You Look Different in Real Life

his grandmother. I wanted to be entertained by it, but I actually felt kind of bad for him.”
    “Oh, yeah,” says Felix, perking up, a knowing edge to his voice.
    “Scoop?” I ask. Felix does not talk to Nate, but Felix’s mother talks to everybody.
    “Mrs. Hunter wants Nate to spend some time workingat the farm. With, you know. The crew around. Free advertising, and all that.”
    “Yuck,” I say.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Felix shrug. “Times are tough. The farm needs all the exposure it can get.”
    “They’re not bugging you about it.”
    Felix doesn’t answer. His silence is suspicious.
    “What is it?” I ask. “What are you about to tell me?”
    “They’re not bugging me about it because I’ve got other things going on.” I catch him looking down at his phone. “I got a call from Leslie today.”
    It’s been two days since Lance and Leslie had a big meeting with their producers, and I haven’t heard a peep. Which has been kind of nice and kind of devastating at the same time.
    “Did they talk about Independent Eye?” I ask.
    “They got some notes,” says Felix. “Maybe they’ll tell you more at the theater. We talked a bit about me. The Independent Eye people talked about me.”
    The thought of a bunch of cable channel executives sitting around a table, drinking espresso and discussing the five of us like they know us, like they own us somehow, has kept the hair on the back of my neck standing on end for days. Even now, I clench my hands around the steering wheel.
    “They’re thinking my blog should be part of the onlinepresence for the film, and they’d like to do something with one of my songs.”
    “Ah, so they know how to get you,” I say.
    “Well, I don’t kid myself with the music thing. I know I’m not that good. Yet. But what I have that others don’t is an existing stage. People will see me. Important people, who could actually help me with my career. How else am I going to show my parents I can make a living this way? They want me to find something more . . . reliable. In other words, corporate and mind-numbing and not who I am .”
    I take my eyes off the road for just a second to glance at him and in that second, he appears different. I always thought of Felix’s hunger for the spotlight as something desperate and a little annoying, but now I get it. He is chronically unseen, even by his own family.
    “You know what it means?” Felix continues. “It means maybe this time, they’ll actually care about me. It’s always been you or Keira or Nate. Rory and me . . . they never really focused on us because we weren’t that interesting. But now, apparently I am.”
    Felix looks overjoyed. I wish I could offer him any one of a thousand other things to feel this way about: a tricked-out new keyboard, perhaps, or a girlfriend.
    “Felix, you’ve always been interesting,” I say. “More than most people.”
    “Well then, now it’s official.”
    We drive in silence for a few seconds. So Felix is more interesting to them than he was. Does this mean I am less interesting? Well, that’s no surprise. The best I can do here is be a good friend.
    “That’s great,” I finally say to Felix. “You deserve that.”
    “I’m so happy that I don’t even care that Leslie and Lance are asking us to do what they want us to do.” He pauses. “ You will, though, Justine. You will totally hate it.”
    He’s right. I do hate it. I hate it so much, I’m still trying to figure out how my mouth even formed the sounds of Okay that brought me here.
    In the corner of the school library, underneath one of the dusty bubble skylights, there’s a table where there was never a table. The bookshelves have been moved around to make room for this thing, which was dragged over from another part of the library. It’s a larger, taller version of the one we sat at in kindergarten.
    Lance and Kenny are tinkering with some lights they brought in, and somewhere, far enough away so we can’t see her but not so far that she can’t hear everything that’s going on, is the librarian, Mrs. Abruzzo. It’s after school but I’m sure she doesn’t mind sticking around for this.
    This . I am the first one to arrive for this .
    This being all five of us around the table. Nate, Felix, Keira, Rory, and me. Together. Talking, ideally. We’ll see.
    I wanted to get here early so I could suss out thesituation. The others are probably dallying at their lockers or in the bathroom, but