Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen Page B

something-I’ll be right down, okay?”
    â€œFine.”
    Marion went upstairs and I heard her knocking on Scarlett’s door, her voice muffled. Steve came in the kitchen. He looked even blander under bright light. “Hello there,” he said. “I’m Steve.”
    â€œHalley,” I said, still trying to listen to what was happening upstairs. “It’s nice to meet you.”
    â€œAre you a friend of Scarlett’s?” he asked.
    â€œYes,” I said, and now I could hear Scarlett’s voice, raised, through the ceiling overhead. I thought I could make out the word hypocrite. “I am.”
    â€œShe seems like a nice girl,” he said. “Halley. That’s an unusual name.”
    â€œI was named for my grandmother,” I told him. Now I could hear Marion’s voice, stern, and I babbled on to cover it. “She was named for the comet.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYes,” I said, “she was born in May of 1910, when the comet was coming through. Her father watched it from the hospital lawn while her mom was in the delivery room. And in 1986, when I was six, we watched it together.”
    â€œThat’s fascinating,” Steve said, like he really meant it.
    â€œWell, I don’t remember it that well,” I said. “They say it wasn’t very clear that year.”
    â€œI see,” Steve said. He seemed relieved to hear Marion coming down the stairs.
    â€œReady?” she called out, all composure, but she still wouldn’t look at me.
    â€œReady,” Steve said cheerfully. “Nice to meet you, Halley.”
    â€œNice to meet you, too.”
    He slipped his arm around Marion as they left, his hand on the small of her back as they headed down the front walk. She was nodding, listening as he spoke, holding her car door open. As they pulled away she let herself look back and up, to Scarlett’s bedroom window.
    When I went upstairs, Scarlett was on the bed, her legs pulled up against her chest. The flowers Steve had brought Marion were abandoned on the dresser, still in their crinkly cellophane wrapper.
    â€œSo,” I said. “I think that went really well, don’t you?”
    She smiled, barely. “You should have heard her. All this stuff about the mistakes she’d made and how I should have known better. Like doing this was some way of proving her the worst mother ever.”
    â€œNo,” I said, “I think my mother’s got that one pegged.”
    â€œYour mother would sit you down and discuss this, rationally, and then counsel you to the best decision. Not run out the door with some warrior.”
    â€œMy mother,” I said, “would drop dead on the spot.”
    She got up and went to the dresser mirror, leaning in to look at herself. “She says we’ll go to the clinic on Monday and make an appointment. For an abortion.”
    I could see myself behind her in the mirror. “Is that what you decided to do?”
    â€œThere wasn’t much of a discussion.” She ran her hands over her stomach, along the waist of her jeans. “She said she had one, a long time ago. When I was six or seven. She said it’s no big deal.”
    â€œIt’d be so hard to have a baby,” I said, trying to help. “I mean, you’re only sixteen. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
    â€œShe did, too. When she had me.”
    â€œThat was different,” I said, but I knew it really wasn’t. Marion had been a senior in high school, about to go off to some women’s college out west. Scarlett’s father was a football player, student council president. He left for a Big East school and Marion never saw or contacted him again.
    â€œKeeping me was probably the only unselfish thing Marion’s ever done in her life,” Scarlett said. “I’ve always wondered why she did.”
    â€œStop it,” I said. “Don’t talk like