Somebody Else ✔

Suspended like a boss.

Timothée Chalamet as Vinnie 😍

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cole.

Edited.

The girls left their school bags in the back of my car, and being the taxi service I was, Friday morning before school, I drove them back.

I chose to go to Izzy's house last, and followed the directions on Google Maps to the address she had sent me. Not wanting to speak to her, I was planning on dropping the bag off on her driveway -- it was raining so it'd hopefully get saturated -- and getting out of there before she could mention Joel to me again. I formulated possible scenarios of our conversation if I did have to speak to her. I'd call her out for cheating on one of my friends. I might even call her a good for nothing bitch.

It was early, barely 7 o'clock when I arrived at Izzy's -- the worst house on a reasonable street. It looked different in the morning than it did in the night; with a broken brick driveway, unkempt garden and a girl sitting on the curb with her head in her hands?

The girl didn't react as I parked my car next to her. Through the unwound window I asked. "Izzy?" She was dressed in baggy track pants and a jumper that probably would've been too big for me -- it couldn't be her.

The girl peered up at me through her fingers. It was an exhausted Izzy. "Oh. Hey." She blinked up at me. Her lips were blue, her red hair dark and hanging, dripping in her face. She had a red welt over her left cheekbone and her knuckles bled. My stomach flipped. Silently staring at each other, it took her a few minutes to say, "My dog got out."

"I've got your school bag."

"Cheers."

"I can help you find your dog?" So much for avoiding her as much as possible and yelling at her for cheating on Joel. She stopped and looked at me finally. Her hazel eyes were hooded and drained, her skin unhealthily pale. This girl was not the Izzy I had watched dance on tables and enthrall those around her, not the girl who shrugged off the rumours surrounding her.

She could guess what I thought about her, but she was just too tired so she said reservedly. "She normally just runs to the park." I leaned over and pushed the passenger side door open for her. She climbed in shaking. Joel's name hammered itself against my mind. I still couldn't let her freeze. I passed her the jacket I wore over my school uniform.

"So, according to Alex I'm being dragged to your netball game tomorrow." I tried to incite her into conversation. The silence was gnawing at me. She barely rose an eyebrow. "Yeah, he's going to watch Sam and is making us come." She nodded. I let the conversation go.

The park was only a minute drive from Izzy's house. Making up the park was a large green field, pond and playground. We didn't have to search for very long to find her dog. She was hiding in the undergrowth, around the edge of the green sludge of a pond. She was a soaking wet Caviler King Charles Spaniel. "We called her Molly after one of King Charles the Second's mistresses. Cause her breed is named after him." I started laughing and didn't stop until Molly peed on my backseat, and then Izzy starts to tremble with laughter.

"Sweetheart, you are cleaning that shit up."

"I would love to, but I've got to get home." Instead, she took the tissues from the glove box and threw them over the puddle. She knotted her fingers together and yanked, as I pulled back up to her driveway. Light from inside oozed through the cracks in the curtains of the front room. The words formed and bubbled like acid in the back of my throat. They fizzled out. "I know what you think I did." And that was the last thing she said to me, before she climbed out of my car with Molly in her arms and reluctantly went back into her house. The drive to school was arguing with myself over what she meant.