Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  “Where?”

  “To that party you’re supposed to be at. You’re gonna find that boy and nip this shit in the bud.”

  I gaped at her. “Now?

  “Now. Let’s go.”

  ****

  Approximately ten seconds after we walked through the door of Brent’s house, we were accosted by Jessica. “It’s about time,” she shouted over the noise. The place was mobbed with people. “Boy, are you in for some major damage control.” As she said this she glanced curiously at Robin, who flanked my left side. “Hi, I’m Jessica,” she said, changing into her friendly voice.

  I wondered what she’d meant by damage control. “This is my friend Robin,” I said.

  Jess’s eyes widened as she made the connection. The girl she blew us off for, I could almost hear her thinking. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Yeah, same here,” Robin said, glancing around the room.

  Lia came up to us then, followed by Mallory. The two of them ogled Robin like she was a celebrity who’d made a wrong turn on the way to Hollywood and ended up in Brent’s living room. There was nothing these girls appreciated more than glamour, and Robin had that in spades.

  I introduced everyone before asking, “Where’s Dylan?”

  “Garage,” Lia said, exchanging a look with Jess.

  I touched Robin’s arm. “I’ll be back soon.”

  “Take your time. I’ll stay in here and have a drink with your friends.” The last word was spoken with a hint of mockery, but all three of them lit up like Christmas trees at the thought of being seen with such a beautiful, intriguing stranger. I knew Robin would be fine. In fact, she’d probably be the life of the party inside of ten minutes. She was like that.

  I found Dylan right where Lia had said he’d be, in the garage, surrounded by several other guys I recognized from the soccer team, and a few girls. Most of them were sitting on plastic lawn chairs, drinking beer out of bottles and passing around what I thought was a cigarette until the smell hit me. I’d come in from the kitchen entrance, and everyone looked up when the door banged shut behind me.

  “Hey,” I said, greeting everyone but looking only at Dylan, who returned my gaze with a mixture of embarrassment and contempt. I couldn’t tell from his eyes whether he’d been sampling that joint or not, but going by the way he wobbled as he walked over to me, he’d been drinking at the very least. “Can we talk?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest. The garage door was open a couple of feet and it was freezing in there.

  “About what?” He blinked a few times, as if trying to adjust his eyes from seeing more than one of me.

  “Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

  As it turned out, the only quiet, private spot we could find was in my car. We sat in the front seat with the heat cranked to the highest level.

  “I’m just going to say this straight out,” I told Dylan, who was sitting very still in the passenger seat, his head tipped back against the headrest. “I’m sick of this shit. Either you grow up and stop treating me like crap, or I’m done. Got that? I’m done.” I gripped the edge of my seat, anxious, as always, for his response.

  “Okay,” he said, still not moving a muscle.

  “Really?” That had been way too easy.

  He nodded and then closed his eyes, breathing deeply. I watched his throat move as he swallowed. “I’ll change. For you.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Dylan.”

  “I mean it this time.” He opened his eyes and looked at me, his face pale and sweaty in the light of the dashboard. “I love you.”

  And with that heartfelt declaration, he flung open the passenger side door and hurled all over Brent’s front curb.

  Chapter 19

  When I walked into French on Monday morning, Jessica was sitting at our table, beaming.

  “I didn’t know it was humanly possible to be happy this early on a Monday morning,” I said, sliding in beside her and digging around in my bag for a pen. “And you’re here early too. What’s with the grin? Did Clinique come out with a new lipstick or something?”

  “My, aren’t we feisty today. For your information, I’m happy because I got a new fish yesterday.”

  “Oh,” I said, underwhelmed by this news. Yay, a new fish that would croak in a month. “Replaced Jake Hanson, did you?”

  “No one can replace Jake Hanson,” she told me. “But Sydney Andrews sure has brightened up the tank.”

  “Sydney Andrews? Let me guess, another character from that old show.”

  “That’s right. She’s a cutie.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the actress or the fish, but then decided it didn’t really matter. “Well, congrats.”

  “Thanks.” She shot me a sidelong glance as she smoothed down her already smooth hair. “So, um, how’s Dylan this morning?”

  “Remorseful,” I told her, and she smiled. They all thought Dylan’s upchucking episode was hilarious. Me, not so much. I wasn’t laughing when I had to practically drag him back into Brent’s house and find him a place to lie down, and I certainly wasn’t laughing as I scrubbed puke spatter off the side of my car at one in the morning.

  Still, unpleasant as it was, standing out there in my dad’s driveway in the freezing cold with several yards of paper towel and some Lysol provided me with the clarity I so desperately needed. As the smell of the cleaner rose up into the night air, burning my eyes and making me cry even more, I realized that I’d reached my limit. Dylan was out of chances. This was his last one, and if he so much as looked at me the wrong way from here on out, I would walk away and never look back. Done.

  He knew it too. His shame made him putty in my hands. At this point, I was pretty sure he’d jump off a cliff if I told him to. Lucky for him, I didn’t.

  Later, in chem lab, I felt Ashley’s eyes on me as I took my seat between Dylan and Jess at our usual table. She didn’t approach me right away, but when I crossed the room to gather the supplies we needed for our lab, she was on me like a wet sheet.

  “I thought you wanted to sit with us today.” She nodded toward her table, where Brooke was filling a beaker with water.

  “I changed my mind,” I said, carefully extracting three test tubes. “I’ll stick with my group.”

  “Just yesterday you were calling me and begging me to let you work with us. You said you needed a break from them.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  She looked at me for a long moment. “And here I thought you were coming to your senses,” she said, and turned and walked back to her table, leaving me to wonder if we were in the final stages of our lifelong friendship. She couldn’t stand my other friends, and although Jessica and Lia and Mallory weren’t dumb enough to rag on her in front of me, I knew they saw Ashley as an annoying goody-two-shoes geek. Not the right kind of friend for me. Or, loosely translated, not the right kind of friend for them.

  Robin was a different story, though. Now she was the perfect kind of friend—beautiful and spontaneous and intriguing. But Robin didn’t like my new friends any more than Ashley did. She had them pegged after only two hours.

  “Now I know you’ve lost your mind,” she’d told me on the ride home Saturday night. “How can you be friends with those girls? They’re so boring. They spent the whole night arguing about which celebrities should be on this year’s Most Beautiful People list.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe because I’d become boring too.

  “What was all that about?” Jess asked when I got back to the table with the test tubes. We were supposed to fill them with different amounts of water and then do some sort of test with calcium.

  “Nothing,” I said. Dylan looked like he was about to make a comment but then stopped, thinking better of it now that he was on his best behavior. But that was okay because Jess had no problem grilling me.

  “She looked pissed,” she said. “Are you guys still friends or what?”

  I labeled each tube with measurements. “I guess not.”

>   “No big loss, if you ask me. It’s pathetic how jealous she is of you.”

  “Jealous?”

  She brushed an invisible piece of lint off her shirt. “Well, yeah. You have friends and a boyfriend and an actual life and all she has are those dorky school clubs and band and church. I mean, come on.”

  McDowell started talking then. I switched my attention to the front of the room and pretended to be fascinated by his lecture on diatomic molecules so I wouldn’t say something I’d later regret. It was one thing for me to complain about Ashley, but quite another for Jess to do it. She didn’t even know her. It was true that Ash could be judgmental, but she’d always been satisfied with her life. She didn’t need boys or the latest fashion trend or a million friends to feel fulfilled, and she didn’t give a whit about impressing people. The idea of her being jealous of me was ridiculous. If anything, I was jealous of her. She was real in a way that I wasn’t brave enough to be.

  Tensions mounted even higher after school when Ashley and I met up at the locker we still shared. She collected her books and coat as fast as she could, not looking at me once, and then left without a word. Pissed, I flung my math book into the bottom of the locker, forgetting that my expensive calculator was wedged in the front cover. It bounced out and slid across the floor, coming to a stop a few feet away, under the glassed-in fire extinguisher. I probably would have left the damn thing there, too, but luckily Dylan came along then and rescued it for me.

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it from him. “I think I need to relocate.”

  “Really?” He swung open his locker door and gestured with one hand. “I have lots of room.”

  I peered into his locker. He was a bigger slob than me. “No, you don’t.”

  He yanked papers and pens and books off the top shelf and crammed the whole mess into the bottom portion. Somehow, in the face of gravity, it all stayed put. “Sure I do.” His dimples flickered for the first time all day. “So. You want to move in with me?”

  I gave him a wobbly smile, not sure I was ready for the finality of a locker switch. Ashley and I had been sharing since junior high school. If I moved out now, I’d never get invited back.

  “This here is prime real estate,” Dylan said, rapping his knuckles on the now-empty shelf. “Ocean views, walk-in closets…not to mention your very own mummified apple core.”

  He was trying to cheer me up, make me smile, but it wasn’t working. I hated fighting with my friends, especially over something so silly. Why did I have to choose between them? Ashley had other friends, people from band and church, and I didn’t resent her for that. Then again, most of her other friends were like her, preppy school-spirit types who thrived on getting involved in activities and causes, the type who steered clear of superficial people like Jessica. And effective today, people like me.

  It was a good thing Dylan and I were alone in the Dungeon because I started to choke up right there in front of the prime real estate.

  “Come here,” he said when he noticed my tears. I went to him and he held me tight, awkwardly patting my back. He wasn’t accustomed to seeing me cry—this was only the second time. The first was the day I’d flipped out when my car wouldn’t start, but that was different. Then I was mad. Now I was hurt.

  “Sorry,” I said, giggling and blubbering at the same time, like a lunatic. “Rooming with you and the mummified apple core sounds great, but…”

  He kissed the top of my head. “Don’t stress about it. She’ll come around.”

  He was being so sweet, so comforting. I knew this was part of the post-fight honeymoon period, but in my vulnerable state it felt like it might go on forever. I wrapped my arms around him, pressing my face into his sweatshirt. The fabric-softener scent of it reminded me that I’d never returned his black hoodie, the one my mother had found in my room. It was still there, buried under a bunch of junk in my closet. It probably didn’t even smell like him anymore.

  We stood there hugging until a teacher walked by, spotted us, and yelled at us to break it up and go home before he had us both suspended. It kind of ruined the mood.

  Since I was still grounded and had to go straight home, alone, to wait for my mother’s check-in call, I dropped Dylan off at his house. Before getting out of the car, he leaned over, kissed me, and said, “I feel like I can finally relax.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He smiled. “The fact that you’re still with me after everything that’s happened means you’re not going anywhere.”

  I thought about that the whole way home.

  ****

  Two days later, I was still replaying Dylan’s words in my head. Only now they had taken on a new weight.

  I didn’t hate my cell phone anymore, but apparently it still had it in for me. I realized this on Wednesday night after work when I climbed into my car, snatched up my phone, and brought up a text message I had viewed at least twenty times in the past twenty-four hours. I knew every word, every letter, every curve of every letter, and for the life of me I could not bring myself to delete it.

  Stupid cell phone, tempting me with its cheerful “reply” button.

  I studied the text again, deliberating, contemplating, trying to decipher a hidden meaning in one short, to-the-point question. Like always, each word was typed carefully, capital letter at the start, punctuation at the end, free of the shorthand text-speak most people used.

  Can we talk?

  Such a simple question. Or it would have been, had it been posed by anyone other than Michael.

  It had arrived in my inbox the night before as I was working on an English paper in my room. When I first saw it, I thought I was hallucinating. How many times had I dreamt of receiving a message exactly like this one, from exactly this person, in the past four months? Now here it was, and I was totally freaking out. So I did the only thing I had the wits to do at that moment—I ignored it, told no one, and hoped it would disappear overnight, like a pimple.

  But it was still there in the morning, taunting me, making sure I didn’t hear a damn word that was said in school all day. Or at work tonight, for that matter. Which was why four customers got regular Coke instead of diet.

  Can we talk?

  We can, I thought, trying to push back the painful twinges that rocked my stomach every time I read that text, but I don’t think we should. Why on earth did he pick last night to contact me? And what did he want?

  Desperate for guidance, I called Robin’s cell.

  “Brody?”

  “Um, no. Taylor.”

  “Oh. Hey, Tay. What’s up?”

  She sounded half-baked. At nine-thirty on a school night. “Who’s Brody?”

  “No one. Just some guy. So what’s up? Where are you?”

  “In my car outside of Moretti’s. Listen, I want to get your opinion on something.” I hesitated, not completely sure I wanted to share this information with a girl who had obviously been drowning her sorrows. Since finding out about her mother’s pregnancy, she’d been in total self-destruct mode. Still, I was frantic. “I got a text last night from Michael.”

  “No shit? What did it say?”

  I told her. “What should I do?”

  “You mean you didn’t text him back or call him or anything?”

  “No. I can’t. I mean, it wouldn’t be…right.” I thought about Dylan and how nice he’d been this week.

  “Tay, he might just want his stuff back or something. You won’t know unless you talk to him. Look, you want me to text him and see what gives?”

  “Will you?”

  “Call you back.”

  I waited there for five minutes, and then started driving home. My hands were so sweaty it was a miracle they stayed on the wheel. I had to wipe them on my pants before making turns. What was taking her so long?

  Robin didn’t get back to me until after ten, at which time I was in the middle of an acute nervous breakdown.

  “I talked to him,” she said, her words slurring together even more than before. W
hat was she doing, pounding shots between calls?

  “And?”

  “He said, and I quote, ‘I want to talk to her about something but I understand if she doesn’t want to talk to me.’ End quote. When I asked him what he wanted to talk to you about, he told me to stop being so nosy.” She laughed. “God, Taylor, don’t you miss him? I do. I miss you guys together.”

  The ache in my chest told me I missed him too. Missed us together.

  “I guess I’ll call him then,” I said, sounding like I’d just agreed to dig hairballs out of the bathtub drain.

  “Good,” Robin said. “And don’t worry about…uh…”

  “Dylan?”

  “Right. Dylan. Don’t worry. He doesn’t need to know.”

  “I don’t plan on doing anything wrong,” I said, which was bullshit. Calling ex-boyfriends was an unjustifiable offense in Dylan’s eyes. Contacting Michael was wrong—just like driving by his house that time had been wrong—because Dylan would be upset if he knew I did it, and enraged if he knew I did it and covered it up. Especially now, when he was finally starting to feel comfortable.

  It took me another thirty minutes to work up the nerve to call Michael. He picked up on the first ring. “Hey.”

  I was caught off guard by how fast he’d answered and then again by the sound of his voice after all these months. He sounded…exactly the same. I cleared my throat, hoping my own voice would come out normal.

  “Hi,” I said. Not bad. Casual, with only a slight trace of hysteria.

  “Thanks for calling me back.” In the background I could hear voices, laughter, as if he had just walked into a party or a bar. The sounds got louder and then started to die off as he apparently moved to somewhere quieter. When I heard the thump of a door being shut, I realized he’d been walking through the dorm to his room. Now, in the sudden quiet, he said, “How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said. God, this was awkward. I was perched on the end of the bed, shoulders stiff, body leaning forward like I was about to launch into the ceiling. My neck ached from stress and anticipation.