You Look Different in Real Life

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 twicegets 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 tobuild 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