Someone Like You Read Online Free PDF Page A

white collar. “I don’t have a single thing that’s appropriate.”
    â€œYou can wear my twelve-year-old dress,” I offered, and she made a face.
    â€œI 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.
    â€œWha—?” he managed, sitting up straighter and blinking. He was all tangled up, one sheet wrapped around his arm. “Where’s Scarlett?”
    â€œShe’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.
    â€œWell, 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.
    â€œDid you meet Halley?” Scarlett asked him, hanging the dress on her closet door. “Halley, this is Macon. Macon, Halley.”
    â€œHi,” I said, immediately aware of how high my voice was.
    â€œHey.” 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.”
    â€œWell, 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