You Look Different in Real Life

must be for him. “It’s a Saturday afternoon in Manhattan.” Then he turns to me. I’m his cocaptain, back here. “Do you want to come with me?”
    Nate already has that endearing All-American Boy look on his face and he’ll be just fine on his own. Probably better. I shake my head.
    “Be right back,” he says. “If someone asks you to move the car, just circle around.”
    I turn on the camera and shoot him exiting the car, then climb out in time to catch him walking down the sidewalk and turning into the courtyard.
    When he’s out of sight, I turn to Felix, who’s rolled down his window and is leaning his head against the frame, staring at the sky. I’m still recording. “Why was your mom so angry?” I ask him. “You’re with friends. You’re not missing school. You said you’d be back tomorrow.”
    Felix eyes the camera and takes a deep breath. “It’s disrespectful, what we did. That’s what she said. And in my family when you disrespect someone . . . not a good thing. Plus, she’s afraid we violated our agreement with Lance and Leslie and they’ll come after us with lawyers.My parents are big on the legal thing, you know. They spent so many years undocumented and worked so hard to change that.”
    He’s risked a lot to be here. It makes me feel like I’ve let him down somehow.
    “I’m sorry, Felix.”
    He bites his lip. “There’s something else that’s really embarrassing.”
    “You don’t have to tell me.”
    “Why not? At this point, I’ve got nothing to hide.” He pauses and looks straight into the camera, then at me. “I’ve never actually spent a night away from home. I don’t think my parents wanted it to be quite like this.”
    “Not even one night? You’re sixteen. How can that be?”
    Felix gives me one of his Oh, you are so white looks. “I wasn’t allowed to do sleepovers. Sleepaway camp was out of the question, moneywise. So that’s how it can be.”
    Rory unbuckles herself and scrambles ungracefully into the backseat with Felix, draws her knees up to her chin. “I’ve never spent a whole night away from home either.”
    That’s no surprise. We tried a sleepover at my house. Once. Rory woke up screaming at 2:00 a.m. and started to run home, until my dad caught her two houses down and drove her the rest of the way. I was so mad. Wounded, really. What was wrong with my house? She’d been there a thousand times and called my parents “D-Mom” (for Diana) and “J-Dad” (for Jeff). But our sleepovers werealways at Rory’s from then on. Later, after I met new friends, it felt amazingly uncomplicated to have them sleep over. Dramaless.
    I hear footsteps and turn to see Nate jogging toward us. Fortunately, I’ve had the camera on this whole time. I wasn’t thinking about it. It’s becoming part of my hand and I don’t even feel the weight of it.
    “We’re golden,” he says, waving a Post-it note. “I talked to the woman Mrs. Jones was sharing the apartment with. Apparently she moved last year, but the roommate gave me the address like she gave it to Keira.”
    At first, I’m not going to ask how he was able to swing this, because really, it’s Nate. But I feel the tug of the camera’s curiosity.
    “What did you say?” I ask, raising it to frame Nate against the buildings across the street.
    “I explained that Keira was our friend and we wanted to be there for her when she saw her mother again for the first time.”
    Our friend . “I’m so glad you left out the part where she has no idea we’re here, and that you’re really the only person she would possibly in a million years want to see right now.”
    Nate shakes his head sadly. “You make it sound like she hates you.”
    I press stop on the camera and lower it. “Um, because she does.”
    “She doesn’t.”
    “And you know, of course.”
    He shrugs. “We’ve talked about it.” He looks at me, his eyes darting to my feet, then up again at my face. “She admires you, actually.”
    I’m about to ask more when we hear a sudden honk. It’s a police car. My heart jumps.
    “Please move your vehicle,” says an amplified voice, half-human. “You are in a no-parking zone.”
    Nate waves at the cop, respectful and pleasant, then jumps into the car. I slide into the passenger seat, heart racing. Why do I feel like we almost got caught doing something? We’re not committing any crime. We barely even pissed anybody off. We’re just four teenagers meeting up with a friend in New York