Someone Like You, Page 3

  Scarlett poured herself some cereal, adding sugar from the bowl between us. “Do you want some?”

  “No,” I said. “I ate already.” My mother had made me French toast, after spending most of the early morning gossiping over the back fence with her best friend, Irma Trilby, who was known for her amazing azaleas and her mouth, the latter of which I’d heard all morning through my window. Apparently Mrs. Trilby had known Mrs. Sherwood well from PTA and had already been over with a chicken casserole to relay her regrets. Mrs. Trilby had also seen me and Michael and Scarlett more than once walking home from work together, and late one night she’d even caught a glimpse of Scarlett and Michael kissing under a streetlight. He was a sweet boy, she’d said in her nasal voice. He mowed their lawn after Arthur’s coronary and always got her the best bananas at Milton’s, even if he had to sneak some from the back. A nice boy.

  So my mother came inside newly informed and sympathetic and made me a huge breakfast that I picked at while she sat across the table, coffee mug in hand, smiling as if waiting for me to say something. As if all it took was Michael Sherwood mowing a lawn, or finding the perfect banana, to make him worth mourning.

  “So what time’s the service?” Marion asked me, picking up her Marlboro Lights from the lazy Susan in the middle of the table.

  “Eleven o’clock.”

  She lit a cigarette. “We’re packed with appointments today, but I’ll try to make it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Scarlett said.

  Marion worked at the Lakeview Mall at Fabulous You, a glamour photography store where they had makeup and clothes and got you all gussied up, then took photographs that you could give to your husband or boyfriend. Marion spent forty hours a week making up housewives and teenagers in too much lipstick and the same evening gowns, posing them with an empty champagne glass as they gazed into the camera with their best come-hither look. It was a hard job, considering some of the raw material she had to work with; not everyone is cut out to be glamorous. She often said there was only so much of a miracle to be worked with concealer and creative lighting.

  Marion pushed her chair back, running a hand through her hair; she had Scarlett’s face, round with deep green eyes, and thick blond hair she bleached every few months. She had bright red fingernails, smoked constantly, and owned more lingerie than Victoria’s Secret. The first time I’d met her, the day they moved in, Marion had been flirting with the movers, dressed in hip-huggers, a macramé halter top that showed her stomach, and heels at least four inches high. She wasn’t like my mother; she wasn’t like anyone’s mother. To me, she looked just like Barbie, and she’d fascinated me ever since.

  “Well,” Marion drawled, standing up and ruffling Scarlett’s hair with her hand as she passed. “Got to get ready for the salt mines. You girls call if you need me. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Scarlett said, taking another mouthful of cereal.

  “Bye, Marion,” I said.

  “She won’t come,” Scarlett said once Marion was safely upstairs, her footsteps creaking above us.

  “Why not?”

  “Funerals freak her out.” She dropped her spoon in her bowl, finished. “Marion has a convenient excuse for everything.”

  When we went upstairs to get ready I flopped on the edge of her bed, which was covered in clothes and magazines and mismatched blankets and sheets. Scarlett opened her closet and stood in front of it with her hands on her hips, contemplating. Marion yelled good-bye from downstairs and the front door slammed, followed by the sound of her car starting and backing out of the driveway. Through the window over Scarlett’s bed, I could see my own mother sitting in the swing on our front porch, drinking coffee and reading the paper. As Marion drove past she waved; her “neighbor smile” on, and went back to reading.

  “I hate this,” Scarlett said suddenly, reaching into the closet and pulling out a navy blue dress with a white collar. “I don’t have a single thing that’s appropriate.”

  “You can wear my twelve-year-old dress,” I offered, and she made a face.

  “I bet Marion’s got something,” she said suddenly, leaving the room. Marion’s closet was legend; she was a fashion plate and a pack rat, the most dangerous of pairings.

  I reached over and turned on the radio next to the bed, leaning back and closing my eyes. I’d spent half my life in Scarlett’s room, sprawled across the bed with a stack of Seventeen magazines between us, picking out future prom dresses and reading up on pimple prevention and boyfriend problems. Right next to her window was the shelf with her pictures: me and her at the beach two years ago, in matching sailor hats, doing a mock salute at my father’s camera. Marion at eighteen, an old school picture, faded and creased. And finally, at the end and unframed, that same picture of her and Michael at the lake. Since I left for Sisterhood Camp, she’d moved it so it was in easy reach.

  I felt something pressing into my back, hard, and I reached under to move it; it was a boot with a thick sole that resisted when I pulled on it. I shifted my position and gave it another yank, wondering when Scarlett had bought hiking boots. I was just about to yell out and ask her, when it suddenly yanked back, hard, and there was an explosion of movement on the bed, arms and legs flailing, things falling off the sides as someone rose out of the mess around me, shaking off magazines and blankets and pillows in all directions. And suddenly, I found myself face to face with Macon Faulkner.

  He glanced around the room as if he wasn’t quite sure where he was. His blond hair, cut short over his ears, stuck up in tiny cowlicks. In one ear was a row of three silver hoops.

  “Wha—?” he managed, sitting up straighter and blinking. He was all tangled up, one sheet wrapped around his arm. “Where’s Scarlett?”

  “She’s down there,” I said automatically, pointing toward the door, as if that was down, which it wasn’t.

  He shook his head, trying to wake up. I would have been just as shocked to see Mahatma Gandhi or Elvis in Scarlett’s bed; I had no idea she even knew Macon Faulkner. We all knew who he was, of course. As a Boy with a Reputation, his neighborhood legend preceded him.

  And what was he doing in her bed, anyway? It couldn’t mean—no. She would have told me; she told me everything. And Marion had said Scarlett slept on the couch.

  “Well, I think I can wear this,” I heard Scarlett say as she came back down the hallway, a black dress over her arm. She looked at Macon, then at me, and walked to the closet as if it was the most normal thing in the world to have a strange boy in your bed at ten in the morning on a Thursday.

  Macon lay back, letting one hand flop over his eyes. His boot, and his foot in it, had somehow landed in my lap, where it remained. Macon Faulkner’s foot was in my lap.

  “Did you meet Halley?” Scarlett asked him, hanging the dress on her closet door. “Halley, this is Macon. Macon, Halley.”

  “Hi,” I said, immediately aware of how high my voice was.

  “Hey.” He nodded at me, moving his foot off my lap as if that was nothing special, then got off the bed and stood up, stretching his arms. “Man, I feel awful.”

  “Well, you should,” Scarlett said in the same scolding voice she used with me when I was especially spineless. “You were incredibly wasted.”

  Macon leaned over and rooted around under the sheets, looking for something, while I sat there and stared at him. He was in a white T-shirt ripped along the hem and dark blue shorts, those clunky boots on his feet. He was tall and wiry, and tan from a summer working landscaping around the neighborhood, which was the only place I ever saw him, and even then from a distance.

  “Have you seen—?” he began, but Scarlett was already reaching to the bedside table and the baseball cap lying there. Macon leaned over and took it from her, then put it on with a sheepish look. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.” Scarlett pulled her hair back behind her head, gathering it in her hands, which meant she was thinking. “So, you need a ride to the service?”

  “Nah,” he said, walking to the
bedroom door with his hands in his pockets, stepping over my feet as if I was invisible. “I’ll see you there.”

  “Okay.” Scarlett stood by the doorway.

  “Is it cool? To go out this way?” he was whispering, gesturing down the hall to Marion’s empty room.

  “It’s fine.”

  He nodded, then stepped toward her awkwardly, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “Thanks,” he said quietly, in a voice I probably was not supposed to hear. “I mean it.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Scarlett said, smiling up at him, and we both watched him as he loped off, his boots clunking down the stairs and out the door. When I heard it swing shut, I walked to the window and leaned against the glass, waiting until he came out on the walk, squinting, and began those eighteen steps to the street. Across the street my mother looked up, folding her paper in her lap, watching too.

  “I cannot believe you,” I said out loud, as Macon Faulkner passed the prickly bushes and turned left, headed out of Lakeview —Neighborhood of Friends.

  “He was upset,” Scarlett said simply. “Michael was his best friend.”

  “But you never even told me you knew him. And then I come up here and he’s in your bed.”

  “I just knew him through Michael. He’s messed up, Halley. He’s got a lot of problems.”

  “It’s so weird, though,” I said. “I mean, that he was here.”

  “He just needed someone,” she said. “That’s all.”

  I still had my eye on Macon Faulkner as he moved past the perfect houses of our neighborhood, seeming out of place among hissing sprinklers and thrown newspapers on a bright and shiny late summer morning. I couldn’t say then what it was about him that kept me there. But just as he was rounding the corner, disappearing from sight, he turned around and lifted his hand, waving at me, as if he knew even without turning back that I’d still be there in the window, watching him go.

  When we got to the church, there was already a line out the door. Scarlett hadn’t said much the entire trip, and as we walked over, she was wringing her hands.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “It’s just weird,” she said, and her voice was low and hollow. She had her eyes on something straight ahead. “All of it.”

  As I looked up I could see what she meant. Elizabeth Gunderson, head cheerleader, was surrounded by a group of her friends on the church steps. She was sobbing hysterically, a red T-shirt in her hands.

  Scarlett stopped when we got within a few feet of the crowd, so suddenly that I kept walking and then had to go back for her. She was standing by herself, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

  “Scarlett?” I said.

  “This was a bad idea,” she said. “We shouldn’t have come.”

  “But—”

  And that was as far as I got before Ginny Tabor came up behind me, throwing her arms around both of us at once and collapsing into tears. She smelled like hairspray and cigarette smoke and was wearing a blue dress that showed too much leg.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, lifting her head to take in me and then Scarlett as we pulled away from her as delicately as possible. “It’s so awful, so terrible. I haven’t been able to eat since I heard. I’m a wreck.”

  Neither of us said anything; we just kept walking, while Ginny fumbled for a cigarette, lighting it and then fanning the smoke with one hand. “I mean, the time that we were together wasn’t all that great, but I loved him so much. It was just circumstances—” and now she sobbed, shaking her head—“that kept us apart. But he was, like, everything to me for those two months. Everything.”

  I looked over at Scarlett, who was studying the pavement, and I said, “I’m so sorry, Ginny.”

  “Well,” she said in a tight voice, exhaling a long stream of smoke, “it’s so different when you knew him well. You know?”

  “I know,” I said. We hadn’t seen much of Ginny since midsummer. After spending a few wild weeks with us, she’d gotten sent off to a combination cheerleading/Bible camp while her parents went to Europe. It was just as well, we figured. There was only so much of ongoing Ginny you could take. A few days later Scarlett had met Michael, and the second half of our summer began.

  We kept following the line into the church, now coming up on Elizabeth. Ginny, of course, made a big show of running over to her and bursting into fresh tears, and they stood and hugged each other, crying together.

  “It’s so awful,” a girl said from behind me. “He loved Elizabeth so much. That’s his shirt she’s holding, you know. She hasn’t put it down since she heard.”

  “I thought they broke up,” said another girl, and cracked her gum.

  “At the beginning of the summer. But he still loved her. Anyway, that Ginny Tabor is so damn shallow,” said the first girl. “She only dated him for about two days.”

  Once inside, we sat toward the back, next to two older women who pulled their knees aside primly as we slid past them. Up at the front of the church there were two posters with pictures of Michael taped to them: baby snapshots, school pictures, candids I recognized from the yearbook. And in the middle, biggest of all, was the picture from the slide show, the one that had brought cheers in that darkened auditorium in June. I wanted to point it out to Scarlett, but when I turned to tell her, she was just staring at the back of the pew in front of us, her face pale, and I kept quiet.

  The service started late, with people filing in and lining the walls, shuffling and fanning themselves with the little paper programs we’d been handed at the door. Elizabeth Gunderson came in, still crying, and was led to a seat with Ginny Tabor sobbing right behind her. It was strange to see my classmates in this setting; some were dressed up nicely, obviously used to wearing church clothes. Others looked out of place, awkward, tugging at their ties or dress shirts. I wondered what Michael was thinking, looking down at all these people with red faces shifting in their seats, at the wailing girls he left behind, at his parents in the front pew with his little sister, quietly stoic and sad. And I looked over at Scarlett, who had loved him so much in such a short time, and slipped my hand around hers, squeezing it. She squeezed back, still staring ahead.

  The service was formal and short; the heat was stifling with all the people packed in so tightly, and we could barely hear the minister over the fanning and the creaking of the pews. He talked about Michael, and what he meant to so many people; he said something about God having his reasons. Elizabeth Gunderson got up and left ten minutes into it, her hand pressed against her mouth as she walked quickly down the aisle of the church, a gaggle of friends running behind her. The older women next to us shook their heads, disapproving, and Scarlett squeezed my hand harder, her fingernails digging into my skin.

  When the service was over, there was an awkward murmur of voices as everyone filed outside. It had suddenly gotten very dark, with a strange breeze blowing that smelled like rain. Overhead the clouds had piled up big and black behind the trees.

  I almost lost Scarlett in the crowd of voices and faces and color in front of the church. Ginny was leaning on Brett Hershey, the captain of the football team, as he led her out. Elizabeth was sitting in the front seat of a car in the parking lot, the door open, her head in her hands. Everyone else stood around uncertainly as if they needed permission to leave, holding their programs and looking up at the sky.

  “Poor Elizabeth,” Scarlett said softly as we stood by her car.

  “They broke up a while ago,” I said.

  “Yeah. They did.” She kicked a pebble, and it rattled off of something under the car. “But he really loved her.”

  I looked over at her, the wind blowing her hair around her face, her fair skin so white against the black of Marion’s dress. The times I caught her unaware, accidentally, were when she was the most beautiful. “He loved you, too,” I told her.

  She looked up at the sky, black with clouds, the smell of rain stronger and stronger. “I know,” she said softly. “I know.”

  The first drop was big, slos
hy and wet, falling on my shoulder and leaving a round, dark circle. Then, suddenly, it was pouring. The rain came in sheets, sending people running toward their cars, shielding themselves with their flimsy paper programs. Scarlett and I dove into her car and watched the water stream down the windshield. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen it rain so hard.

  We pulled out onto Main Street in Scarlett’s Ford Aspire. Her grandmother had given it to her for her birthday in April. It was about the size of a shoe box; it looked like a larger car that had been cut in half with a big bread knife. As we crossed a river of water spilling into the road, I wondered briefly if we’d get pulled into the current and carried away like Wynken, Blynken, and Nod in their big shoe, out to sea.

  Scarlett saw him first, walking alone up the street, his white dress shirt soaked and sticking to his back. His head was ducked and he had his hands in his pockets, staring down at the pavement as people ran past with umbrellas. Scarlett beeped the horn, slowing beside him.

  “Macon!” she called out, leaning into the rain. “Hey!” He didn’t hear her, and she poked me. “Yell out to him, Halley.”

  “What?”

  “Roll down your window and ask him if he wants a ride.”

  “Scarlett,” I said, suddenly nervous, “I don’t even know him.”

  “So what?” She gave me a look. “It’s pouring. Hurry up.”

  I rolled my window down and stuck my head out, feeling the rain pelting the back of my neck. “Excuse me,” I said.

  He didn’t hear me. I cleared my throat, stalling. “Excuse me.”

  “Halley,” Scarlett said, glancing into the rearview mirror, “we’re holding up traffic here. Come on.”

  “He can’t hear me,” I said defensively.

  “You’re practically whispering.”

  “I am not,” I snapped. “I am speaking in a perfectly audible tone of voice.”

  “Just yell it.” Cars were going around us now as a fresh wave of rain poured in my window, soaking my lap. Scarlett exhaled loudly, which meant she was losing patience. “Come on, Halley, don’t be such a wuss.”