Someone Like You

Content Warning: This section references death and abusive behaviors.

“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.”

This early quote illustrates how Halley’s relationship with her mother is morphing into something neither of them recognize. The “draw” is an indication of how Halley and Julia’s relationship has become stagnant as each of them attempts to figure out how to relate to one another as Halley gets older.

“[Life] is an ugly, awful place to not have a best friend.”

The loving relationship between Halley and Scarlett is central to Someone Like You. Though both Scarlett and Halley experience romantic relationships throughout the text, their relationship with each other proves to be more important and lasting, highlighting The Importance of Friendship.

“When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. But the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren’t yet in place. Scarlett’s vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.”

This quote lends important insight into how Halley sees herself at the beginning of the text: unfinished and waiting for life events to happen to her so that she will be “filled in” with the colors and patterns that make an individual unique. Halley believes that Scarlett lends some color to her personality, but Halley feels that she is only borrowing these colors and seeks to form more of an identity on her own.