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

The second week of January comes faster than I thought it would. It’s the same courtroom as before, except it feels even smaller now because they’re so many more bodies in it. More people sitting in the gallery on each side. Extra reporters in the back. A jury now.

I take a sip of water and look out at Mara and Lane. Then my eyes set on CeCe, who’s looking down at her notes.

Kevin is there at his table with his lawyers. The white-haired lawyer who loves to raise his hand and object and talk in circles until he makes us all dizzy asks me the same questions as last time, except in more confusing ways, trying to trip me up.

I’d been preparing myself for the past two weeks to be able to face the last question again. I studied the transcripts from the first hearing as if they were for another exam I was destined to ace. I practiced in my apartment, like I practiced the clarinet. Out loud, I practiced saying no in as many ways as I could imagine. I compared each one and ended up picking out my version of no just like I picked out my outfit. Business. Casual. Modest. No, I would say, simple and straightforward. Unemotional. Because anyone with half a brain or half a heart would understand that me verbally saying the word no was beside the point.

Last night, at two in the morning, I went into the kitchen to get some water, and when I leaned up against the sink, I remembered something. Something I thought should definitely be on this exam. I texted CeCe about how he assaulted me the next Christmas in our kitchen—I’ve had to practice using that word too, “assault.” I never even mentioned it to anyone, not the detective or Lane or CeCe. It was something I thought didn’t even matter before, wasn’t bad enough to be worth mentioning. I sent her a text that took up the entire length of the screen on my phone. I told her how I’d remembered when I was in the kitchen just now getting water that he came in when no one was there and pinned me up against the sink from behind while he put his hands all over me, up my shirt and down my pants and wasn’t it important to let them know how he kept managing to find these little pockets of terror? To remind me that he was there, to remind me that I’d promised not to tell? That he was holding me hostage for so long after that one night. Because I’d read that article—and even though Josh told me not to read the comments, I did—and I saw the one about five minutes. Only five minutes. And they needed to know it wasn’t only five minutes that he had me.

CeCe texted back right away:

Thank you, Eden. This is helpful. But

please make sure you get some sleep

before tomorrow.

But now that’s what I’m thinking about as I sit here— wondering if I made my point earlier when CeCe had seamlessly slipped it into her questions that she somehow wove together to tell a story. And now I’ve missed the question White Hair has just asked me.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say clearly into the microphone.

Except now I’m remembering that I forgot to say the part about how he smiled at me. I was supposed to tell them this time how he smiled at me before he left. Kissed. Smiled. Boxers. Door. How could I have forgotten? Stupid. We studied this!

“Can you please instruct the witness to answer the question?” White Hair is saying now.

The judge leans toward me and says, “Eden, please answer the question.”

But wait, I missed it again. Fuck.

“Um,” I begin, and the mic lets out a high-pitched note in place of my voice. “Can you repeat the question again?” I say, too far away from the microphone.

White Hair scoffs and says, “Again, at any point during this encounter, did you verbally say no?”

This is it. The last question. I have to get it right. I search my brain, but I can’t find the no I’d memorized. It was supposed to be right there, waiting for me to scoop it up and throw it in his face, all business and casual. But what the fuck. I open my mouth and literally nothing comes out.

“Your Honor,” he says.

“The witness will answer the question,” the judge says.

I look down at my hands in my lap, and I see my dandelion sticking out from under the cuff of my shirt. “There was no question,” I hear myself say, quietly, into the microphone.

“Please speak up,” the judge says.

“There was no question,” I repeat.

White Hair sighs and says, slowly, enunciating his words: “The question was, did you, at any point during the encounter, say no?”

“And my answer is, there was never a question.” I hear my voice shaking. “He never asked.”

The lawyer repeats himself, this time adding, “Just yes or no.”

“There wasn’t a question to answer,” I say again, and I can see how mad I’m making him, his face turning red and his mouth going all rigid as he speaks.

“Yes or no,” he says. “Did you tell him no?”

“I couldn’t answer a question that was never asked.”

“Did you ever say the word no?” he almost yells at me now.This material belongs to NôvelDrama.Org.

I look down at my tattoo again. Then back up, except this time, instead of looking at White Hair or CeCe or Mara or Lane, I look at Kevin. He’s watching me closely, that same knifelike stare he used to control me, all this time, up until now.

I lean into the microphone, even as my whole body is trembling, even as I feel the tears rushing to my face, and say with precision now, not breaking eye contact with him: “He. Never. Asked. The. Question.” I bypass White Hair and look up at the judge, sitting there perched above my shoulder. “That’s my answer.”

The next thing I know, I’m busting out through the doors, racing down the hall, trying to remember if I’m headed in the right direction for the bathroom. Mara’s running behind me, calling my name. But I don’t stop until I make it. And then I push the door open and throw up. Everything.

Mara holds my hair back and keeps telling me how amazing I was.

I hear Lane’s heels against the tiles. She says something like “Oh! Eden. Okay. It’s okay.” And then I’m sweating and freezing and laughing and crying all at the same time as I kneel on the floor next to the toilet. Mara flushes it for me, and Lane brings me some wet paper towels to wipe my mouth, and then even she kneels down on the floor next to me and Mara.

“You did it,” Lane tells me with a big smile.

“She was awesome, right?” Mara asks Lane.

She nods, echoing, “Awesome.”

When we finally get out to the car, Mara checks her phone. “It’s Josh,” she tells me as she reads the text.

“He’s texting you?” I double-check.

She nods. “He didn’t want to bother you. He’s asking how it went. Is it okay if I tell him you kicked ass?”

I laugh but then say, “Okay.”

Her phone dings immediately. “He says: ‘I knew she would.’”

We sit there for a moment, and I can feel the effects of the midwinter heat wave that hit this week. Sunbeams catching dust motes in the stuffy car. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, and it breaks when Mara leans forward to start the engine and rolls down all the windows, letting in the fresh air.

I realize there’s a calmness inside me, for once nothing warring in my head. No fears or guilt or regret or even sadness, just a plain open quietness. I’ve done what I came to do, and I did it the very best way I knew how. I look at the courthouse, the massiveness of the building striking me as cruel and cold, as I think about Mandy and Gen still in there, waiting. And I wish I could somehow share just a little bit of this feeling with them.

I pull out my phone and find Amanda’s number, adding Gen to a new group text. My fingers hover over the letters unsure of what words I can, or should, say. So instead, I send a heart. Just one. Purple. Amanda sends one back immediately, then Gen.

I look at our three hearts for a moment and remember, whatever happens, we did this for us.

“So, where to, Edy?” Mara revs the engine. “Food? Coffee? More tattoos?”

I put my phone away and look over at my friend who has become even more my friend over the past few months, who, after all these years, I finally feel like I understand. I’d always made it too complicated, but it was simple. She’s Team Edy, as she calls it—and I don’t doubt that anymore. I also think she might be the only person in the world I will let keep calling me by that name.

“I know exactly where I want to be.”