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

by Amber Smith

My body is a torture chamber. It’s a fucking crime scene. Hideous things have happened here, it’s nothing to talk about, nothing to comment on, not out loud. Not ever. I won’t hear it. I can’t.

I want to get as far away from the past as possible, be as different from that girl as I can.

Am I mad? Maybe, but that’s not all. I’m sad. And still scared. And confused, because I don’t understand why I’m still scared, why I’m still sad, why I’m angry. This was supposed to fix things. This was supposed to help.

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 feel a little strange, like, out of my body in a way I’ve never been before. In a way that feels so much better than drinking too much, or even that night at the playground when we got high. Better than any feeling I’ve ever had. Empty and full, all at the same time.

look around. The Earth is still intact. I’m still alive. The floor didn’t open up and swallow me whole. I haven’t spontaneously combusted. I don’t know what I thought would happen if I told, if I let that that one word exist, but I didn’t expect nothing to happen.

“I know that I’ve lied about things before, but I wouldn’t lie about this,

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.