I can never trust you with anything, give you any piece of me without you grabbing it to keep for yourself.' I can never trust you with anything or share anything with you. And then you wonder why I never tell you anyone or share anything with you. 'Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance.' 'Why don't you ask me what I said to him out there?' 'Why are you just assuming I'm going back to him?' I asked her, just as she was drawing in breath to make another point. I don't care if I have to follow you twenty-four hours a day, you will not see him, Halley. 'I don't care if I have to send you away or switch schools. 'I don't care what I have to do,' she said, her voice low and even.

She was taking this moment, this time when I was strongest, away from me.

The best thing she has going is her own steady voice.“Mom.' I couldn't believe she was doing this again. Talented as she is, Sarah Dessen can't quite attend to all this activity. Her mother schedules an abortion, but Scarlett flees, and with Halley's full support arranges to keep the baby. Then it emerges that the one time Scarlett had sex was enough to make her pregnant. The book begins with a phone call from Scarlett: her boyfriend of a few weeks, her first true love, has been killed in a motorcycle accident. But she equates the tumult of adolescence with tumultuous One scene at the supermarket where Scarlett and Halley work as cashiers shows that they have lives off the page. The author propels her story with a stream of witty observations and smart dialogue. Should she sleep with him before he says ''I love you''? Takes the attractive form of a romance with the neighborhood bad boy, Macon Faulkner. Halley, who narrates, struggles to disentangle herself from her mother's apron strings - a job made tougher (and funnier) by the mother having exchanged the apron for renown as an authority on adolescence. Scarlett is wise and generous, and Halley, vulnerable but striving for strength, rides on Scarlett's popularity.

Two best friends, high school juniors, love each other with steely Southern loyalty. On the surface, the book seems to have everything. ''Someone Like You,'' falls into the category of good enough - it will entertain teen-age girls, but its reliance on the conventions of so many young-adult novels pegs it as a genre piece. Arah Dessen's first novel, ''That Summer,'' was so good that adults could read it with at least as much pleasure as teen-agers.

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