You Look Different in Real Life

me he’s not sure exactly who’s chasing him. I don’t yell that it’s me, in case that means he’ll just run faster.
    Now I’m at the door and I throw myself through it. It puts me out in another hallway, but I see the building lobby up ahead, and Felix at the front door, rushing outside. By the time I’m outside too, I just get a glimpse of him at the corner, crossing the street into the park. He’s not running anymore. He slows to a walk, deliberate, angry. Each hard footstomp on the pavement is like a silent shout.
    I keep up my speed, though, and I’m able to get across the street during the same traffic light. I don’t have to go too far into the park to find Felix. He must have grabbed the first empty bench he saw, but it’s a nice one, right under a streetlamp. He sits hugging his knees to his chest and when he sees me approach, he doesn’t react. He just watches me. I slide into the bench next to him and struggle to catch my breath.
    “I thought it was you,” Felix says flatly.
    We’re silent for a little while, breathing together, as we watch a pair of young women with identical shoppingbags walk by. Elsewhere in the park, someone’s playing a clarinet.
    “Go ahead,” he finally says. “Ask what you want to ask.” The first part of his sentence comes out casually, but by the end of it, his voice is shaking, breaking down.
    I don’t ask what I want to ask. I ask something else. “When you asked Rory what helps, I thought that was brilliant, really. Can I steal that? Can I just ask how I can help you? ”
    “You can’t help me, but thanks anyway.” Felix shakes his head. “Goddamn Nate. He planned this whole thing.”
    I assume he means the trip to find Keira. “It was my idea, originally. Remember? But he does seem to be in charge at the moment.”
    “I mean, coming here to Dylan’s. We could have hung out in a park or gone to Macy’s or something while we waited.”
    “I think he wanted to find a place where we could borrow money and sleep, if it got too late . . .”
    But Felix is not listening to me. “Nate knew Dylan is . . . out,” he continues, “and that his friends were probably like that.” He turns to me now, tears welling up in his eyes. “But I’m not. You know that, right? I’m not . I can’t be.”
    “You mean gay.”
    Felix shrivels at the sound of the word, into a smaller version of himself. I don’t want to ruin this. The camera’soff, but this must continue. I draw a mental line back to what he said about Nate, then connect that conversation to the rest of what just happened.
    “Felix, why would Nate think you’re gay?”
    Now Felix is really crying. He puts his hands over his eyes and sobs. They are little-boy-lost sobs, the-world-is-ending sobs. I rest my hand on his knee.
    “Felix?” I prod.
    Felix sucks in a deep breath, and the sobs disappear into it.
    “Because maybe I am.” He raises his eyes only halfway to me, and I still can’t see his face.
    I want to ask something practical here, like, Why? Are you attracted to men? But I decide to take a different tack.
    “And how would Nate know that?” I keep my voice easy. Totally nonjudgmental.
    For this one, Felix has to turn his head so he’s looking away from me, toward the music, wherever it is.
    “Something happened. When we were kids.”
    I wait for him to go on. I’m tired of filling in the blank spaces with questions.
    “We were eleven. It wasn’t long after they shot Five at Eleven , but before the movie came out.”
    “Can you tell me what it was?”
    “No. I don’t want you having that image in your head. God knows it’s burned into mine.” He pauses, then slowly pivots toward me, still not meeting my glance. “Let’s justsay we were messing around, wrestling, you know, and I had this overwhelming need to see what would happen if—” He stops dead, jammed against the thing in his mind that blocks him from going further. But I don’t need him to go past it right now. It’s all making so much sense. Felix’s eagerness for us to start dating. All the cryptic things Nate said.
    Seeing Felix every day, right in front of me, but not seeing him at all.
    “Wow,” I say. “I really had no clue. You’re going through all this and you kept it completely hidden? Impressive. Terribly unhealthy, but impressive.”
    Felix shrugs. “Well. That’s something, I guess.”
    “I can’t believe you didn’t think you could tell me. It would have been fine.”
    “But if I