The Me You See

by Stevens, Shay Ray

  I swear. I did.

  But the tear didn’t stop. It went right past the fabric panel that was sewn in to stop the tear.

  Now, Stefia was on the bed and the audience couldn’t see what I saw. None of the other actors or stage hands could see what I saw. David Jeffery Hank couldn’t see what I saw.

  What I saw was the word Hate. Right there, etched in thick, puffy red letters into the skin below her breasts.

  Hate.

  She was a cutter.

  Stefia realized I’d seen it about the same time I realized what it was and for a millisecond we were thrown right out of the scene. I stared into her eyes and saw a mixture of anger and fear and almost an apology for having put it there to be seen. You could have heard a pin drop; the silence was closing in on my ears, louder than any applause I’d ever heard in my life.

  David had blocked the end of the scene to be absolute physical chaos. But I didn’t want that for Stefia. Not that night, anyway.

  Instead, I held her arms above her head and pinned to the bed. Then I got close to her ear and whispered stop fighting.

  She did.

  So I traced my finger over the tip of her nose, down her neck, and between her breasts that were barely covered with a white lace bra. I closed my fingers and rested my hand over the word hate.

  Then I saw a tear form in the corner of her eye.

  I saw Trevor off stage getting ready to enter stage right for his part which was to pull me off of her, and I knew our improvisation was almost over. There had been no kissing blocked into our scene, but I decided at that moment to kiss her harder than I’ve ever kissed anyone in my life before or since, like an apology for whatever she was going through that made her slice hate into her chest. The kiss lingered and my tongue slid its way into her mouth.

  She kissed me back. I know she returned the kiss.

  And then she bit my tongue.

  She bit my fucking tongue as hard as she could.

  Trevor ran in to pull me off of Stefia and was supposed to toss me with a well-blocked shove out the door stage left. But I was so caught off guard at the kiss, the bite, and that I could taste blood that I tripped and cracked my hand against the doorframe so hard that I wondered if the audience knew it was an accident.

  I stumbled into the wings, catching myself by the curtain and sat down, cradling my hand. Oh, my god…the fucking pain…

  Henny, the stagehand came running over.

  “Is it broken, man? Did you break it?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I said. “Just let me sit here a minute. I don’t feel good…”

  Henny ran to get David. I laid my head back against the heavy curtain and closed my eyes. My heart was pounding. I was going to pass out. I felt like shit.

  I knew it didn’t have anything to do with my hand.

  **

  After wincing my way through a bow that night, it came to our attention Dr. Patton was in the audience. He came backstage to look at my hand and assured me it wasn’t broken. I went into the guys’ dressing room and sat with an ice pack because I needed to sit.

  I just wanted to sit and think.

  David came in to check on my hand, again. He commented that our fight scene was the best he’d ever witnessed, the most ah-ma-zing ever, and congratulated me for really throwing myself into it. But I could also tell he was paranoid that I was going to be mad for the injury. I figured it must be hard to be a director because on one hand, he was pleased the scene had been so intense and convincing, but he wasn’t stupid and he could tell something had caused that scene to be what it was.

  I assured him it was fine, it would heal, and that I was completely okay to do the rest of the nine shows we had scheduled.

  “I wasn’t talking about your hand,” he said.

  Stefia walked in. David looked at her, then back at me. I hadn’t told him anything about what led to the most amazing scene ever on stage, but he knew by the heavy air between Stefia and I that we needed to clear something up.

  “You okay, kid?” he asked Stefia.

  “I’m fine,” she said, “and you know I’m not a kid.”

  David smiled at the both of us, went to the door, looked back one more time, and finally left.

  I looked down at the floor while rubbing my thigh with my good hand.

  She said nothing. And after a full minute of silence, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “Okay. What was that?” I asked.

  “What was what?”

  “Come on. Don’t play games.”

  Her eyes were so pristine, so faultless, that I almost wondered if maybe the whole thing had just been a case of two actors getting caught up in what was happening on stage.

  But then there was a snag in her breath. Just the slightest slip. And I knew I hadn’t misread anything.

  “You’re a cutter.”

  She breathed in, slowly.

  “Why are you a cutter?”

  She breathed out, slowly.

  “Why did you bite me?”

  Still, no answer.

  “Stefia, you obviously came in here for a reason, and it wasn’t just to stare at me. So say something.”

  “I bit you to distract you,” she finally said.

  “From what?” I said. “My lines? The blocking? The fact we were on stage?”

  “The cutting. I knew from the look on your face you saw it. You weren’t supposed to see it. How is your hand?”

  “Don’t worry about my hand,” I said.

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  I stared at her in disbelief.

  “Paul,” she said, quickly, “I need you to not tell anyone about what you saw…”

  “Why are you cutting?” I interrupted.

  “I can’t talk to you about this.”

  “Then what did you come in here for?”

  She stopped and I watched as her gaze fell down the length of the dressing room table. The stage makeup was lined up in boxes, mostly cleaned up and put back where it was supposed to go for the next night’s performance. She started fiddling with the things in the boxes, stacking cakes of foundation and putting tubes of mascara into the cup that kept them separated.

  “Just please don’t tell anyone what you saw,” she said, without looking away from the makeup.

  “Stefia, why do you do it?”

  “Have you ever wanted to dig something out of your life?” she said, looking up at herself in the mirror. “Ever wanted to get rid of something that you knew wasn’t yours to get rid of?”

  I didn’t respond. I just kept looking right at her, hoping she would look at me.

  “If you can’t get rid of that thing,” she continued, “if you can’t dig it out or cut it up…”

  “I get it,” I said. “If you can’t cut that thing out of your life…you just cut yourself. I get it.”

  “You do?”

  “My sister was a cutter.”

  “Then why did you ask why I did it?”

  “What is the thing you want to get rid of that you can’t? That’s what I wanted to know.”

  “You don’t get it,” she said, shaking her head and biting at her top lip. “I can’t tell people the truth. I can’t.”

  “Just open your fucking mouth and say something. You do it all the time on stage.”

  “I read lines, Paul. That’s all I do.”

  “What do you want to say that you can’t say? Just open your mouth!”

  “You are not pulling me into this,” she said, coming right at me and pushing a finger at my face. “I did not ask for you to see those marks.”

  “But they are there, Stefia. They are there and I did see them and someone else besides me is going to see them. You’re going to get measured for a costume or go skinny dipping at the beach or god knows what else and someone is going to see them.”

  “And then what?” she said, raking her fingers through her sweaty, over sprayed hair. “Paul, nobody is going to see them!”

  “Yes, they will,” I
said, standing up and pointing at her. “And you know what? They’re going to care enough to say something.”

  “Why would they care?”

  I stared at her incredulously, wondering if her callous detachment from what she was saying was for real or just a front.

  “Why wouldn’t they care?”

  “Listen, I’m sorry you saw it. This is…what you saw is the first thing I’ve cut. It’s not a big deal.”

  “It is a big deal, and I will bet you every dollar I have that it’s not the first time. Don’t lie to me…”

  “I don’t owe you the truth,” she hissed, stepping closer to me so no one would heard us outside the door. “I don’t owe you anything. We just have to get through this run of shows and then you can go back to your big fancy ass theater in the cities and you never have to deal with me again. You don’t have to worry about it.”

  “That’s not the first carving you’ve done,” I said, ignoring her outburst.

  “It’s the first word,” she said, as if her correction meant anything.

  “Why did you carve hate?”

  “You wouldn’t get it…”

  “Try me.”

  “Why? Why the hell should I tell you anything?”

  “Because we have to get through this run and then I can go back to my big fancy ass theater and not have to deal with you or worry about you. So why don’t you just go ahead and tell me why you carved hate?”

  She pulled at a stack of three rubber bands wound around her wrist, itching the mark the elastic had worn into her skin. Her jaw was locked in an attempt to squash back anything else that should never have come out. She stared. She focused her fiery little eyes right onto mine and finally unhinged her jaw.

  “I carved hate because when I scratch at the surface of myself, that’s what comes out.”

  There were no magical words I could conjure up to hurl out of my mouth at her to make the situation any better. The first time I’d seen her, I saw a put together, happy, absolutely beautiful woman who was sixteen, but so not sixteen. Now I just saw a churning ball of pain whose acidic insides were seeping out.

  Of course. It’s always the ones you don’t suspect. Just like my sister.

  David announced himself with a knock on the door and then walked in.

  “Everything okay in here?”

  “Fine,” we both answered as shortly as we could. Stefia stared at her bare feet and I fixated on the throbbing in my hand.

  “Listen, guys…if we need to change the scene…I mean….if it’s too much…”

  “It’s not too much,” Stefia said, emphatically. She looked up at David, took a deep breath, and then plastered a smile on her face. “It’s not too much. It’s perfect the way it is.”

  “It’s only opening night, you guys,” he said. “You’ve got nine more shows. I mean, the performance was amazing but…geez. I don’t know if I can take nine more times of you guys freaking out…”

  “Who said we’re freaking out?” I asked.

  “We’re fine,” Stefia said. “It’s fine.”

  “I heard voices in here. I heard you…”

  “It has nothing to do with the scene,” Stefia said.

  “Completely unrelated,” I agreed.

  If we would have been in a movie right then, the camera would have panned around to show each of our faces individually, fraught with worry. Then it would have fallen back to see the three of us in the dressing room in an uncomfortable dance of who was going to be the next person to speak up.

  “No issues I need to worry about, then?” David finally asked.

  “None,” Stefia answered quickly, her eyes rising to meet mine.

  “Everything is fine,” tumbled out of my mouth, even though it was a total lie.

  David walked out closed the door.

  “So, let me get this right,” I said. “Basically, you just want me to pretend I didn’t see anything. You want me to pretend there is nothing wrong.”

  “Yeah,” she said, full of sarcasm. “Gosh, I know. It’s crazy. I’m asking you to act.”

  “Stefia, I’m not on a fucking stage right now…”

  Hot stinging tears washed over my eyes. I wanted to break the mirror. I wanted to...

  “God, Paul. Don’t you get it?” she said, with a tired sigh.

  "Get what?" I screamed.

  “We’re always on stage. Always."

  She walked out of the dressing room and I kicked over the chair I'd sat in, sending it towards the door that she'd closed. I balled up two fists to hit the mirror but stopped short as pain stabbed through my hand, reminding me I’d already screwed it up enough.

  Then the tears spilled over, hot and fast, and I didn't even bother to wipe them away. Do you know why? Because Stefia was right.

  She was absolutely right.

  We are never not on stage.

  -Raynee-

  Stefia was a train wreck waiting to happen.

  Well, actually a car wreck, like when Old Man Rogers barreled his big ass farm truck down Main Street and plowed into that little car. But everyone always calls a bad situation a train wreck, so I’ve always thought of Stefia like a train.

  So, train wreck. Car wreck. Whatever. It’s like seeing something coming and knowing it’s going to be bad. Knowing its coming, watching the disaster happen, wanting to look away, but not being able to. Just like when I was coming out of the drug store that one day a couple years ago and saw the mess Old Man Rogers made. It was horrible but we all just kept staring at the wreck.

  Staring. Watching.

  That’s why I always kept watching Stefia. Princess Stefia. That annoying puke of small town royalty who got anything she wanted by twirling her perfect hair around her perfect finger. I’d kept watching her because I knew she was going to wreck.

  “What do you have against her?” Gabriella had asked one afternoon. School had ended two hours prior, after which we walked to Beidermann’s Ice Cream and decided to order double chocolate cones. We’d finished them and then hiked down to the river that the shop overlooked.

  “She’s everywhere. She’s in everything. She’s annoying,” I said. I sucked on my cigarette and then turned my hand to look at the chipped nail polish on my thumbnail. I had painted lime green and black stripes on the nails of my right hand the night before bed and the polish hadn’t even lasted twenty-four hours.

  Cheap polish, I suppose, for a cheap girl.

  “She’s such a spoiled brat,” Gabriella continued. “Which is kind of unfair, since I’m the youngest.”

  Gabriella was two years younger than me but cool as hell. Crazy, since she was also Stefia’s youngest sister. Gabriella and I didn’t talk to each other much during the school day but usually ended up doing something together after class let out.

  “Everyone likes her,” I said. “Stefia, I mean.”

  “Well, that’s not a reason to not like her.”

  “What? Now you’re part of the Princess Stefia club? I thought you couldn’t stand your sister.”

  Gabriella laughed and pulled out a cigarette of her own. She lit it with her neon pink Bic and leaned her back against the giant boulder we were next to.

  “No, I’m not part of her fan club,” she said. “Let’s make sure we have that clarified.”

  “Good.”

  “But if you’re going to hate her, hate her because she’s a stuck up bitch. Don’t just hate her because she’s got everyone else fooled about it.”

  I smirked and took one last drag off my cigarette and flicked the butt into the river.

  “I’ve got plenty of reasons not to like your sister,” I said. “And none of them have to do with what anyone else thinks about her.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  “It all boils down to the fact that she’s not for real.”

  And that was the truth. My whole issue with Stefia was that she seemed too perfect. Her life was too perfect. And perfect is a lie, everyone knows that.

  She was hiding something
.

  “Are you going to Jimmy’s birthday party this Saturday?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I am. I mean, who isn’t?” Gabriella smirked and lazily tossed a pebble in front of her. “I’m leaving with Adam afterwards.”

  “For the night?”

  “No. For good. I’m done with this town.”

  “Don’t you think someone will try and stop you?” I asked.

  “Who would try to do that?” She picked up another rock, rolled it between her fingers, and then tossed it as hard as she could at the water.

  I knew who wouldn’t be at Jimmy’s party. Stefia. Stefia never came to parties. Stefia was too good for high school parties. I didn’t understand how the same person who didn’t come to high school parties for whatever reason could still be worshipped by the same people she wouldn’t party with.

  Oh, to lie prostrate at the feet of Saint Stefia. To wrap oneself in adoration and adulation for the Princess of Perfection.

  Well, fuck them.

  **

  That Saturday night, while marbling my nails blaze orange and yellow, I thought about Stefia and the homeroom class we shared as freshmen. I’d just moved to town and she was that goody-two-shoes who took it upon herself to welcome me.

  “Welcome to Granite Ledge!” she had said, arm extended waiting for me to shake her hand. All I could think was what fourteen-year-old girl shakes hands? And as I sat there trying to figure out if it was a small town thing, or just something strictly Stefia (what kind of a name is that anyway?), she put her hand down and flitted away to grab another group of gals to introduce to the New Girl.

  I tried as best as I could to peg Stefia down, fit her into a group. Was she a cheerleader? Was she student council president? Was she a recovering emo? As hard as I tried, I couldn’t label her as anything. She was like a ridiculously gorgeous, unidentifiably shaped peg that wouldn’t fit into any hole I wanted to slam her into.

  A couple months after I started at the new school, I was hiding out and smoking a cigarette behind the bump out the lunch room made into the parking lot. School had been done for twenty minutes and I marveled at how quickly the parking lot had emptied. As I scanned the horizon, I realized Perky Perfect Stefia was getting into an old olive green Cutlass that had pulled up to the curb. I squinted to get a better look at her, wondering why the hell I found her so fascinating. She was like a magnet, this girl, and as I looked in the car I realized it might have had something to do with her daddy driving the car. Let me tell you, her dad was smoking hot.