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

by Amber Smith

A world that’s a lot like the real world, except slightly slower. This alternate reality where I’m not quite in my body, not quite in my mind, either—it’s this place where all I do is think about one thing and one thing only.

Disassociation

I know she’s been having a hard time with it all—her parents getting divorced, her dad moving out, her mom getting crazier, and now this alleged girlfriend.

Mara

“I guess.” I can’t exactly protest too much, because honestly, the idea of reinventing myself sounds pretty appealing. I’m not sure who I’d want to be, though.

Reminds me of narrative theory

You don’t need contacts. You want them, you don’t need them.”

Reminds me of dad back in the day lol

His eyes meet mine. I’m staring. I look down and think: Chocolate. That’s what his eyes remind me of. I look up again. The color of dark chocolate. And I realize that those small random facts don’t really add up to anything when you’re up close like this. When someone like him is looking at you the way he’s looking at me.

His skin is warm, just like his voice and his eyes and his laugh.

I drop his hand, shocked back into a world not composed solely of this guy’s chocolate eyes. I gather my things quickly so I can get out of there, because I don’t know what just happened—what’s happening. I don’t know if it’s scary or exhilarating. I don’t dare look back at him.

I have an image of the Tin Man stuck in my head. Dorothy and Scarecrow finding him rusted solid in the woods, oiling his mouth and jaws, and then, magically, squeak, squeak, squeak, much like a mouse, he says “M-m-m-m-my goodness, I can talk again.” It is like that. Cathartic. I feel like I might never shut up again.

All that honesty saturating the atmosphere, filling in the gaps that exist between us. It does stuff to my brain, like a drug; it makes me want to tell the truth. I feel dangerously capable.

As he lays his head back down on my chest he says, “I can hear your heart.” It’s a simple, sweet thing to say. I smile a little. But then I feel my heart do something funny—it’s the thump, thump, thumping of the proverbial part of the organ. And around the time the moon and sun are coexisting in the sky, turning the room inside out with that eerie, yet calming, pale glow, 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. And I know, somehow, that things have changed between us.

I wonder what he would say if I told him. What he would do. If I told him my deep, dark, black-hole secret, the one that had the potential to swallow up the entire universe.

My heart starts racing as he looks deeper into me. Because he’s right. Tough girls don’t blush. Tough girls don’t turn to jelly when a cute boy tells them they’re beautiful. 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.

“Mm-hmm,” he murmurs, listening to me like I’m saying the most interesting things he’s ever heard in his life, paying such close attention to every word out of my mouth.

I stare at him and wish that I could somehow make him understand everything. Everything that’s happened, everything I think and feel, about him, about me, about us together. How my heart—that stupid, flimsy organ—aches violently for him.

I don’t mind. In fact, I’m really beginning to like the silence. It’s become my ally. Things happen in silence. If you don’t let it get to you, it can make you stronger; it can be your shield, impenetrable.

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.

Nostalgia

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.

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.