You Look Different in Real Life

by Jennifer Castle

  Now there’s an awkward moment where nobody is doing anything, and Leslie feels the need to proclaim.

  “I can’t believe you’re all here. In one place! The fact that you were up for this . . . well, it means a lot to Lance and me. And it’ll mean a lot to the film and, eventually, the audience.”

  “Do you guys remember where you sat?” Lance asks. “In kindergarten?”

  I do, and I know Felix does, but I want to see who else might.

  “Yes,” pipes up Rory. “It went Felix, Keira, Nate, Justine, and me.”

  We stand silent for a moment, and then, Rory goes to the table and sits down at one of the chairs. Felix laughs, and Rory looks confused, but his smile is warm and unfiltered as he goes to sit next to her. Then Keira goes to her chair, next to Felix, and Nate moves to the other side of her. Now it’s my turn to get on my mark in between Nate and Rory.

  Nate does not acknowledge me as I sit. I look around the table and realize Felix is the only person here who doesn’t hate me.

  “Oh, this is great,” says Lance, as if talking to his camera. “The shot is beautiful. Books and posters in the background. Light is perfect.”

  Now Leslie is leaning in next to me, addressing the group. “I’ll ask you some questions, and you can answer me, if you want. I’ll be moving around with the second camera. But the point is for you to speak to one another. I may even remind you to do that.”

  We’re all quiet. I’m guessing because the situation is so insane, there are no words.

  “Oh, I almost forgot.” She grabs a brown paper grocery bag from the floor and starts to unpack it. There’s bottles of juice and sports drinks, and cookies.

  “There’s no eating in the library,” says Rory.

  “Special permission,” says Leslie.

  I can guess what the snacks are for. To keep our hands busy. To give us something to fidget with. If our hands can move, our bodies won’t. It looks better. As we reach for the drinks, Nate and I try to grab the same bottle, something pink called BerryLuscious. Our wrists bang and Nate jerks his away like he’s been burned. I pretend not to notice and take the bottle for myself.

  Kenny’s got the boom mic situated and Leslie has taken a position about a quarter of the way around the table from Lance, and I notice the camera’s already rolling. I don’t think anyone else does yet. They’re busy popping open their drinks, unwrapping their cookies.

  I’m waiting for Leslie to jump in with one of her questions. But she’s silent, watching.

  I think they’re all hoping the questions won’t come. Easier to munch away and pretend this is not actually happening.

  Suddenly, a memory pops into my head. Or is it a scene from Five at Six? Well actually, both.

  Our teacher, Mrs. McGuire, has been having trouble getting the class to settle down when it’s time to start working. She’s offered an incentive. Each day, the first table to be totally quiet when she claps her hands twice gets a sticker on a chart at the front of the room. Our table, the Green Table, is tied with another table, the Red Table. (Oh, how we hated that Red Table.) We’re both one sticker away from getting to go to the Treasure Chest and pick out prizes.

  Keira really wants us to win. She wants the plastic princess tiara she glimpsed in there. She has been coaching us on how to be quiet the instant we hear the claps. Rory or Felix tend to ruin it, but we think we have it down.

  Mrs. McGuire claps. We zip it up so fast, it’s as if we’ve been freeze-framed. A second passes. Two. Keira has her hand up as a cue to us, to hold it there. Just hold it. I’m sitting on my hands (something the camera picks up as it circles the table). Felix and Nate both have theirs folded in front of them, exchanging glances like they’ve practiced this at home.

  Red Table is completely quiet as well. They’ve taken a bit longer, though, and we can smell victory as we wait for Mrs. McGuire to complete her evaluation of the room.

  Rory has been staring at the board, stone silent. Then she turns around and into the silence, says, to nobody, “I don’t like chalk because you can never get it into a perfect point.”

  Keira shoots out of her chair and yells, “SHUT UP!” Rory starts crying. I wrap my arms around Rory and yell back to Keira, “YOU SHUT UP!” Nate and Felix get up and run to the corner of the classroom.

  In the film, Lance and Leslie edited this sequence to build up the tension like a suspense thriller. The moment we all lose it, everything shifts into slow motion. Our faces are stricken with the tragic drama of not getting to pick out crappy little toys from a box.

  The next scenes in the film show Felix playing under the farm store counter because he’s been ordered to stay out of the way, Nate waiting up for his mom to come home from work so she can read him a story before bed. Rory going with her father and older brother to the local food pantry to pick up canned tuna and beans. Keira being quizzed by her father about geography. Me throwing up in the bathroom the morning of my Emperor’s New Clothes performance.

  There is no narration in the films. Lance and Leslie won their awards in part because you don’t need narration. The voice you hear in your head while watching these scenes is, These kids have problems so much bigger than not getting that last sticker, but they don’t realize it.

  Sitting here now, the five of us, I wonder what scenes Lance and Leslie will use to contrast whatever happens around the table. I wonder what I could say or do that will give them something.

  I wonder why I can’t stop thinking in these terms. Do the others do this too?

  Finally, after everyone has opened their snacks and had some time to crunch, Leslie speaks:

  “Have you guys watched Five at Six recently?”

  Everyone nods, except Rory. She shakes her head.

  “What do you wish you could tell that kid, your six-year-old self?”

  There’s the shortest of pauses, then Nate jumps in. “I’d tell myself not to worry so much.”

  Keira lets out a short laugh, then smiles affectionately at him. “You didn’t seem like a worrier.”

  Nate winks at her. “Oh. I had the weight of the world.”

  Silence. Then Felix says, “I’d warn myself that I don’t know people as well as I think I do.” He shoots a look at Nate.

  Rory is thinking hard. I’m afraid she’s going to say something similar with a glare at me, but instead she just says, “I would tell her what happens in the later Harry Potter books.”

  We all laugh at this, and it takes Rory a moment to realize she’s said something funny, and then she joins us. I forgot about Rory’s laugh. It changes whatever room she’s in. It is the best thing I’ve heard all day.

  Silence again. Leslie looks at me, then Keira. We haven’t gone yet.

  I’m about to speak when Keira says, “I would tell myself to stop wanting what I’m not allowed to have, and just . . . be . . . present.”

  She says it matter-of-factly, a big statement but gorgeously simple. Leslie looks at her with such love that I find myself stricken with jealousy.

  Now everybody’s staring at me. I’m supposed to say something witty and fresh, to slay them with my brutal honesty. To be Justine.

  What can I say that will trump them all? I go with the first thing that pops into my head and when I say it, I’m not even sure it’s out loud.

  “I would tell myself that it’s all downhill from where you are right now.”

  Dammit. That came out way less funny and much more self-pitying than I meant it to. Leslie, who has been moving around the table with her camera, stops and lowers it. She looks at me and it’s not with the mega-love she gave Keira but, rather, intense curiosity. Like, Who the hell is this kid and what the hell are we going to do with her?

  After a few horrible moments where everyone gets very busy with their snacks, Leslie says, “Okay, then. That was my icebreaker. I think the ice is broken.”

  Everyone laughs nervously, but the truth is, the ice is not really broken. Maybe the glaze has been rubbed off a little, so we’re not g
oing to slip and fall on our asses trying to cross it, but I don’t see so much as a crack.

  “So now,” continues Leslie, “I’d like you to think of your favorite memory of another person from that film. Or maybe it’s not even a favorite, just one that sticks in your head.”

  Once again, it’s Nate who speaks first. “Keira, playing that board game with her mom and dad.” He addresses Leslie when he says this.

  “Can you say that again, but say it to Keira? I’d like you guys to look at the person you’re talking about.”

  Nate looks a little chastised, hurt, like he did something wrong, but he flashes Blinding Smile Number Twelve and turns to Keira as naturally as he can. “My favorite memory from that first film is of you, Keira, and your parents. Playing that board game. The three of you in one place at one time, enjoying something.”

  Keira grins politely, but you can tell this has caused her pain. Physical pain, like her chair has suddenly grown spikes. She can’t shift in the seat enough to be comfortable. Finally, she looks at Leslie.

  “Am I supposed to tell him thank you?”

  “Why don’t you tell him about your favorite memory of him?”

  Keira turns to Nate without missing a beat. “I remember when you were giving the tour of the orchards. It was so adorable! You were, like, the world’s tiniest apple ambassador.”

  Nate smiles, but there’s something behind it. A flicker of sadness. It’s fascinating, how they managed to wound each other so easily and accidentally.

  Felix has been waiting to jump in, as evidenced by his tapping fingers against the table. Now that there’s a pause in the talking, he goes for it.

  “Justine,” he says, staring at me. “I know everyone talks about the scene where your mom and dad drive you to the hospital. But for me, it’s when the doctor comes in and talks to your parents about how they couldn’t find anything wrong. You’re coloring in bed and the camera stays on you the whole time, and we only hear everyone else’s voices. I can still close my eyes and see you sitting there, listening and filling up a whole blank page with orange crayon.”

  I see Leslie nodding fondly but I don’t even glance at the others. I don’t want to know how they think of this scene, which took up more screen time than any other scene in that film. Lance and Leslie just kept the cameras rolling and barely edited it.

  So now it feels like Felix has tagged me, and it’s my turn to say something. I could right-back-at-you to Felix, which he’s surely expecting. But where does that leave Rory?

  The truth is, all of my favorite scenes from Five at Six are with Rory. Rory walking in the woods with her dog, explaining why her father was out of work and the kind of jobs she thought he was most qualified for, like a lifeguard or town mayor. Or Rory and her family holding a yard sale, and Rory having a meltdown when some guy wanted to buy her old stroller, saying she’d need it if she got paralyzed in an accident. At the time, these scenes made me laugh. I’m not sure they made other people laugh. I think they generally made people uncomfortable, because Rory was always looking at the ground and cracking her neck when she spoke.

  Then there are the scenes with her and me. The dancing-princess thing. The two of us on a class field trip to a nature center, holding hands as we walk along the muddy trail, behind the rest of the group. In my bedroom, playing Alligator Family—an elaborate situation where I was a mother alligator, and she was my daughter alligator, and I’d just tell her which toys to gobble up. I haven’t been able to watch those scenes in years, but I don’t really need to. They’re running on a loop in my head at all times.

  I want to turn to Rory and tell her these things. But I can’t.

  So I turn back to Felix and a memory comes to mind. I don’t think about it too much. I just sort of go with it. “Felix, there’s that scene with you and your mom at the supermarket. You’re riding in the basket of the cart even though that’s not allowed, and you’re translating stuff for her because she’s trying to improve her English.”

  Felix’s features all sag at once, disappointed and maybe even betrayed.

  “What?” I say.

  “That’s the part you remember most from ten years ago?”

  I nod, flipping through the film in my head. What else was there? Scenes of him and Nate playing. Stuff on the farm. What does he want me to remember most?

  “Great. Just great.” Felix pushes his food away and in the space he’s cleared, puts his face in his hands. “That’s all anybody remembers. Felix with his foreign parents. Felix with Nate. What about all those scenes of me on my own?”

  I draw a blank. I can’t remember any scenes of Felix on his own. Oh, there was one. In it, he’s alone in his kitchen, dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” It’s actually a little silly and the one scene in the whole movie that seems set up.

  Felix is looking at Leslie now. “It’s going to be different this time, right?” he asks. “Like we talked about?”

  Leslie lowers her camera and nods. “Yes, Felix. Of course. We told you we would do more with you on your own.”

  Felix glances at Nate, then at me, embarrassed now. “Okay. I’m sorry about that. I ruined this whole thing, didn’t I?”

  “No,” says Leslie, who then shoots me a look.

  “Absolutely not,” I add. Not convincingly.

  “Shit,” says Felix, and before I know it, he’s darted out of his chair and is running away from us. Suddenly I’m darting after him. I get past the first bookcase and then pause, turning to see that Leslie has started to follow me with the camera.

  “Don’t,” I practically spit, as if commanding a trained dog. She freezes and I continue through the library, out into the hallway. Felix is down at the end of it, walking fast.

  I call his name, and he turns. “Please don’t make me chase you!” I say, and see him smile.

  “Camera?” he yells.

  “No,” I say, as I head down the hallway toward him. He puts his hands in his pockets and watches me intently, and I have to wonder if he’s still wishing we could date.

  When I reach him, he says, “Sorry about that.”

  “Who’s the diva now?”

  “That would be me. So unexpected.”

  I just shrug.

  “It’s Nate,” adds Felix. “I acted that way because of Nate being there. Do you realize we haven’t been in close proximity for more than a minute in years?”

  “I’m sure it was not fun,” I say, wanting to touch his arm but not wanting to give him the wrong idea.

  “Aside from you, he’s been the headliner. Even when we were little, it made me jealous that he was on screen so much more than me. Why did everybody notice Nate, when I was right there too?” Felix looks down and rubs his sneaker along one line of a tile on the floor. “Seeing him always stirs up some intense stuff.”

  “Well, who could blame you for that? After what he did.”

  “What he did?” asks Felix, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. You know. Ditching you as a friend. Remaking himself into the Nate-tastic incarnation he’s become.”

  Felix stares at his sneaker for another long moment, then lifts his head. “Right.”

  He takes a quick breath and I get the sense he’s about to say something else, but we hear the library doors open down the hallway and Leslie appears.

  “Will you come back?” she calls.

  Felix and I look at each other.

  “Give us a minute,” I yell, and grab his hand. I pull him around the corner to a water fountain nook, where Leslie can’t see us.

  “We should go back.”

  “I have a feeling they got what they wanted. They got something exciting.”

  “You don’t understand,” says Felix. “They’re planning to focus on me this time. I don’t want to jeopardize that.”

  “Just tell them what you told me, about Nate. They’ll want more time for you to talk about it all.”

  Felix thinks for a moment, a flash of panic in his eyes.

  �
�I’m not sure I want to.”

  “Why not?” I ask. It seems obvious to me. Nate looking bad. Nate’s image, smudged. I like that.

  “It’s complicated.” Felix peers back around the corner toward the library. “I can’t go back there. Not today.” He takes a deep breath, then reaches out and grabs my hand. “Will you leave with me? I can call my cousin for a ride. If we take off together, it won’t just be me they’re mad at.”

  “You can say I made you do it. They’re permanently annoyed with me anyway.”

  “Deal,” he says, taking my hand and pulling me toward our lockers. “Let’s get our stuff and then get lost.”

  Merengue music from a stereo system fills the backyard of Felix’s parents’ house, and because of this, nobody can stop moving. Technically, officially, it’s a birthday party for Felix’s younger brother, Gabriel. But there are more adults than kids here because they’ve invited every family member within a sixty-mile radius. So there’s a lot of people and a lot of food and a lot of noise. An elderly aunt and uncle start dancing an elaborate Latin ballroom routine and a circle forms around them to watch.

  Felix doesn’t join the circle. He’s busy carrying his brother’s newly gifted toys, armload by armload, into the house. He dumps some of the toys on the sofa and collapses down next to them.

  There’s a cut to Ana entering from outside through the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. “Felix, you’re not going to stay in here again, are you? The cousins will think you’re rude!”

  “I talked to them. I ate those beans Naomi always makes.” Felix turns to the camera and pretends to put his finger down his throat, just so we know what kind of sacrifice that was.

  “It’s your brother’s party and he’ll be very upset if you’re not celebrating with him!”

  “Mami, he’s like high on sugar and running around with that new squirt gun. He doesn’t give a crap where I am.”

  “Don’t curse at me!”

  Felix looks at the camera again and shakes his head, rolls his eyes.