Someone Like You (5 page)

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.”

“I am not a wuss,” I said. “God.”

She just looked at me. I stuck my head back out the window.

“Macon.” I said it a little louder this time, just because I was angry. “Macon.”

Another loud exhalation from Scarlett. I was getting completely soaked.

“Macon,” I said a bit louder, stretching my head completely out of the car.
“Macon!!”

He jerked suddenly on the sidewalk, turning around and looking at me as if he expected us to come flying up the curb in our tiny car to squash him completely. Then he just stared, his shirt soaked and sticking to his skin, his hair dripping onto his face, stood and stared at me as if I was completely and utterly nuts.

“What?”
he screamed back, just as loudly.
“What
is
it?”

Beside me, Scarlett burst out laughing, the first time I'd heard her laugh since I'd come home. She leaned back in her seat, hand over her mouth, giggling uncontrollably. I wanted to die.

“Um,” I said, and he was still staring at me. “Do you want a ride?”

“I'm okay,” he said across me, to Scarlett. “But thanks.”

“Macon, it's pouring.” She had her Mom voice on, one I recognized. As he looked across me, I could see how red his eyes were, swollen from crying. “Come on.”

“I'm okay,” he said again, backing off from the car. He wiped his hand over his face and hair, water spraying everywhere. “I'll see you later.”

“Macon,” she called out again, but he was already gone, walking back into the rain. As we sat at the stoplight, he cut around a corner and disappeared; the last thing I saw was his shirt, a flash of white against the brick of the alley. Then he was gone, vanishing so easily it seemed almost like magic—there was no trace. Scarlett sighed as I rolled up my window, saying something about everybody having their ways. I was only watching the alleyway, the last place I'd seen him, wondering if he'd ever even been there at all.

When I think of Michael Sherwood, what really comes to mind is produce. Deep yellow bananas, bright green kiwis, cool purple plums smooth to the touch. Our friendship with Michael Sherwood, popular boy and legend, began simply with fruits and vegetables.

Scarlett and I were cashiers at Milton's Market, wearing our little green smocks and plastic name tags:
Hello, I'm Halley! Welcome to Milton‘s!
She worked register eight, which was the No Candy register, and I worked Express Fifteen Items and Under right next to her, close enough to roll my eyes or yell over the beeping of my price scanner when it all got to be too much. It wasn't the greatest job by a long stretch. But at least we were together.

We'd seen Michael Sherwood come in to interview at the end of June. He'd been wearing a tie. He looked nervous and waved at me like we were friends as he waited for an application at the Customer Service Desk. He got placed in Fruits and Vegetables, his official title being Junior Assistant to Produce Day Manager, which meant that he stacked oranges, repacked fruit in those little green trays and sealed them with cling wrap, and watered the vegetables with a big hose twice a day. Mostly he laughed and had a good time, quickly making friends with everyone from Meat to Health and Beauty Aids. But it was me and Scarlett he was drawn to. Well, it was Scarlett, really. As usual, I was just along for the ride.

It started with kiwis. During his first week, Michael Sherwood ate four kiwi fruit for lunch each day. Just kiwis. Nothing else. He'd stick them on Scarlett's little scale in their plastic bag, smiling, then take them outside to the one little patch of grass in the parking lot and cut and eat them, one by one, by himself. We wondered about this. We never ate kiwis.

“He likes fruit,” Scarlett said simply one day after he was gone, having smiled his big smile at her and made her blush. He came to my register once, but by the third day he was standing in line at Scarlett's, even when my overhead light was flashing OPEN NO WAITING.

I looked out at Michael, in his green produce apron, sitting in the sun with those tiny fuzzy fruits, and shook my head. It would always take at least fifteen minutes for Scarlett to stop blushing.

The next day, when he got to the front of the line with his kiwis and Scarlett was ringing him up, she said, “You must really like these things.”

“They're awesome,” he said, leaning over her little check and credit-card station. “Haven't you ever tried one?”

“Only in fruit salad,” Scarlett said, and I was so distracted listening I rang up some rigatoni at two hundred dollars, screwing up my register altogether and scaring the hell out of the poor woman in my line, who was only buying that, some pineapple spears, and a box of tampons. Between voiding and ringing everything back out, I missed half of their conversation, and when I turned back Michael was walking outside with his lunch and Scarlett was holding one fuzzy kiwi in her hand, examining it from every angle.

“He gave it to me,” she whispered. Her face was blazing red. “Can you believe it?”

“Excuse me, miss,” someone in my line shouted, “are you open?”

“Yes,” I shouted back. To Scarlett I said, “What else did he say?”

“I have these,” said a tall, hairy man in a polka-dot shirt as he pushed his cart up, thrusting a pile of sticky coupons in my hand. He was buying four cans of potted meat, some air freshener, and two cans of lighter fluid. Sometimes you don't even want to think about what people are doing with their groceries.

“I think I'm going to take my break,” Scarlett called to me, pulling the drawer from her register. “Since I'm slow and all.”

“Wait, I'll be done here in a sec.” But of course my line was long now, full of people with fifteen items, or eighteen items, or even twenty with a little creative counting, all staring blankly at me.

“Do you mind?” Scarlett said, already heading to the offices to drop off her drawer, that one kiwi in her free hand. “I mean ...”

She glanced outside quickly, and I could see Michael on the curb with his lunch.

“It's okay,” I said, turning back to Scarlett as I ran Hairy Man's check through the confirming slot. “I'll just take my break later, or something....”

But she didn't hear me, was already gone, outside to the curb and the sunshine, sitting next to Michael Sherwood. My best friend Scarlett had traded a kiwi fruit for her heart.

I didn't get many breaks with her after that. Michael Sherwood wooed her with strange, foreign fruits and vegetables, dropping slivers of green melon and dark red blood oranges off at her register when she was busy. Later, when she looked up, there'd be something poised above her on her NO CANDY REGISTER sign; a single pear, perfectly balanced, three little radishes all in a row. I never saw him do it, and I watched her station like a hawk. But there was something magical about Michael Sherwood, and of course Scarlett loved it. I would have too, if it had ever happened to me.

That was the first summer when it wasn't just me and Scarlett. Michael was always there making us laugh, doing belly flops into the pool or sliding his arms around Scarlett's waist as she stood at the kitchen counter, stirring brownie mix. It was the first summer we didn't spend practically every night together, either; sometimes, I'd look across the street in early evening and see her shades drawn, Michael's car in the driveway, and know I had to stay away. Late at night I'd hear them outside saying good-bye, and I'd pull my curtain aside and watch as he kissed her in the dim yellow of the streetlight. I'd never had to fight for her attention before. Now, all it took was a look from Michael and she was off and running, with me left behind again to eat lunch alone or watch TV with my father, who always fell asleep on the couch by eight-thirty and snored to boot. I missed her.

But Scarlett was so happy, there was no way I could hold anything against her. She practically glowed twenty-four hours a day, always laughing, sitting out on the curb in front of Milton's with Michael, catching the grapes he tossed in her mouth. They hid out in her house for entire weekends, cooking spaghetti for Marion and renting movies. Scarlett said that after his breakup with Elizabeth at the end of the school year, Michael just didn't want to deal with the gossip. The day we went to the lake was the first time they'd risked exposure to our classmates, but it had been empty on the beaches, quiet, as we tossed the Frisbee and ate the picnic Scarlett packed. I sat with my
Mademoiselle
magazine, watching them swim together, dunking each other and laughing. It was later, just as we were leaving and the sun was setting in oranges and reds behind them, that I snapped the picture, the only one Scarlett had of them together. She'd grabbed it out of my hand the day I got them, taking my double copy, too, and giving it to Michael, who stuck it over the speedometer in his car, where it stayed until he traded the car a few weeks later for the motorcycle.

By the beginning of August, he'd told her he loved her. She said they'd been sitting at the side of her pool, legs dangling, when he just leaned over, kissed her ear, and said it. She'd whispered it as she told me, as if it was some kind of spell that could easily be broken by loud voices or common knowledge.
I
love you.

Which made it so much worse when he was gone so quickly, just two weeks later. The only boy who had ever said it to her and meant it. The rest of the world didn't know how much Scarlett loved Michael Sherwood. Even I couldn't truly have understood, much as I might have wanted to.

 

On the first day of school, Scarlett and I pulled into the parking lot, found a space facing the back of the vocational building, and parked. She turned off the engine of the Aspire, dropping her keychain in her lap. Then we sat.

“I don't want to do it,” she said decisively.

“I know,” I said.

“I mean it this year,” she said, sighing. “I just don't think I have it in me. Under the circumstances.”

“I know,” I said again. Since the funeral, Scarlett had seemed to fold into herself; she hardly ever mentioned Michael, and I didn't either. We'd spent the entire first part of the summer talking about nothing but him, it seemed, and now he was out of bounds, forbidden. They'd planted a tree for him at school, with a special plaque, and the Sherwoods had put up their house for sale; I'd heard they were moving to Florida. Life was going on without him. But when he was mentioned, I hated the look that crossed her face, a mix of hurt and overwhelming sadness.

Now people were streaming by in new clothes, down the concrete path that led to the main building. I could hear voices and cars rumbling past. Sitting there in the Aspire, we held on to our last bit of freedom.

I sat and waited, shifting my new backpack, which sat between my feet, a stack of new shiny spiral notebooks and un-sharpened pencils zipped away in its clean, neat compartments. It was always Scarlett who decided when it was time.

“Well,” she said deliberately, folding her arms over her chest. “I guess we don't have much of a choice.”

“Scarlett Thomas!” someone shrieked from beside the car, and we looked up to see Ginny Tabor, in a new short haircut and red lipstick, running past us holding hands with Brett Hershey, the football captain. Only Ginny could hook up with someone at a funeral. “School is this way!” she pointed with one red fingernail, then laughed, throwing her head back while Brett looked on as if waiting for someone to throw him something. She waggled her fingers at us and ran on ahead, dragging him behind her. I couldn't believe we'd spent so much time with her early that summer. It seemed like years ago now.

“God,” Scarlett said, “I really hate her.”

“I know.” This was my line.

She took a deep breath, reached into the backseat for her backpack, and pulled it into her lap. “Okay. There's really no avoiding it.”

“I agree,” I said, unlocking my door.