Someone Else (3 page)

“
Le retard n'est pas acceptable. Comprenez?
”

Jessica flicked her hair out of her face with one set of long, polished fingernails. “Yeah, sure…I
comprenez
.”

Madame Bedeau’s mouth curled into a pretzel shape, but she let it go and continued on with her lecture.

For the rest of the hour, Jessica doodled on her notebook—pictures of fish, mostly—and only looked up once when the teacher asked her a question, addressing her first as “Mademoiselle Erica”. When she answered her back in perfectly-accented French, shocking us all (including Madame Bedeau) I decided that this Jessica Foley would most surely add to the entertainment factor of this class. Maybe I could get to know this strange, indifferent girl. Maybe I could figure her out what made her tick.

The more distractions, the better.

****

Now that school was back in session, my hours at the Chick N’ Burger had been sliced in half. Now I was part-time, twenty hours max. Two shifts on weekends and one weeknight shift, usually on Thursdays. I’d worked it out this way with Charlie, my boss. I wanted my weekends chock-full of distractions. Not only would I be super busy but I’d also be exhausted coming home at night, allowing me the luxury of falling asleep instantly.

After my first four-hour weekday shift, I trudged home feeling totally wiped. It sucked getting up at seven in the morning, going to school all day, heading straight to work from school, and then slaving away over the fryers until nine. I got through it by reminding myself that it was only once a week, and it provided the much-needed extra income I needed to keep my car on the road. I finally understood why adults bitched so much about the price of gas.

“How was work?” my mother asked as I dragged my weary bones past the living room, where she was curled up on the couch, watching one of her crime dramas.

“Good,” I mumbled. “Shower.”

“Good night,” she said with a grin. My mother was really proud that I had taken responsibility and gotten a job to support my car. But still, she never missed an opportunity to remind me that “life is hard, work sucks, get used to it” whenever I complained about being tired. So I had learned not to grumble too much.

In the bathroom, I stripped off my greasy-smelling clothes and hopped into the shower. Then, dry and dressed in pajama pants and a T-shirt, I stretched out on my bed and got out my homework. It was only the second week of school, but the teachers were already piling it on. Tonight I had to read a short story for English. By the second paragraph my eyes were drooping closed, as if tiny weights had been attached to my upper lids. Before I knew it I was facedown on my book, halfway to dreamland. I probably would have slept that way all night, using my book as a pillow, if my phone hadn’t jarred me awake a little after ten. Michael.

“Did I wake you?” he asked, sounding a little shocked upon hearing my groggy hello. I’d never fallen asleep before one of his calls, ever.

I cleared the sleep out of my throat. “No, I’m just tired. I worked tonight and now I’m trying to get through some homework.”

“Oh,” he said, accepting my tiny fib.

“How was your day?”

“Busy. I was in class until four and then I had to drop by the registrar’s office to—.” He was interrupted by a loud knock on his door. “Just a sec.”

I yawned while I waited for him to come back to the phone. Broken conversations were a common occurrence with us these days. Michael had made new friends quickly, as I knew he would, and someone always seemed to be banging on his door. By now I knew all their names and voices, and which name belonged to which voice. Luckily, so far, most of these disembodied voices seemed to be of the male variety.

“Back,” Michael said about a minute later. My eyes, which had sagged closed again, snapped open wide as if I’d been poked with a thumbtack. “So, how was your day?”

“Crazy,” I said, and then gave him the play-by-play. As I spoke, I closed my book, shoved it off the bed, and nuzzled into my pillow.

“Don’t work too hard, okay?” Michael said when I finished. “Make sure you get out and have some fun too.”

“I will. Robin called yesterday, insisting I go to the RHH dance with her tomorrow night. She seems to be really fitting in there.”

“It’s a good school. I liked it there. High school seems like a breeze now, compared to Avery.”

“You’ll do fine. But don’t work too hard, okay? Make sure you get out and have some fun too.”

“I’ll try,” he said with a chuckle. I could picture him now, smiling the way he did whenever I said something that amused him. I missed that smile. So much.

“Any plans for the weekend?” I asked, struggling to push down an overwhelming stab of loneliness.

“There’s always something going on.”

I refused to let my mind reflect on the context of that “something”. I’d watched enough TV and movies and read enough books to know what went on around college campuses. Drinking, partying, casual hook-ups. Going away to college meant freedom, exploration…it scared the hell out of me to think about what Michael might be freely exploring behind my back. Hot alcohol-impaired guys and horny college girls are a dangerous mix, if you ask me.

But, as I told myself over and over, it was all about trust. I had to let go and trust him or else we’d never make it past November.

“Do you think you’ll get home at the end of the month?” I said, taking care that my tone didn’t reveal any traces of pathetic desperation.

“Hope so. I have to get my car in for an oil change and—.” And he was cut off yet again by a rap on his door. I suppressed a sigh. “Be right back,” he said. There was some rustling as he put the phone down, and then again when he picked it back up to tack on a quick, “Sorry.”

This time he was gone for longer than a minute, and I began to doze off again. Sharing his attention like this was starting to drain me. I startled awake when I heard the phone being picked up in a hurry.

“Back,” Michael said, breathless. “Sorry…I had to help a guy on my floor move a—.” Knock. Knock. Knock. This time I didn’t hold back my sigh. “I’m asleep!” he said to whoever was at the door.

“Your public needs you,” I said around another yawn. “I have to go, anyway. I’m about to crash here.”

“You sure? I can tell them to get lost and leave me alone.”

“I’m sure.”

“It’s you I want to talk to,” he said in the low, velvety voice he used when he was trying to melt my insides. It usually worked. It was working now, in fact, but I still wanted to hang up. Let him go, be with his friends, without worrying about rushing back to me.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Okay,” he said. No protests, no cajoling. Oh well. Just another thing to obsessively dwell on later, after we hung up for the night and I was lying there alone, in the dark, trying in vain to deflect my overactive imagination.

Later, as I lay in bed obsessing instead of sleeping, I tried to make sense of why everything was starting to get worse instead of better. Right after Michael left, I really was fine. I’d balked at sympathy because I honestly didn’t need it. But now that he’d been gone for over two weeks, reality was starting to set in. At Avery, he’d begun a new life without me. I never expected him to stay in his room and behave like a hermit (a life choice I had considered for myself at one point) but I hadn’t anticipated the possibility that he would actually
like
it there.

For him, Avery was a welcome change of scenery. His reasons for choosing to go there over Kinsley, our local university, had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his father, who had insisted Michael go to a highly-respected university like Avery so that one day he would be worthy enough to join his law firm. The fact that Michael didn’t want to be a lawyer didn’t seem to factor into his dad’s expectations. Last year, when his brother Josh was arrested on numerous charges and sent to jail, the pressure had only increased. Michael was the good son, the “smart one” with the drive to succeed. His dad had high hopes that his younger son wouldn’t disappoint him. And knowing Michael as I did, he probably wouldn’t. He didn’t like to disappoint anyone, even a man who consistently disappointed him.

But now, he’d escaped all that. Started a new life. And as long as he brought home grades that met proper standards, the rest of his life was his to govern.

All I could do was hope that there would always be a place in it for me.

Chapter 3

“I don’t think so,” I told Robin, who in response gave me a heartbreaking pout that I’m sure worked like magic on all the boys that flocked around her.

“Come on.” She relaxed her pout in order to take another drag of her cigarette. “It won’t be as wild as the party last weekend, I promise.”

“Let’s just have a coffee like we planned, okay?”

She sighed and stubbed out her cigarette on the wet pavement. We were standing outside Starbucks in the late September drizzle, and I was getting annoyed with both the gross weather and the incessant begging. We could never just talk anymore. Our recent conversations consisted mostly of her trying to talk me into going out with her and her new friends, and me declining as tactfully as I could. In truth, I did want to go out, but not with that crowd. I’d tried it three times, one dance and two parties, and that was enough. Robin had found her niche at Redwood Hills High, all right, but it held no draw for me.

“Let’s go in,” Robin said, not even trying to hide her disappointment in me. “Maybe some espresso will perk you up.”

I’d like to see how perky she’d be after working an eight-hour shift on a Saturday. Still, I took her advice and ordered a vanilla latte, the biggest size they had, plus a frosted brownie that looked big enough to lie down on. We gathered our drinks and snacks and found a table next to the floor-to-ceiling fireplace.

“Did you notice my new boots?” Robin asked with a grin. Her irritation with me had melted quicker than the icing on my warm brownie.

I glanced under the table at her feet. Her jeans were tucked into a pair of black leather high-heeled boots that came up to just below her knees. She looked like Catwoman, or maybe a dominatrix. “Nice,” I said. Only her tall, stick-skinny frame could get away with boots like those.

“Thanks,” Robin said, holding out her leg for us—and the man the next table over—to admire. “I’m starting to get used to having money.”

“Alan gives you money?”

“Oh, I get a weekly allowance.” She smirked. “Just like my mother.”

Robin hated living in Redwood Hills, in spite of the gorgeous new bedroom and the brand new furniture and the fat allowance. Her mother ignored her there just like she’d ignored her in the small, run-down bungalow they’d lived in before. Only now—in that huge, pristine house—the silence was even louder.

“So, spill,” Robin said, running her tongue over her lips to sop up the whipped cream left behind from her mocha. “Is there a reason you wanted to talk to me tonight in a boring coffee shop instead of going to Isabelle’s party?” Isabelle was one of her new friends, a girl who had seen more males naked than a locker room shower.

“No special reason. I just haven’t seen you much since school started. When was the last time we sat around like this?”

“A while, I guess. Not since I dyed your hair. Hey…” She reached up to run her fingers through my hair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw our neighbor peek at us over the top of his newspaper, his eyes wide with interest. “The color’s starting to fade already.”

“Maybe you can dye it again for me tomorrow.”

“Sure.” She gave me a wicked smile. “If we’re not too hungover, that is.”

“I don’t want to go to that party, Robin,” I said patiently. “I mean it.”

“But we had so much fun last weekend.”

“You had so much fun. I sat there bored out of my skull.”

She pouted again. “You used to go to Hills parties all the time when Michael was home.”

“His friends were different.”

“What’s wrong with my friends?” she said, getting all huffy. “We have fun. We’re not hurting anything.”

“I know.” I took another sip of latte, enjoying the buzz of caffeine. “It’s just not my thing, that’s all I’m saying.” I’d figured that much out the first time I witnessed a girl whacked out on Ecstasy—it was Isabelle, come to think of it—making out with five different guys in less than an hour. Add that to the drunk assholes who didn’t seem to understand the concept of
not interested
, and that pretty much summed up my reasons for avoidance.

“What
is
your thing, Tay?” Robin said, swatting my knee. “Sitting home alone every weekend, pining away?”

Her tone was light and playful, but the words stung. “I miss my boyfriend, all right? So sue me.”

Her face suddenly softened. “Michael was supposed to come home this weekend, wasn’t he? What happened?”

“He had to study.”

I didn’t want to get into what I really thought—that maybe he was having far too much fun at Avery to leave it behind even for a weekend. That perhaps I missed him just a little more than he missed me. When he told me he couldn’t make it home, he acted like it was no big deal. So I did too. Instead of expressing my disappointment, I hid it from him…and everyone else. Until now, at Starbucks with Robin. I was getting tired of keeping everything in to show how “fine” I felt.

“I’m sure he wants to come home.” She tipped her cup, downing the last few drops. “He’s probably really busy, right? College isn’t like high school.”

“That’s for sure,” I muttered.

She studied me as I sat there, absently crumbling pieces of brownie between my fingers. “Know what you need?” I looked up at her warily. “Fun,” she said with a single nod. “You are going to that party if I have to tie you up and drag you there myself. Let’s get out of here.”

I clamped my jaws together. How could I talk to someone who seemed to disregard almost everything I said? Who only heard what she wanted to hear? Especially when a good listener was what I needed the most right now?

“I’m not going,” I said. “But if you want to go, I’ll drop you off.”

She sighed as if she’d run out of patience with me. I knew the feeling.