You Look Different in Real Life

buy her old stroller, saying she’d need it if she got paralyzed in an accident. At the time, these scenes made me laugh. I’m not sure they made other people laugh. I thinkthey generally made people uncomfortable, because Rory was always looking at the ground and cracking her neck when she spoke.
    Then there are the scenes with her and me. The dancing-princess thing. The two of us on a class field trip to a nature center, holding hands as we walk along the muddy trail, behind the rest of the group. In my bedroom, playing Alligator Family—an elaborate situation where I was a mother alligator, and she was my daughter alligator, and I’d just tell her which toys to gobble up. I haven’t been able to watch those scenes in years, but I don’t really need to. They’re running on a loop in my head at all times.
    I want to turn to Rory and tell her these things. But I can’t.
    So I turn back to Felix and a memory comes to mind. I don’t think about it too much. I just sort of go with it. “Felix, there’s that scene with you and your mom at the supermarket. You’re riding in the basket of the cart even though that’s not allowed, and you’re translating stuff for her because she’s trying to improve her English.”
    Felix’s features all sag at once, disappointed and maybe even betrayed.
    “What?” I say.
    “ That’s the part you remember most from ten years ago?”
    I nod, flipping through the film in my head. What else was there? Scenes of him and Nate playing. Stuff on thefarm. What does he want me to remember most?
    “Great. Just great.” Felix pushes his food away and in the space he’s cleared, puts his face in his hands. “That’s all anybody remembers. Felix with his foreign parents. Felix with Nate. What about all those scenes of me on my own?”
    I draw a blank. I can’t remember any scenes of Felix on his own. Oh, there was one. In it, he’s alone in his kitchen, dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” It’s actually a little silly and the one scene in the whole movie that seems set up.
    Felix is looking at Leslie now. “It’s going to be different this time, right?” he asks. “Like we talked about?”
    Leslie lowers her camera and nods. “Yes, Felix. Of course. We told you we would do more with you on your own.”
    Felix glances at Nate, then at me, embarrassed now. “Okay. I’m sorry about that. I ruined this whole thing, didn’t I?”
    “No,” says Leslie, who then shoots me a look.
    “Absolutely not,” I add. Not convincingly.
    “Shit,” says Felix, and before I know it, he’s darted out of his chair and is running away from us. Suddenly I’m darting after him. I get past the first bookcase and then pause, turning to see that Leslie has started to follow me with the camera.
    “Don’t,” I practically spit, as if commanding a traineddog. She freezes and I continue through the library, out into the hallway. Felix is down at the end of it, walking fast.
    I call his name, and he turns. “Please don’t make me chase you!” I say, and see him smile.
    “Camera?” he yells.
    “No,” I say, as I head down the hallway toward him. He puts his hands in his pockets and watches me intently, and I have to wonder if he’s still wishing we could date.
    When I reach him, he says, “Sorry about that.”
    “Who’s the diva now?”
    “That would be me. So unexpected.”
    I just shrug.
    “It’s Nate,” adds Felix. “I acted that way because of Nate being there. Do you realize we haven’t been in close proximity for more than a minute in years?”
    “I’m sure it was not fun,” I say, wanting to touch his arm but not wanting to give him the wrong idea.
    “Aside from you, he’s been the headliner. Even when we were little, it made me jealous that he was on screen so much more than me. Why did everybody notice Nate, when I was right there too?” Felix looks down and rubs his sneaker along one line of a tile on the floor. “Seeing him always stirs up some intense stuff.”
    “Well, who could blame you for that? After what he did.”
    “What he did?” asks Felix, raising an eyebrow.
    “Yeah. You know. Ditching you as a friend. Remakinghimself into the Nate-tastic incarnation he’s become.”
    Felix stares at his sneaker for another long moment, then lifts his head. “Right.”
    He takes a quick breath and I get the sense he’s about to say something else, but we hear the library doors open down the hallway and Leslie appears.
    “Will you come