You Look Different in Real Life

idea.”

TWENTY-FIVE
    I f the audience only knew how well I can hear them.
    Every time a seat creaks with someone shifting their weight. Every whisper, laugh, and sniffle. I listen to all of it, even over the sound of the film, and even from where I stand backstage, which is so close yet also so far removed from the hundreds of people watching Five at Sixteen on the other side of this theater curtain.
    I hear them loudest when they make no noise—when what they’re seeing on-screen has them riveted to silence.
    “Just a few more minutes, right?” asks Felix, who’sstanding nearby. He swigs from his water bottle and glances nervously at me.
    I listen for the voices on the audio track, then nod.
    Rory’s here too, traveling the length of the dark, narrow space by putting one foot precisely in front of the other along the lines in the hardwood floor. Keira sits on a folding chair, reading the film festival guide. We are one of the highlights, apparently. This screening was sold out.
    Keira raises her eyes to me and points to the guide. “I love this picture of you,” she says warmly.
    “Thanks,” I say, touching my hair. I recently changed out the pink streaks for turquoise, and I daresay I’m rocking that color.
    We’ve already been told what’s supposed to happen. The film will end, and they’ll take a minute to set up chairs for the Q&A session before a moderator—some famous magazine movie critic—introduces us one by one. We’ll listen for our names and fill in the chairs starting from the far end of the stage. It all sounds so simple, except for the fact that we’re terrified.
    Here it comes. The last lines of dialogue I now know so well. Then, the moments of a blank screen—I count them out, one, two, three —followed by the song that runs over the closing credits. It’s a great song. Perfect, really. I’m still so proud of that. But I only hear the first few notes, because it’s suddenly overpowered by wall-shaking, whooping applause.
    Felix, Rory, Keira, and I look back and forth to one another with various combinations of surprise, relief, and curiosity. Felix peeks his head through the curtain that separates us from them, then turns around with a smile. “They’re standing.”
    “You bet your ass they are,” says Nate, who is suddenly beside me. Lance and Leslie asked that we not be in the audience, so we were escorted backstage through a special entrance only ten minutes ago. That was fine by most of us, but Nate sneaked out to watch the last scene.
    My pulse is pounding and my stomach, of course, is churning, and I have to keep looking down at my feet to make sure they’re still there, because I don’t feel connected to the ground.
    A petite young woman with blue horn-rimmed eyeglasses and a clipboard ducks through the curtain. She could be twenty-five, or thirty-five, or fifteen. She’s one of those.
    “We’re ready! Do you hear that applause? You’ve got a great audience out there.”
    Nate slips his hand in mine and squeezes. Just like that, I’m plugged back in to where I need to be. I squeeze back.
    The moderator introduces Keira first, who takes a deep breath and shakes out her wrists before stepping onstage. Then Felix, who flashes us the smile that will somehow get even bigger as soon as he sees that audience—the confident grin that pulls you into his world. Next is Rory,presenting us with a carefully drawn Gah, can you believe this? look before marching out there.
    As soon as she disappears, I turn to Nate. “You’re on.”
    He grabs my face with both hands and stares at it for several long seconds. I have seen so many versions of him in the past year. Nate at six and eleven and sixteen, over and over in a computer’s video editing program. Nate in real life, present tense. From a distance, and in extreme close-up. I know them all by heart.
    The moderator calls his name. Nate doesn’t move, except for stroking my cheek with his thumb. For a moment, I’m worried he hasn’t heard. He just gazes at me and I gaze back, and between us swings the weight of everything we’ve discovered about ourselves since that weekend in the city.
    Then he kisses me, quickly but deeply, before turning to run through the curtain.
    I’m still feeling Nate on my lips and his palms on my skin when someone else touches me on the shoulder. I turn around to see Leslie, and Lance behind her.
    “Ready, kiddo?” she asks, her eyes welled up in a good way.
    “No,” I say.