“Hey,” Michael said from behind me. He pressed an ice cold bottle of water against my bare shoulder, trying to make me jump. But the cold felt good. He kissed the top of my head before dropping into the chair beside me, keeping the bottle on my skin the whole time. “How you holding up? Exhausted yet?”
I shrugged and took the water from him. “I’m okay.”
“Let me know when you feel like leaving.”
“I will.”
My gaze kept returning to the pool. Elena was still there, talking to a blond guy who floated in the water right below her. Every few seconds she would glance around, as if checking to see who was checking her out in her miniscule swimsuit. Most of the guys in the yard were sneaking peeks at her, even the ones who were with other girls. Those other girls stared at her too, but in a narrow-eyed, “Who does she think she is?” kind of way. She seemed to enjoy that kind of attention even more.
Then, as if she felt the weight of my gaze, Elena looked in our direction. Her eyes met mine for a fraction of a second, and then flicked over to land on Michael. I watched as her mouth drooped ever so slightly, almost as if something had disappointed her. I looked over at Michael too, fully expecting to catch a look passing between them, or at least the understated ogling thing all the other guys were doing. But he wasn’t looking at her at all. In fact, he was looking at me.
Not at Elena. At me. Out of the two of us, I was the one always thinking about Elena Brewster. I was the one who cared.
Then suddenly I didn’t anymore. Sure, she was beautiful. And she still wanted Michael. Wanted him so much she’d probably never give up.
But I was the one who had him.
I let myself see her one last time. She was laughing now as the guy in the pool splashed her, trying to entice her into the water. “No!” I heard her squeal, and then she backed away toward the lounge chairs, where she sat down and wrapped herself in a towel. The blond guy, discouraged now, hoisted himself out of the pool, leaving it empty except for a couple of beach balls. The water rose and fell for a moment in his wake, but it quickly became calm again. Irresistibly calm.
“I’d love to jump in there right now,” I said, unable to take my eyes off that inviting pool.
“Dare you,” Michael said.
“But I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“So?” He nodded toward my shorts and tank top. “That’s fine.”
I sucked in a breath. The air smelled like chlorine and beer and summer. “I don’t think so. Everyone would think I was nuts.”
“How about this,” Michael said, leaning close to me. “We’ll do it together. We’ll get up, calmly walk over there, and jump in. Both of us.”
I turned to look at him, making sure he was serious. His storm-cloud eyes stayed steady on mine, and I knew he’d do it if I would. But would I? Jump into a pool with my clothes on in the middle of the night in front of dozens of people? Why was I even considering this? It didn’t make any sense. Robin was the one who did crazy things like this. The one who took risks. Not me. Never me. I wasn’t the spontaneous type.
“Both of us,” I repeated. “You promise?”
“I’ll be right beside you.”
“Well then,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
We walked over to the pool, stopping at the edge of the deep end. I peered down into the water but all I could see was the bottom of the pool, light blue and seemingly endless.
Michael shifted beside me. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I said, and when he took my hand, I closed my eyes and jumped.
About the Author
Rebecca Phillips lives in Nova Scotia, Canada with her husband, two children, and cat. This is her first novel. Taylor’s story continues in SOMEONE ELSE, the sequel to JUST YOU. You can find Rebecca on her blog: rebeccawritesya.blogspot.com and on Twitter: twitter.com/SillyMom25
Excerpt from Someone Else:
The day before my boyfriend Michael left for his freshman year of university, I decided to dye my hair.
Now, I wasn’t one for impulsive decisions like this. I wasn’t spontaneous like my friend Robin, who, as it happened, was an accomplice to this spur of the moment hair-dying inspiration. In fact, she picked out the color.
“Pomegranate,” she said, opening the shiny green box after we had shut ourselves up in the bathroom. “Sounds delish.”
I was still out of breath from our quick, adrenaline-soaked jaunt to the drug store and back. As I dug through the linen closet for an old towel, I could feel beads of sweat forming on my upper lip and neck. “Are you sure red will work with brown hair?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Robin pushed me down into the folding chair she’d dragged in from my bedroom. I sat facing the mirror, a ratty old beach towel wrapped around my shoulders and a panicked look on my face. I couldn’t believe I was trusting my long, chestnut-brown hair—one of my best features, or so I’d been told—to a girl who 1) had no hair-dying experience whatsoever and 2) was unable to do anything without making some kind of a mess, somehow. Robin wasn’t familiar with the concept of careful.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” I asked. My eyes widened as she pulled a pair of plastic gloves out of the box, along with two small tubes, a plastic bottle, and an instruction sheet. It all looked so…chemically permanent. I felt my first wave of doubt but quickly pushed it back.
“Of course.” She slipped on the gloves and then stood at the counter, mixing and shaking, pausing ever few seconds to check the directions. When she moved around to the back of my chair, plastic squirt bottle in hand, I scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. As usual, she projected an air of coolness and confidence, sprinkled with the occasional glimpse of pure evil. She so enjoyed having me at her mercy. “Ready?” she asked.
Our eyes met in the mirror as she hovered over me, poised to begin. I closed my eyes in a silent prayer. “Do it.”
The first squirt of dye was cold, but by the time half my roots were covered, it had started to burn a little. Every so often I cracked opened my eyes to check for falling clumps of hair or rising smoke.
“Almost done,” she said, massaging my hair up into a slimy clump at the back of my head. We’d bought a no-drip formula, but a spattering of purplish blotches clung to my temples and forehead. Robin used the edge of the towel to wipe my skin. “Now,” she said, standing back. “We have to wait twenty-five minutes and then wash it out.”
I consulted my watch. It was 3:47 now. My mind scrambled for the exact washing-out time while Robin immediately figured it out. “Four-twelve is the moment of truth.”
I turned my goopy head this way and that. I wasn’t about to take my eyes off myself. “I hope it doesn’t look like ass.”
Robin sat on the closed toilet and put her chin in her hands. “We should’ve picked up an extra box for me. I could do with a change.”
“Another one?” She’d already had plenty of changes over the summer, what with her mother’s hasty marriage to her bald investment banker boyfriend, Alan—a guy she’d dated for a record-breaking six months—and their subsequent move to Alan’s big new house over in Redwood Hills, one of the city’s fanciest neighborhoods. Not to mention starting a brand new school in four days, where she knew virtually no one.
“Maybe I’ll go all dramatic.” She wrapped a strand of her long, reddish-brown hair around her finger. “Like black.”
“Don’t you dare. Your hair is perfect the way it is.”
“So was yours.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “What came over you this afternoon, anyway? You don’t do stuff like this, Taylor. Jesus, you freak out when I suggest you try a new shade of lipstick. You’re so conformist you’re practically a sheep.”
“Hey.”
“It’s true.” She smiled to let me know she still loved me despite my flaws. “Ba-aa-aa.”
“Shut up.”
She laughed and leaned over to poke at my hair. So far so good. I wasn’t bald or on fire. Yet.
We had ten minutes to go when a voice on the other side of the door said, “What in the hell is that smell?” A moment later the bathroom door eased open and my stepsister Leanne stuck her head in. “What is going on in here?” she asked, looking alarmed as she took in my hair and the various items splayed out on the counter.
“Taylor got a wild hair,” Robin said with a cackle.
Leanne slipped into the bathroom to get a closer look. She picked up the empty box. “Pomegranate? Isn’t that a fruit? What color are pomegranates, exactly?”
“Auburn, I guess.” I’d never actually seen a pomegranate.
“You dyed your hair auburn? Why?”
“She doesn’t know,” Robin said, grabbing my wrist to check my watch. “Eight minutes.”
Leanne squinted at my hair, her hands on her hips. “Just…because?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “Just because.”
They both stared at me with matching dubious expressions, but I ignored them. I didn’t feel like trying to explain why I had suddenly gotten the urge to change my hair color when I’d never even considered dying my hair before. Like Robin, I craved change, even though my life as I knew it was about to get very different very fast, starting tomorrow morning when Michael’s car, with him in it, drove off toward a highway that would take him three hundred miles away and out of my life—at least physically—until Thanksgiving at the earliest, or until he found time to come home to visit.
But unlike Michael’s leaving, my hair going from brown to red was a change I could easily control with a few dollars, a box full of chemicals, and a friend to help. And as I struggled to deal with my mounting anxieties, I felt like I needed control over something.
But who would understand that, besides me?
“Time’s up,” Robin said.
The three of us pounded down the stairs to the kitchen sink, the best place to rinse my hair without making too much of a mess. Plus it had one of those handy sprinkler attachments. I bent over the sink while Robin doused my head again and again with warm water. Leanne acted as her assistant, letting her know when she missed a spot and keeping the floor free of puddles.
Once my hair was thoroughly rinsed, Robin squeezed a tube of moisturizing conditioner into it, and then rinsed it again. Finally it was time to wrap my head in a towel, but not before I checked for bald spots and scalp burns. Everything seemed normal and intact.
“Let’s go see,” Robin said, her pale cheeks flushed with excitement.
My stepsister was invested in the outcome now too. “Once,” she said as we went back upstairs, “I tried to dye my hair red and it came out orange. Like the color of a pumpkin. All my friends called me Pumkinhead or Jack for weeks.”
I remembered that; it happened shortly after our parents had gotten married, when Leanne was deep into her wild phase. Back then, the orange hair seemed to complement the whole rebel vibe she had going on, but I knew it wouldn’t look quite so fitting on me.
The three of us stood side-by-side facing the mirror while I cautiously unveiled myself. I cringed as the towel dropped, preparing myself for the worst, but after a moment I relaxed. It wasn’t a dramatic change. My hair was wet and stringy, which made it hard to tell if the dye had worked, but upon close inspection I could detect a new reddish tinge. Red. Not orange.
“Let’s dry it,” Robin said, rubbing a strand between her fingers. She plunked me down in the chair and started combing through my hair. I shut my eyes again as she trained the hair dryer at my head and worked her magic.
“Oh my God,” I heard Leanne say when the dryer stopped.
“What?” I was afraid to open my eyes. I couldn’t tell from her voice whether it was a good Oh my God or a bad one.
Robin styled my dried hair into place. “Taylor, look.”
When I opened my eyes, I gasped. I had red hair. Well, not red-red, but a deep, dark, luscious auburn. And with my green eyes, it totally suited me.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“I know, right?” Leanne said, smiling so wide that the stud in her nose almost touched her cheek.
Robin stood back and nodded, admiring her work. “It’s the new you.”
“Thank you,” I whispered, still staring at my reflection.
The New Me, I thought. Someone who was strong enough to make it through the year with her boyfriend miles away, no longer within easy reach. Someone who would never be jealous, insecure, or suspicious. Someone who would learn to be satisfied with phone calls, email, and memories until he came back again. Someone who would ignore the brown-haired girl inside who desperately wanted summer to drag on and on, unending, so she wouldn’t have to say good-bye.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Just You Page 19