Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  “I guess you’re wondering why I called you.”

  I didn’t answer because it was obvious, and because I’d just noticed that he did sound a little different. Subdued. I still knew him well enough to decode his various tones, and the one he was using now told me he hadn’t called last night to play catch up.

  “Josh is missing,” he said.

  I sat up straight, feeling my vertebrae pop. “Missing?”

  “Yeah, since Saturday. He’s gone missing before but never for this long. My mom is freaking out. She’s called everyone he knows and every place he’s ever gone, and nothing.”

  “Did she call the police?”

  “My dad did it last night. That’s why I called you…so you’d hear it from me instead of seeing it in the paper or on the news.” His voice broke a little, and I could tell it killed him to think about his brother’s picture on the evening news.

  “Where do you think he is?” I asked. I didn’t want to say what I thought, that there were so many ways for an addict to get hurt or disappear or worse. But of course he already knew that.

  “Who knows?” Anger sneaked into his voice. “He could be staying away on purpose to punish us for something. He could be passed out in a ditch somewhere, drunk or beat up or dead. You never know with him. He’s got more lives than a cat.”

  I thought of all the car accidents and overdoses and bouts of alcohol poisoning he’d survived over the years. Still, even a cat’s luck had to expire at some point.

  “So that’s the news,” Michael said with a tired sigh. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thanks for telling me. And if there’s anything I can do, for your mom or whatever, feel free to call me. Okay?”

  “Thanks. I really…” He paused, as if reorganizing his next words. “I really appreciate it. I can keep you updated too, if you want. Or is that a bad idea?”

  “No,” I said, too quickly. “Please keep me updated. Of course.” Perfectly acceptable, I told myself. Just because we broke up didn’t mean I had to stop caring about his family. Or him.

  After our phone call I tried to study, but gave up when I found myself reading the same paragraph over and over, absorbing nothing. Instead I went to bed, where I lay staring, unblinking, at my alarm clock. My brain was stuck on the first time I met Josh, the night of Michael’s parents’ Christmas party, when the three of us sneaked away to play pool. Parts of that night jumped out at me—Josh’s whiskey breath. The warmth of his big hand over mine on the pool cue. Michael’s disappointed face when we dropped Josh off at Kelsey’s afterward. And then the conversation in the driveway, the one that marked the beginning of the end for Michael and me, and the beginning of everything else with Dylan.

  Dylan. I grabbed my phone off the night stand and texted him a quick good night, my fingers fumbling over the keys in the dark. He was still in his Good Dylan phase, so he wouldn’t be calling me again tonight. I lay back on the pillows, my blood buzzing in my veins, and figured it was just as well.

  Chapter 20

  “Come on. Just for an hour.”

  “We can’t.”

  “A half hour?”

  An irritated prickle danced up the back of my neck. Dylan had been bugging me for days about going to my house after school. We hadn’t been there in two weeks, since the day Mom busted me. He couldn’t get it into his head that my mother wasn’t some pushover who turned a blind eye on rule-bending.

  “Dylan, we can’t,” I repeated, crouching down in front of my locker to hunt for the book we’d been assigned for English class. It seemed to have disappeared overnight. My section of the locker was such a mess. Not that Ashley complained about it anymore, seeing as our relationship had been reduced to chilly, monosyllabic conversations whenever we were in forced proximity of each other. She didn’t call me anymore, stopped asking for drives to school. We may as well have been strangers.

  “She’ll never know,” Dylan said. He was unrelenting, like a spoiled child who wouldn’t take no for an answer. “We did it for weeks without her knowing, remember?”

  I stood up, giving up on my book search. I must have left it at home, or in the car. “She wasn’t looking for it then. She is now. If we go there, she’ll know.”

  He looked away, his expression hardening. I felt another prickle, this one a warning. “Since when are you the perfect daughter? This is the only time we have to be alone and if you really wanted to be with me, you wouldn’t think twice about breaking a few rules.”

  I took a deep breath, feeling my back molars scrape against each other. Three Cs, I reminded myself. Calm, cool, and composed. A few people still remained in the Dungeon and I wasn’t in the mood for giving them a free show.

  “I do want to be with you,” I said, which wasn’t exactly the truth, especially not at this precise moment, when his mere presence made me want to slam my head against a locker. “But my mother would ground me until graduation if we got caught. Is that what you want?”

  He slid his hand across my waist, exactly the wrong thing for him to do to me right then. “You know what I want.”

  I jerked away from him. “Dylan, you’re not listening to me.”

  His hand dropped and he stared at me, a flush creeping up his cheeks. He’d been regressing back to his old ways for the past couple of days, and now, as his eyes flashed angrily, I knew we were headed back to square one. And we both knew what that meant. I’d made it quite clear after the puking episode.

  “What is your problem?” He leaned into me, close enough to invade my personal space “You’ve been acting weird all week.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Yes, you have. It’s like you’re somewhere else when I talk to you. You’re distant and distracted. If I didn’t know better I’d think you were about to break up with me.”

  My math book tumbled to the floor. I leaned over to retrieve it, my face burning. “That’s silly.” I concentrated on my book, smoothing out the crumpled pages.

  “Really?” He took the book from me, clapped it shut, and dropped it back into my locker. “Then let’s go to your house so you can prove to me how silly it is.”

  That was when the three Cs decided to take a much-needed vacation. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to go to my house with you. How many ways do I have to say it before it finally sinks in?”

  I could feel curious eyes on us now, taking in Dylan’s face as it went from pink to pinker to a scary, furious red.

  “You don’t have to be such a fucking bitch about it,” he said, his voice bouncing off the walls of the Dungeon. He moved toward me, his shoulder bumping mine as he passed, causing my backpack to jar loose and slide down my arm. He didn’t seem to notice that—or the three girls watching a few feet away—as he stormed off, taking whatever redeeming qualities I’d once thought he had along with him.

  “You all right?” one of the girls asked after he was gone. I was still standing there by my locker, backpack dangling from my hand.

  “Yeah,” I said, jolted into motion. I moved in a daze, returning my backpack to my shoulder, locking my locker, giving the gawkers a strained smile, as if my boyfriend physically intimidated me and called me nasty names all the time. No big deal. “I’m fine.”

  And I was fine until I got in my car and noticed my hand was shaking too much to hold my keys still. It took me three tries to get the right key into the ignition, something I usually did subconsciously. With the car finally started, I tipped my head back onto the headrest, closed my eyes, and focusing on breathing until my heart returned to its normal rhythm. Then and only then did I reach for my cell phone and power it up, eager to catch a glimpse of the one thing I’d been waiting all day to see. The real reason I preferred to be alone after school these days.

  I’m pretty sure the guy sitting across from me in the SUB right now is looking at porn on his laptop.

  I smiled at this latest text, and then brought up some of the older ones, rereading them in order. There were seventeen of them now,
all from this past week. All from Michael.

  The texting started last Saturday, the day after our second conversation about his brother. This time, the news was good. After almost a week with no word from Josh, he’d finally called his mom. He’d been an hour away from home the whole time, staying with some woman in a seedy hotel room and doing vast amounts of coke. He was sick and thin but alive. Instead of letting him come home, his parents sent him straight to a ninety-day rehab. He’d hit rock bottom and lived to tell. Again.

  After Michael updated me, I thought that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t. Texts started appearing on my cell, random one-sentence observations about his professors or dorm-mates or perfect strangers seated near him in the library or student union building. Why he did this, I didn’t know, but I liked it. Every day I watched the clock, counting down the hours until I could get away by myself, turn on my phone, and hear the little message-waiting chime that no longer aggravated me. And with no one around to see me, I’d let myself grin.

  Dylan was right. I had been acting distant and distracted all week, and not just because of these texts. Plotting ways to break up with one’s boyfriend required a lot of concentration.

  The moment I knew I had to break up with Dylan occurred two days before, when he accused me of flirting with Tim Hawkins, a guy I knew from art class. After our class that day, Tim walked with me to my locker because he happened to be going to the basement to pick up some French assignments he’d missed while he was out with the flu. While we walked, we talked about art and French. An innocent, polite thing to do, but Dylan didn’t see it that way. All Dylan saw was me walking with Tim, laughing at some crack he’d made about Madame Bedeau’s renowned senility. Somehow, this translated into me being hot for Tim’s body, which would have been funny had it not been so sad. First of all, Tim was short and pockmarked and purportedly gay. Second, I was not the flirting type, a fact Dylan would know if he ever emerged from his jealous haze long enough to have a rational thought. However, I knew by now that this was too much to ask, just as sure as I knew that I was never going to change him.

  But I could still change me.

  Looking again at Michael’s newest text, I hit save and then sent a text of my own, to Dylan. We need to talk, I typed. Pick u up at 8?

  His response came a minute later. Going to Jess’s tonite. Meet me there? Sorry for before. I’m a prick.

  I turned off the phone. His apologies meant nothing to me now.

  ****

  On the way to Jessica’s house that evening, I pulled into a gas station/convenience store and called Leanne. She’d been my confidante, my sounding board, through all of this Dylan mess. Now, more than ever, I needed her wisdom.

  “I’m breaking up with Dylan tonight.”

  There was silence as she took this in. “Had enough?”

  I filled her in on today’s fight. “Yeah, I’d say I’ve had enough.”

  “Damn,” she said. “Sounds like a good time to get out.”

  “It was the last straw, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know all about last straws, remember? I’m glad you’re dumping his ass tonight, but promise me you’ll do it in public. I mean, around people. Don’t let him get you alone.”

  “We’ll be at our friend’s house,” I assured her. “People will be there.”

  “Good.”

  “How should I do it? Break up with him?”

  She paused, considering this. “Just rip off the Band-Aid. One quick motion. With guys like him, it’s the only way to go.”

  Band-Aid. Right. “Thanks, Leanne.”

  “Good luck, Taylor. You’re doing the right thing.”

  Leanne’s pep talk made me feel more confident about what I was about to do, but I still found myself stalling. I took my time pumping gas, then loitered in the convenience store for a few minutes, deliberating over packs of gum. On the way back to my car I walked slowly, breathing in the smell of gasoline mixed with clean spring air. It was a clear night, the inky sky dotted with stars. I stood there gazing at it for a minute, spotting the constellations my dad had taught me to find when I was six. Some were easily visible, others were hiding.

  Finally, unable to put it off any longer, I drove to Jessica’s house.

  “Hallelujah,” Jess said when she opened the front door for me. “Come on in.”

  I glanced around for Dylan, but he wasn’t there. “Where’s Dylan?” I asked Jess as she put her arm around me and steered me into the kitchen, where Lia and Mallory stood by the fridge, each sipping what looked like iced chocolate milk.

  “He’s not here yet,” Jessica said, picking up her own glass of the same brown liquid. “The guys are coming later.”

  “Want a mudslide?” Lia asked me, holding up her glass. Her eyes met mine for a second and then flicked away.

  “No thanks.” I glanced over my shoulder at the living room, which was empty. We seemed to be only ones in the house. “So when are the guys supposed to get here?”

  “Soon,” Mallory said, and all three of them nodded in unison. They reminded me of giant bobble-head dolls.

  “It’s just us girls for a bit,” Jessica said. She squeezed my shoulder, the same one Dylan had bumped earlier. The pressure from her hand made my collarbone ache. “This’ll give us a chance to talk.”

  “Talk about what?” I glanced at Lia, who suddenly seemed fascinated by her mudslide. She poked at the ice with her straw, avoiding my gaze.

  “Dylan,” said Mallory, studying me from beneath her ever-present wave of hair.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s been acting a little…” She waved her hand around, searching for the right word. “…paranoid lately.”

  Lately?

  “He’s worried you’re going to dump him,” Jess said. “Which, of course, is ridiculous. Right?”

  All eyes swung to me, even Lia’s. I swallowed before answering. “Well, I think that should be between Dylan and me.”

  Their faces twisted in confusion. To them, everything was their business. Especially when it wasn’t.

  “Taylor, you’re being impulsive,” Jessica said. “Stop and think about this for a second. You know Dylan’s crazy about you. He’s just tense because he knows your ex is coming home from college soon. For some reason he thinks you’ve never gotten over him.”

  I thought about the seventeen texts still tucked away in my cell phone. Dylan had grounds to be suspicious, but that still didn’t give him a right to treat me like he did. Accepting texts from my ex and discussing his family problems didn’t exactly qualify as not being “over him”. But I had no desire to explain myself to three girls who were famous for taking only a part of the story, molding it into whatever suited them, and then presenting their version as fact.

  “You guys have no idea how difficult Dylan can be,” I told them. It became obvious to me then, what was going on here. They had staged this…whatever it was. Break-up intervention?

  “He’s a guy,” Jessica said, knocking back the rest of her drink. “They’re all infants. You just have to know how to handle them.”

  I looked at Lia again. She’d been abnormally quiet since I got here, and I wondered if it was because she’d been the one vote against this ambush. Not that opposing views had ever deterred Jessica. Sometimes it was easier just to stand back and shut up.

  The guys arrived then, cutting short our little kitchen summit. My relief over that was doused by anxiety when I caught site of Dylan. When I started toward him, Jessica grabbed my arm and pulled me back.

  “He loves you, Taylor,” she said in my ear. “Don’t do anything you might regret later.”

  Her words sounded more like a threat than advice. “I won’t,” I said, and slid out of her grasp.

  I strode over to Dylan like I was on a mission. He didn’t look up at me until I was standing right in front of him, and when he did I could see the worry in his eyes. He knows what’s coming, I thought.

  “Let’s go in Jessica’s room,”
I said, and without a word he followed me across the living room and down the hallway. Jess shot me a reproving look as we passed, but I ignored her and kept walking.

  The second I shut the bedroom door behind us, Dylan was on me, hugging me like the world would end if he dared to let go. He smelled like beer. My arms stayed where they were, limp at my sides. Hugging him didn’t feel good anymore. Nothing about him felt good anymore.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said into my hair. “There’s no excuse for how I acted today. I can’t believe you even want to talk to me after what I said.”

  I backed out of his arms and sat down on the bed. The only light in the room came from the fish tank in the corner. In any other situation, the soft yellow glow might have been kind of romantic.

  “We need to talk,” I said, nodding toward the spot beside me. He sat down and laced his fingers through mine. I let him do this because it was easier than pulling away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. Up close, his eyes were red and bloodshot, either from emotion or large quantities of beer. “Nothing like that will ever happen again. I promise.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Nothing like that will ever happen again.” Rip off the Band-Aid. One quick motion. “I want to break up.”

  His hand slipped away from mine. I heard him inhale deeply, as if breathing in my words, removing them from the air. “You don’t mean that.”

  “This isn’t working. It hasn’t been working for a long time.”

  “So we’ll make it work.” His arms snaked around my waist. “Please, Taylor. Don’t do this. I love you.”

  I inched away from him. “Stop saying that. You don’t love me, Dylan. You never did. You don’t call someone you love nasty names or freak out when they talk to another guys. Telling me you love me means nothing unless you show it too. Otherwise, it’s just noise.”

  He looked at me like he’d never seen me before, like an evil spirit had possessed my body and turned me into someone else. “Sorry I’m not perfect like Michael,” he said, bitterness replacing the panic that had permeated his voice only moments before.