The Way I Used to Be (The Way I Used to Be, #1)

by Amber Smith

Life just goes, just happens, continuing as always.

I think about how they say when most people get into car accidents, it’s less than one mile from their home. Maybe that’s because everything’s so familiar, you stop paying attention.

I cry until there are no more tears, like I have used them all up, like maybe I have broken my damn tear ducts.

And I really wonder how people get to be normal like this. How they just seem to know what to say and do, automatically.

Why do I feel like, sometimes, I have no one in the entire world who knows me in even the slightest, most insignificant way?

Sophomore Year

My fave part of the book, joshua miller..!!!!

All you have to do is act like you’re normal and okay, and people start treating you that way.

That’s when I notice his eyes. They’re this intense brown, so deep it makes me want to just fall all the way into them.

And then he looks up at me with his smile, and I can feel his eyes watching me as I leave. I’m barely breathing. My heart feels light and fast—too fast.

“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.”

This guy, Josh, he’s good enough. He did, after all, pick me a weed.

I have to be sure and strong and solid because there’s something about him—I don’t know what, exactly—that makes me want, so badly, to be vulnerable.

“You have, uh, like, sauce”—he touches the corner of his mouth—“right there.” “Eww, stop watching me eat!” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Did I get it?” “Uh-uh, come here, I’ll get it.” I lean in, still wiping my face. “Closer,” he says, “let me see.” I’m practically on top of him by the time I realize he’s messing with me. He grins as he moves in to kiss my mouth. “Got it.”

Because what kind of God lets bad things happen to people who so desperately try to be good?

But the truth is that right now, in this moment, the world feels pretty amazing to me.

I have a terrible thought: I like him. I really, really like him. Like, love-like him. Like, with my metaphorical heart. Like, if I had an x-ray, it would show an arrow lodged right into the center of that bloody, bleeding mass of muscle in my chest.

“Okay, you need to stop calling him Joshua Miller, Mara. It’s weird.” “But… he’s Joshua Miller, Edy.” “I’m aware of that.” I sit down in my desk chair and look at her, so excited for me, and I try really hard not to get excited for me too. “So what do you call him? Sweetie? Sexy? Sugar? Greek God?” “Yeah, Mara, I call him Greek God.” I laugh,

Sometimes he uses his words like weapons to chip away at my icy exterior and sometimes he can break through to the slightly defrosted layer beneath. But then again, sometimes he just hits solid iceberg. For instance, he knows what he’s doing when next he says, “And you should smile more too.” I look away, embarrassed. He has no way of knowing how sometimes it physically hurts to smile. How a smile can sometimes feel like the biggest lie I’ve ever told.

And I’m terrified he’ll see through the tough iceberg layer, and he’ll discover not a soft, sweet girl, but an ugly fucking disaster underneath.

“I can’t tell if you’re really pretty,” he continues so sincerely, a soft smile on his face, “or really ugly.”

Senior Year

Wait, no not the end, ive read way too much today..! Lol

And her big secret is really not such a huge deal anymore. It was all so long ago now, it practically never even happened.

She cries. And then, because I’m such great friend, I just walk away.

“You know, I can take weird,” he says quietly, the muscles in his face flexing and twitching. Then quieter, “I can take fucked up.” And his eyes, they fill with water. Oh God, his voice shakes. “But you’re just a… slut.”

This part always makes me cry..

He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.

His hands, his arms, can hold the pieces in place temporarily, maybe even for a long time, but he can never truly put them back together. That’s not his job. He’s not the hero and he’s not the enemy and he’s not a god. He’s just a boy. And I’m just a girl, a girl who needs to pick up her own pieces and put them back together herself.

I watch as his body melts down to the floor and I start to understand something too. That this isn’t all about me. This thing, it touches everyone.

five minutes is forever. Five minutes is the rest of your entire fucking stupid life.

“That was a terrible thing—yes. But it’s not a free pass. Not an excuse.”

All these maybes swimming around my head make me think that “maybe” could just be another word for hope.