You Look Different in Real Life

stripes on his polo shirt, his hands shoved into his pockets.
    “I know this changes everything,” I say, but I’m not sure to whom.
    Felix takes a deep breath and then, without raising his head to look at me, walks swiftly in the direction of thecar. We all watch him climb into the backseat as Rory and Nate slide over to make room.
    There is nothing else to say. Pam has a disappointed-schoolteacher thing going on. Lance and Kenny have the camera and mic on Leslie as she sags against the banister again. Turning away from all of them is so easy, yet so difficult. I do it quickly and walk to the car.
    Rory, Nate, and Felix accordioned into the backseat together look uncomfortable in every possible way. How funny that they’ve left me to ride shotgun, like they trust me to be in charge here. Like I know how to lead them. I slide in and give Olivia a kiss on the cheek.
    “Thanks for coming.”
    “As if I would miss this.”
    Olivia starts the car and begins to back out.
    “Wait!” shouts Leslie. She’s running down the front walk.
    “Should I keep driving?” asks Olivia, and I nod yes. We need to get out of here.
    “Just a second!” yells Leslie again. “Please!”
    “Okay, stop,” I say, and Olivia slams on the brakes. There’s something about Leslie’s face now, a rawness in her voice. When Leslie sees that we’ve actually stopped, she holds up a single finger as a sign for us to hang on, then rushes back into the house.
    “I would love it if she went in to get us some money,” says Nate.
    But when Leslie reappears, hurrying toward the car, she’s carrying a canvas case with a long strap. I’ve seen it before.
    It’s her camera bag.
    She circles around the front of the car and when I see she’s headed for my window, I roll it down.
    “Here,” says Leslie, breathless. She shoves the bag through the window and I take it.
    There are a few things I could ask here. Such as, What do you want me to do with this? Or Why or How or When? But the weight of the bag in my hand, the way it feels like I’ve just had a severed arm reattached, makes those questions redundant.
    Leslie stands back from the car and in lieu of a wave, shoots us the most bittersweet look I have ever seen. It almost makes me want to invite her along for the ride. But she is not one of us.
    “Now?” asks Olivia, slapping the leg she’s got on the brake.
    “Now,” I answer, and the Aikya Lodge begins disappearing from sight.
    Information that we do actually have:
    1.  Keira’s mom’s last known address was in Manhattan on West Forty-Seventh Street.
Minor technicalities we have to work around:
    2.  The fact that she is probably not living there anymore.
    3.  The fact that we have no way to contact her.
    4.  The fact that she may not even be using the same name.
    But first things first. We’re on our way to Nate’s so he can sneak into his house and get his wallet and phone. Then he can call Keira at Leslie’s number. If Keira sees it’s him, she may answer. At least, this is what he believes. I’m not so sure.
    Nate is driving now. I don’t know why Olivia seemed eager to hand him the keys to Sob; she’s never let me drive it, and I got my license a few weeks before he did. But I’m too grateful to be annoyed right now, because when we dropped Olivia at the library on campus, she handed me all twenty-three dollars of cash from her wallet.
    I’m still in the front passenger seat, and I’ve got the camera rolling so I can shoot Mountain Ridge as we rumble through it. The tenements disguised as off-campus student housing, the achingly cute historic buildings converted into chic restaurants. I pan across the three competing artisan craft stores on Main, and the shop with all the tie-dye clothing displayed on the sidewalk, like it puked the 1960s right into the street.
    I turn to the backseat and point the camera at Felix.
    “You’ve done that, like, ten times already,” he says grumpily. He’s sitting with his arms crossed, pressed against one door, as far as possible from where Rory has Velcroed herself to the opposite side. We survived the drive down the mountain thanks to Nate, who distracted us from the palpable layer of What the Hell Do We Do Now? in the air by recounting the entire weekend to my sister, while I shot him and tried to keep the camera still and also not get nauseous. Now I stop the camera and nestle it into my lap. I don’t want to overdo it.
    We drive south from town and pass the