this is my chance—a second chance—to be initiated into all this boy-girl stuff.

“Wait, yes?” He looks at me closely, his eyes lighting up. “So you're actually
saying
yes?”

I take a deep breath and repeat it: “Yes.”

“Finally!” he yells, raising his arms to the sky, laughing. “Tomorrow night, are you free?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Just as he's about to say something else, a car pulls in at the far end of the lot—a navy blue hearse-looking vehicle, most definitely a parent's car.

“Shit, that's my ride. Here.” He takes my hand.

“Wait.” I pull away. “What are you doing?”

“Hold on,” he says with a laugh. “It's okay, it won't kill you. Just relax,” he says in this soothing, dreamy way that probably makes other girls melt. He unclenches my fingers and puts something there in my palm.

I look down. It's the dandelion, the in-between one.

He stands and shoulders his bag. “So, let's just meet here after school tomorrow?”

I nod.

“Cool.” He smiles. “Okay.”

He gets into the hearse car with a woman who I assume must be his mother in the driver's seat. She waves her hand in my direction. I turn around to look behind me. But she's waving at me, I realize, as he sits in the passenger seat looking embarrassed. I raise my arm and wave back. “Does she need a ride?” I hear her ask through the unrolled window. He says either “No” or “Go.” I can't tell which.

After the car drives off, I pull out my planner and open it to this week. Then I carefully set the soft white weed in the binding and close it gently between the pages.

I hear shuffling on the tennis courts. I glance behind me and do a double take. It's Amanda. Standing there with her fingers wrapped through the chain-link fence, staring at me.

“Hey!” I call over to her. But she turns and starts walking. “Hey!” I stand up and run over to the gate that leads inside the court. “What are you doing just standing there?” I yell, catching up with her quickly. “Spying on me?”

“No. And I can stand wherever I want.” She crosses her arms and looks me up and down, her face changing slowly, her upper lip curling into this snarl of disgust.

“Why don't you just mind your own business, Mandy!” I start to shove past her, but I swing back around, my heart tugging on my courage. “Wait, what is your problem exactly?”

“I don't
have
a problem,” she answers.

“Seems like it to me.” I cross my arms as well, trying to calm down, trying to look as formidable as she somehow does. She steps in close to me, like that day on the front steps. And if I didn't know her better, I would think she was actually about to hit me.

“My name is not Mandy,” she growls.

She stalks off the tennis courts without another word.

I BARELY SLEEP AT
all that night. So I wake up early and get ready. Before Mom and Dad even. Nobody's at school yet by the time I get there. The burnt stench of cheap coffee wafts out from the teacher's lounge, but there's not a person in sight. I go into the girls' bathroom on the first floor and open the window to sneak a cigarette while no one's around.

I try to get my head together in here. I'm so terrified about seeing him later today, I can hardly think straight. I consider going home sick. That would be a good excuse. If only I didn't actually
want
to see him later.

I hear someone coming. I toss my cigarette and slam the window shut. This time of the morning, it has to be a teacher. I race into one of the stalls and lock it behind me. Stepping up onto the toilet seat, I hold my breath and wait.

The door screeches open and two voices whisper frantically to each other.

“Hurry up, hurry up. Lock it, lock it now.”

“Okay, I got it. Here, here.”

“Hurry! Hurry,” they whisper breathlessly.

Their sheer excitement makes me need to know more. I cautiously position myself to look through the crack between the door and the wall of the stall, careful not to make a sound. That's when I see her: Amanda. I can't seem to get away from her lately.

“Okay, here,” she says to this other girl—another freshman I've seen around, always with this snarky look on her face—handing her a marker.

“All right, and what are we writing again?” Snarky Girl asks, staring at the wall.

“You know—slut, whore, skank, bitch, whatever. All true, so just take your pick,” Amanda tells her.

Armed with two wide-tipped permanent markers, they approach the bathroom wall. Amanda goes first. She presses the spongy tip of the marker against the grimy, pale pink tiles and it squeaks as I watch her carefully write the words:

EDEN MCCROREY IS A WHORE

I can barely believe it. I can barely breathe.

Then Snarky steps up and draws a little arrow between the words “A” and “WHORE,” and writes in this sickeningly self-assured scrawl: