You Look Different in Real Life

by Jennifer Castle

  Keira glances at Felix and me. We don’t get the naughty-puppy look. With us, it’s more like, It would be so nice if you weren’t here right now.

  “Did you see her?” asks Nate.

  “No,” says Keira. “She wasn’t home. I decided to walk a five-block square around her street five times and then try again later. I know that’s weird. But it’s calming me down.”

  “Do you want us to stay with you?”

  She looks at Felix and me again, then away. “No. It’s actually been . . . kind of nice, being alone.”

  Nate nods slowly at her, relieved, and I’m getting the sense that this is it. The end of our adventure here. No reason not to head home to Mountain Ridge and let whatever will be, be.

  “Want some nachos?” asks Felix, a completely brilliant comment to insert into the moment. Keira smiles. She visibly relaxes. For her this means standing up straighter, pointing her chin higher. She steps toward the table and Nate pulls the fourth chair out for her.

  I hold up the camera. “Do you mind?” I ask her. “I’ve sort of been documenting this whole outing.” Keira gives Nate a questioning glance and he nods, then she nods. I would hate their little unspoken connection if it didn’t make life easier for me at crucial moments. I press record as she sits down.

  “So,” says Nate. “Do you want to hear the details of the shit hitting the fan after we all woke up and found you gone?”

  “Yes, please,” says Keira, smiling now. She raises her head and reaches out for a chip, and then suddenly, loudly, sucks in her breath like she’s been punched. Like something came out of nowhere and knocked the middle out of her.

  She’s staring into the near distance. Felix and Nate follow her gaze and I do the same, but with the camera. It takes me a few moments to land on them, but there they are:

  Crossing the street toward us is a man and a woman. The man is pushing an empty stroller and the woman is holding hands with a little girl, maybe two years old.

  The woman is Keira’s mother.

  I recognize her instantly, although she looks very different than I remember. She’s wearing a long plaid shirt over black leggings, and white Keds that match the ones on the girl. Her hair, which was always super long, is just to her shoulders now.

  The four of us watch them reach the curb, then turn to walk up the block right past us. I keep the camera on them the whole time. They say anything can happen in New York, and now anything is.

  I glance at Keira. She’s not blinking. There is no expression on her face and I can’t tell what she’s feeling. Maybe at a moment like this, you feel every emotion at once and they cancel one another out, like how white light is not actually white but many colors of light blended together.

  As they pass us, almost on cue, Mrs. Jones picks up the toddler and rests her on her hip. It’s such a fluid, natural motion. Devastating.

  “Keira,” whispers Nate. “Aren’t you going to call her name?”

  Keira doesn’t speak. She only moves. She moves away from us and toward the trio, following behind.

  “Shit,” says Nate, digging into his pocket and pulling out the rest of his cash. He counts out what should be enough, then throws it on the table before starting off after them. Felix and I exchange a look.

  “Whatever happens,” he says, “you keep that camera rolling. Yes?”

  I nod, and now we’re following too. I speed up so that I’m alongside Nate. He doesn’t even notice me; he’s got his sights locked on Keira.

  We round the corner as the tail end of this extremely strange parade, and just as we do, the little girl drops a stuffed thing she’s holding. It’s like a small blanket with a cat’s head. She cries out.

  Mrs. Jones and the guy stop abruptly, and Mrs. Jones sets the girl on the ground so she can pick up the blanket. Keira stops. She’s only a few feet behind them. Mrs. Jones must sense someone there because now she turns around, casually, probably expecting to get a dirty look from some other pedestrian who has to get around them.

  She sees Keira, smiles in an apologetic way, then turns back. Keira does not move or speak.

  Now Mrs. Jones turns around again, and really looks at Keira. Her daughter.

  “Oh my God,” she says.

  I move silently to the side and take some steps away, so I can get a better shot of what’s happening. At any moment, they will notice me and react to the camera, but until then, I can record every second possible. Besides, it’s easier to watch what’s happening on the LCD display instead of in the intensity of real life.

  Keira looks at the little girl, then back at her mother.

  “Keira, no,” says Mrs. Jones. “It’s not—”

  And Keira bolts. Across the street, down the block, faster than I have ever seen her move.

  EIGHTEEN

  As Nate takes off after Keira, Mrs. Jones crumples onto the steps of the nearest brownstone.

  The little girl watches her do this, then turns to the man, frightened. He scoops her up and walks her down the block a bit, abandoning the stroller in the middle of the sidewalk.

  I’m not sure what I should do here. I don’t seem capable of moving, or taking the camera off this woman who now has her face in her hands, sobbing into them. Fortunately, Felix steps into frame.

  “Mrs. Jones?” She looks up, her eyes unfocused. “It’s Felix Cortez. Do you remember me? From Mountain Ridge? From the movies?”

  She stops sobbing long enough to make the connection, then nods. Now she notices me, and the camera.

  “Is this part of the next film?” she asks, defeated, like she’s been dreading this moment for a long time and now it’s finally here.

  “No,” says Felix emphatically. “Not if nobody wants it to be.”

  Mrs. Jones looks down the street at the man and the girl. “She’s not mine. That’s my boyfriend and his daughter.”

  “We’ll find Keira,” Felix assures her. “We’ll explain.”

  She dabs at her tears with the back of her wrist, once on each cheek, and then presses her palm to her chest like she wants to make sure she’s still breathing. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” says Mrs. Jones. “I wanted to really get my life together before contacting her.”

  Felix leans on the railing above her, a comforting Go on gesture. I zoom out a bit so they’re both in frame.

  “She’s so beautiful,” says Mrs. Jones, staring at the spot where she saw Keira, as if it were years ago and not minutes, and in her voice there’s pain and love and desperate want.

  “Yes, she is,” says Felix.

  “It’s so strange. Every day, I think I see her on the street. The city is filled with young women who look like my daughter.”

  Nate reappears, panting and sweaty. He walks over to us. “I lost her around a corner.” He grips an iron fence and tries to catch his breath.

  “Do you have any way of reaching her?” asks Mrs. Jones.

  Nate nods. He takes out his phone and dials. Mrs. Jones stands and holds out one hand to indicate she’d like to speak, and Nate gives her the phone. “You’ll hear Leslie Rodgers on the voice mail. Just ignore that. Say what you need to say.”

  Mrs. Jones steps away from us, toward the man and the girl, and we see her speaking into the phone. She hangs up, says something to the man. He nods sadly, then they all come walking back to us. She returns the phone to Nate.

  “Look at you,” she says to him. “You’re all grown up.” She scans over to Felix and me. “All of you.”

  “Not quite, but we’re getting there,” says Nate, then flashes a shy smile.

  “Can you make sure she listens to my message?” asks Mrs. Jones.

  “I can try. She’s using someone else’s phone, and I don’t know if she can access the voice mail.”

  After Nate gives Mrs. Jones a couple of cell phone numbers—Keira’s, and then his own—she slips her hand into the man’s, and the three of them turn around to head back down the street. We watch them climb the steps to her building and disappear.<
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  Nate looks at me expectantly. “It’s her boyfriend and his daughter,” I reply to his unasked question. Nate nods, then turns to his phone. Types out a text message, presumably to Keira.

  “What now?” I ask.

  “I told her we’re going to hang out somewhere for a while. I told her we’re here if she needs us.”

  “I was hoping you had a slightly more detailed plan than that.”

  The truth is, I’m not really annoyed. I’m grateful. That we don’t have to go home yet. That I’ll have more time to get my questions answered.

  “That makes two of us,” says Nate. “But I can’t leave until I know this is going to be all right. Let me call Dylan to see if he’s around, because that’s a totally safe place to chill and we could probably stay over if we have to.”

  Nate starts fiddling with his phone again so I turn off the camera and go over to Felix. He’s now sitting on the step where Mrs. Jones was, and I lean my head against his shoulder. He’s quiet for a moment, then puts his arm around me. I have no idea where exactly we’ll spend the rest of the day and even the night or what our next meal will be, and I’m still very confused about that conversation between Nate and Felix, and stumped over what to do about Rory and what I want to do about Rory. Our lives in Mountain Ridge seem a hemisphere away. We’re in a place where none of the rules of those lives seem to apply. And I find myself wishing I could stay here forever.

  Nate hangs up and steps over to us. “It’s all cool. We can go to Dylan’s. But it’s way the hell downtown and we should leave the car here, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “Once the Parking Gods have gifted you, you don’t want to anger them. I’m sure we got the last free space in the city.”

  “But we’d have to walk. Can’t afford the subway at the moment.”

  “We’ve got legs,” I say, shrugging.

  “Uh, aren’t you forgetting something?” asks Felix. “As in, Rory? She can’t stay in the car all night.”

  Nate visibly deflates. “Right.”

  “I’ll explain that she’s got to come with us,” I offer.

  Felix shakes his head. “No. Let me do it.”

  He walks to the car and knocks on the window, which leads me to believe Rory is sleeping. Then he opens the car door and slides in. All we can do now is wait.

  Nate sits down on the bottom step. Facing the sidewalk, away from me. “You know, we shouldn’t be sitting on someone else’s steps.”

  “Thank you,” I say suddenly.

  “I just don’t want us to get in trouble.”

  “No, I mean, for what you said earlier. About Rory and me. It was something I hadn’t thought of.”

  The back of Nate’s head nods.

  “Have you thought about what would happen if Felix were to forgive you?

  Now Nate turns to me, frowns. “Felix forgive me? I didn’t do anything he needs to forgive me for.”

  “Is that how you see it?”

  His face hardens to match the tone of my voice. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but I have a feeling it’s not exactly true.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but it hits me. Felix hasn’t actually told me anything. Was there a conversation somewhere in the last four years when Felix said, “Nate decided to change his life and become a different person, so he completely ditched his best friend”? It feels like there must have been. I’ve been seething about these events for four years.

  I don’t know what to say next so I do the thing that seems to be working when this happens. I turn on the camera and frame Nate below me. It’s an interesting shot. He looks smaller, more vulnerable. Nothing but sidewalk and car tires behind him.

  He stares right into the lens. “What did he tell you, Justine? I think I have a right to know.”

  The thing about having a camera basically stitched onto your anatomy is that you can’t look away when you want to. The camera forces me to meet Nate’s gaze on the display, even if it’s through a whole bunch of electronic innards.

  “He didn’t tell me anything. He didn’t have to.”

  Nate’s features slide into a kind of sadness. “Ah. So you’re going on assumptions.”

  I pause. “Why don’t you set me straight?” I say, keeping my voice even, like Leslie would.

  “That’s not up to me. I meant what I said to Felix before. I’ve kept my word all this time and I’m not going to blow it now. It’s on him to tell you the truth. And really, you’re the one he should tell. If he can’t tell you, he’s in bigger trouble than I thought.”

  Nate turns away. What can I ask next to get him to keep talking? But just then, I hear Felix chirp, “Here we are!”

  I find him with the camera and yes, here he is. And here Rory is too, staring a hole into the pavement.

  “Yay, Rory!” says Nate, but she doesn’t react so he switches gears. “We have to get down to Dylan’s dorm and we have to walk. It’s pretty far. Felix explained that?”

  Rory nods.

  “Why don’t we go ask Mrs. Jones to lend us money for the subway?” suggests Felix, pointing with his thumb behind us.

  “No subway,” says Rory. “No way. Never.”

  Felix mentioning money reminds me of the credit card in Olivia’s car. It makes sense to have it with us, in case of an emergency. “Before we go, I need to grab my stuff,” I say, and pass off the camera to Felix.

  “Oh, yeah,” says Nate. “Me too.”

  He starts walking toward the car and I step in alongside him. I don’t want him to see me grab the credit card. I’m not sure why this is important, but it is.

  Nate still has the keys so he uses them to pop the trunk, reaching in to grab my backpack and then his. He hands me mine and slams the trunk shut.

  I’m focused on the credit card but there’s something else gnawing at me. I think of the front seat. Leslie’s bag. I know from the camera’s display that I have plenty of shooting time left on the memory card but eventually, I’ll run out of battery charge.

  “Hang on,” I call to Nate. I reach in, find the bag on the floor of the front passenger seat. As I’d hoped, inside is a spare battery, which I grab and stuff in my backpack.

  Nate is distracted by something up the street so now I open the back door, crouch down like I’m searching. I flip up the floor mat on one side. Nada. Then I flip up the other. Oh, come on, Olivia. Please don’t tell me you borrowed your own emergency credit card and then forgot to put it back. At first, I see nothing. Then, way in, almost under the front seat, I see a corner of colored plastic. Bingo.

  Nate’s still watching two drivers argue about who cut off the other. I tap him on the shoulder and he snaps out of it, uses the keys to beep the car locked. Then we move back toward Rory and Felix.

  “Ready?” Nate asks Rory, hoisting his backpack onto his shoulders. It’s like we’re about to embark on some treacherous hike in the woods. Which we sort of are.

  Rory just starts walking, hugging herself.

  Felix falls back, returns the camera, and asks me, “Would it help if I offered to hold her hand?”

  Rory has never been one for touching. She might have changed, what with all the therapy. But I see in my head the image of Felix and Rory walking down the street, hand in hand, and even though it would make a great shot I already feel the sting it would cause me. So I shake my head no, slowly, like Don’t even go there.

  We get to the corner and the light is with us, so Nate gestures and we follow, across the street and on our way downtown. I hang back so they’re all in front of me and start shooting.

  Nate leads us, and Felix tries to slow his pace so he’s behind him and not next to him, but also not next to Rory but not too far ahead of Rory. He looks ridiculous, and maybe a little drunk. Rory walks in a steady and careful march, not taking her eyes off the sidewalk.

  Traffic roars by, a tide of mostly yellow taxis, like loud breaking waves that keep coming and coming. A car parked at the curb honks, and Rory jumps, then freezes, brea
thes in with her whole body to the count of three, and starts walking again. Up ahead, Nate’s at the corner and the light has just turned to a red hand so he has to wait, and we catch up to him.

  “You good?” he asks Rory. Rory just nods. “Okay. One block down. About fifty-four more to go.”

  He says this with a supportive and earnest smile, but Rory turns pale.

  The light changes again. We cross. As we walk, I experiment with panning the camera to the right and left, up and down. It feels embedded now. Like a second pair of eyes searching for things my regular eyes could never see.

  These are the things the camera notices:

  Nate walks looking straight ahead. Felix can’t stop looking skyward in all directions. Rory has not glanced up from the ground.

  Here in the city, Felix has lost his swagger; he moves like he’s in a new body. Experimenting, trying it out. Unsure of every step.

  Nate seems to be striding confidently the same way he does at home, in school. But it’s like he’s Superman and we’re back on Krypton. He has no powers here. Occasionally I see a girl or a young woman pass him and let her glance linger for an extra second, but no longer. That’s the most Nate Hunter, in all his country-boy stunningness, is worth in Manhattan.

  Within the rhythms of Rory’s controlled pace, there are tiny spasms. She winces every time someone shouts across her and at the particularly loud rumble of a truck, the cry of a baby strapped on to a woman’s chest, and the sharp-pitched barking of a pair of German shepherds.

  We’ve gone four blocks now. It feels like we’re in a groove, that we can do this.

  Out of nowhere, a screaming fire truck cuts through what’s already become a familiar hum of city noise. It’s loud and painful. I’d stick my fingers in my ears if I didn’t have the camera to deal with. Then I realize why it’s so intense; behind the fire truck is an ambulance, and their two sets of sirens don’t match up.

  We all turn to look at Rory, statue still, her eyes fixed on the pavement. This seems to be working for her, so none of us goes closer.