Just You (25 page)

“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.