Someone Like You Read Free

our separate corners, I could always count on hearing the whirring of the blender in the kitchen, and then him appearing at my doorway presenting me with the thickest, coldest milkshake as a peace offering. But all the milkshakes in the world weren’t going to get me out of this.
    So, just like that, I lost the end of my summer. By that Sunday I was packed and riding three hours into the mountains with my mother, who spend the entire ride reminiscing about her own golden camp years and promising me I’d thank her when it was over. She dropped me at the registration desk, kissed me on the forehead and told me she loved me, then drove off waving into the sunset. I stood there with my duffel bag and glowered after her, surrounded by a bunch of other girls who clearly didn’t want to spend two weeks “bonding” either.
    I was on what they called “scholarship” at Sisterhood Camp, which meant I had my way paid free, just like the four other girls I met whose parents just happened to be therapists. I made friends with my cabinmates, and we complained to each other, mocked all the seminar leaders, and worked on our tans, talking about boys.
    But now I was leaving early, drawn home by the loss of a boy I’d hardly known. I put my stuff in the trunk of the car and climbed in beside my mother, who said hello and then not much else for the first fifteen minutes of the drive. As far as I was concerned, we’d come to a draw: I hadn’t wanted to come, and she didn’t want me to leave. We were even. But I knew my mother wouldn’t see it that way. Lately, we didn’t seem to see anything the same.
    â€œSo how was it?” she asked me once we got on the highway. She’d set the cruise control, adjusted the air-conditioning, and now seemed ready to make peace. “Or what you saw of it, that is.”
    â€œIt was okay,” I said. “The seminars were kind of boring.”
    â€œHmm,” she said, and I figured that I was pushing it. I knew my mother, though. She’d push back. “Well, maybe if you’d stayed the whole time you might have gotten more out of it.”
    â€œMaybe,” I said. In the side mirror, I could see the mountains retreating behind us, bit by bit.
    I knew there were a lot of things she probably wanted to say to me. Maybe she wanted to ask me why I cared about Michael Sherwood, since she’d hardly heard me mention him. Or why I’d hated the idea of camp right from the start, without even giving it a chance. Or maybe it was more, like why in just the last few months even the sight of her coming toward me was enough to get my guard up. Why we’d gone from best friends to something neither of us could rightly define. But she didn’t say anything.
    â€œMom?”
    She turned to look at me, and I could almost hear her take a breath, readying herself for whatever I might try next. “Yes?”
    â€œThanks for letting me come home.”
    She turned back to the road. “It’s all right, Halley,” she said to me softly as I leaned back in my seat. “It’s all right.”
    Â 
    My mother and I had always been close. She knew everything about me, from the boys I liked to the girls I envied; after school I always sat in the kitchen eating my snack and doing homework while I listened for her car to pull up. I always had something to tell her. After my first school dance she sat with me eating ice cream out of the carton while I detailed every single thing that had happened from first song to last. On Saturdays, when my dad pulled morning shift at the radio station, we had Girls’ Lunch Out so we could keep up with each other. She loved fancy pasta places, and I only liked fast food and pizza, so we alternated. She made me eat snails, and I watched her gulp down (enjoying it more than she ever would admit) countless Big Macs. We had one rule: we always ordered two desserts and shared. Afterwards we’d