You Look Different in Real Life

the camera, but until then, I can record every second possible. Besides, it’s easier to watch what’s happening on the LCD display instead of in the intensity of real life.
    Keira looks at the little girl, then back at her mother.
    “Keira, no,” says Mrs. Jones. “It’s not—”
    And Keira bolts. Across the street, down the block, faster than I have ever seen her move.

EIGHTEEN
    A s Nate takes off after Keira, Mrs. Jones crumples onto the steps of the nearest brownstone.
    The little girl watches her do this, then turns to the man, frightened. He scoops her up and walks her down the block a bit, abandoning the stroller in the middle of the sidewalk.
    I’m not sure what I should do here. I don’t seem capable of moving, or taking the camera off this woman who now has her face in her hands, sobbing into them. Fortunately, Felix steps into frame.
    “Mrs. Jones?” She looks up, her eyes unfocused. “It’s Felix Cortez. Do you remember me? From Mountain Ridge? From the movies?”
    She stops sobbing long enough to make the connection, then nods. Now she notices me, and the camera.
    “Is this part of the next film?” she asks, defeated, like she’s been dreading this moment for a long time and now it’s finally here.
    “No,” says Felix emphatically. “Not if nobody wants it to be.”
    Mrs. Jones looks down the street at the man and the girl. “She’s not mine. That’s my boyfriend and his daughter.”
    “We’ll find Keira,” Felix assures her. “We’ll explain.”
    She dabs at her tears with the back of her wrist, once on each cheek, and then presses her palm to her chest like she wants to make sure she’s still breathing. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way,” says Mrs. Jones. “I wanted to really get my life together before contacting her.”
    Felix leans on the railing above her, a comforting Go on gesture. I zoom out a bit so they’re both in frame.
    “She’s so beautiful,” says Mrs. Jones, staring at the spot where she saw Keira, as if it were years ago and not minutes, and in her voice there’s pain and love and desperate want.
    “Yes, she is,” says Felix.
    “It’s so strange. Every day, I think I see her on the street. The city is filled with young women who look like my daughter.”
    Nate reappears, panting and sweaty. He walks over to us. “I lost her around a corner.” He grips an iron fence and tries to catch his breath.
    “Do you have any way of reaching her?” asks Mrs. Jones.
    Nate nods. He takes out his phone and dials. Mrs. Jones stands and holds out one hand to indicate she’d like to speak, and Nate gives her the phone. “You’ll hear Leslie Rodgers on the voice mail. Just ignore that. Say what you need to say.”
    Mrs. Jones steps away from us, toward the man and the girl, and we see her speaking into the phone. She hangs up, says something to the man. He nods sadly, then they all come walking back to us. She returns the phone to Nate.
    “Look at you,” she says to him. “You’re all grown up.” She scans over to Felix and me. “All of you.”
    “Not quite, but we’re getting there,” says Nate, then flashes a shy smile.
    “Can you make sure she listens to my message?” asks Mrs. Jones.
    “I can try. She’s using someone else’s phone, and I don’t know if she can access the voice mail.”
    After Nate gives Mrs. Jones a couple of cell phone numbers—Keira’s, and then his own—she slips her hand into the man’s, and the three of them turn around to head back down the street. We watch them climb thesteps to her building and disappear.
    Nate looks at me expectantly. “It’s her boyfriend and his daughter,” I reply to his unasked question. Nate nods, then turns to his phone. Types out a text message, presumably to Keira.
    “What now?” I ask.
    “I told her we’re going to hang out somewhere for a while. I told her we’re here if she needs us.”
    “I was hoping you had a slightly more detailed plan than that.”
    The truth is, I’m not really annoyed. I’m grateful. That we don’t have to go home yet. That I’ll have more time to get my questions answered.
    “That makes two of us,” says Nate. “But I can’t leave until I know this is going to be all right. Let me call Dylan to see if he’s around, because that’s a totally safe place to chill and we could probably stay over if we have to.”
    Nate starts fiddling with his phone again so I turn off the camera and go over to Felix. He’s now sitting on the step