You Look Different in Real Life

by Jennifer Castle

  The bell rings, and within seconds I’m out the door toward history class. I can’t face Lance and Leslie. I don’t want to answer their questions about why I can’t just play along. But four steps down the hallway, I feel someone touch my shoulder. I turn around, expecting Leslie and her Diplomatically Concerned face.

  But it’s Nate.

  “Do you have a problem with me?” he asks hesitantly, like he already knows the answer.

  “No,” I lie. Just go away go away.

  “You called me fake.”

  “I said the situation—”

  “Be careful what names you throw around.” Nate cuts me off, then adds, with an exaggerated glance at my hair. “Especially that one.”

  Then he’s off, and I watch him go.

  It’s all I can do not to yell it after him. That stupid, hateful nickname from years ago, the one you used to see scrawled on his locker. For a second, I feel the thrill of imagining what he would do if I resurrected it, right here in the crowded hallway.

  But I hesitate too long, and then he’s gone. I look back in the direction of Journalism class. Lance is standing not five feet behind me, the camera lens rotating. My microphone’s been on the whole time.

  Nate opens one of the hutches and reaches in to pet a large white rabbit. It’s fluffy—ridiculously fluffy. It looks like it could float up any second now to its home against a teal-blue sky. It’s the kind of animal little girls feel giddy about.

  But Nate’s not a little girl. He’s an eleven-year-old boy, and the way he looks at this animal with a mix of awe and devotion, well frankly, it makes you a little uncomfortable.

  He gently lifts the rabbit out of the hutch and toward his chest. “This is Nimbus,” he says tenderly, like a proud parent. “She won a blue ribbon at the county fair last summer.”

  The rabbit has a very rabbity way of looking both bored and terrified. Nate coos to her with baby talk, and the camera stays there just long enough so you feel the beginning of a cringe.

  The cutaway shot is to a wall in Nate’s room, covered in colorful awards, then another back to Nate’s hands as he combs the rabbit with a steel comb. “Nimbus was my first English Angora. My grandpa got her for me when I turned eight. The trick with these guys is that you have to groom them enough so they don’t get wool block, which is like hairballs, but not so much that they don’t show well.”

  This next moment always cracks people up: the combination of Nate’s calm and practiced hands, working quickly on Nimbus’s fur, paired with Nimbus’s expression of surprised pleasure.

  Nate continues: “Usually she stays in the house but on nice days, I like to have her out in the hutch with the others. Plus people who stop at the farm store can buy some hay for fifty cents and come down and feed them. It’s good for business.”

  Now we see a shot of the farm store driveway. Two boys Nate’s age are standing at the edge of it, peering across the lawn at Nate and the rabbit hutches behind the farm store. The light looks different; some time has passed.

  “Hey, it’s Bunny Boy!” yells one.

  “And his girlfriend!” calls the other.

  Nate turns his head the other way and wraps his arms protectively around Nimbus, covering her ears as if he doesn’t want her to hear the taunts.

  “Or is it a boy rabbit?” we hear one of the kids shout, the camera still on Nate. “Because if it’s a boy rabbit, that would make you a total fag!”

  A cut now to Felix standing outside the farm store, a few feet from the other boys. He’s apparently heard the commotion and come out the back door.

  “Go away!” Felix yells at them, but only after some hesitation.

  One boy turns to him and makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Felix, YOU go away,” he says. “Go back to picking fruit or whatever it is you people are good at.”

  “He has to protect his boyfriend!” says the other. “That’s so sweet!”

  We can see Felix take that double hit, absorbing it, letting it explode inside him but trying not to let the aftershock show.

  “Yeah,” he finally says. “We’re boyfriends because we hang out together. I guess that makes you guys boyfriends too. Should we all have a gay party?”

  One boy lunges at Felix but the other catches him, his eyes on something else: a mom, who comes out of the store now and ushers them away. Felix watches them disappear, then turns to look at Nate.

  We don’t see Nate’s immediate expression because when the scene cuts back to him, a few minutes have passed. He’s standing up straight again and Nimbus is moving on the table, and Nate’s been asked a question.

  “No, the names don’t bother me,” he says flatly, like one of those computerized voices. “Those guys are jerks. Felix didn’t need to stick up for me.”

  He looks at the comb in his hand.

  “They can call me Bunny Boy all they want. They don’t understand the rabbit thing. My grandmother says it’s just ignorance.”

  The camera zooms in on the comb, the way Nate is fidgeting with it, his fingers running over the teeth in search of some kind of reassurance tucked between them, where it’s hardest to get.

  It’s a shot that will get repeated later in the film. The nervous, searching fingers plucking at the metal of the comb. It’s the day Nate comes home late from school to find the hutch empty, Nimbus nowhere to be seen.

  They found Nimbus in the orchard the next morning, alive and well and just as fluffy as ever. She’d been rabbit-napped but otherwise unharmed, unless you count the licorice someone had fed her, which resulted in a memorable scene involving red-streaked rabbit poop and Nate yelling, “She’s bleeding internally! Call the vet!”

  Everyone assumed it was Aidan and Tony, the two boys who taunted Nate on camera. What you saw on film was only a tiny bit of what we saw in school. They persecuted Nate relentlessly, and everyone but them got bored and annoyed by it. Even the teachers stopped paying attention, until the thing with Nimbus. Nate’s grandfather visited Aidan’s parents in person. That’s another great scene. So great—an old weathered farmer, a pillar of our community, ripping those people a new one—that sometimes I wonder if Lance and Leslie put him up to it.

  But Aidan and Tony denied the bullying, and nobody could prove otherwise. Mr. Hunter asked Lance and Leslie if they’d shot anything that would prove how badly Nate was being persecuted, but they claimed they had nothing. It was the people who didn’t believe that who helped make Lance and Leslie’s life hell when the film came out. The thing with Keira was bad enough, but if they had footage that could make sure these kids got disciplined, why wouldn’t they share it?

  It’s always been easiest for me to believe they were telling the truth.

  SEVEN

  If I could edit together a montage of Follow Day at school, from my point of view and not the camera’s, it would look like this:

  The faces of people who don’t normally sit with me at lunch, sitting with me at lunch.

  The thin blue lines of my class notebooks, filling up with much more writing than usual.

  The lacrosse goal in gym class as I smack a ball into it, because I’m secretly terrific at lacrosse.

  The reactions of other students as they notice the crew, then pretend they don’t notice, but act differently anyway. It’s fascinating to watch how some don’t seem to care and some care way too much.

  Oh, and the whole sequence would be set to electronic music that’s pretentiously dramatic and slow, because that’s how it all feels.

  I can’t stop thinking about what the lens is seeing as I move through my routine. I open up a little screen in my mind where I can imagine how the shot is framed as I sit uncharacteristically quiet in class or eat tomato soup in the cafeteria. (And why did I get soup anyway? Nobody looks good eating soup.)

  So it’s not only the camera watching me, but me watching me, and by last period Spanish, I am damn seriously sick of myself.

  This is where I get a stomach cramp, and in a sense, I feel like I’ve be
en waiting for it all day. It grows more intense; it’s going to be a Mega. I send all the painful energy into my toes and curl them inside my sneakers where nobody can see—another trick I’ve developed over the years. But soon, this can’t contain the ow. I clench a fist, then two, and bite my lip.

  Leslie’s noticed; her frown line is creased deeper and darker. Before I can think about it, I’m raising my hand for a bathroom pass.

  Pass granted, I don’t look at the crew as I leave the room and step into the blissful solitude of the hallway, where I can really breathe now. They won’t follow me right away. They’ll assume I’ll be back in a few minutes. But I could use more than a few, and suddenly I don’t care if I have to steal them. I can always make up an excuse later.

  I head directly for the stairs to the east wing, at the end of which is the gym and the locker rooms. The girls’ locker room will be deserted this period, and since it’s got a bathroom, my pass might keep me covered if anyone questions what I’m doing there. I’ve done it before.

  Once inside the locker room, in the quiet half-dark that feels like a secret, I sit on a bench and breathe through the cramp as it loosens its hold, then goes away completely. Some time passes. My cell phone chimes with text messages from Leslie, wondering where the hell I am. The final bell rings and there’s the rumble of mass exodus, people getting out of school as fast as humanly possible. When all sounds calm again, it feels safe to leave. I know I should let the crew know where I am, but I just can’t yet.

  I’m in the hallway for all of four seconds when I hear my name echo against the walls.

  “Justine!”

  I freeze. There’s a silhouette moving out of the shadows.

  “Justine,” the figure says again, more softly. It’s starting to look like Ian. I find myself actually happy to see him after my long, long night and day.

  “Isn’t this like a scene from a zombie movie?” I say, putting the grin in my voice. Maybe this is what he was talking about when he said I felt more like a buddy to him, but I can’t help it.

  Now he’s almost reached me and I notice he’s wearing gardening gloves. He stretches out his hands, curling them into giant claws, and changes his walk to an Undead march.

  “Rawrrrr . . .” he growls.

  Yeah, he’s adorable. And he smells like damp earth.

  “What’s up?” I say fake-casually. “I mean, before you kill me or eat me or whatever, we should exchange pleasantries.”

  He releases his claws and looks suddenly embarrassed. “I’m trying to get to all the classroom wastebaskets before the custodians do. Long story that involves recyclable plastic containers and a science fair project.”

  So, not earth. Just plain old garbage, but garbage never smelled so good. I get a sharp body pang from missing him.

  “Well, I would say that’s weird, but remember, I know you.”

  Ian laughs. Score! “Where are you headed?” he asks.

  “Just outside to wait for my mom.” If I’m lucky, he won’t notice that I don’t have my bag, or anything else that would make me look ready to be picked up from school.

  “I’m headed that way too,” he says, pointing his head sideways as if to say, lazily, after you.

  My phone chimes again. I ignore it.

  “How’s the filming going?” Ian asks brightly as we walk.

  “It’s going. That’s all I know for sure right now.”

  “I haven’t gotten a chance to tell you, but I think your hair looks great,” he says.

  Something inside me takes off in flight. “Thanks,” I say, and then swallow hard.

  “I hear you made a secret appearance at Felix’s party that night,” says Ian.

  “Yeah, well . . . I didn’t plan it to be secret, I just . . . it was a lot harder to be there than I expected.”

  Ian nods thoughtfully. When we reach the door, he holds it open for me. It’s a gesture so simple, so normal, but thrilling. The first time he did that, on our first date, I knew we were really going out.

  Outside, the air feels warmer than expected. Ian takes off his gloves and stuffs them in his back pockets. He squints into the late afternoon sun, hanging over the ridge in the distance, and takes a deep breath.

  “I have to tell you, I kind of miss hanging out,” he says. “I miss our friendship.”

  Another body pang. Oh, you mean the friendship that you declared we should have after you BROKE MY HEART FOR NO APPARENT REASON? I’m sorry if it’s not everything you imagined it to be.

  But here’s all I can mutter before my throat clenches up: “Me too.”

  “It feels like you’ve been avoiding me lately. Are things just overly weird?”

  Yes, I’ve been avoiding him, which means fighting every impulse I’ve got. It’s worth it though. If I’m not around him, the camera isn’t around him, and there are no humiliating questions about who he is and what happened.

  “Things are weird, yes,” I say, trying to pull out the strands of truth, the ones that won’t make me feel like a total fake liar girl. “I just have a lot going on right now.”

  “Well, if you feel like you need some fun, let me know. The trails up on the mountain are clear and we could go for a hike.”

  When we were JustIan, I put up with the hikes. I put up with the blisters in my Converse high-tops (“You’re not supposed to wear shoes like that,” he’d said) and the constant, panicky breathless-but-not-in-a-good-way feeling of trying to keep up with him.

  “It might be something cool for, you know, the camera crew to film.”

  He must notice my expression. Actually, if he didn’t, he’d be a moron because I’m looking at him like someone just slapped me with a wet rag.

  “I mean, it’s so beautiful this time of year,” Ian quickly adds, and by his face I can tell he wishes he could just back up, up, up from that thing he just said.

  Is this what he wants? Does he want to be in the movie?

  My stomach tightens again.

  “Justine?” a voice calls from around a corner. Leslie.

  “Gotta go,” I squeak, not caring what Ian thinks, all flight response. I’m prey and the crew is my predator. I dart back toward the door and fling it open, letting it bang shut behind me as I rush inside.

  The hallway is darker now but I move farther down, into the shadows. At the end of the hall there’s one classroom door open, a trapezoid of light projected onto the floor. I walk toward it because I’m a fugitive from my own absurd life and have nowhere else to go.

  Closer to the classroom now, I hear happy voices—I can tell from the musical upturn at the end of each comment. Someone laughs. I reach the doorway and peer into the room.

  There’s one girl cleaning the whiteboard at the front of the room. Another is moving desks around.

  The first girl is Rory. I’d know by her clothes even if I couldn’t see her face: Rory always wears button-down blouses and track pants with white stripes down the side. The second is a girl named Aimee who I’ve often seen talking to Rory.

  My afternoon is about to get even more bizarre.

  “Justine?” asks Rory, seeing me.

  I step all the way into the room. “Hi,” I say.

  Silence. Ugh ugh ugh.

  “What are you guys doing?” I ask casually, like it’s normal for me to just appear at this moment.

  “Setting up for a History Club meeting,” says Aimee.

  Rory’s eyes are on me, then off me.

  “What are you doing?” asks Aimee.

  “I was just . . . looking for someone.” Got it! I can say Ian. Ian was probably just here checking the wastebasket and voilà, plausibility.

  Rory puts down the paper towel and Windex she’s been using to clean the whiteboard, then steps a little closer, all without making eye contact.

  “Me?” she asks.

  “You?” I echo, stupidly.

  “Were you looking for me?” Now here comes the eye contact. One, two, three. I meet her there, in this small space where we are star
ing at each other, and all the things we ever shared, all the adventures and secrets and daily ins-and-outs of friendship, are jammed in tight.

  There are footsteps in the hallway.

  “Justine!” calls Leslie, because she can see me, and I am stuck.

  I turn and hold up my hand in a wave. “Sorry,” I mutter.

  Leslie looks pissed. I can’t see Lance’s face because he’s focused on the camera, which is pointed at me and most definitely on.

  “Justine, you can’t . . .” Now they’ve reached the doorway, and Leslie glances into the classroom. “Rory!”

  Rory doesn’t react. She’s been staring at the top of the doorframe above my head, but now she glances at me again.

  “Were you?” she repeats. “Looking for me?”

  A strange question for anyone but Rory to ask in this situation, but she makes it sound like it’s so obvious, it would be strange if she didn’t ask it. It feels like if I tell her, “No, I was looking for Ian,” or even if I tell the truth and say, “Actually I wasn’t looking for anyone; I was just trying to avoid these guys,” it would be profoundly disappointing. So I just nod.

  “Yeah, I was. I was looking for you.”

  “My mom said you might,” says Rory, nodding back. “She said I should be careful.”

  I take a step into the room, then glance back to see Leslie, Lance, and Kenny gathered in the doorway. Kenny steps inside the door and to the side, holding out the boom mic so it’s above our heads but out of the camera’s frame.

  This is not how I wanted it to happen, with Rory. But I want to say the words. If I could just say them, it wouldn’t matter what happened next. They would be out and I could move forward with my life. The fact that the camera is here and they’re recording this suddenly doesn’t matter. It feels like a perfectly reasonable part of my punishment.

  “Your mom must have been pretty upset, when we stopped being friends.” Then I correct myself. “When I stopped being friends with you.” I correct myself a second time. “When I stopped, then started, then stopped again.”

  I think of how much her mother must have hated me while she was warning her daughter that I might pull the same crap again. I wonder if she counted all the carpools and outings and meals and sleepovers where I was part of her family. I know what I did ruined the friendship between her family and mine, but that’s something Mom and I never talked about.