Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  It wasn’t a question of whether or not Sana liked girls. It was that Sana was so secure in her position. She came from the right kind of family and she had the right kind of pedigree. Her mom worked in the movies and her dad was some kind of big-deal TV reporter.

  Rachel was so wrong that even at this point, she still hadn’t figured out the right kind of sneakers to wear so that nobody noticed how out of place she was. Rachel’s hair had been short and she’d spent as much time as she could covering it up with a beanie. Her curls were too coily to wave in a tousled way—the way that girls with short hair had looked in her feed—and not quite curly enough to make a nice halo around her face. The haircut had been a disaster. Rachel had been a disaster.

  Rachel had felt her voice shaking. She wasn’t going to cry. Wasn’t going to let some rich, entitled cheerleader get to her. She belonged here. She wasn’t just an outsider muscling her way in. Wasn’t just new. She had talent. Just because this girl thought she looked like an easy target, that wouldn’t stop her. No. It would fuel her. She’d show Sana. She’d show them all. “Stay away from me. I’m not a joke. Asking me out is not a joke.”

  “No—” Sana had said, like she could apologize for this kind of cruelty. “I meant—”

  But Rachel had already whirled off.

  Fucking Sana. Fucking cheerleaders. Stupid fucking water polo players with hearts of fucking gold.

  Rachel shook her head. She was sick of the lot of them. She hauled up all her equipment, squaring her shoulders and balancing the weight of the bags and cases and cameras. She had footage to review and she couldn’t waste her time worrying about Sana or Diesel or even Douga. Rachel had to focus.

  She had to find a new lead for her final project.

  Again.

  3

  Your Big Dumb Combat Boots

  Rachel

  Tip tip tip. Tiptiptip. Tip.

  Rachel watched as the back of her pen hit the counter.

  “Will you stop that racket.” Jeanie held a pitcher in one hand and a platter of food in the other. Jeanie Silber was anywhere between forty and sixty, though she liked to tell everyone she was still thirty-eight. Her hair was pulled back into a long, poofy ponytail and her orthotic shoes squeaked along the linoleum of the deli floor. “And table six is ready to order.”

  Rachel stopped tapping her pen. She pulled out her notebook and went over and took table six’s order. They were one of those couples that kept waffling with their order, each one depending on the other to be able to finalize a decision. Neither one willing to bear the brunt of being wrong.

  They finally settled on a matzo ball soup and a Reuben with turkey. A Rachel, ironically enough. Because of all the sandwiches in the world, Rachel had to be named for the one that took something delicious and made it weird and healthy. Which—what even was the point of a Reuben without the pastrami?

  Rachel put her order in back at the counter and waited. She pulled her hair back off her neck and away from her face. She’d contemplated cutting it again, but for now, she slicked as much gel in it as she could. At least with it to her shoulders, Rachel could pull her hair back when she needed.

  “What are you just standing around for?” Jeanie managed to be everywhere and nowhere at once.

  “I’ve got one table. It’s five thirty on a Tuesday.” Rachel huffed.

  “So go help bus.”

  Rachel sighed. Nobody else would dare sigh at Jeanie, but Rachel knew she could. Jeanie pointed toward the uncleared tables. Rachel went and grabbed a rag to wipe up.

  Because Rachel would do what Jeanie told her to. When Rachel’s mom had left and it had just been Rachel and her dad—everyone in the Jewish Mexican community had reached out to see if she’d wanted help. If she and her father had needed help.

  ¿Necesitas ayuda? they had asked.

  And she had needed help. But instead she had recoiled. Papa had been drinking then and Rachel hadn’t known what to do. She’d run from the people who had reached out. Run from her usual—though only attended on High Holy Days—synagogue. Run from everything that had been familiar and known.

  She and her mother had been alike in that way.

  And in all her running, Rachel and her dad had run out of money. There ought to have been a safety net, a cushion to fall back on, but there hadn’t been. Faith wasn’t something Rachel had in a religious way. To her, faith was community. It was the safety net she had rejected, had run from. But despite running from help when everything had gone wrong at home, that community—that safety net—had only been lying dormant. All she had to do was pick it back up again. Two years ago, Rachel had marched straight into Factor’s and right up to Jeanie and asked for a job busing tables. Jeanie had taken one look at Rachel and immediately taken her in. Trained her on the spot to wait tables so she could earn more in tips.

  Papa had gotten back on his feet again soon after, which had helped. Had kept them out of real dire straits.

  But Rachel couldn’t forget how Jeanie had let her start over. Jeanie wouldn’t let Rachel forget that she’d been the only person Rachel had let in. So Rachel would huff and sigh but ultimately do what Jeanie told her. And Jeanie, for her part, wouldn’t ever force Rachel to do anything unpleasant. She was a believer in hard work, but never for its own sake.

  Jeanie was worth a thousand perfect tracking shots.

  Rachel finished wiping down the table. The order for table number six was ready and she served that without a smile. Jeanie never made Rachel smile.

  Rachel refilled water glasses and double-checked soda orders and waited for the dinner crowd to pick up a bit. The rush was typically at lunch. Weekday dinner was a pretty mellow situation. Jeanie fussed over a couple of tables, so Rachel went back and cleaned them again. Did the setup nice and exact.

  Rachel worked part-time. She only cared about her grades that involved writing or film work. Her math and science grades weren’t bad, they just weren’t anything to particularly brag about. She didn’t see how biology would affect whether or not she’d make a solid film. Though she had enjoyed using trig to construct triangulated shots and line up imaginary rigs on paper.

  The rest of the evening was slow, which was less than ideal from a tipping perspective but more than ideal from a needing-to-think-about-how-to-recast-her-film-lead perspective.

  Rachel was all out of ideas, though.

  Then Rachel had the joy of checking her email and getting a particularly fun message in her inbox.

  Subject: Equipment Checkout

  Rachel,

  The camera you checked out has been returned with a GINORMOUS CRACK IN IT. Please come to my office first thing in the morning to sort out.

  —Douga

  Rachel was not one to take criticism lying down. Or standing still. She sent her response right away.

  Douga,

  Had a run-in with a cheerleader. Double-checked the equipment and no damage done to the camera. Purely cosmetic.

  R

  There. That would show Douga. Until a ping sounded, letting Rachel know she’d gotten a quick response.

  Rachel,

  Bring the cheerleader.

  —Douga

  Rachel clicked the lock button so hard she was surprised she didn’t do any lasting damage to her phone. She was not going to meet up with Sana. She was not going to take her to Douga’s office. That was Rachel’s space. Her domain. She wasn’t about to have it invaded by some pretentious cheerleader who thought asking out an outcast and a film nerd as a prank was some kind of hilarious joke for everyone to enjoy.

  Except Rachel didn’t have any leeway in this. She was already hanging on with Douga by a thread. And now she’d returned damaged equipment back to the film lab. She’d have to explain herself. And unfortunately, Rachel had to explain herself with the one person she truly hated in the world right by her side.

  Rachel would rather watch a Tarantino movie double feature than face what she had to tomorrow morning.

  Sana

 
Sana and her mother lived in a one-story bungalow in Studio City, which they had bought back before Studio City had become the place to buy for young and upwardly mobile professionals in the film industry. Sana’s mom had bought the place when the neighborhood was filled with all the cinematic support staff—studio lot workers, crew members, craft services, and the other countless invisible jobs of the movie industry. Back when Sana’s mom was just a carpenter on set and too young and too determined to fail.

  Sana had apparently lived in some crappy apartments in the Valley and North Hollywood, but she’d been too young to remember anything but this place as home.

  A bang sounded from the front of the house.

  “Sana-joon, I’m home!” shouted Sana’s mom into the void of the house. Farrah Akhtar was many things—punctual, diligent, and a real pain in the butt to anyone in her way—but quiet, formal, and home at a reasonable dinnertime were never any of them. She made up for this by bringing free food home from the set whenever she could. “I’ve got dinner!”

  “Coming.” Sana hoped her mom had brought home Chinese. After two hours of cheerleading practice, all Sana wanted was endless piles of noodles and salty, tangy chicken.

  “You would not believe”—Mom kissed both of Sana’s cheeks—“the day I’ve had.”

  “Oh, really?” asked Sana.

  “Yes, really. We couldn’t get the electric department in, so the grips had all the lights set up and in place, but nobody to plug them in.” Sana’s mother sighed. The grip department could position lights, but not plug them in. The electrical department dealt with anything with plugs. For real. “That’s six hours wasted on set, and we were going to have to go to time and a half if I kept them, because of course the delay happened after the lunch break. Ida needs to take control of the set again. She’s losing them. It’s not her fault, but she’s losing them. And I’m losing the production’s money in the process.”

  Ida Begum was the director of Mom’s current project. Sana knew her mother sympathized with female directors. As a woman who had clawed her way up from carpenter to art director to production designer, Sana’s mother couldn’t help but understand what it was to be a woman in a largely male space. But Mom tended to say that the leeway was millimeters for women where the male directors got miles.

  “You’re not in charge of budgets anymore, though,” said Sana.

  That had been her mother’s job as an art director. All of those daily tasks, all of that system administration, all of the coordination between costume and set and FX and the director. But now Farrah was a production designer. Mom had climbed and carved her way to the top of her field.

  “Of course it’s my job. It’s all my job. The buck stops with me on this one. Even if I don’t spend my day in the details, it all reflects on me.” Farrah waved Sana’s hand away with a swat. She set the reusable grocery tote that she carried over one shoulder on the kitchen counter. “Luckily crafty was amazing today. And there were tons of leftovers that Rebecca couldn’t reuse tomorrow. So we’ve got a total feast on our hands.”

  Mom started pulling out containers from her bag. One had egg rolls, another had little sandwiches filled with roast beef or tuna fish. She had one with salad in it and another with mozzarella sticks.

  Sana pointed at the cold, rubbery cheese, trying to figure out how anyone thought that was a good idea to have on a table on set for several hours. “Really?”

  “The lead on this production. You wouldn’t believe his contract requests. There’s no end of the shit he pulls. He’s the one causing all the disruption with the crew, too. Trying to undermine the director while she’s working. Pissing off the electric department and in turn causing them to piss off the grips, which of course pissed off crafty, makeup, and me. Some men just can’t take direction from women.”

  “He sounds like the worst.”

  Sana’s mother grabbed a plate of food, then moved into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. “Tell me about it. But, and I quote, he pulls in the theater. Heaven forbid you give a woman the directorial keys to a large production without a leading man to bring in box office numbers.”

  Sana put several sandwiches, two egg rolls, and a heap of pasta salad onto her plate. She took her plate into the living room and sat beside her mother on the couch. “That’s unfair.”

  Farrah shrugged, like she was used to how unfair the world was. “Nobody likes to take a risk with fifty million dollars. Particularly not the good old boys in charge of the studio money.”

  “Gross. Oh! This girl picked a fight with me at school today,” said Sana through a mouthful of food.

  “That cow! What did she do?”

  “You don’t even know her. Or what she did. I could have deserved it.”

  “I’ll call her as many names as I want,” said her mother. “And I doubt you deserved it; you are my most perfect child.”

  “I’m your only child. Which probably makes me your least perfect child as well. And I saw her trip over a sprinkler or something, which was going to knock her video equipment out of her hand. Of course I try to help and end up knocking her video equipment out of her hand. And breaking it. She says I’m going to pay for what I did.”

  “That’s tough. I guess I’ll just have to see you in the next life, then. When you’ve got that kind of money. I am assuming you’re talking Royce School levels of camera of equipment here. Maybe after you’ve gone to Princeton and have become a world-famous surgeon.”

  Sana felt her eyes go tight and her jaw clench as she forced out a laugh. Sana’s mother didn’t notice the tension, though. She got up and went back into the kitchen. She grabbed several of the containers of food, all balanced perfectly along her arms, like she was used to bearing a heavy burden with ease and grace. She set the containers on the coffee table.

  Once that was done, she snapped on the TV. “There. Much better. We can have as much as we want without having to get off of our butts. I don’t want to have to leave this couch again. Not after the day we’ve both had. I live here now.”

  “Cheers,” she said, lifting her plate toward Sana’s like it was a glass of champagne. “To the end of a lousy day.”

  “Cheers!” Sana returned the gesture with more enthusiasm than she had. An extra tilt of the head. A brighter smile than normal. It was hard to find the right expression anymore. Harder to figure out what her face should look like. But Sana knew she had to find the right expression; otherwise, her mom would start asking questions.

  Sana grabbed a container of noodles that she had missed before off the coffee table. She piled some on her plate and then slurped them down with greedy noise. Everything was salty and tangy and perfection. It was delicious. That, at least, she didn’t have to fake.

  April 2

  29 Days Until Deadline

  4

  Alright, Alright, Alright

  Rachel

  It had taken Rachel three years to get the niggling sensation that she was an intruder out of her head as she passed through the Royce hallways. The precise sort of person who was meant to be kept out by the wrought iron gates and the high, manicured—but of course, sustainably planted—hedges. Somehow along the way, she went from feeling like she violated every sacred code this school held dear to sailing through its shitstorm. Not as though she belonged, but more like she knew the treacherous waters. Here there be dragons and monsters and coral and shoals and Rachel knew where they all lay now.

  Rachel had to find Sana and convince her to go to Douga’s office.

  Tell her, more like.

  Besides, Sana was a cheerleader—she must, on some level, like to follow orders. Rachel had it all mapped out. She was just going to walk right up to her and tell her they had to go into Douga’s office because of the broken camera. There was no way Sana was going to stay no. Rachel was going to get to her in the early morning hours, before either of their homerooms started. And Rachel knew from the couple of times she had done early morning shoots that Sana was the sort of girl who ar
rived early to school, well before the first bell. And not because Sana was scrambling to do her homework at the last minute.

  Sana clearly liked school.

  Rachel shuddered. School was a means to an end. A way to get to where she wanted to go. Sure, she could start working on a crew at any time. But she needed the pedigree, the legitimacy that a degree would provide. Men could climb their way up the blue-collar work of the film world in a way women couldn’t. And even the women who did—they went up through the stunt-coordination route more often than not. And Rachel was not what anyone would term stuntwoman material. Or even stunt coordination material.

  Rachel was decidedly sits-in-the-editing-bay-with-snacks material.

  Lost in thought, Rachel didn’t realize she’d come up on the senior locker area. She startled as a small, shadowy form stepped into her path.

  “Hello.” Sana had stopped a foot away. Her eyes were a beam of spotlight that refused to let go.

  “Sana.” Somehow the rest of Rachel’s planned speech went flying out of her head.

  Sana didn’t break eye contact. And Rachel wouldn’t. They would be stuck in this state, eyes locked, staring each other down, possibly until the end of time. Rachel was unable to speak. She just watched the way light played across Sana’s face.

  Real people should not look like an incredibly tanned Hedy Lamarr.

  Sana tilted her head. “Is this about the camera equipment? Have you come with an itemized bill?”

  Rachel felt her heartbeat pick up a kick. As Sana’s ponytail swished, Rachel visualized her plan crack in half, then fizzle and pop as it drained neatly out of her mind.

  “I need you in the film lab.”

  Whatever Sana had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t for Rachel to say that. She stood there, blinking repeatedly. Rachel noticed a cup of coffee in the other girl’s hands. Much like Sana, the cup looked like it would photograph well. Made to be in a staged picture even more than it was made for real life.