Someone Like You

by Sarah Dessen

  “So,” I asked, “what are you doing tonight?”

  “Nothing much.” He let my hand drop. “Just going out with the fellas.”

  “Don’t you have to do stuff with your mom?”

  He shrugged. “Not tonight.”

  “Are you going over to Rhetta’s?”

  A sigh. He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, Halley. Why?”

  I kicked at a bottle on the ground by my feet. “Just wondered.”

  “Don’t start this again, okay?” He glanced down the road. One mention of this and he was already twitchy, ready to go.

  But I couldn’t stop. “Why don’t you ever take me there?” I said. “Or any of the places you go? I mean, what do you guys do?”

  “It’s nothing,” he said easily. “You wouldn’t like it. You’d be bored.”

  “I would not.” I looked at him. “Are you ashamed of me or something?”

  “No,” he said. “Of course not. Look, Halley. Some of the places I hang out I wouldn’t want you to go. It’s not your kind of place, you know?”

  I was pretty sure this was an insult. “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.” He waved me off, frustrated. “Forget it.”

  “What, you think I’m too naive or something? To hang out with your friends?”

  “That’s not what I said.” He sighed. “Let’s not do this. Please?”

  I had a choice here: to let it go, and wonder if that what was what he meant, or keep at him and be sure. But it was Christmas, and the lights on the tree in our front window were twinkling and bright. I had a ring on my finger, and that had to mean something.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I really like my ring.”

  “Good.” He kissed me, smoothing back my hair. “I gotta go, okay? I’ll call you.”

  “Okay.”

  He kissed me again, then went around to the driver’s side of the car, his head ducked against the wind. “Macon.”

  “What?” He was half in the car, half out.

  “What are you doing for New Year’s?”

  “I don’t know yet. Why?”

  “Because I want to spend it with you,” I said. Even as I said it I hoped he understood what I was saying, how big this was. What I was giving him. “Okay?”

  He stood there, watching my face, and then nodded. “Okay. It’s a plan.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I said again as he got in the car.

  “Merry Christmas,” he called out, then turned on the engine, gunning it, and backed out of the driveway. At the bottom he flashed his lights and beeped, then screeched away noisily, bringing on Mr. Harper’s front light.

  So that was that. I’d made my choice and now I had to stick to it. I told myself it was the right thing, what I wanted to do, yet something still felt uneven and off-balance. But it was too late to go back now.

  Then I heard Scarlett’s voice.

  “Halley! Come here!”

  I whirled around. She was standing in her open front door, hand on her stomach, waving frantically. Behind her I could see Cameron, a blotch of black against the yellow light of the living room.

  “Now! Hurry!” She was yelling as I ran across the street, my mind racing: something was wrong with the baby. The baby. The baby.

  I got to her front stoop, panting, already in crisis mode, and found her smiling at me, her face excited. “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  “This.” And she took my hand and put it on her stomach, toward the middle and down, and I felt her skin, warm under my hand. I looked up at her, wondering, and then I felt it. A ripple under my hand, resistance—a kick.

  “Did you feel that?” she said, putting her hand over mine. She was grinning. “Did you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, holding my hand there as it—the baby—kicked again, and again. “That’s amazing.”

  “I know, I know.” She laughed. “The doctor said it should happen soon, but when it did, it just freaked me out. I was just sitting on the couch and boom. I can’t even explain it.”

  “You should have seen her face,” Cameron said in his low, quiet voice. “She almost started crying.”

  “I did not,” Scarlett said, elbowing him. “It was just—I mean, you hear about what it’s like to feel it for the first time, and you think people are just dramatic—but it was really something, you know. Really something.”

  “I know,” I said, and we sat down together on the stoop. I looked at Scarlett, her face flushed, fingers spread across the skin of her belly, and I wanted to tell her what I’d decided. But it wasn’t the time, so just I put my hand over hers, feeling the kicks, and held on.

  Chapter Fourteen

  My mother spent the whole day of New Year’s Eve madly cleaning the house for her annual New Year’s Anniversary Party. She was so distracted it wasn’t until late afternoon, as I lifted my legs so she could get to a patch of floor by the TV, that she concerned herself with me.

  “So what are your plans tonight?” she asked, spraying a fog of Pledge on the coffee table and then attacking it with a dustcloth. “You and Scarlett going to watch the ball drop in Times Square?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We haven’t decided.”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking,” she said, working her way over to the mantel, and then around the Christmas tree, which regardless of my father’s loudest grumbling was still standing, dropping what seemed like mountains of needles anytime anyone passed it. “Why not just stay here and help me out? I sure could use it.”

  “Yeah, right,” I said. I honestly thought she was joking. I mean, it was New Year’s Eve, for God’s sake. I watched her as she sanitized the bookcase.

  “The Vaughns will be here, and you can keep an eye on Clara for us, and you and Scarlett always like helping out at the party—”

  “Wait a second,” I said, but she kept moving, dusting knickknacks like her life depended on it. “I have plans tonight.”

  “Well, you don’t sound like you do,” she said in a clipped voice, lifting up the Grand Canyon picture and dabbing at it with the cloth, then setting it back on the mantel. “It sounds like you and Scarlett don’t even know what you’re doing. So I just thought it would be better—”

  “No,” I said, and then suddenly realized I sounded more forceful than I should, more desperate, as I felt the net start to close around me. “I can’t.”

  I half expected her to spin around, rag in hand, point at me and say, You’re going to sleep with him tonight! proving she had somehow managed to read my mind, and once again making my choice for me before I had a chance to think for myself.

  “I just think you and Scarlett can watch TV and hang out over here as easily as you can over there, Halley. And I would feel better knowing where you were.”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said. “I’m sixteen. You can’t make me stay home.”

  “Oh, Halley,” she said, sighing. “Stop being so dramatic.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I said. “You can’t just come in here at five o’clock and forbid me to go out. It’s not fair.”

  She turned to look at me, the dust rag loose in her hand. “Okay,” she said finally, really watching me for the smallest flicker of wavering strength on my part. “You can go to Scarlett’s. But know that I am trusting you, Halley. Don’t make me regret it.”

  And suddenly, it was so hard to keep looking at her. After all these months of negotiating and bartering, putting up strong-holds and retreating, she’d used her last weapon: trust.

  “Okay,” I said, and I fought that sudden pull from all those days at the Grand Canyon and before. When she was my friend, my best friend. “You can trust me.”

  “Okay,” she said quietly, still watching me, and I let her break her gaze first.

  As I got dressed to go out that night I stood in front of the mirror, carefully studying my face. I blocked out the things around my reflection, the ribbons from gymnastics, honor-roll certificates, pictures of me and Scarlett, markers of the important m
oments in my life. I rubbed my thumb over the smooth silver of the ring Macon had given me. This time, I had only myself and what I would remember, so I concentrated, taking a picture I could keep always.

  I stopped at Scarlett’s house on the way to Spruce Street, where Macon was picking me up. This was one of the first New Year’s Eve we hadn’t spent together; I’d made my decision, but for some reason I still felt guilty about it.

  “Take these,” Scarlett said to me when I came in, stuffing something into my hand. Marion came around the corner, smoking, her hair in curlers, just as I dropped a condom right on the floor by her foot. She didn’t see it and kept going, stepping over the half-assembled stroller—none of us could understand the directions—and I snatched it up, my heart racing.

  “Um, I don’t think I’ll need this many,” I said. She’d given me at least ten, in blue wrappers. They looked like the mints hotels give you on your pillow. I could see Cameron sitting at the kitchen table. He was cutting up a roll of refrigerated cookie dough into little triangles and squares. Scarlett had been scarfing cookies like crazy lately; usually she didn’t even wait until the dough was cooked, just eating it by the handful out of the wrapper.

  “Just take them,” Scarlett said. “Better to be safe than sorry.” One of my mother’s favorite sayings.

  She was looking at me as we stood there in the kitchen, as if there was something she wanted to say but couldn’t. I pulled out a chair, sat down, and said, “Okay, spit it out. What’s the problem?”

  “No problem,” she said, spinning the lazy Susan. Cameron was watching us nervously; he’d recently branched into wearing at least one thing that wasn’t black—Scarlett’s idea—and had on a blue shirt that made him look very sudden and bright. “I’m just—I’m just worried about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Because I know what you’re doing, and I know you think it’s right, but—”

  “Please don’t do this,” I said to her quickly. “Not now.”

  “I’m not doing anything,” she said. “I just want you to be careful.” Cameron got up from the table and scuttled off toward the stove, his hands full of dough. He was blushing.

  “You said you’d support me,” I said. “You said I’d know when it was right.” First my mother, now this, thrown across my path to keep me from moving ahead.

  She looked at me. “Does he love you, Halley?”

  “Scarlett, come on.”

  “Does he?” she said.

  “Of course he does.” I looked at my ring. The more times I said it, the more I was starting to believe it.

  “He’s said it. He’s told you.”

  “He doesn’t have to,” I said. “I just know.” There was a crash as Cameron dropped a cookie sheet, picked it up, and banged it against the stovetop, mumbling to himself.

  “Halley,” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t be a fool. Don’t give up something important to hold onto someone who can’t even say they love you.”

  “This is what I want to do,” I said loudly. “I can’t believe you’re doing this now, after we’ve been talking about this for weeks. I thought you were my friend.”

  She looked at me, hard, her hands clenched. “I am your best friend, Halley,” she said in a steady voice. “And that is why I am doing this.”

  I couldn’t believe her. All this talk about trusting myself, and knowing when it was time, and now she fell out from beneath me. “I don’t need this now,” I said, getting up and shoving my chair in. “I have to go.”

  “It’s just not right,” she said, standing up with me. “And you know it.”

  “Not right?” I said, and I already knew something hateful was coming, before the words even left my lips. “But with you it was right, Scarlett, huh? Look at how right you were.”

  She took a step back, like I’d slapped her, and I knew I’d gone too far. From the stove I could see Cameron looking at me, with the same expression I saved for Maryann Lister and Ginny Tabor and anyone who hurt Scarlett.

  We just stood there, silent, facing off across the kitchen, when the doorbell suddenly rang. Neither of us moved.

  “Hello?” I heard a voice say, and over Scarlett’s shoulder I saw Steve, or who I thought was Steve, coming into the room. The transformation, clearly, was complete. He was wearing his cord necklace, his boots, his tunic shirt, thick burlaplike pants, what appeared to be a kind of cape, and he was carrying a sword on his hip. He stood there, beside the spice rack, a living anachronism.

  “Is she ready?” he said. He didn’t seem to notice us outright staring at him.

  “I don’t know,” Scarlett said softly, taking a few steps back toward the stairs. She wouldn’t look at me. “I’ll go see, okay?”

  “Great.”

  So Vlad and I stood there together, both of us fully evolved, in Scarlett’s kitchen at the brink of the New Year. I heard Scarlett’s voice upstairs, then Marion’s. On the table in front of me I could see the pregnancy Bible, lying open to Month Six. She’d highlighted a few passages in pink, the pen lying beside.

  “I have to go,” I said suddenly. Vlad, who was adjusting his sword, looked up at me. “Cameron, tell Scarlett I said good-bye, okay ?”

  “Yeah,” Cameron said slowly. “Sure.”

  “Have a good night,” Vlad called out to me as I got to the back door. “Happy New Yearl”

  I got halfway across the backyard before I turned around and looked back at the house, the windows all lit up above me. I wanted to see Scarlett in one of them, her hand pressed against the glass, our old secret code. She wasn’t there, and I thought about going back. But it was cold and getting late, so I just kept walking to Spruce Street, Macon’s car idling quietly by the mailbox, and what lay ahead.

  The party was at some guy named Ronnie’s, outside of town. We had to go down a bunch of winding dirt roads, past a few trailers and old crumbling barns, finally pulling up at a one-story, plain brick house with a blue light out front. There were a few dogs running around, barking, and people scattered across the stoop and the yard. I didn’t recognize anyone.

  The first thing I thought when I stepped inside, past a keg set up at the front door, was what my mother would think. I was sure the same things would jump out at her: the fake oak paneling, the coffee table crammed with full ashtrays and beer bottles, the yellow and brown shag carpet that felt wet as I walked over it. This house wasn’t like Ginny Tabor’s, where you knew in its real life it was a home, with parents and dinner and Christmas.

  A bunch of people were lined up on the couch, drinking, and beside them the TV was on with just static, a soundless blur. I couldn’t hear, the music was so loud, and I kept having to step over people sitting on the floor and backed against the walls, as I followed Macon to the kitchen.

  He seemed to know everybody, people reaching out to slap his shoulder as he passed, his name floating over my head in different voices. At the keg he filled up a cup for me, then himself, while I tried to make myself as small as possible to fit in the tiny space behind him.

  Macon handed me my beer and I sucked most of it down right away out of nervousness. He grinned and filled it again, then motioned me to follow him down a hallway, past a trash can overflowing with beer cans, to a bedroom.

  “Knock-knock,” he said as we walked in. A guy was sitting on the bed, and there was a girl with him, leaning over the side. The room was small and dark, with just a candle lit on the headboard, one with cabinets and shelves, like in my parents’ room.

  “Hey, hey,” said the guy on the bed, who had short hair and a tattoo on his arm. “What’s up, man?”

  “Not much.” Macon sat down at the foot of the bed. “This is Halley. Halley, this is Ronnie.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello.” Ronnie had very sleepy eyes and his hair was short and spiky, black, his voice low and gravelly. He slid his hand across the bed to the leg of the girl beside him, who gave up on whatever she was looking for on the floor and started to lift
her head out of the shadows.

  “I lost my damn earring,” she said, as her hair slid across her face, and I could make out her mouth. “It rolled under the bed and I can’t reach it.” As she sat upright, her features all falling into place, she looked at me, and I looked right back. It was Elizabeth Gunderson.

  “Hey,” she said to Macon, doing that hair swing, so out of place here. “Hi, Halley.”

  “Hi.” I was still staring at her. She was wearing a T-shirt that was too big on her and shorts, obviously not what she’d come to the party in. Elizabeth Gunderson worked fast.

  Ronnie reached down beside the bed, on the floor, and picked up a purple bong, which he handed to Macon. I sucked down the rest of my beer, just to have something to do, as he took the hit and handed it back.

  “You want one?” Ronnie asked me, and I could feel Elizabeth watching me as she lit a cigarette. I wondered what her father, with his Ralph Lauren looks and BMW, would think if he could see her. I wondered what my father would think of me. As she watched me, in the dark, I could have sworn she was smiling.

  “Sure,” I said, pushing the thought of my father away as quickly as it came. I handed Macon my empty cup and took the bong, pressing it to my mouth the way I’d seen it done at other parties. He lit it and I breathed in, the smoke curling up toward my mouth, thicker and thicker, until there was a sudden rush of air and my lungs were full, hot. I held it until it hurt and then blew it out, the smoke thick against my teeth.

  “Thanks,” I said to Ronnie, handing it back as Macon slid his hand across my back. He’d been wrong. I could fit in here. I could fit in anywhere.

  After a while Ronnie and Macon went outside to do something and left me and Elizabeth alone in the dark together. He handed me his beer as he left, which I downed half of because I was suddenly so thirsty, my tongue sticking to my lips. I’d never been stoned before, so I didn’t know what to think about what I was feeling. I wasn’t about to ask Elizabeth Gunderson, who had taken three bong hits before I lost count and was now stretched out across the bed, smoking, examining her toes. I was still perched at the foot, looking at the shag carpet which was suddenly fascinating, and wondering why I’d never tried this before.