Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  Another laugh bubbled up, but I hid it inside a cough. Ashley shot me a look anyway, knowing exactly what I was thinking—that maybe it was time for her to…well, stroke some leg hair, so to speak. See what all the fuss was about. But then I glimpsed the purity ring on her finger and remembered she wouldn’t be stroking anything until after she said “I do”.

  “I feel like I’m the only sane one left,” Ashley whined. “Erin’s in love, Brooke’s practically engaged to Alex, and you and Dylan are suctioned together at the hip.” She sucked in her lips and then released them, producing a loud popping noise. “That’s how you sound when you separate at the end of the day.”

  “Funny.”

  “Just answer me this.” She opened her door, a teasing smile on her face. “Does he have soft leg hair?”

  I concentrated on locking the car, keeping my face passive as if refusing to dignify her question with any kind of response. And I was doing well too, until we met up with Dylan at the side entrance, where he waited for me in the mornings. Seeing him, Ashley snorted and then busted out laughing. I couldn’t help but join in.

  “Did I miss out on a joke?” Dylan asked, his eyes narrowing as he tried to determine if we were laughing at him. Which we kind of were. But I wasn’t about to tell him that.

  “Yeah,” I said, elbowing Ashley in the ribs. She calmed down and the three of us started toward the Dungeon.

  When the bell rang, Dylan walked me to French. He lingered by the door, hesitant to relinquish me for even an hour. “We still on for later?” he asked. His hand brushed my cheek before resting on the back of my neck.

  “Sure.” There was a chemistry test coming up on Friday, and the night before on the phone we’d made plans to study together at my house after school.

  “See you at lunch,” Dylan said. He leaned in to kiss me, but Madame Bedeau appeared in the doorway and cut him off at the pass. She ushered me into the classroom while shooting Dylan a glare that could pierce metal. Once he was gone, she turned back to me and pursed her orange lips. The woman was firmly against fraternization.

  “S'asseoir maintenant,” she said.

  I took my seat next to Jess, who was on time for once. I looked over at her, all set to make a sarcastic comment about old crusty Bedeau, and noticed that her eyes were red. Like she’d just finished crying. Right away, I thought the worst. Her father was sick. Brent dumped her. Brent dumped her for Jill Holloway.

  “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  She swallowed hard. “Jake Hanson is dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, assuming Jake Hanson was her uncle or something.

  “Thanks.” She let out a little sniff. “He was the oldest one. I thought he looked kind of pale the other day, but he seemed to cheer up after a water change. Then this morning I found him at the bottom of the tank. Dead.”

  I put down my pen. “Wait. Jake Hanson is a fish?”

  “A black neon tetra. I had him for five years.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say to a person who was grieving over a scaly creature that lived in its own filth. “You named him Jake Hanson?”

  “It’s the name of a character on a show my mother used to watch when I was little.”

  “Oh,” I said. Now I understood a little better. It was the fish who represented a memory of her mother, and now he was gone. Flushed away. “That’s too bad.”

  “He was a good fish.”

  Madame Bedeau started talking then, and for the rest of the class Jessica did her fish doodles, filling up two pages of notebook paper. She slid one over to me, a gift for not making fun of her for growing attached to such a fragile creature, one that was pretty much destined for a quick death. I studied her drawings and noticed that all the fish looked sad, as if they were missing their friend too.

  ****

  My house was usually empty in the afternoons. Mom worked until five and Emma attended an after-school program at her school, so on the days I didn’t work, I had the house all to myself for two full hours.

  Before our first after-school study session, Dylan had been over few times, but only while my mother was home. All very innocent. And the day we studied for the chemistry test was innocent too, even though we’d been completely unsupervised.

  But after that, after all our chaste little study-dates with my mother lurking nearby, after we’d crammed in enough chemistry to ensure each of us a half-decent grade on our test, Dylan started coming home with me in the afternoons when we didn’t have anything to study for at all.

  The first few times, we made out on the couch, reclining against the pile of blue corduroy pillows. When the couch started feeling cramped we moved to my bed, where the spark that had been smoldering between us these past few months grew into an inferno. What I felt for Dylan wasn’t even close to what I’d once felt for Michael, but that didn’t dampen the physical attraction I had for him. I wasn’t sure if it was simply my hormones taking over, or if my feelings for him had evolved into something deeper. All I knew was that kissing him helped me feel a little more alive.

  On one snowy Tuesday afternoon, we went to my house with the intent to do some actual homework for once, but only got as far as spreading our books out on the kitchen table before heading to the bedroom for a “break”. Forty-five steamy minutes later, we stumbled back out into the kitchen, our eyes squinting against the bright overhead light.

  “Let’s try this again,” I said, picking up my pencil with weak fingers. I felt dazed and a little ashamed, like I always did after emerging from the bedroom on these afternoons. Fortunately the shame part never lasted—all I had to do was think about Michael getting naked with some girl and the guilt would evaporate like a fine mist.

  “I’ll be able to concentrate now,” Dylan said. His leg grazed mine under the table.

  “Okay. Intermolecular forces. List four types.” I slumped against my book. “God, this crap is so boring.”

  “We could go back in your room.”

  “Nice try.”

  I clutched his knee to stop his leg from rubbing against mine and distracting me from this fascinating lesson in solubility. He reached under the table to loosen my grip, wrapping his fingers around mine. I thought he was being romantic until I felt his thumb wiggling against the ring on my right hand.

  “When are you going to take this off?” he asked, resting our linked hands on top of my textbook. The ring Michael had given me back in September glinted in the light, its infinite loop more endless than ever.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Actually, it had never occurred to me to take it off. It was a gift, and I liked it.

  “You guys broke up two months ago,” Dylan reminded me. “You’re with me now. Don’t you think it’s time to get rid of all the sentimental stuff?”

  I bristled. Nothing irked me more than being told what I should do or think, especially by someone who had no call to offer an opinion in the first place. “It’s just a ring,” I said, sliding my hand away from his and placing it in my lap. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “To me it means that you don’t really believe it’s over with him.”

  Our eyes met and we stared each other down; a challenge. This wasn’t the first time he’d acted possessive over me, and it wasn’t something I enjoyed or appreciated. Sometimes I could reason away his occasional petulance, blame it on his being an only child who was used to getting his own way, but other times, like now, it just pissed me the hell off.

  “I’m not taking it off.” I forced myself to maintain eye contact for five seconds, counting down in my head. Five, four, three, two, one, look away.

  “Fine,” he said. And just like that he became the old Dylan again, the one with the perpetual scowl that shut out everyone around him. Tension crept through the room.

  “We’d better go,” I said. “My mother would kill me if she knew you were here.”

  Silently, he gathered his things together and followed me out to the car. We didn’t speak again until we
were parked outside his house, a tidy split-level located just a few streets over from Jessica’s house. He’d moved there when he was twelve, when his father got transferred for his job. He was some kind of sales manager who traveled a lot. His mother was one of those Betty Crocker types who baked things from scratch, and when she wasn’t in the kitchen, she worked part-time at the library. I’d met both of them about a week after Dylan and I got together, but hadn’t seen them since. Dylan preferred my house, where cookies came from boxes and mothers worked in the afternoons, leaving teenage children to their own devices.

  “Dylan, wait,” I said, grabbing his sleeve to stop him from leaving the car. He shut the door again and looked at me, his expression vulnerable, and I thought about all the nice things he’d done and said since we started dating. Like the time we were walking to my car after school, holding hands, and he looked over at me and said, “How did I get so lucky?” And Valentine’s Day, when he’d taped a flawless red rose to my locker. Just thoughtful little gestures that filled up some of the emptiness Michael had left behind.

  “What?” Dylan prompted when I didn’t say anything else.

  “It’s really over with Michael. I do believe that.”

  “If he told you he wanted to get back together, you’d dump me in a second.”

  “I wouldn’t,” I said. I’d always ascribed to the theory that saying something out loud would help it become true. That if you simply put a voice to your wish, some magical cosmic force made it happen for you. I ached to believe it was over with Michael so that I could stop thinking about him, stop wondering if he still thought about me.

  “But you can’t guarantee you’ll never go back to him, right?”

  “You need a guarantee?” Irritated, I flicked on the windshield wipers a little too roughly, pushing the lever up to the highest speed. Snow flew everywhere. “What am I, a stereo?”

  “No,” Dylan said, as if he’d taken my question to heart. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just…shit, I don’t know. This past month has been amazing, and I’m worried it will all end too soon.”

  My irritation melted when I saw the anxiety in his features. He was afraid of losing me, and not just to Michael either. Losing me, period. I reached over, tugged his sleeve so he’d look at me. “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere. Well, except for home, because I’m late and my mother’s going to have a canary when she finds out I’ve been driving in this weather.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched, and the tension that had been hovering over us began to lift. He leaned forward to kiss me good-bye, his hand sliding to its favorite spot on the back of my neck. Even in this frigid weather, his palm felt like a warm blanket against my skin. After a long kiss he pulled back to look at me, his face settling back into its typical seriousness.

  “I love you,” he said, and was out of the car and almost inside the house before I had time to react. Several emotions ripped through my body, the most prominent one being freaked out.

  I put the car in reverse, narrowly missing the mailbox as I backed out of the driveway. I drove home in a fog, and between that and the snow it was a miracle that I arrived in one piece.

  “Finally,” my mother said when I walked into the warm kitchen. “Taylor, where on earth have you been?”

  “I had to go to the store for something,” I said, moving over to the table, where Emma was ripping the top off a box of takeout pizza. I scooped up a slice and ate it leaning against the counter. I was starving.

  “You shouldn’t have been driving in this snow,” Mom said, unaware that this was the least of my infractions for today. She approved of Dylan, but if she ever found out I was bringing him home with me after school, she’d murder us both. Nothing disturbed my mother more than the thought of her child having a sex life, even though Dylan and I weren’t technically having sex. Still, over the years I had learned when to shut up and when to lie through my teeth.

  “I made it back, didn’t I?” I said, licking tomato sauce off my finger. “Chill out.”

  Mom shot me a look. I didn’t usually talk to her that way. Maybe the treacherous ride home had emboldened me.

  “I can’t say I like your tone,” she said.

  I can’t say I care, I felt like responding. But that would get me good and grounded, so I just mumbled an apology around a mouthful of cheese. She let it go, probably sensing that I wasn’t in the mood for any lectures.

  Chapter 16

  I drove slowly down the streets I knew like the back of my hand, all the while fighting the urge to switch off my headlights and duck. But that would only make me look like a stalker, I reasoned. And I wasn’t a stalker. All I was doing was driving through Redwood Hills at eight-fifteen on a Saturday night, after work, to see if Robin was home. It wasn’t my fault Riverview Drive was the quickest route to Robin’s house. It wasn’t my fault I had to pass Michael’s house the day after he’d presumably arrived home for his week-long break from school.

  Or maybe I was a stalker.

  In any case, I turned onto his street and accelerated, prepared to whiz by if someone happened to be looking out a window right then, close enough to recognize my car. I cleared a familiar curve in the road and the house, all lit up, filled the passenger side window. I held my breath until I saw that the windows were indeed clear and no one was looking at me, the desperate ex-girlfriend, skulking around under the cover of darkness.

  But, reckless in my relief, I totally forgot about the large tree that half-obscured the driveway from this particular angle. And by the time I remembered, it was too late. I had already passed it, and on the other side, climbing into his car, was Michael.

  Instinctively I hunched down, then realized a beat later that this, like any reaction in this moment, was futile. He knew my car, knew the sound of my car, as well as he knew me. So I did the next best thing—I floored it, and didn’t stop until I hit the outskirts of the subdivision. I drove the speed limit the rest of the way home, my face burning, and parked haphazardly in front of my father’s house.

  Inside, I found Leanne wrapped up in a quilt on the living room couch, watching TV with jumbo box of tissues at her side.

  “What’s up?” she asked, sounding like she’d just sucked down ten packs of cigarettes. She’d been battling the flu all week “Why do you look like that?”

  “Like what?” I sat in Dad’s recliner, as far away from her as I could get and still be in the same room.

  “All frazzled or whatever. Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “I sort of did,” I mumbled.

  “Huh? What do you—” She was interrupted by a coughing fit that turned her face a frightening shade of purple. I jumped up to get her a glass of water. “Thanks,” she said when I handed it to her. “And this is me on a good day. I feel better than I have all week.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I actually got up and walked around the house today, took a shower…then almost passed out. I guess I’m not ready for more than that.” She put the water down and blew her nose. “So what were you saying?”

  I sat back down. “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on, Taylor. I’ve been stuck inside all week with Mom trying to force this disgusting electrolyte stuff on me to prevent dehydration. I’m starved for a conversation that doesn’t involve fevers and phlegm. Please.”

  I’d rather have discussed phlegm, but she looked so pitiful and needy lying there. “I drove through Redwood Hills after work. I was going to see Robin but got a little sidetracked.” I stopped there, knowing my stepsister would fill in the rest.

  “How’d he look?” she asked with a slight smile.

  “I didn’t see him. I mean, I saw him, but just for a second before I booked it out of there. I don’t think he saw me. It was dark and I was out of there before he even glanced up.” I tilted the recliner back and sighed. “He looked good. Really good.”

  Leanne adjusted the quilt around her, draping it across her shoulders until it resembled a giant hood. “N
ot to be judgmental or anything, but I don’t think it’s healthy for you to be driving by your ex-boyfriend’s house in the dark like some kind of stalker.”

  I winced. “Curiosity got the better of me. I don’t plan on doing it again.”

  “Taylor, you obviously still have feelings for him. You should call him sometime, see where his head’s at. You need answers. I bet he misses you as much as you miss him.”

  “I can’t,” I said, horrified at the thought. I hadn’t spoken to Michael in two and a half months, which was an answer in itself. At some point our break had become an official break up. Meaning we were over. I didn’t need to call him to know that.

  And like an audible reminder of another reason why I couldn’t call, my cell phone rang and it was Dylan.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Hanging out with Leanne,” I said. “She’s still sick.”

  “You’re at home?” His words were partially drowned out by a series of raucous yells in the background. He’d sacrificed one night with me so he could go to a hockey game with his cousin, who had season tickets. I didn’t mind; I had a history paper that was due in a week and I hadn’t even done the research. I planned to make some coffee and get a start on it tonight.

  “Yes, I’m at home. Where are you? Is the game over already?”

  “Second period just ended. Hey, did you forget to take your phone off vibrate again? I called you about forty-five minutes ago and got voice mail.”

  This was a bone of contention with us—me not answering my phone because I kept it on vibrate while I was at work and then usually forgot to turn the ringer back on later.

  “I remembered about twenty minutes ago, when I came in. Sorry.” Now I could hear a loud voice, a man talking into a microphone. An announcer, maybe, going by the lilt of enthusiasm in his tone. “Who’s winning?”

  “It’s tied. Three-three.” Static buzzed over the line. “Were you held up at work or what?”

  “No,” I said, and then immediately wanted to kick myself. Now he would ask where I’d gone after work and I’d be forced to lie. To admit anything would only confirm his suspicions. All the colleges were on break this week and Dylan was well aware of the fact that Michael was probably in town, and way too close to me for his comfort. As a result, he’d been extra paranoid lately.