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

by Amber Smith

Because it was just a dream, a bad dream—a nightmare. Not real. Not real. Not real. That’s what I keep thinking: NotRealNotRealNotReal. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Like a mantra. Like a prayer.

I don’t know that these images flashing through my mind—a movie of someone else, somewhere else—will never really go away, will never ever stop playing, will never stop haunting me.

it’s all I can see, all I can feel, a...

Life just goes, just happens, continuing as always. Normal. And I can’t shake the knowledge that life will just keep on happening, regardless if I wake up or not.

Not real. So as I stare at the ceiling, I’m thinking: I must have serious issues if I’m dreaming stuff like that. Horrible stuff like that.

And now I know, for sure, it happened. It actually happened. And this pain in the center of my body, the depths of my insides, restarts its torture as if on cue.

how am I supposed say the words, the worst words, the ones I know have to be spoken?

No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever.

I know somehow if it’s not now, it has to be never. Because he was right, no one would ever believe me. Of course they wouldn’t. Not ever.

Try to act like every part of my body, inside and out, isn’t throbbing and pulsing.

try not to give away anything that would let him know how wrong my body feels to me right now.

something snaps inside of me. Physically snaps. If my body were a machine, it’s like the gears inside of me just grind to a halt, my muscles short-circuit and forbid my body to move.

without a coherent thought in my head except Get the hell out, I get the hell out.

It’s too humiliating to be in lunch anymore, to have to hide and still get food thrown at you anyway, and not be able to do anything about it, and your friends are too afraid to stand up for you, or themselves. Especially when you just got attacked in your own house—in your own bed—and you can’t even stand up for yourself there, either, the one place you’re supposed to be safe.

I don’t think I’ll ever think of anyone in that way.

“You know, just, the way things are. How there are all these stupid cliques, and rules you’re supposed to follow that don’t make any sense. Just all of it, you know?” I stop myself, because sometimes I forget we aren’t really supposed to talk about this. We’re supposed to accept it. Supposed to feel like it’s all of us who have the problem. And we’re supposed to deal with it like it’s our problem even though it’s not.

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

If only I were sick all the time, things might feel a little more normal around here.

I feel like I’ve gone off somewhere else, like I’ve just sort of slipped into this other realm. 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.

Lately it feels like my skin, just like my mind, has been turned inside out. Like I’m raw and exposed, and it almost hurts to even be brushed up against.

But I can’t listen all the way because I seem to have only one thought. Just this: Fucking die fucking asshole fucking kill you fucking die, die, die.

It’s something new, this feeling. Not anger, not sadness, not embarrassment. It burns up everything inside of me, every thought, every memory, every feeling I ever had, and fills itself in the space left vacant.

I’ve spent the whole summer trying to figure how you go about not hiding when that’s all you’ve ever done your entire life.

And I hear fragments of Dad’s response: “Jesus . . . melodramatic . . . girl . . . spoiled rotten.” Spoiled? I’m spoiled? I never ask for a thing! I never even ask for attention.

Except maybe I do mean it. A little, at least. Because I let them push me around just like I let everyone push me around. I let them make me into a person who doesn’t know when to speak the hell up, a person who gives up control over her life, over her body, over everything. I do what they tell me to do, what everyone tells me to do. Why didn’t they ever teach me to stand up for myself?

afraid they might see that underneath my new outfit and hair and makeup and body, maybe I’m really not that normal or okay.

No idea that I ever existed. And somehow, I really like the way that feels.

That Kevin would continue to control me in these ways I had never even dreamed of. And suddenly the thought of having someone else there in place of him is something I required-wanted-needed, in the most severe of ways. And I don’t really care who, anyone else at all will do.

so what if he has chocolate eyes or an aquiline nose or a magnetic smile—technically, he could do it, could do anything he wanted, and I wouldn’t be strong enough to stop him and no one would even know because we’re here all alone and how the hell did I get here again? What was I thinking?

“I don’t know,” I whisper. Because I don’t know—I don’t know anything right now.

Because whatever he thinks I am, I’m not. And whatever he thinks my body is, it isn’t. 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.

My heart races dangerously fast. My skin burns. My chest tightens, my lungs seem to go rigid. I’m not breathing quite right, I know that much. My fingers and toes tingle. Things begin to go out of focus, then back in, and out again. Like looking through a kaleidoscope, it makes me dizzy—the room, the way it’s spinning—the way the world ceases to make any sense at all. I hear this buzzing in the background, like static. Static pulsing through brain waves, electric currents floating around in this strange place, making the air feel nervous, activated somehow.

I can feel my heart pumping. I can feel the blood, at first, rushing through my veins, but then I get the distinct feeling that it’s stopped rushing, stopped pulsing, stopped coursing, and is just seeping out, uncontained, flooding my whole body and I’ll surely be dead soon.

And then someone switches off the circuit breaker in my mind and everything just stops. Like wires are cut somewhere. I am disconnected, offline. And then things fade to this still, calm, quiet nothingness.

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.

I know I’m not supposed to need anything. Not supposed to want.

“Sometimes”—I’m not sure if I should say something this terrible out loud—“sometimes, I don’t think I believe in God.” Because what kind of God lets bad things happen to people who so desperately try to be good?

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 want to believe that somewhere beneath that knifelike stare he can see just how much I’ve changed, how different I am from that girl he once knew.

it’s like my body knows before my brain does, my senses heightened, my skin suddenly hot and itchy. Like I’m allergic to him.

Things happen in silence. If you don’t let it get to you, it can make you stronger; it can be your shield, impenetrable.

And I realize 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.

I don’t know who I am right now. But I know who I’m not. And I like that.

Not that I enjoy the parties all that much. But I enjoy losing myself. And there’s always someone there. Ready, waiting. Waiting for something to happen. Just like me. I’ve gotten good at picking them out right away. Finding that someone. Not a bad person. Someone who just wants what I want. To disconnect. For a little while, anyway. From themselves, mostly. I think. I wouldn’t really know, though, because it’s not like we ever talk about these things. It’s not like I really care, anyway.

And me, well, before it was like you had the girl and then you had the rumors about the girl, but now there’s only the girl, because the rumors aren’t just rumors anymore, they’re the reality—they are the girl.

Empty, haunted—this house. Not by ghosts, but by us, by our own history, by the things that have happened here.

And it’s like I’m back there, but not as myself. I’m there as someone else, like a bystander sitting at the table with them,

I could tell, but this was the moment he knew not only that he would do it, but that she would let him get away with it.

But he wasn’t thinking of her in that way. He was holding her in the palm of his hand, wrapping her around his fingers, one at a time, twisting and molding and bending her brain. I try to whisper in the girl’s ear: “Edy, get up. Just lock your door. That’s all you need to do. Lock your door, Edy, please!” I shout, but the girl doesn’t hear me. It’s too late.

Not only do I need to be wasted to have a good time, I need to be wasted to even be conscious right now,