Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  Michael dropped by my dad’s house the next morning on his way back to Avery. This good-bye was almost as horrible as the first one, but this time I refused to cry. At least not in front of him. I simply hugged him extra hard and told him I’d see him at Christmas, which felt like an eternity away instead of two short months.

  In a way, seeing Michael had made me even lonelier. It was like everything had reset and I had to start missing him all over again. Even worse, he seemed glad to be getting back to Avery and his life there. Relieved, even. It made me feel a little resentful, and jealous of whatever held him there. Engrossing school work? Doubt it. His friends? Maybe. Another girl? God, I hoped not. Michael knew how I felt about cheating, and we’d vowed to never do that to each other. We’d break up first. I’d witnessed the effects of cheating when my father left my mother to be with Lynn, and again when my ex Brian dumped me for Kara Neilson. I didn’t have it in me to relive it again.

  With everything that happened on the weekend, it was no surprise that I totally forgot about starting chemistry labs on Monday morning. I forgot about something else too, I realized when I shuffled into class a little late and glimpsed Jessica, Dylan, and Ashley sitting at a table near the back of the room. Ashley saw me and raised her eyebrows all the way up to her hairline. My weekend with Michael had totally erased the matchmaking scheme from my mind. But now it was back, and three pairs of eyes bored into my face as I sat down.

  “Hi,” I said, trying to sound cheerful and ready to mix chemicals when all I really felt was depressed and ready to go to bed.

  “Where were you?” Ashley demanded.

  “I went to the classroom first. I forgot we started labs today.”

  “Jessica said we’re all working together, but I don’t remember anyone discussing it with me.”

  Damn Ashley and her outspokenness. Okay, so I’d failed to mention the group plans to her, but only because I knew she would say no. For one, Ashley didn’t like Jessica all that much. Secondly, she always got tongue-tied around boys she thought were cute. She never would have agreed to this arrangement.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She sent me a look that I’d seen many times before—cold-eyed disapproval—and then pretended to go over her notes. Jessica cleared her throat in the tense silence that followed, and Dylan gazed longingly over to a group of his friends at another table, undoubtedly wondering how in the hell he got stuck with three crazy girls. I thought of Michael’s words from Saturday night: estrogen overload.

  McDowell started explaining in his dry tone that we would spend today’s lab getting familiar with the equipment and going over safety procedures.

  “And next week,” he said, actually sounding a little animated now, “we’ll start working with base metals.”

  Across from me, Jessica yawned loudly. McDowell ignored her and began demonstrating how to use a Bunsen burner. And after a long, boring tutorial, he let us play too.

  “I have a feeling I’ll be breaking a lot of nails in this class,” Jessica said as she struggled with the rubber tube for our burner. “You guys will have to do the manual labor.”

  Ashley shook her head, annoyed, and Dylan looked like he’d rather be experiencing a Novocain-free root canal than sitting here with us. He hadn’t spoken a word since I’d sat down.

  McDowell turned on the main gas supply. A roaring sound filled the room and for a moment I was sure we were all goners.

  “Remember,” he said, circling the room. “The hottest part of the flame is just above that cone of unburnt gas. Respect the flame, people. Okay, let’s shut everything down and take a look at the eyewash station.”

  The roaring stopped and I slouched against the table, exhausted. McDowell started lecturing again, his deep, monotonous voice lulling me into a kind of daze until I was barely conscious of my surroundings. I rested my head on my hand, my eyes focused on the teacher but my mind somewhere else entirely. It was important to learn this safety stuff, I knew, but I was too tired to concentrate. In fact, I was so out of it that it took me a while to realize that Dylan was staring at me.

  I’d caught him in my peripheral vision, which he obviously didn’t realize because he kept doing it. I jerked upright, my hand knocking into my pen and sending it rolling to the floor. I leaned over to get it and by the time I came back up, Dylan’s eyes were fixed on the teacher.

  He didn’t look at me again for the rest of the class. I knew this because I spent the whole time watching him, trying to catch him in the act. I’d never really looked at him before, really looked, and all of a sudden I started noticing things about him, like that his forearm—which rested on the table as he half-turned in his chair toward McDowell—was covered in fine blond hairs. They matched the hair on his head, which was sandy blond and cut short. He was thin but not scrawny—lean and fit from soccer. His profile was nice but his nose, like mine, was a little on the large side. His face wasn’t all sharp planes and angles like Michael’s, but it was attractive enough. Or it could have been, if he quit the brooding for one second and actually smiled.

  To pass the time, I began dreaming up possible reasons why he never smiled. Braces? Bad teeth? No teeth? Severe depression? I couldn’t pin it down. He was a jock, and most of the jocks I knew were noisy and obnoxious, always joking around. He and his friends were generally popular, and he was good-looking enough to have his share of girlfriends. As for his personality, I couldn’t say. He’d have to, you know, speak first.

  The bell rang for lunch. As I gathered my things, I realized I hadn’t heard a single word of the safety lecture. Beside me, Ashley slung her bag over her shoulder and glared at me sideways. I knew what that meant—she was going to ream me out as soon as we left the room. I slowed my pace, trying to delay the inevitable, and in doing so I was also able to eavesdrop on Jessica and Dylan, who were having a conversation.

  They were talking about someone they both knew, someone who had apparently gotten smashed over the weekend and threw up somewhere he shouldn’t have. Jessica made some kind of scathing remark, and that was when it happened.

  Dylan smiled. He smiled and I stared, but not because he had braces or bad teeth or no teeth or anything like that. Not even close.

  He had the most adorable dimples I had ever seen.

  ****

  “I’m switching groups in chemistry,” Ashley told me on Friday afternoon as we stood at our locker, getting ready to go home. “I’ve been thinking about it all week and today I made a decision. I’m going with Brooke’s group. It’s just her and these two boys who show off and act like idiots around her, so she needs me to act as buffer.”

  I stuffed my math book and two binders into my bag. “Okay.”

  “You know how I feel about Jessica.” She spoke quickly and without apology. “She’s so shallow and flakey. I mean, be friends with whoever you want, obviously, but I don’t have to like everyone you like.”

  “Okay, Ash.”

  She gave me that disapproving look again. “And honestly, Taylor, I’m not a moron. I know it was your idea to work with Dylan because you wanted to throw me at him.”

  I pretended to hunt for my calculator.

  “It won’t work. Even if I did want to go out with him—and I’ve told you a million times that I don’t—I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be on board with the idea. He’s never so much as looked at me. Come to think of it, all he did during chemistry lab on Monday was stare at you.”

  I forced out a laugh. “He did not.”

  “He did too. I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “Why?”

  She slammed the locker shut. “Your boyfriend is hundreds of miles away with college girls all over him, and a cute guy right here in Oakfield has the hots for you. Do the math.”

  As if on cue, Dylan walked into the Dungeon and headed straight for his locker. Ashley and I turned away quickly, but not before I caught him giving me a brief once over. Apparently, Ashley caught it too because she whispered, “See?”

&nbs
p; There was no point in arguing. We both knew she was right. I saw it every day now, saw how he’d glance up when I walked into a room, saw him brighten when I spoke during lunch, felt his eyes on my backside as I passed him in the halls. All week, I’d been well aware of it. I was being watched, and it made me extremely uncomfortable.

  My agitation had only quadrupled by the time Robin called me at my dad’s house that evening. I was so freaked out, in fact, that I lost my head and did something stupid: she was having a party at her house tonight, and I agreed to go.

  My uneasiness over Dylan wasn’t the only reason I decided to go out. Neither was the fact that I hadn’t seen Robin in two weeks. Both of these things together would not have gotten me out the door. In the end, it was the phone call with Michael that drove me to the comforts of an old friend and large amounts of alcohol.

  On weekends I usually called Michael’s room at around seven, before he headed out for the evening. Often, during our calls, he’d have a room full of friends, a boisterous group of guys who laughed a lot and rarely gave him a moment’s peace. I knew them all by name now. Sometimes they even answered his phone when I called, teasing me, calling me “the little woman” or “the wife” or refusing to put Michael on the phone. But I could deal with that.

  What I couldn’t deal with was calling my boyfriend and hearing a strange female voice on the other end of the phone.

  When this girl answered, saying “Michael’s room” in a cute, perky voice like she was his damn secretary, all I could do was croak out a few words, hoping they sounded something like, “Is Michael there?”

  Next I expected her to say no and then ask to take a message, like a good little receptionist, but instead she said “Yep, just a sec” and a second later, Michael was on the phone.

  “Hey.” He sounded just as cheerful as his message service girl.

  “Hi,” I said, the end of the word lilting up a little, like a question. As in, who the hell is this and why is she answering your phone?

  “Oh, hi. How was your day?”

  I couldn’t answer right away. My mind was too busy processing the tone of his voice. The way he phrased his words, he could have been talking to a distant aunt. “Fine,” I said, finally, and at this point I could hear other voices in his room, male as well as female. This made me feel better, but not much. I cleared my throat. “Who answered your phone?”

  “Lauren. She lives in my dorm.”

  As he said her name—this girl who obviously felt so at home in his room—I had an image of them sitting close together on his bed, her shapely thigh pressed against his. She sounded like the girls who used to hang around Michael and his friends in high school, the ones with bleached-white teeth and tans in the dead of winter. Girls I never felt I could compete with. Michael always claimed he wasn’t attracted to that underfed, overdone type (which was why he liked me, I guess) but I figured almost anyone would start to look good after several weeks without sex.

  “Friend of yours?” I asked. My hand started throbbing and I realized I was squeezing the phone. I eased up on my grip.

  “Yeah, I guess.” As he spoke, tinkling female laughter drifted through the phone. It sounded close. Like right-next-to-him close. “Everything okay?” he asked after several seconds of silence on my end. When I didn’t answer, the laughter and voices grew distant as he moved away from his friends, presumably out into the hallway, where it was quieter and more private. “What’s wrong?” he asked, sounding louder now that the background noise had faded.

  “Nothing,” I told him. Then I remembered our promise to always be honest with each other. “I guess I don’t like the idea of some girl answering your phone.”

  In the pause that followed, I could hear people yelling back and forth. No wonder he found home so peaceful in comparison. “She’s just a friend,” he said in a hushed voice, as if he didn’t want anyone to overhear this predictable statement, one that has been said by guys to girls—and vice versa—since the beginning of time.

  “Okay,” I said, none too convincingly.

  “What, am I not allowed to have friends here?”

  I focused on the digital clock on my night stand, trying to keep the red numbers from blurring. “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just…”

  “I’ve always had female friends. Why is it such a big problem for you all of a sudden?”

  “Just forget it, okay?”

  “What is with you lately? It’s like you don’t trust me anymore or something.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, kneading my forehead with my fingers. What the hell was I trying to do with all this insecure-possessive-freak crap? Push him into Lauren’s arms myself? “Forget I said anything. Please. I don’t want to fight.”

  “Me either.” He let out a sigh. “Sorry for getting so defensive.”

  “Me too.”

  We moved on to other topics after that, all the while trying to pretend like everything was back to normal. Like everything was fine. Even though we both knew by now that it wasn’t.

  And so, it was perfect timing that I got that invitation from Robin. The last thing I wanted to do that night was sit at home, alone, obsessing over every word Michael had said, every word I had said, and the echo of Lauren’s sparkling laugh. Blocking it all out seemed like a much better idea. At the time.

  I packed an overnight bag and drove over to Robin’s house in Redwood Hills. The drinks were already flowing when I got there. I dumped my bag in Robin’s room, headed out to the kitchen where she and a few of her friends had gathered, and asked her to make me a drink. A strong one. She grinned at my unexpected request but then, seeing my expression, her smile slipped. I shook my head, indicating that I did not want to get into it right now. She nodded and made me a drink.

  The party was like any other I’d been to in Redwood Hills with Michael, only with a new cast of characters. Robin, it seemed, had turned into the girl to know around school. She was in her element with all these upper class kids. She’d always fit in here, even when she was living in a dilapidated bungalow with her mom. Now she was unstoppable.

  My drink was lethal. I hadn’t paid any attention to what Robin put in it, but it tasted like a combination of lemon juice and Windex and it immediately made me feel warm all over. After drinking the first one, I no longer cared about Dylan’s cute dimples or Michael’s new friend. I no longer cared about anything.

  After two drinks I was one of the gang, as comfortable as if I were hanging out with my own group of friends. Robin’s friend Isabelle was hilarious, I decided, especially when she started swallowing colorful pills and acting crazy. And the guys? So charming, even when I looked down to find a hand on my knee.

  Three drinks in, things stopped being so funny and I wound up in the main floor powder room, crying. Some girl I didn’t know found me there and went to get Robin, who came right away. She locked the door behind her and sat down on the floor next to me.

  “Are you sick?” she asked.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sick, yet, but I had reached the point at which laughter turned to tears on a dime. Robin handed me a wad of toilet tissue and I wiped my eyes. “Michael doesn’t love me anymore,” I told her.

  “Now I find that hard to believe,” she said, slurring the words a little. “He’s crazy about you.”

  I sniffled. “I’m not enough for him anymore.”

  “Bullshit.” She pushed some hair off her face, which was flushed and sparkling from the glitter gel she liked to rub on her cheekbones and around her eyes. “If anyone can make this long-distance thing work, you guys can. Michael loves you, Tay. He’s not gonna just stop.”

  “Everything’s different now. He’s changed. We’ve changed.”

  “Well, yeah. He’s at Avery and you’re here. You see him once every couple of months instead of every weekend. Of course you’ve changed.”

  My eyes burned with fresh tears. “Robin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How will I get through four years of
this?”

  She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me. “I know it sounds corny, but you have to take it one day at a time. It’ll get better.”

  “You honestly believe that?”

  “I honestly do.” She stood up and dragged me to my feet. “Now let’s fix your face and go get another drink.”

  Another drink was the last thing I needed right then, but I had one anyway. After that fourth one, everything got fuzzy. The next day, all I could remember from the night before was eating very spicy pizza (which did not taste nearly as good coming up as it did going down) and talking for what seemed like hours to Isabelle on the living room couch. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in Robin’s bed at four in the morning and puking into a garbage can that someone had kindly placed beside me. After about an hour of that, I fell back to sleep and woke up again at eleven with the kind of headache that felt like someone had reached into my head, grabbed hold of my brain, and squeezed. It hurt to blink.

  After downing two Advil and the largest cup of coffee on earth, I felt good enough to go home and face my cell phone. Only one message waited for me, from Michael, sent about an hour ago. When I saw it, the same feelings I’d tried to bury under alcohol last night came rushing back to the surface. Still feeling a dull throb in my temples, I called him back.

  “Just checking to see how you’re feeling,” he said, sounding about as hungover as I felt. “And to apologize again for last night. I acted like an ass.”

  “I was the one who acted like an ass.”

  “How about we forget it ever happened?”

  Thoughts of last night’s phone call nudged through the clouds in my head. That girl’s voice, answering my call. Her laugh, so close in my ear. “I’ve already forgotten,” I said, knowing somehow that it wouldn’t be the last lie I’d ever tell him.

  Chapter 7

  On Monday I wore black dress pants and a fitted white blouse to school. My job interview was at four-thirty and I planned to go straight from school. I even brought some makeup to put on later, which thrilled Jessica. She loved having a preening partner in the girl’s john.