Someone Else

by Rebecca Phillips

  “It’s going to be a great year. Believe in the power of positive thinking.”

  I glared at her, silently cursing myself for offering to drive her to school today. And every day, all year. I’d known Ashley since we were four, and sometimes I wondered if we had stayed friends all these years purely out of habit. Or it could be because she was a huge gossip and knew way too much about me.

  “Did you hear about Mrs. Crane?” Ashley asked as we crossed the parking lot and headed for the main doors.

  Mrs. Crane had been the school vice-principal for many years. “What about her?”

  Ashley kept me in suspense until we reached the school entrance. “Her husband left her for a woman from New Zealand that he met on the Internet.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “We go to church with her cousin.”

  I nodded my head as if to say of course.

  “Anyway,” she said, “she’s not coming back this year. I heard she had a nervous breakdown and moved to Florida.”

  “Let me guess, you heard that at church too.”

  “No…” She paused for a moment to say hi to some girl she knew from band. “These two women were talking about it in line at Superstore the other day.”

  “And you just happened to overhear them.”

  “I was right behind them. I couldn’t help it.”

  Before I had a chance to come back with a derisive remark, we ran into our friend Brooke Smithson near our classroom. Brooke was standing with Alex Singleton, the boyfriend she’d acquired over the summer break. Alex was a senior and Brooke’s male counterpart: tall, blond, and striking. Together they looked like a walking advertisement for Colgate.

  “Hey, guys,” Brooke said, flashing her toothy smile as we approached them.

  Alex greeted us with his own Crest-Whitestrips grin before kissing Brooke on the cheek and then taking off for his own class. When he was gone, engulfed in the crowd, Brooke’s pale cheeks flushed and she bit her lip shyly. I knew that look—and the feeling behind it too—very well. First love.

  “Did you hear about Mrs. Crane?” Ashley asked her, but Brooke was still off in la-la land.

  “Crayon? What?” She stood on her tiptoes, trying to catch one last glimpse of her man.

  Ashley sighed. “I miss Erin. At least she cared about important current events.”

  “You mean important current gossip,” I said. I missed Erin too, even if she did like to feed off Ashley’s inner catalog of scandals. Last spring her father had landed a new, better paying job, which unfortunately involved moving his entire family halfway across the country. We still emailed and IMed, but being here at school without her just wasn’t the same.

  Ashley pulled a pack of gum out of her pocket and shook several pieces into her palm. She handed a couple to me, and then offered her palm to Brooke.

  “Thanks,” Brooke said, still in a lovesick daze as she took a gum, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth. The peppermint seemed to electroshock her back down to earth because suddenly she turned to me, her long-lashed eyes filled with pity. “Taylor, are you okay?” she asked, holding my hand gently as if I’d just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.

  “I’m fine,” I said with a slight edge to my voice. This recent outpouring of sympathy was starting to get on my nerves. Ever since Michael left, my friends and family had been treating me like a grieving widow. But I really was okay. I talked to Michael every night on the phone or computer, and he still loved me and missed me. He’d met some people there, even found some he knew from high school, so he wasn’t dying of loneliness. Neither was I, yet. I thought maybe I could do this long-distance thing, after all. Maybe everything would work out fine.

  Or maybe I was just fooling myself.

  The bell rang, and the three of us piled into our first class, chemistry. Back in the spring when I was picking classes for this year, I thought I’d try to get all my math and science-related credits out of the way early. Smart. If math didn’t kill me before January, chemistry surely would. And, as icing on the cake, the teacher looked like he preceded the invention of the wheel and smelled like my mother’s antique cedar chest. Ten minutes in, I knew this class would prove to be a thorn in my side. No, make that a two-by-four.

  The morning passed quickly. We got our locker assignments, and Ashley and I agreed to share again this year. But unlike tenth grade, this year’s locker wasn’t in a prime location such as across from the cafeteria, or even next to a washroom. This year, we’d been relegated to a sectioned-off alcove in the farthest corner of the basement, an area of the school I had never seen or even knew existed. It housed twenty lockers that looked brand new (meaning no dents, dried gum, or graffiti). When I first walked into this dismal little nook, I got the feeling that I had stepped into a vortex from which I’d never escape.

  “Is this even considered part of the school down here?” Ashley said while we were stashing our books before lunch.

  “It’s like a dungeon.” I dropped my fifty-pound chemistry book into the bottom half of the locker.

  “Yeah, a dungeon,” Ashley said, and from that moment on, that was how we referred to our locker cubby. The Dungeon. As in “Meet me in the Dungeon after class” or “Wait a sec, I just have to drop off my books in the Dungeon.” The nickname fit.

  A familiar chicken-nugget-and-bad-pizza smell greeted us as we wandered into the school cafeteria. Behind the counter I could see Candy, everyone’s favorite lunch lady, hefting a large tin of mashed potatoes. The line-up was already curling around the vending machines.

  “I’ll meet you over there,” Ashley said, gesturing across the room to our usual table, the same one we’d staked out in the middle of last year. Brooke and Alex were already there, staring longingly into each other’s eyes over trays of congealed pizza.

  I got the least offensive thing on the menu, chicken soup, and made my way to the table, skillfully dodging people so as not to upset my tray.

  “Taylor, how are you?” Bridget Ross asked as soon as my butt hit my chair. Bridget was Brooke’s friend and I didn’t know her well, but obviously she’d been caught up on the story of my life.

  “She’s fine,” Ashley said, extracting a sandwich from her lunch bag.

  I smiled. Out of everyone, Ashley was the only person who hadn’t made a fuss over my precarious mental state after Michael left. She just carried on like normal, and I loved her for it.

  “You must be so lonely,” Bridget said, giving me the inoperable-brain-tumor look.

  I shrugged and dove into my soup. I wasn’t lonely, really. I was quite used to not seeing Michael for days at a time, so I’d decided that would be my strategy for this year—take it one day at a time. I tried not to picture him as being hundreds of miles away at Avery instead of a mere twenty miles away at Redwood Hills High. Instead, I thought about later, and hearing his voice, and dreaming about him during my restless sleeps.

  Brooke came to my rescue. “Drama’s gonna rock this year,” she said. “We’re doing My Fair Lady in the spring. It’s a musical.”

  “Is it about you?” Alex asked, reaching up to tuck a strand of white-blond hair behind her ear.

  Ashley glanced at me and made a disgusted face. I stifled a giggle. I only hoped that Michael and I hadn’t been that sickening when we first started dating.

  “No, it’s about Eliza Doolittle,” Brooke said.

  “Are you going to try for that role?” I asked, sending her a grateful smile.

  “I wish. That part will probably go to a senior. Besides, I’m not a very good singer. I bet Morgan Radcliff will get it. She’s got an amazing voice.”

  “You’re a great singer,” Alex said, loyal as a dog.

  She just shook her head, as if she didn’t believe she was good enough, though everyone but Brooke knew this wasn’t true. In addition to being gorgeous and talented, she also oozed humility. If I didn’t know the real Brooke, the insecure one who suffered through body issues and messed-up parents
like everyone else, I probably would’ve hated her.

  After lunch I had French. No one I knew took French. I liked it, mostly because the French teacher was a senile old lady who called everyone by the wrong name, even several weeks into the semester. Last year, she was convinced my name was Tina no matter how many times I corrected her.

  Now, as I ambled into the classroom a little early (this class happened to be in close proximity to the Dungeon), I could tell that Madame Bedeau hadn’t changed a bit over the summer. Same gray hair pulled back in a bun, same old stodgy housedress, same twisty mouth with orangey lipstick branching out of the edges of her lips.

  “Mademoiselle Tina,” she said, nodding at me. Same bad memory…

  Madame Bedeau started by explaining to us, in French, what we could expect this semester. I only caught about one-third of it, and most of the people around me looked just as clueless. It wasn’t as if we had practiced our vocabulaire over summer break.

  About ten minutes into class, the door opened and a girl entered the room. She had the shiniest hair I’d ever seen and wore lots of eye makeup. Everyone turned to look at her, and the teacher stopped mid-sentence to study her as well. The girl, who I suddenly recognized from my chemistry class that morning, didn’t appear to notice all the staring, nor did she seem to care that she had interrupted the lecture. She glanced around the room in search of an empty seat and chose the one next to me. I slid my chair over a couple of inches to make more room for her, and she sat down without acknowledging me.

  “Quel est votre nom, la Mlle?” Madame Bedeau asked. She hated tardiness.

  “Jessica Foley,” said the girl, her tone one of utter boredom.

  “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 a
nd 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.