I close my eyes again, but it’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can hear: his skin, his arms, his legs, his hands too strong, his breath on me, muscles stretching, bones cracking, body breaking, me getting weaker, fading. 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. That’s what I keep thinking: NotRealNotRealNotReal. Because it was just a dream, a bad dream-a nightmare. Ignore the taste in your mouth, the sticky dampness of the sheets, the fire radiating through your thighs, the nauseating pain-this bulletlike thing that ripped through you and got lodged in your gut somehow. Try to ignore all the things that didn’t feel right, all the things that felt like they would never feel right again.

I don’t know how long I lay there afterward, telling myself: Squeeze your eyelids shut, try, just try to forget. Or why I didn’t try to fight him when I still stood a chance. Why I didn’t scream when I opened my eyes and saw him crawling between my sheets. Or why it didn’t register that something was wrong-so mercilessly wrong-when I felt the mattress shift under his weight. Why I didn’t lock the damn door to begin with. I don’t know why I didn’t hear the door click shut. But it also demonstrates one young woman’s strength as she navigates the disappointment and unbearable pains of adolescence, of first love and first heartbreak, of friendships broken and rebuilt, all while learning to embrace the power of survival she never knew she had hidden within her heart.

Told in four parts-freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior year-this provocative debut reveals the deep cuts of trauma. Nothing makes sense anymore, and she knows she’s supposed to tell someone what happened but she can’t. What she thought she knew to be true, is now lies. What Eden once loved-who she once loved-she now hates. But the night her brother’s best friend rapes her, Eden’s world capsizes. Starting high school didn’t change who she was.

New York Times bestseller! In the tradition of Speak, Amber Smith's extraordinary debut novel “ is a heart-twisting, but ultimately hopeful, exploration of how pain can lead to strength” ( The Boston Globe).Įden was always good at being good.

Amber smith the way i used to be