You Look Different in Real Life

there. Close but untouchable.
    I open the bag and remove the camera, then fish out the headphones and poke around a bit until I successfully get the right jack to plug them into. I turn on the cameradisplay and navigate to the playback menu, where I can watch every clip I’ve shot since yesterday.
    There’s the road leading out of Aikya Lodge, the trees and sheets of rock, the side of the mountain where it drops away to show us the entire valley below, the patchwork of farms and river and the cluster of buildings in the center of Mountain Ridge that means the college.
    I see Olivia driving, and Nate and Felix and Rory in the backseat. Where we started.
    The chain of video clips takes me through town and onto the thruway, toward the city, in and out of our day. The street and the dorm and the party.
    Keira and her mother hugging. The way their sobs blended, each wrapped inside the other. Then the image jumps to black, and even though I know I didn’t shoot more after that moment, I keep waiting for the tiny screen to show me something else.
    The Cramp, which I haven’t felt since we left home, hits me hard as if to make up for lost time. It raises the hair on my arms and the back of my neck. Something else starts to happen too, but I won’t let it. I mentally stomp on it and grind it into the ground with the toe of my shoe.
    I’m not going to cry.
    But I do have to get the hell out of here.
    It’s light now and the clock says 6:07 a.m., and there must be someplace open for food. I fumble for my shoes and sweatshirt, then scribble a note (“Went for bagels”). I leavethat on the bathroom mirror where the first person with a full bladder will see it, and take the liberty of grabbing Mrs. Jones’s keys from the handmade pottery bowl by the front door.
    I’ve headed toward First Avenue simply because we were there before, and it’s practically an old stomping ground compared with the rest of the city. The air’s still night-fresh but the light’s already getting strong, and there’s a feeling, something you can’t put your finger on, that the day is going to be beautiful.
    As soon as I turn the corner and point my feet downtown again, I remember a playground we passed yesterday. It was packed with parents and kids, vibrating with noise and energy. Now, though, it’s deserted.
    Once inside the gates, I notice that in between the swings and this massive maze of a climbing structure sit two small elephant statues. I get a closer look and realize they must be fountains, because their trunks look quasi-functional. I can imagine children in bathing suits on a summer day, running across the pavement as they get sprayed with water, squealing like they hate it but in fact are really loving it. I sit on one, then feel stupid, so I get up and go over to the end of a spiral slide, which really is not any less stupid but at least now I’m not squatting on a concrete animal.
    This is where I let it happen. The switch gets flipped,the cord gets cut, and I face-plant into my own hands. They’re instantly wet and the tears are seeping through the cracks between my fingers. My eyes burn so much; why do they burn so much? Maybe they’re simply not used to this.
    I’m totally losing it in front of people walking down the street and the city sanitation crew that’s arrived to empty the park garbage cans. Nobody even looks up, though. Like a girl crying on a playground by herself in the early morning is just another part of the city’s landscape.
    “Please don’t,” says a voice. I part my hands and see a familiar pair of sneakers on the pavement in front of me.
    “Why not?” I ask.
    “Because I was just getting used to seeing you smile,” says Nate. He leans against the play structure above me, sleepy-looking and adorably bed-headed.
    “Ah,” I say, brushing the back of my hand across my eyes and nose. “That never lasts long. You’ve completed Lesson One about me.” Now I force myself to look at him. “How did you know where I was?”
    “I woke up just as you were leaving, so I followed you.”
    “That’s creepy.”
    “That’s concern . Anything can happen to you alone in the city, even during daylight.”
    Nate was worried about me. This might start the crying again.
    “Lesson Two,” I say, digging back into my arsenal ofsmart-ass self-defense. “Nothing ever happens to me.”
    Nate motions for me to scoot over on the end of the slide, and I do, and because it opens wide at the end, there’s just