Someone Else by Rebecca Phillips

“It is pretty bad.”
    “McDowell’s a fossil,” Mallory said.
    Jess nudged my foot with hers. “Taylor, don’t worry about it, okay? Dylan’s kind of intense sometimes, and he’s sensitive, but he’ll survive. He likes you, but really, it’s just a harmless crush. He sees a girl who’s pretty and nice and he thinks he feels some sort of connection between the two of you.”
    “Which is dumb because you guys don’t even hang out,” Lia put in.
    I wanted to agree with her, to say it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, but all I could think about was how not dumb it really was. Maybe we did have a connection. And maybe we didn’t hang out, per se, but over the past couple of weeks we’d started talking a little more. Small talk, for the most part, little comments exchanged during chemistry lab or at our lockers between classes. Innocent enough that it made me think that one day we might even get to be friends. Just friends. Never mind the spark between us. Never mind the fact that whenever I was with him, I would spend the entire time searching my brain for something funny to say just so I could see his dimples when he smiled.

Chapter 8
     
     
    My mother was on me the second I walked into the kitchen. “What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing.” I knew I looked like death warmed over after an eight-hour Sunday shift at the restaurant. Being a server was a lot tougher than I thought it would be. Moretti’s wasn’t like Chick N’ Burger at all. At first, I felt like maybe I’d bitten off more than I could chew, but after two weeks there I was finally starting to get the hang of it.
    “Don’t you have an English test tomorrow?” Mom asked. She was sitting at the table with her laptop and mug of tea, catching up on work.
    “I’ve been studying all weekend.” I extracted my plate of dinner from the fridge and dug in, not bothering to heat it up. “All I have to do tonight is go over one poem.”
    “Remember what we discussed…if you fall behind in school, the job goes and so does your car.”
    “I know, Mom.” I’d heard this line so many times, it may as well have been tattooed down my arm. I shoveled in some more cold chicken.
    “I know you know,” she said. “But it’s so easy to become overwhelmed.”
    I didn’t dare tell her that I already felt overwhelmed most of the time. Handing work and school and friends and a relationship was a delicate juggling act—if one fell, the rest would follow. It took some effort to keep them all in the air.
    My beeping cell phone waited for me in my room. I sat on the bed, muscles sighing with relief, and picked it up. Two texts from Jessica, one about some chem notes she needed to borrow and one asking when I wanted to go dress shopping for the holiday semi-formal dance, which was this Friday. I deleted that one. She already had a dress—it was me she insisted on shopping for. Me, who refused to go the stupid dance without a date, even though a lot of other girls were going with friends. Me, who was sick and tired of everyone bugging me to go, even though I didn’t have to work that night, and even though the prospect of staying home, alone, when every single one of my friends would be out having fun, was really depressing.
    There was one more message—Michael, calling to apologize for not getting in touch with me yesterday. I deleted that one too and tossed the phone over my shoulder. It landed softly on the bed behind me. A second later I flopped down next to it, my unstudied poem forgotten.
    I stared up at the ceiling, trying to figure out when my relationship with Michael had changed, the exact moment we’d gone from so close to so distant. Maybe it wasn’t a moment at all…maybe it had been a gradual thing, building since the day he left. Whatever was happening between us, I did know one thing for sure—being apart wasn’t getting any easier. With every argument or misunderstanding or missed phone call, we slipped a little further away from what