Someone Else (18 page)

“Dylan, wait,” I said, grabbing his sleeve to stop him from leaving the car. He shut the door again and looked at me, his expression vulnerable, and I thought about all the nice things he’d done and said since we started dating. Like the time we were walking to my car after school, holding hands, and he looked over at me and said, “How did I get so lucky?” And Valentine’s Day, when he’d taped a flawless red rose to my locker. Just thoughtful little gestures that filled up some of the emptiness Michael had left behind.

“What?” Dylan prompted when I didn’t say anything else.

“It’s really over with Michael. I do believe that.”

“If he told you he wanted to get back together, you’d dump me in a second.”

“I wouldn’t,” I said. I’d always ascribed to the theory that saying something out loud would help it become true. That if you simply put a voice to your wish, some magical cosmic force made it happen for you. I ached to believe it was over with Michael so that I could stop thinking about him, stop wondering if he still thought about me.

“But you can’t guarantee you’ll never go back to him, right?”

“You need a guarantee?” Irritated, I flicked on the windshield wipers a little too roughly, pushing the lever up to the highest speed. Snow flew everywhere. “What am I, a stereo?”

“No,” Dylan said, as if he’d taken my question to heart. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just…shit, I don’t know. This past month has been amazing, and I’m worried it will all end too soon.”

My irritation melted when I saw the anxiety in his features. He was afraid of losing me, and not just to Michael either. Losing me, period. I reached over, tugged his sleeve so he’d look at me. “I’m here now. I’m not going anywhere. Well, except for home, because I’m late and my mother’s going to have a canary when she finds out I’ve been driving in this weather.”

The corners of his mouth twitched, and the tension that had been hovering over us began to lift. He leaned forward to kiss me good-bye, his hand sliding to its favorite spot on the back of my neck. Even in this frigid weather, his palm felt like a warm blanket against my skin. After a long kiss he pulled back to look at me, his face settling back into its typical seriousness.

“I love you,” he said, and was out of the car and almost inside the house before I had time to react. Several emotions ripped through my body, the most prominent one being
freaked out
.

I put the car in reverse, narrowly missing the mailbox as I backed out of the driveway. I drove home in a fog, and between that and the snow it was a miracle that I arrived in one piece.

“Finally,” my mother said when I walked into the warm kitchen. “Taylor, where on earth have you been?”

“I had to go to the store for something,” I said, moving over to the table, where Emma was ripping the top off a box of takeout pizza. I scooped up a slice and ate it leaning against the counter. I was starving.

“You shouldn’t have been driving in this snow,” Mom said, unaware that this was the least of my infractions for today. She approved of Dylan, but if she ever found out I was bringing him home with me after school, she’d murder us both. Nothing disturbed my mother more than the thought of her child having a sex life, even though Dylan and I weren’t technically having sex. Still, over the years I had learned when to shut up and when to lie through my teeth.

“I made it back, didn’t I?” I said, licking tomato sauce off my finger. “Chill out.”

Mom shot me a look. I didn’t usually talk to her that way. Maybe the treacherous ride home had emboldened me.

“I can’t say I like your tone,” she said.

I can’t say I care
, I felt like responding. But that would get me good and grounded, so I just mumbled an apology around a mouthful of cheese. She let it go, probably sensing that I wasn’t in the mood for any lectures.

Chapter 16

I drove slowly down the streets I knew like the back of my hand, all the while fighting the urge to switch off my headlights and duck. But that would only make me look like a stalker, I reasoned. And I wasn’t a stalker. All I was doing was driving through Redwood Hills at eight-fifteen on a Saturday night, after work, to see if Robin was home. It wasn’t
my
fault Riverview Drive was the quickest route to Robin’s house. It wasn’t
my
fault I had to pass Michael’s house the day after he’d presumably arrived home for his week-long break from school.

Or maybe I
was
a stalker.

In any case, I turned onto his street and accelerated, prepared to whiz by if someone happened to be looking out a window right then, close enough to recognize my car. I cleared a familiar curve in the road and the house, all lit up, filled the passenger side window. I held my breath until I saw that the windows were indeed clear and no one was looking at me, the desperate ex-girlfriend, skulking around under the cover of darkness.

But, reckless in my relief, I totally forgot about the large tree that half-obscured the driveway from this particular angle. And by the time I remembered, it was too late. I had already passed it, and on the other side, climbing into his car, was Michael.

Instinctively I hunched down, then realized a beat later that this, like any reaction in this moment, was futile. He knew my car, knew the sound of my car, as well as he knew me. So I did the next best thing—I floored it, and didn’t stop until I hit the outskirts of the subdivision. I drove the speed limit the rest of the way home, my face burning, and parked haphazardly in front of my father’s house.

Inside, I found Leanne wrapped up in a quilt on the living room couch, watching TV with jumbo box of tissues at her side.

“What’s up?” she asked, sounding like she’d just sucked down ten packs of cigarettes. She’d been battling the flu all week “Why do you look like that?”

“Like what?” I sat in Dad’s recliner, as far away from her as I could get and still be in the same room.

“All frazzled or whatever. Like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I sort of did,” I mumbled.

“Huh? What do you—” She was interrupted by a coughing fit that turned her face a frightening shade of purple. I jumped up to get her a glass of water. “Thanks,” she said when I handed it to her. “And this is me on a good day. I feel better than I have all week.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I actually got up and walked around the house today, took a shower…then almost passed out. I guess I’m not ready for more than that.” She put the water down and blew her nose. “So what were you saying?”

I sat back down. “It’s nothing.”

“Come on, Taylor. I’ve been stuck inside all week with Mom trying to force this disgusting electrolyte stuff on me to prevent dehydration. I’m starved for a conversation that doesn’t involve fevers and phlegm. Please.”

I’d rather have discussed phlegm, but she looked so pitiful and needy lying there. “I drove through Redwood Hills after work. I was going to see Robin but got a little sidetracked.” I stopped there, knowing my stepsister would fill in the rest.

“How’d he look?” she asked with a slight smile.

“I didn’t see him. I mean, I saw him, but just for a second before I booked it out of there. I don’t think he saw me. It was dark and I was out of there before he even glanced up.” I tilted the recliner back and sighed. “He looked good. Really good.”

Leanne adjusted the quilt around her, draping it across her shoulders until it resembled a giant hood. “Not to be judgmental or anything, but I don’t think it’s healthy for you to be driving by your ex-boyfriend’s house in the dark like some kind of stalker.”

I winced. “Curiosity got the better of me. I don’t plan on doing it again.”

“Taylor, you obviously still have feelings for him. You should call him sometime, see where his head’s at. You need answers. I bet he misses you as much as you miss him.”

“I can’t,” I said, horrified at the thought. I hadn’t spoken to Michael in two and a half months, which was an answer in itself. At some point our break had become an official break
up
. Meaning we were over. I didn’t need to call him to know that.

And like an audible reminder of another reason why I couldn’t call, my cell phone rang and it was Dylan.

“What are you doing?”

“Hanging out with Leanne,” I said. “She’s still sick.”

“You’re at home?” His words were partially drowned out by a series of raucous yells in the background. He’d sacrificed one night with me so he could go to a hockey game with his cousin, who had season tickets. I didn’t mind; I had a history paper that was due in a week and I hadn’t even done the research. I planned to make some coffee and get a start on it tonight.

“Yes, I’m at home. Where are you? Is the game over already?”

“Second period just ended. Hey, did you forget to take your phone off vibrate again? I called you about forty-five minutes ago and got voice mail.”

This was a bone of contention with us—me not answering my phone because I kept it on vibrate while I was at work and then usually forgot to turn the ringer back on later.

“I remembered about twenty minutes ago, when I came in. Sorry.” Now I could hear a loud voice, a man talking into a microphone. An announcer, maybe, going by the lilt of enthusiasm in his tone. “Who’s winning?”

“It’s tied. Three-three.” Static buzzed over the line. “Were you held up at work or what?”

“No,” I said, and then immediately wanted to kick myself. Now he would ask where I’d gone after work and I’d be forced to lie. To admit anything would only confirm his suspicions. All the colleges were on break this week and Dylan was well aware of the fact that Michael was probably in town, and way too close to me for his comfort. As a result, he’d been extra paranoid lately.

“Well, you got home fifteen minutes late,” he said, sounding almost like a parent. And I already had two of those. Three if you counted Lynn.

“I had to stop at the store for something. Jeez, what’s with the interrogation?”

“You could’ve just said that in the first place.”

“I didn’t realize buying tampons was vital information.”

Bad idea. When lying, keep it as simple as possible. Adding too much detail will only complicate your story, making it harder to remember later. I learned that much from
Law & Order
.

“Okay,” Dylan said, finally satisfied. Nothing like the word
tampons
to shut a guy up. “Listen, I gotta go. I’ll call you after the game. You’ll be home all night, right?”

“I already told you I have to work on my history paper tonight.”

“Have fun with that.” His voice was lighter now, almost cheerful. “Call you later.”

I hung up the phone, feeling Leanne’s gaze on me. “What the hell was that?” she asked.

“Dylan,” I replied, slipping my cell into my pocket, keeping it close in case God forbid I missed his call later.

“Do you guys always snipe at each other like that?”

I shrugged. We
had
been butting heads a lot lately. Sometimes I couldn’t stop myself from being snarky—he could be so damn
stifling
.

“He called here earlier, by the way,” Leanne said, yanking half a dozen tissues from the box. “After you didn’t answer your cell, I guess. Dude needs to chill. He sure does like to keep track of you, doesn’t he?”

“He’s insecure.”

She gave me a long, thoughtful look, telling me silently that she knew as well as I did that something was wrong with this relationship. And if all I had the guts to do was make excuses for it, and for Dylan, things were bound to get much worse.

“Pay attention, Taylor,” she said, her raspy voice suddenly dead serious.

My head jerked up. “What?”

“Not to me. Pay attention to what’s going on. The warning signs.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had an ‘insecure’ boyfriend once.” She coughed into her tissues. “When I was in tenth grade. His name was Eli. He was this popular, charming guy who all the girls wanted, and for a while I thought I was the luckiest person on earth. Then he changed.”

Leanne never discussed personal stuff like this. I leaned forward, riveted, as she told me about Eli. About how he started off nice but then changed into someone else, someone who ragged on her about everything, from how she acted to how she dressed. She couldn’t please him no matter what she did. Then he started alienating her from her friends, telling her they were all idiots, too stupid to hang around with, until finally she dropped them all. He called her constantly so he’d know exactly where she was and what she was doing at all times. He didn’t stop until her whole world revolved around him. Which it did, for a long time.

“I lost myself,” she said.

The whole thing was shocking to me. Leanne always seemed so tough, so in control of what she wanted. Where had I been during all this? I remembered her being wild back then, lashing out at her mom, running away. Her problems had been kept from me, or maybe I had purposely chosen to steer clear of anything to do with her because she’d intimidated the hell out of me up until a year and a half ago. “How did you get away from him?” I asked.

She started shredding a Kleenex into thin ribbons. “One day I didn’t show up when I was supposed to and he beat the crap out of me. Before that he’d never laid a hand on me, but I guess I pushed him too far that day. He just…exploded.”

I swallowed hard. “Oh my God.”

“It was bad. Mom
freaked
. Called the police and pressed charges. You know my father used to beat her, right? Well, no one was going to do that to
her
daughter and get away with it. So we got a restraining order and Eli wasn’t allowed near me anymore.”

“Is that why you switched schools?”

She nodded. “If I’d stayed where I was, his asshole friends would’ve made my life a living hell. So I transferred to Redwood Hills High, where I didn’t know a soul. I was surrounded by all these preppy rich kids who pretty much ignored my existence, but that was what I needed then, to be left alone. After a while I made friends with some of the outcasts and ended up having a decent couple of years there.”

My mind whirled with the knowledge that some guy had
beat up
my one-hundred-pounds-soaking-wet stepsister. I tried to imagine Dylan losing control like that, “exploding” like Leanne’s boyfriend had done, but I couldn’t fathom it.