Someone Like You (25 page)

“I'm sorry,” I said, and it was work just to talk, I was so tired. “I ruined your party.”

“I don't care about the party,” she said. She looked tired too, sad, the same face she'd had that whole week we were with Grandma Halley. “Where were you? What happened?”

“Julie,” my father said from the next bed, his voice thick. “Let her sleep. It's not important now.”

“The policeman said you were with Macon Faulkner,” she went on, and she sounded uneven, as if she was running over broken ground. “Is that true? Did he do this to you?”

“No,” I said, and it was coming back to me now, the cold and the bright light and all the stars, falling. I was so drained, I closed my eyes. “It was just—”

“I knew it, I knew it,” she said, and she was still holding my good hand, squeezing it now, hard. “God, you just can't listen to me, you just can't understand that I might be right, I might know what's best, you always have to prove it to yourself, and look what happens, look at this....” Her voice was getting softer and softer, or maybe I was just slipping off. It was hard to say.

“Julie,” my father said again, and I could hear him coming around the bed, his steps moving closer. “Julie, she's sleeping. She can't even hear you, honey.”

“You promised me you wouldn't see him,” she whispered, close to my ear now, her voice rough. “You
promised
me.”

“Let it go,” my father said. Then, again, so soft I could hardly hear it, “Let it go.”

I was half asleep, wild thoughts tangled in with the sounds around me, pulling me away. But right before I fell off entirely, or maybe I was already dreaming, I heard a voice close to my ear, maybe hers, maybe Macon's, maybe just one I made up in my head.
I'll be right here,
it said as I drifted off into sleep.
Right here.

January was flat, gray, and endless. I spent New Year's Day in the hospital and then went home with everything aching and took to my bed for the next week, staring out the window at Scarlett's house and the planes overhead. My mother took complete control of my life, and I let her.

We didn't talk about Macon. It was understood that something had happened to me that night before the accident, something big, but she didn't ask and I didn't offer. Instead she rebandaged my eye and wrist, and gave me my pills, bringing me my meals on a tray. In the quiet of my house with her always so close by, Macon seemed like a dream, something barely visible, hardly real. It hurt too much to even picture him.

But he was trying to get in touch with me. My first night home I heard him idling at the stop sign, our old signal, and I lay staring at my ceiling and listened. He left after about ten minutes, turning the corner so that his headlights traced a path across my walls, lighting up a slash of my mirror, a patch of wallpaper, the smiling face of my Madame Alexander doll. Then he beeped the horn, one last chance, and I turned again to the night sky and closed my eyes.

I didn't know what to think. That night was a mad blur, beginning with my fight with Scarlett and ending being cold cold cold on the side of the road. I was hurt and angry and I felt like a fool, for my wild notions, for turning even on Scarlett, the only one who really mattered, when she tried to tell me the truth.

Sometimes when I lay in bed that week I still felt for the ring he'd given me, forgetting they'd cut it off at the emergency room. It was on my desk, in a plastic baggie, next to the saucerful of candy I'd never touched. He wasn't what I'd thought he was; maybe he never had been. I wasn't what I'd thought
I
was, either.

Of course, some of us had already formed our opinions. “He's such a
jerk,”
Scarlett said after the first week, as we sat at my kitchen table playing Go Fish and eating grapes. We never discussed our argument on New Year's Eve; it made both of us uncomfortable. “And today he kept asking about you at school. He would
not
leave me alone. Like he couldn't come over and visit you himself.”

“He came by again last night,” I said. “He sits out there like he's waiting for me to sneak out.”

“If he gave a crap, he'd be at your door on his knees, begging for forgiveness.” She made a face, shifting in her seat. Now she really was huge; she couldn't even sit against the table, her walk reduced to what could only be politely called a waddle. “I'm so hormonal right now I could kill him with my bare hands.”

I didn't say anything. You can't just turn your heart off like a faucet; you have to go to the source and dry it out, drop by drop.

It was around midnight a few nights later when I heard something
ping
off my bedroom window. I lay in bed, listening to pebble after pebble bounce off until I finally went and opened it up, sticking my head out. I could barely see Macon in the shadows of the side yard, but I knew he was there.

“Halley,” I heard him whisper. “Come out. I have to talk to you.”

I didn't say anything, watching my parents' window for the sudden light that meant they'd heard too, and I almost hoped they had.

“Please,” he said. “Just for a second. Okay?”

I shut the window without answering, then walked down the back stairs and even let the screen door slam a little bit behind me. I didn't care about being careful anymore.

He was in the side yard, by the juniper bushes, and as I came around the corner he walked toward me, stepping out of the shadows. “Hey.”

“Hi,” I said.

A pause. He said, “How are you feeling? How's your wrist?”

“Better.”

He waited, like he expected me to say more. I didn't.

“Look,” he began, “I know you're mad that I didn't show up at the hospital, but I had a good reason. Your parents would've been upset enough without having to see me. Plus I had to walk to a phone and get a ride because my car was totaled, and ...”

As he talked I just watched his face, wondering what it was that I'd ever thought was so magical about him. I had been fascinated by the things he'd shown me, but they were all just sleight of hand, quarters pulled from children's ears. Anyone can do that trick, if they know how. It's nothing special.

He was still talking. “... and I've been coming by all week 'cause I wanted to explain, but you wouldn't come out and I couldn't call you, and...”

“Macon,” I said, holding up my hand. “Just stop, okay?”

He looked surprised. “I didn't mean to hurt you,” he said, and I wondered which hurt he meant, exactly. “I just freaked out. But I'm sorry, Halley, and I'll make it up to you. I need you. I've been miserable ever since this happened.”

“Yeah?” I said, not believing a word.

“Yeah,” he said softly, and reached out to put his arms around my waist, brushing my bruised ribs and hurting me again. “I've been going crazy.”

I stepped back, out of his reach, and crossed my arms against my chest. “I can't see you anymore,” I said to him.

He blinked, absorbing this. “Your parents will get over that,” he said easily, and I knew he'd said this many times before. Everything, each line I'd held close to my heart, had been said a million times to a million other girls under their windows and in their side yards, on back streets and in backseats, in dark rooms at parties, with the door locked tight.

“This isn't about my parents,” I said. “This is about me.”

“Halley, don't do this.” He ducked his head, that old hangdog P.E. look. “We can work this out.”

“I don't think so,” I said. The truth was I knew, after all those flat January days, that I deserved better. I deserved
I love yous
and kiwi fruits and flowers and warriors coming to my door, besotted with love. I deserved pictures of my face in a million expressions, and the warmth of a baby's kick under my hand. I deserved to grow, and to change, to become all the girls I could ever be over the course of my life, each one better than the last.

“Halley, wait,” he called out after me as I backed away. “Don't go.”

But I was already gone, working a little magic of my own, vanishing.

 

I didn't see her right away as I came inside the back door, easing it shut behind me. Not until I turned around, in the dark, and the room was suddenly bright all around me. My mother, in her bathrobe, was standing with her hand on the light switch.

“So,” she said, as I stood there blinking. “Things are right back to the way they were, I see.”

“What?”

“Wasn't that our friend Macon?” She said it angrily. “Does he ever come around in broad daylight? Or does he only work under cover of darkness?”

“Mom, you don't understand.” I was going to tell her then that he was gone, maybe even that she was right.

“I understand that even that boy almost
killing
you is not enough for you to learn a lesson. I cannot believe you would just go right back out there to him, like nothing had changed, after what happened to you. After what he did.”

“I had to talk to him,” I said. “I had to-”

“We have not discussed this because you were hurt, but this is not going to happen. Do you understand? If you don't have the sense to stay away from that boy, I will keep you away from him.”

“Mom.” I couldn't believe she was doing it again. She was taking this moment, this time when I was strongest, away from me.

“I don't care what I have to do,” she said, her voice low and even.
“
I don't care if I have to send you away or switch schools. I don't care if I have to follow you myself twenty-four hours a day, you will not see him, Halley. You will not destroy yourself this way.”

“Why are you just assuming I'm going back to him?” I asked her, just as she was drawing in breath to make another point. “Why don't you ask me what I said to him out there?”

She shut her mouth, caught off guard. “What?”

“Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a
chance.”

“Yes, I do,” she said indignantly.

“No,” I said. “You don't. And then you wonder why I never tell you anything or share anything with you. I can never trust you with anything, give you any piece of me without you grabbing it to keep for yourself.”

“That's not true,” she said slowly, but it was just now hitting her, I could see it.
“
Halley, you don't always know what's at stake, and I do.”

“I will never learn,”
I said to her slowly,
“until you
let me.”

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now, I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

“Okay,” she said finally. She ran a hand through her hair. “All right.”

“Thank you,” I said as she cut the light off, and we started upstairs together, her footsteps echoing mine. It was still all settling in, this deal we'd made. It was like learning another way of something instinctive, like walking or talking. Changing something you already thought you'd mastered and figured out on your own.

As we got to the top of the stairs, to split off into our different directions, she stopped.

“So,” she said softly. “What did you tell him?”

Outside, across the street, I could see Scarlett's kitchen light, yellow in the dark. “I told him he wasn't what I'd thought he was,” I said. “That he let me down, and I couldn't see him anymore. And I said good-bye.”

I knew there was probably a lot she wanted to ask or say, but she only nodded. We would have to learn this slowly, making the rules up as we went. It was undiscovered country, as wide as the Grand Canyon, as distant as Halley's Comet.

“Good for you,” she said simply, and then she went inside her room, shutting the door quietly between us.

You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place. But standing there alone on the landing, I thought of Grandma Halley and how she'd held me close against her lap as we watched the sky together. I'd always thought I couldn't remember, but suddenly in that moment, I closed my eyes and saw the comet, finally, brilliant and impossible, stretching above me across the sky.

“Oh, honey, you look so wonderful! Brian, come in here with the camera, you've got to see this. Stand here, Halley. No—here, so we get the window behind you. Or maybe—
”

“Mom,” I said, reaching behind me again for the itchy tag that had been scratching my neck since I'd put the damn dress on, “please. Not now, okay?”

“Oh, but we've
got
to take pictures,” she said, waving me over by the potted plant in the corner of the kitchen, “some of you alone, and some when Noah comes.”

Noah. Every time I heard his name, I couldn't believe I'd gotten myself into this. Not just the prom, not just a too-poofy dress with a tag that would drive me insane, but the prom with the dress with the tag with Noah Vaughn. I was in hell.

“Oh my goodness,” my mother said, looking over my shoulder, one hand moving up to cover her mouth. She looked like she might cry. “Look at
you!”

I turned around to see Scarlett, much as I'd left her upstairs minutes ago, except maybe larger, if that was possible. She was at nine months almost exactly, her belly protruding up and outward so it was always the very first thing you noticed when she came into a room. Her dress had been made especially by Cameron's mother, a seamstress, who was so happy Cameron was actually going to the prom that she spent hours,
days,
making the perfect maternity prom dress. It was black and white, with a semi-drop neck that showed off Scarlett's impressive bosom, an empire waist, and it fell gently over her knees. She really did look good, if huge. But it was the smile on her face, wide and proud, that made it perfect.