Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  And because her mother was in that kind of defensive pain, Sana did the only thing she could think to do. She defused, as she must. “You’re here now. I think Mamani made tahdig.”

  Massoud put his hand over his heart. “Now aren’t I lucky?”

  Mamani blushed. She honest-to-God blushed with pleasure. Which was what Sana had been counting on.

  “I remembered how much you like it, Massoud-joon.”

  “Now I really have been spoiled,” said Massoud with a wink.

  Sana did her best to suppress a snort.

  Mamani rose elegantly from her couch and led them all into lunch, with Sana’s father beside her, Sana’s mother behind, and Sana and her grandfather leading up the rear. Lunch was a tense affair, with globs of polished, polite conversation pouring forth from all quarters, excepting Sana’s mother, who sat still and slightly mute, trying to process this new development in her life.

  Mom left her parents’ house with barely a goodbye, packing Sana away in the car and driving off in near silence.

  Rachel

  Tap, tap, tap.

  Rachel bounced her fingers on the keys of her laptop. Not so hard as to press them, but loud enough to carry a sound.

  Even her fancy computer was by grace of the Royce School. It never helped, remembering that when she was already in a mood. It was like when she’d get stuck in LA traffic on the way to Royce, then remember she had a car all because they bought her a computer and she could use the cash she earned at Factor’s Famous Deli on a beat-ass Lincoln Continental that was so retro it was making a nineties comeback.

  Rachel kept reading her script. Kept seeing the holes and the gaps. It was the only thing she could see now—the pitfalls in her project. Easier to think about the gaps in her plotting than the giant crack in the camera she was using. Easier to think about the holes and the gaps than the fact that Sana made a perfect lead and Rachel has destroyed her project’s future with a few choice words. Douga would probably fail her for this.

  Fucking Sana.

  Rachel had to think of somebody better than Sana. Somebody a little less Liz Taylor. Somebody so good that Douga wouldn’t care that Rachel had ignored the teacher’s express mandate. Rachel looked around her room. There were movie posters all over the walls—she’d learned that she could get tons of great posters after a movie went out of theaters. Employees usually just threw the posters out. Rachel asked for whatever a theater had in stock when she went to go and see a film. Her prize possession was an old poster for Marie Antoinette that one of the old independent theaters in LA hadn’t managed to throw out. Even though Somewhere was Rachel’s favorite Coppola film, the Marie poster was almost as old as Rachel and that made it feel more authentic and real than any of the other ones she’d snagged.

  Rachel went to the lone bookshelf in her room—she cataloged all of her films by year made along the shelves. She’d spent the time burning them onto discs and then putting those discs into cases. She had hard drives with storage, but for Rachel, materializing her films, making them a tangible, finished thing, gave her a sense of accomplishment. On top of the shelf, were a couple of battered old library sale books on cinematography, a screenwriter’s bible, and one of the yearbooks her father had sprung for last year. Rachel reached up and pulled down her yearbook and started circling and crossing through potentials.

  Rachel felt a little guilty, defacing with a red permanent marker the yearbook her father had paid for. But she had work to do, and work was more important than preserving memories she didn’t much give a damn about.

  Sana managed to look good in a yearbook photo. The light from the flash of the camera somehow picked up all of her angles and not a single flaw. Rachel wanted to scratch Sana’s entire face away with the permanent marker, but stopped. Sana didn’t just look good on film. She looked wholesome and angular, all at once. Rachel couldn’t quite tell if Sana was smiling or smirking in the photo. Or maybe that was just Sana’s face, resting naturally. It was unnerving.

  She’d be perfect. The thought was instinctive and unwelcome. A villain and a hero all at once. Helen of Troy.

  Rachel flipped away. She drew a deep gash against a random photo of some unsuspecting, unpromising sophomore girl.

  She slammed the book shut. She’d never get any work done, not with the image of Sana’s face floating around her mind. Rachel had to end this. She needed to find another picture of Sana and see how inappropriate she would be as a choice for the lead. Sana wasn’t mysterious or complicated. She was devastatingly simple. Rachel got out her phone and went down a well-worn rabbit hole.

  Fucking saved searches.

  There she was. Sana in her cheerleading uniform, her ponytail frozen by the camera along with her perfectly straight, white teeth in a perfect smile. But Rachel stopped to look at it for a moment and she suddenly saw what she had already glimpsed in the yearbook photo—there was a determined set to Sana’s eyebrows, along with that innocent, Disney-like quality to her eyes. Maybe it was the nose ring. Maybe it was the way her smile crinkled around her eyes but didn’t change her strong, linear jawline.

  Sana would be perfect. Rachel could see it so clearly now. The visualization of it all had made it so much worse. Just a few reshoots and Rachel could get the last of this production rolling all the way to the finish line.

  Rachel didn’t want anything to do with Sana. She tried to open the yearbook again, to flip through the pages and find someone, anyone else. But she kept reaching back for her phone, against her own will. And Rachel had a pretty considerable will. She kept seeing the angles. Kept envisioning how Sana’s face would film. Kept seeing the light as it might strike across the girl’s face.

  Rachel needed advice, feedback. But her first reader and best confidant was her father, and he wasn’t home. Probably wouldn’t be home for hours. He was driving on the night shift, which he often did on weekends.

  Rachel was used to being alone. That’s how she’d gotten behind a camera in the first place. All that time spent alone—when her father was out, before he’d turned the corner after her mom left—she’d started shooting videos on her phone, until she’d had enough material to make a narrative, a story. Enough material to apply to that summer program all those years ago.

  Rachel decided to call her father rather than continue scrolling through Sana’s feed.

  “What did you do this time?” asked her dad when he answered. Because they never had to say hello to each other. Because she didn’t have to censor herself with him. It was more like one continuous, drawn-out conversation throughout the course of their lives. Because Papa would always pick up for Rachel.

  But that didn’t mean Rachel didn’t ask if he had time. “Can you talk?”

  When he was driving, sometimes he could talk, and other times, he had passengers who would definitely ding his rating. Other times he was recruiting drivers, because that paid better than driving did.

  “For you, mija? Anytime.” Papa had started calling Rachel mija instead of habibti after her mom had left. Mama had always called her habibti. For all her running, Rachel’s mother remembered the old ways—remembered that her people had come from somewhere before they’d arrived in Mexico. Papa had stopped using the old terms of endearments when he’d stopped drinking. A clean break from an unnecessarily painful reminder. Habibti was before and mija was after. As though having another tradition to draw on helped heal both of their wounds. And maybe it had.

  Papa’s voice was warm and scratchy at the same time, like his stubble-flecked face. Papa didn’t have an accent—his parents had come from Mexico but he had been born here. Still, when he was tired, the rhythm of his speech lilted through English like it ought to have been Spanish. “So what’s the problem?”

  “Douga cast the cheerleader who cracked my camera in my movie for me. Says she’ll fail me if I don’t use her. I mean, that’s not the problem. She’s perfect for it.”

  “And?”

  After a long pause in which Rachel tried to phra
se several versions of what had happened, she settled on, “And she doesn’t like swearing.”

  And then Papa laughed, a low belly laugh that started with a rumble and finished at a high peak. Papa was laughing at her. And he was thoroughly enjoying it. Papa took a deep inhale, as though he were trying to fill his lungs with enough oxygen to calm himself down. “She doesn’t like swearing?”

  “She asked me not to say ‘hell.’”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I replaced it with another word that she found even more offensive.”

  Papa let out a low whistle. “You are screwed.”

  “Not. Helpful.”

  “I mean, you’re not screwed if you’re actually willing to grovel come Monday morning. But we both know you don’t grovel. You’re going to have to get back that terrible actress, what’s her name?”

  “Allison.” Rachel felt numb and purposeless. She had wanted to submit it to festivals this summer. Probably wouldn’t have come to anything, but she needed to get in the habit, go through the practice. Now this film was what would blow her ride to NYU and stop her from graduating on time. “I know how to grovel.”

  “Oh really? How’s it done, then?”

  “You say you’re sorry and then the person forgives you.”

  Papa made a noise like a buzzer running out. “Wrong. You apologize profusely, assuming the other person won’t forgive you and that you will do anything to get them back on your side. And you have to mean it. Anything.”

  Rachel shuddered. “I don’t have anything that she wants. What the hell do I have to offer other than rage and a shitty car?”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a definitive statement of all of her hopes going up in flames, like an old school film storage house that had caught alight by someone stupid enough to smoke there.

  “Mija. Find out what she likes. Then give that to her. While you apologize.”

  Rachel thought about that for a long beat. She’d do anything to make an all-important piece of history-making cinema. There wasn’t much she wouldn’t sacrifice. Granted, her dignity and her pride would be the last thing on the list, but she’d still do it. If it meant getting the footage she’d need. She’d do it fifty times over, no matter how much it felt like eating dirt.

  Rachel remembered the overpriced coffee in Sana’s hand that morning by the lockers. “And it’ll work?”

  “I dunno. But it sure will work better than doing nothing.” He paused. “Picking up a new rider and they look. Well. Particular. I’ll see you when I get home. Don’t use up all your time on something that won’t pay off.”

  And with that Papa clicked the phone off. Rachel pocketed her cell phone. She apparently had some groveling to plan.

  7

  Overhead Boom Box

  Rachel

  Rachel stood next to Sana’s locker. The bell would ring soon to let them all out from last period, and Rachel had to be ready to grovel. Really, really grovel. She’d skipped seventh to make sure the coffee was still warm when she gave it to Sana. She hoped that would help Sana get through cheerleading practice and help her out again. She wasn’t used to this feeling, nerves tingling, her senses firing on all pistons. Rachel was used to getting out of her body and into her head. Now all she could do was feel the overly warm cup of coffee in her hands and smell the nutty, roasted steam wafting toward her face.

  What Rachel hadn’t been expecting was Sana walking toward her locker with a hard black boot on her right foot, half limping and half rolling through the motions as she walked.

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Do you have to swear all the time?” said Sana with a sniff. She actually sniffed. It was horrible.

  “Look, if you’re going to work with me you’re going to have to take a few swear words now and then.” That, Rachel realized, was the understatement of the century.

  “Who says I’m going to work with you?” Sana folded her arms across her chest.

  Dammit. Hell. Shit. Fuck. Best to get them all out of her head for right now. “No one. But I was going to ask if you’d come back after cheerleading practice today.”

  This was apparently exactly the wrong thing to say. Sana’s mouth formed a disapproving line across her face. Sana narrowed her eyes at Rachel. “Har, har. Very funny.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “Do you think I can go to practice like this?” Sana waved her arms toward her boot.

  “I mean,” said Rachel. “Maybe? Don’t you have things you do other than cheerleading? Like decorating shit and making all those boys feel like gods?”

  “Seriously? Did you really come here to apologize or what?”

  “I mean, I did, but ‘or what’ is feeling a lot more accurate right now.” Rachel slumped against the nearest locker.

  And that’s when Sana caught sight of the coffee. Her whole attitude shifted. She leaned toward the coffee like a kid pressing her face up against the bakery counter loaded up with cookies and pan dulces. “Is that Demitasse?”

  “Yeah,” said Rachel, shoving the cup in Sana’s direction. Rachel couldn’t keep the disapproval out of her voice. Who had the cash for a six-and-a-half-dollar-a-day latte habit? Only spoiled princesses, that’s who. “It’s for you. A latte. A really expensive latte, by the way.”

  Sana popped the eco-friendly travel lid off the cup and took a deep inhale of the coffee. She sipped it like it was something sacred or precious and stayed quiet for a long moment. “You should have led with the coffee.”

  “I tried,” said Rachel, knowing she sounded disgruntled. She couldn’t keep the peevishness out of her voice. “But I couldn’t not ask. About the foot.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat, etc.”

  “Luckily I’m still alive to finish this groveling.”

  Sana raised an eyebrow. “This is you groveling?”

  “Yes,” said Rachel through gritted teeth.

  Sana laughed. It was a clear-as-a-bell laugh. It was a laugh that Victorian ladies probably would have envied, if Victorian ladies were allowed to laugh in public, which Rachel was pretty sure they weren’t.

  “I’d hate to see you on a bad day,” Sana said.

  “You already have.”

  Sana sighed. “This isn’t going to work.”

  There were so many ways that Rachel could answer that. But for some reason, the truth fell out of her mouth. “If you don’t, I’ll fail.”

  Sana shook her head. “That isn’t fair. You can’t put that on me.”

  “I know it isn’t, but I didn’t make the rules.” That was probably the realest thing Rachel had ever said. “Douga did. Now we have to live with them.”

  Sana nodded. Like she got it—the world was unfair and now they were stuck with the rules they would never have written had they had the chance themselves. “All right. I’ll do your film.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I’ve got one condition.” Sana leveled an even stare.

  “Of course you do.” And Rachel had felt so hopeful for that brief, shining moment.

  “I’ll only play Helen of Troy if you don’t make her the villain.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Nope.”

  “Rad. Anything else her majesty would like to deign to offer?” Deign was such a good word. Rachel patted herself on the back for that one.

  Granted, Sana was a private school cheerleader, so odds of it going over her head were low. But using such a big, powerful word made Rachel feel expensive and worthy. Made her feel like nobody could look their nose down at her. Even if said nose was an elegant, sloping nose with a gleaming piece of gold in it.

  Sana’s mouth twitched, like she sensed the implicit screw you in Rachel’s words and she couldn’t think of anything funnier than Rachel trying to get the best of her. “Now that you mention it, I do. I’d like to help make the film. Not only be in it. Think of me as helping with your wandering creative direction. And on that note—ma
ybe don’t just lead with the coffee next time. Maybe stick to the coffee and the request. I think you’re gonna do better with straight bribery rather than groveling. I don’t think groveling is really in your repertoire.”

  Just when Rachel was feeling good and solid about deign, the cheerleader had to come in with repertoire and completely ruin everything.

  “Fine.” Because Rachel didn’t have a choice on this one. It was Sana or fail. And Sana knew it.

  Sana took a sip of her coffee. “You have a time I should meet you or are you just gonna give me this coffee and stare?”

  “Tomorrow. After school.” Rachel definitely hadn’t been staring. At least she hadn’t meant to be staring. Rachel had just gotten so used to ducking behind a camera and getting to observe people that she wasn’t used to being noticed or observed herself. “In the film lab again.”

  “Cool,” said Sana.

  “Cool,” repeated Rachel. But she needn’t have bothered. By that point Sana had turned with her stack of books in hand and walked off to whatever class required eight billion textbooks the size of the Torah and the Talmud put together.

  Sana

  Sana checked her phone. She’d be able to catch Diesel at the tail end of water polo practice and grab a ride home if she headed to the gym without stopping.

  “Sorry about your foot,” said Diesel as he saw Sana approach.

  “S’okay.” Sana shrugged. “Coach shouldn’t have had any of us catching such an elaborate stunt.”

  Diesel’s face had gone blank. Unreadable. And Diesel had an amazingly expressive face. All the muscles of the face could be studied, watching the amazing contortions he could make to express his displeasure. “My dude. Is there something you forgot to mention?”

  Outside was dry and hot, but Sana went cold all over. She wasn’t one for premonitions. She was built for logic, for analysis, for solid methodology, and for science. But she knew if she turned around, she’d see her father. Sana stopped walking, keeping her back to the parking lot that they had been heading toward not a moment before. “My dad’s in town?”