The Way I Am Now (The Way I Used to Be)

Thursday morning, freshly showered, I sit at my kitchen table. In my dining room with my brother, my mother, my father, sipping orange juice from a glass I’ve used a million times before. Bacon, pancakes, coffee.

Mom asks if I want sugar and cream. I do, but I shake my head no.

Dad is asking who wants eggs. I don’t. But when he comes into the dining room holding the skillet in one hand, scooping up a portion of scrambled eggs, smiling at me, I hold my plate out and take them anyway.

Then we’re all sitting here. Chewing. Forks scraping against plates, awkward silence descending over us. I poke at my syrup-soaked pancake. Neither Mom nor Caelin said a word about how it went for them in court yesterday, but I could see their telltale puffy and bloodshot eyes this morning.

“What a fuckin’ week, huh?” I say, just to break the tension.

Caelin laughs, spitting out the sip of juice he’d just taken. “Perfect timing,” he mumbles into a napkin.

Mom scoffs and says, “Edy, good God.”

“So, when you headed back to school?” Dad asks, pretending the tension isn’t happening at all. “Do we at least get you for the weekend?”

I take a sip of my plain coffee, let it burn the roof of my mouth. “I think I’m gonna head out pretty soon, actually. Maybe I can make my last class today, and then I won’t have to miss tomorrow.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything.

“I just don’t want to have so much to make up.”

“And I’m sure you want to get back to Josh, too,” Mom adds. “Your brother showed me his picture online—”

“Mom,” Caelin interrupts. “I didn’t show her,” he says to me. “She needed help searching for him on the team website—”

“Oh, fine,” Mom interrupts him back, tossing her napkin in his direction. “I was snooping.”

“Stalking,” Caelin mutters through a fake cough.

Dad actually laughs.

“Anyway, he’s a very cute boy,” Mom says. “I don’t blame you for wanting to rush back to him.”

“Well,” I begin. “I really do have work to make up.”

She grins at me from across the table.

“So, Eden,” Dad says. “When do we get to meet this very cute boy?”

“Maybe after you all quit calling him a very cute boy.”

“Hey.” Caelin holds his hand up. “For the record, all I’ve ever called him is a decent guy; I never called him a very cute anything.”

And just like that, we’ve had our first semi-normal family interaction in years. I send a silent thank-you across the state to Josh, who’s probably walking to his first class right now, for being so damn decent and handsome, he let my family salvage our last morning together.

After breakfast I help clean up, start the dishwasher, try not to act like I’m in a hurry to leave. I pack up a bag of fall clothes, my soft scarf and matching gloves, a heavy coat, and some of my long sleeves and sweaters from the back of my closet. I have to pull out my old clarinet case to get to my boots, and as my fingers fit around the handle, I have this vivid flashback of freshman year, carrying this thing with me everywhere I went. I set it on my bed next to my other bag and open it up.

Like some kind of time capsule from another life, I find the sheet music I was working on when I decided to quit, the booklet still folded open to the exact page. I take each item out and hold them in my hands for a moment: the plastic case for my reeds; polishing cloth, soft against my fingers; the tiny screwdriver everyone always needed to borrow from me because no one else ever had one; the tube of nearly empty cork grease that Mara once mistook for lip balm; the mouthpiece, barrel, bell, upper joint, lower joint . . . all the pieces of the clarinet disassembled and put away neatly. Exactly as I’d left them, not knowing that would be the last time I played.

I’m not sure why, but I take it with me, along with my fuzzy socks and warm clothes.

I say my goodbyes. Caelin hugs me for the first time in months. Dad tells me he just transferred two hundred dollars into my account, for which I am wholeheartedly thankful. Mom walks me out to the car, tells me, “Take care of yourself. Be safe. And let me know when you hear anything from the DA, okay?”

“I will.”

The drive home, back to Josh and my new life, which has nothing to do with this old one, feels so long. Too long. My eyes just want to close. I only make it an hour and a half before I have to pull off at a rest stop. I push my seat all the way back and pull one of my big sweaters from the bag in the passenger seat, wrap myself up in it.

Just as I’m feeling myself fading to sleep, I’m back in the courtroom, eyes locked on Kevin’s. Then I’m back in my old bedroom, that night, with him looking down on me.

My eyes snap open.

The tree I’m parked beneath is letting the fluttering light filter through the windshield onto my face. It feels so gentle, I allow myself to close my eyes again. The judge is telling me I’m dismissed. “Dismissed.” That was the word. How appropriate, I thought, even then.

How had I forgotten this part?

But I can’t move. Not until Kevin’s dickhead lawyer whispers something to him, making him break eye contact with me. I see Lane and Mara standing up, waiting. DA Silverman nodding, watching me as I step down from the box.

I stare straight down at my feet, but I still feel his eyes on me the whole time.

When I wake up, I’m in the shade now, cold and somehow more exhausted than I was to begin with. I pull my seat upright again and put the sweater on all the way, trying to gather some warmth around me. I dump my travel mug of cold plain coffee from my house and go inside the rest stop for something with sugar and caffeine and calories.

It gets me through the rest of the drive. I make it home in the middle of the afternoon while everyone’s still gone for the day. I trudge up the two flights of stairs with my arms full, unlock the door, make it to my room, and sit down directly on the floor.

Breathe. I need to breathe.

I lie flat on my back, close my eyes, and concentrate on the hard floor under me, find the points where the floor supports my body, like my therapist told me.

I place my hand on my stomach and feel it expand and contract with each breath. In and out, over and over. I’m nearly asleep when I hear my phone vibrating from my bag, and I realize I never texted to let anyone know that I made it home.

I sit up too quickly and pull my purse down on the floor, digging through it until my hand finds my phone. But the text waiting there isn’t from Josh or my mom; it’s from DA Silverman.

I have news . . .

No.

I won’t open it. I can’t. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know yet. Either our case is dead or it’s moving forward. And I can’t know either of those things right now. I stand, leaving the phone there on the floor. It lights up again, and I kick it away from me this time. It skids across the floor and under the dresser, out of sight.

I lug my bags onto my bed, start unpacking. Keep my hands busy—that’s another tip my therapist gave me. I can still hear the vibration of my phone, rattling now, shoved up against the baseboard.

I open my laptop, cue up my moody sad-girl playlist. Florence + the Machine croons out in a darkly lyrical dance. But I can still feel the phone vibrating—inside my chest now, somehow. I turn the volume up.

I put away all my clothes, literally fold every article of clothing, even my bras and underwear. I match up every last sock with its mate and divide half a drawer for all of Josh’s clothes I’ve found lying around. I hang up my sweaters in the closet and line my boots up with my other shoes. Carefully, I slide my clarinet case up on the top shelf of the closet. Next, I organize my desk. Move my hair and makeup stuff over to my dresser. I line up my meds in a row, rounding them out with the packet of birth control pills and the bottle of Tylenol I’ve been popping like candy all week for my never-ending headaches.

I had an in-person with my therapist on Wednesday. She asked how I’d been feeling with the new meds, and I had to admit that I forget to take them a lot, so I couldn’t be sure if they were really helping much. When she asked me why, I didn’t tell her it’s because I keep them hidden half the time; I just shrugged. The thing is, I know Josh is literally the last person on the planet who would make me feel weird about any of it—he understood about the sleeping pills, as I knew he would. It’s me.

So I decide—force myself—to just leave them there, out in the open.

My playlist comes to an abrupt end, plunging me into silence.

I look around. Everything’s in order here. Bed made. Books lined up in neat rows. My life ready for me to dive back in. But I don’t dive. I drag myself over to my bed. I don’t even have the energy to lift the covers. I lay my head on the pillow, curl up inside my sweater, and face the wall, just waiting to feel normal again.RêAd lat𝙚St chapters at Novel(D)ra/ma.Org Only