I think back to that first question. That simple question, the one so basic, nobody thinks to ask it anymore. How can I help him? What will take him just one single step past this place? What will get him off this bench, to start?
“Felix,” I say, trying to break this huge thing down into the smallest possible pieces. “Nobody’s asking you to come out. Not even to your parents. Why don’t you focus on coming out, you know, to yourself first.”
Felix bows his head and stares at my hand on his knee, like he’s just noticing it. He puts his hand on top of mine.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“So what are you going to do, live in the closet for the rest of your life?”
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I guess I was still hoping I would . . . change.”
This hope must be superstrong because I can actually feel it, sitting on this park bench, vibrating off him. If hope can be depressing, that’s what this is.
“Nate,” I add, still working on the puzzle in my head. “That’s the real reason why Nate stopped being friends with you.”
Felix bites his lip. “Actually, no. I stopped being friends with him. I wouldn’t see him anymore or hang out with him. I sent him, like, a breakup letter on X-Men stationery.”
Now I reach over and put my fingers under Felix’s chin, push it up so I can finally see his face straight on. “He didn’t dump you?”
“No,” he says sadly, with a sigh. “I mean, he was definitely weirded out. But he had his own problems, as you know. He needed his friend. But I couldn’t . . .” Felix yanks his face out of my grasp and turns away again. “I’m the one who bailed on him when he was still getting tormented on a regular basis. It sucks having to live with that, in addition to this other thing it sucks having to live with.”
I think back to the apple cider donut and the whole gesture changes. It didn’t come from hurt and loneliness but rather, guilt, and maybe a little self-preservation.
“All this time, I hated him for ditching you,” I say. “And you let me.”
“I guess I was too busy hating myself to correct you.”
The music in the distance stops. It’s like a cue for something else to be said here, a cutaway or at the very least, a change in scene. A shift in the mood.
I come up with this: “So now that we know we’re attracted to the same gender, you have to tell me. Butch or Sundance?”
Felix actually laughs now. “I am so not telling you that.”
“Come on. I’m with the Sundance Kid. All the way.”
“Okay,” says Felix, biting his lip. “Me too.”
Another pause. This feels like the right direction.
“I think you should go back to the party and dance with those guys.”
“That is very much not going to happen.”
I look down at the camera, which is nestled in my lap. Felix follows my gaze.
“No,” he says emphatically. “No way.”
“Understood. But it’s here if you change your mind.”
Felix nods and we sit in silence for a little while. Then he takes a deep breath and says, “We should go back. I’m worried about Rory.”
“Yeah,” I say, “me too.”
He stands up and offers his hand, which is the kind of macho thing Felix never does, but I don’t make a snarky comment about it. I just take it, and let him pull me back to where we came from.
TWENTY-TWO
Rory is dancing. Not just dork-stepping with Nate as we left her, but actually moving her body in a rhythmic fashion. With a guy. Who’s not Nate. He’s tall and smiling down at her and she stares at his chest for five seconds, then at his face for five seconds, then back at his chest.
Nate’s watching nearby, like a bodyguard. I’m not sure how he managed to create this situation in the short time Felix and I were gone.
“Was this a naturally occurring phenomenon?” I ask him. Felix has disappeared to the bathroom to splash water on his face.
“He asked her. She said yes. These things do happen, Justine. Even to Rory.” We watch for a few moments, then Nate asks, “Can you stay and keep an eye on her? I want to go back and see the rabbit.”
“Sure,” I say, and as Nate moves toward the room he was in earlier, he crosses paths with Felix. Felix nods quickly at Nate. Not really a greeting. Barely an acknowledgment. But still.
When Felix finds me, he looks at Rory and the guy and says, “Whoa.” The guy has moved about an inch closer to her. It feels like any second she could scream and run away. Or, alternatively, she could throw her mouth onto his and they could mack out in front of all these people. I’m not sure anything could surprise me anymore.
I move so she can’t see me easily, turn on the camera, and shoot her and the guy for a good minute. Nate still hasn’t reappeared, so I lean in to whisper at Felix, “Can you watch her? I’ll be right back.”
“Does she know she’s got the Secret Service here?”
“I think it’s the only reason why she’s able to do this.”
When I get to the door, I knock twice, then pause, before walking in.
He’s sitting on the floor with a black-and-white lop-eared rabbit in his lap. He looks a little nervous, but seeing me, he relaxes, and his hand starts moving again along the rabbit’s back. It has its nose burrowed into his elbow and seems to be shuddering with joy.
I take a seat on the floor facing him, also cross-legged, like we’re back in kindergarten and this is the multi-colored carpet at the front of the classroom.
“Felix okay?” asks Nate.
“I think he’s going to start kind of eventually being okay, yeah.”
Nate raises his eyes to me, questioning, and I nod. He seems to relax even more. Now we’re silent. I’m not sure what I had planned, coming in here. I just wanted to see him, having this fresh information. I just wanted to see if he looked different.
And he does. He is Bunny Boy again. Obviously, the rabbit helps. But there’s something dug-up about his manner now, a shiny trinket found in the mud after years of being buried. There’s so much I want to ask him. I start with this:
“Do you mind if I shoot?” He doesn’t look up but shakes his head. I turn on the camera and zoom in on the rabbit, then zoom out slowly to frame a shot of them both.
“His name is Ratso,” says Nate, as if knowing what question I’m about to start with. “They bought him from some guy on the sidewalk one night when they were drunk.”
“Ratso Rizzo,” I say, nodding. “That’s a disturbingly appropriate Midnight Cowboy reference.”
Nate laughs, but only a little. “They have no idea how to take care of a rabbit. They’re not even supposed to have it in the dorm. He’s pretty skinny, but nothing a good diet won’t fix.”
Now I know exactly what to ask Nate. I need to ask him about Nimbus, and the boys who made his life a living hell that year, and why he never asked Lance and Leslie to come forward with all the footage they must have had.
But just then, Nate’s phone rings in his pocket. He contorts himself in order to get it without disturbing Ratso, and actually this is pretty funny. He looks at the phone and his face lights up.
“Hello?” he asks, in that way where you pretend not to know who it is despite the caller ID.
He listens. He stops blinking and slows his breath. This is how I can tell he’s alarmed. Also, I can hear Keira’s voice on the other end. It doesn’t really sound like her. She sounds too something, like she’s running on the wrong speed.
“Just stay there. We’re a couple of blocks away. Give us a few minutes.”
Nate hangs up, stares at the bunny. “That was Keira,” he says.
“I figured.”
“She’s at a bookstore down the street. She’s changed her mind about seeing her mom and now she’s scared to be in the city at night by herself. We need to get her.”
But he doesn’t get up, and neither do I. Why don’t we get up?
We won’t get to be alone again. Maybe ever. Can that be it? Or
is this about a rabbit in his lap?
“I’m going to bring this rabbit with me,” he says, then looks at me with such seriousness, I almost bust out laughing. “The guy asked me if I wanted him. I do.”
“Okay. How will we carry him?”
Nate finally stands up and gingerly places the rabbit on the bed. The rabbit makes a strange whimpering noise I didn’t know rabbits could make. Nate looks around the room and sees a backpack on the floor, grabs it. Empties it of its contents, gray sweat socks and a balled-up T-shirt. With extreme purpose, he grabs a towel from a hook on the back of the closet door, folds it carefully, puts it inside the backpack. Then he picks up the rabbit as if it’s a newborn baby, with both hands, so gently it nearly breaks my heart.
“Okay, Ratso, you’re coming with us. I promise it’ll be okay.” He places the rabbit in the backpack, zips it up so that a few inches stay open at the top. “He should be fine like that, until we get to Keira’s mom’s place.”
“Is that the plan? Take Keira to her mom’s?”
Nate shrugs. “We have to try. It makes sense to finish this.” Now he smiles that smile, and once again it’s easy to feel like he laid this all out ahead of time, like everything that’s happened and hasn’t happened so far was for a specific purpose.
Back out in the common room, Rory and her Mystery Guy are still dancing and I swear, they’re even closer now. It’s going to suck to break this up. Felix is still watching her, and fortunately, Adam and Max are nowhere to be seen. I find him and lean in.
“We’re on the move. Operation: Get Keira.”
“I don’t think Rory wants to leave.”
“You break it to her,” I say. Felix gives me a dirty look, but he knows he’s the one.
Me, I just need to get it all on camera.
Felix makes his way through the swarm of bodies and taps Rory on the shoulder. When she freezes, he leans in and whispers in her ear. After a moment, she nods, and Felix walks away. She doesn’t follow him immediately. She turns to Mystery Guy, stares right into his eyes. She makes an I’ve got to go gesture, and he looks deflated. Then she does something I’m so glad I’m getting visual proof of:
She leans in and hugs him. Halfway. Loosely, like she’s draping a pretend blanket over his shoulders.
When she turns to face us, she’s smiling. But it’s a totally private smile. Totally not meant for us, or for the camera. I get a good shot of it, then stop recording. Rory walks toward us and gives me a brief but electric glance. It’s the kind of look you give a BFF when your world has just shifted on its axis, and it thrills me.
“So we’re going to get Keira?” she asks me. Me.
“Yup,” I say. She nods and then leads the way out of the room.
It’s ten thirty on a Saturday night in Greenwich Village, which means the sidewalks are crowded. I see Rory’s confidence falter a bit once we hit the pavement. Groups of students, moving en masse, make walking down the street feel like we’re in a gigantic pinball machine. Rory holds Felix’s hand, looks straight down at the pavement about five feet ahead of her.
“How far away is it?” I ask Nate.
“Two and a half blocks. Think she’ll make it?”
“Are you prepared to carry her with a jacket over her head, if it comes to that?”
“Yes,” he says, without hesitating.
With Rory walking much faster than she did the first time we tried this, and Nate gingerly carrying the rabbit-filled backpack by its top handle so it totally looks like he’s carrying a purse, and Felix constantly swiveling his head back and forth to catch every interesting thing around us, I’ve got plenty to shoot. Each one of them is somehow different as a result of this party, and it shows. I wonder if this happens to everyone, and that’s why Vijay has such a rep.
The bookstore is on a corner and we see it coming from a half block away, lit up and glowing, a big picture window facing the street.
In an overstuffed chair just inside that window sits Keira, her hands folded in her lap, looking down at the floor. She’s so still that she could easily pass as part of the window display.
One by one, we pull to a halt when we see her, but none of us says anything or taps on the glass. I guess we’re just watching to see what she’s doing and what she might do next. After a few moments, Keira raises her eyes to see us.
She looks scared. Tired. Something familiar in those eyes is gone and in its place, a vulnerability. It’s almost like I can really see her now. Some kind of transparent wrapping has been removed. Her gaze sweeps over all of us, one by one.
Now Keira sighs, a sigh that visibly travels the length of her body, down then up. She stands, grabs her bag off the floor. Moves to the door and then out onto the sidewalk to be with us.
I had the camera off, but now I turn it on again.
“Hi,” she says to Nate. I think she’s expecting him to hug her but he really can’t, not with the second backpack in his hand, so now she hugs him. “Thank you for coming.”
“Where have you been?” asks Nate. “Are you okay?”
Keira nods. “I went to the Metropolitan Museum for a while, until they closed. I ate. I walked.”
“But you got your mom’s message?”
Keira nods again, a far-off look on her face now. “Yes. I kept planning to call her. Or to just go back. But I couldn’t do it. For some reason it’s harder, now that I’ve actually seen her.”
Nate thinks about this, and I imagine he’s projecting this idea onto his own situation, evaluating what he would do if it were his father.
“So you guys have a car here?” Keira continues. “Can I ride back home with you? I left Lance and Leslie’s car at the Trailways station in Mountain Ridge.”
“Ride home now?” asks Nate.
“Yeah,” says Keira.
“Without seeing your mom?”
Keira looks like a little kid caught doing something dumb, scolded for taking an extra cookie from the jar.
“I told you,” she says, her voice growing soft, her eyes darting to the rest of us. “It’s too hard.”
This time, it’s Felix who steps forward. “You came all this way. You actually found her. And now that she’s waiting for you to come, you’re not going to do it?”
Keira opens her mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.
“No,” says Felix. “We’re taking you to see her.”
“I can’t,” says Keira, backing up.
“This is the time,” says Nate. “This is it. We’re here and we’ll stay with you.”
Keira looks at us one by one, and when her eyes land on me, they slide down toward the camera hanging at my side. There’s something about the way she’s looking at it that makes me speak without thinking.
“Finish your story, Keira,” I say. “Finish it tonight, and get on with your life.”
She’s frozen silent for a few moments, then finally, she says simply, “Okay.”
TWENTY-THREE
Rory is navigating us uptown to Mrs. Jones’s block, but this time she uses only her memory and not a map. Felix and I sit in the backseat with Keira wedged between us, and Nate drives more confidently now that there’s less traffic.
After we ride in silence for a few blocks, Keira asks, “How late did she say she’d be up?”
“Late. Come on, K. You’re her daughter. She’d stay up all night for you.”
It’s pretty weird, crammed in next to Keira like this. She’s trying hard not to look at me, and in her efforts, she keeps glancing down at the camera. She notices me noticing.
“So have you been shooting everything that happens?” she asks. There’s no judgment in her voice.
“Pretty much.”
“And what about the big reunion? Lance and Leslie would never forgive you if you didn’t get that.”
“It’s really up to you and your mom,” I say, and mean it.
Keira pauses. “Can I think about it?”
“Of course.” I want to be kind here. I want to have an int
eraction with her that will help, not hurt, the experience she’s about to have. “This moment is totally, completely yours. They took the other one from you, but this time you know better. Right?”
Now Keira looks straight at me, with an expression like she’s just been punctured. Pop. She stares for several very long seconds, and I work to keep my eyes connected to hers.
“Right,” she finally says.
“We’re going to stay on this until Sixty-Seventh Street,” says Rory. Nate nods and picks up speed. We see nothing but green lights stretching for blocks in front of us, as if an unknown something is shouting, Go, go, go! When we finally see a red light, Nate slows, but it changes to green before we get to the intersection and he speeds up again. I put my hand out the open window, fingers spread wide, feeling the air slide through them. Felix sees me do this and puts his hand out his window, and now we pretend our arms are wings on either side of the car and we flap them, in unison.
Then something amazing happens. Keira laughs. Rory takes her cue and laughs as well, then Nate notices what we’re doing and cracks a smile.
Finally, a light turns yellow, then red, as we approach, and Nate gently pulls the car to a full stop. But my heart keeps traveling in a joyful trajectory, soaring through the windshield and up into the air, higher than the buildings. Weightless for several infinite seconds, before it rebounds and when it does, everything in the car feels changed again.
“So, Rory,” says Keira into the sudden stillness. “Tell me about this epic party.”
Mrs. Jones’s street is lit all pretty from streetlamps now. Welcoming. This is going to sound weird but at this point, it almost feels like home.
After putting the car in a nearby garage, we stand at the foot of the steps leading to Keira’s mom’s brownstone. I really want to get a shot of it like this, the dark wood of the front door glowing a little from the reflected streetlamp, but don’t want to ruin the moment. Keira’s moment, like I said in the car. Although in a way, it belongs to all of us.
“Hey, Keira,” says Nate.
“Yeah?” She doesn’t take her eyes off the door.
“I’m really glad you’re here.”
You Look Different in Real Life Page 21
