You Look Different in Real Life

have been perfect if not for the taste of rubber.
    In the stiff silence that follows, I dial my mother. When she picks up and I say, “Hey, Mom,” and she says, “Justine,” in that way that really hits hard on the S , I know she’s already spoken to Leslie.
    I tell her the facts and only the facts: I’m fine, betterthan fine, and we’re going to the city and we’ll be back tonight or tomorrow and this is Nate’s phone but don’t call it unless there’s a really, really good reason to.
    “Okay?” I ask. There’s no answer. “Okay,” I say then. Not as a question, but as a good-bye.
    I hang up and offer the phone to Felix, who shakes his head. “Not ready yet,” he says. “Ana will be running the Dominican Curse Marathon by now.”
    But he takes the phone and hands it to Rory, who starts dialing.
    Olivia has only two caseless CDs in her car and they’re both awful, but Nate has thought to grab not just his phone and charger but also the cable to plug it into the stereo system. His seamless integration of Road Trip Entertainment into our quick getaway—impressive. Once we’ve gone through the tollbooth at the Mountain Ridge exit and are headed south on the thruway, Nate hands me the cable.
    “There’s a playlist on there called Away Meets,” he says. “I listen to it on the team bus. It’s a good place to start.”
    I start scrolling through his phone, pretending to be looking for the playlist but really just checking out his music library. Nate’s taste falls squarely in the Not Bad to Incredibly Incredible range.
    “The soundtrack to Grease ?” I ask. I expect him to be embarrassed, but he just smiles and shrugs.
    “I’m a T-Bird at heart.”
    I laugh, but Rory and Felix don’t join me.
    “Actually, it was Felix who first got me into that movie. Remember, dude?”
    Felix looks out the window, presses his nose to the glass so it goes crooked and reminds me of a Picasso painting. “Yeah, I remember.”
    The pain evident on Felix’s face brings me back to reality. Nate hurt him, so bad he had to bait new companions with apple cider donuts.
    I turn back to the phone, find the playlist Nate’s talking about, and press the play button. The music fills the car, seeps into the awkward empty spaces between the four of us. It feels a little like oxygen. I can breathe more easily. So I take out the camera and start shooting again.
    Here are the familiar landmarks that mean we’re headed away from home, south toward something interesting. A horse farm. A billboard advertising a nearby water park, which stays up year-round and always depresses me in winter. We can’t see our ridge anymore, just distant hills that belong to other towns.
    I swivel around to get a shot of Rory. She’s found one of Olivia’s fashion magazines on the floor of the backseat, the pages rumpled, the skin of the cover celebrity mottled with red slushie stains. From Rory’s look of concentration as she reads, you’d think she was studying Tolstoy.
    Felix has closed his eyes. I’m pretty sure he’s just pretending to sleep.
    Nate bobs his head to the music and seems more relaxed about the highway driving, a light-years-away look in his eyes. If I were Leslie, I’d ask him what he’s thinking about. But I’m just me. I suddenly understand this about myself: I like to watch. I like to let the thing I see through the lens tell me whatever it wants to say.

FIFTEEN
    S OLOMON TOWNSEND MEMORIAL REST AREA. 2 MILES.
    Yeah, someday I should look up who these people actually are.
    “Let’s stop here,” says Nate. “I’d like to call Keira.”
    Once we’ve exited the thruway and pulled into a parking space, Nate turns to me, then holds out his hand for the phone, which I had been holding. I give it to him. It’s strange to have this silent language between us.
    “Here goes,” he murmurs. We’re all quiet as he dials Leslie’s number. We can hear the ringing on the other end. Ringing and ringing. “Should I leave a message?”
    I shake my head. Now we hear Leslie and her voice mail greeting. It doesn’t seem right to be leaving messages for Keira on Leslie’s phone, even if Keira could retrieve them.
    Nate hangs up. “She saw it was me who called. I guess if she doesn’t want to talk, I can send her a text. I’ll just ask if she’s okay and tell her to call me if she can.” Nate takes a few moments to type out a message on his phone.
    “So, what now?” I ask when he’s done. “We just head down to