You Look Different in Real Life

and for a second I flash on the Nate he was five years ago in Five at Eleven. His hair was longish then, his green eyes larger, even though I know that’s impossible because eyeballs never grow.
    Is it Nate’s fault, really? He didn’t set this up. So why do I want to close that open look on his face? Zip it, lock it, pull it shut with a drawstring?
    “It feels fake to me ,” I finally say, looking back at Nate for a second. “Fake,” I say again, to him. For him. The word seems to hit its mark, landing deep behind the carefully composed lines of his face. He looks at the floor.
    We’re silent for a moment, then finally Mrs. Zandhoffer takes over. “Okay, Justine. Your performance on this project is what matters most to me. We’ll switch you with someone else.”
    For the rest of the class, in my new location on the Arts and Entertainment island, I have no trouble ignoring the camera. I get assigned a story on an exhibit at the college art museum.
    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 ofimagining 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