Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  “Wow, can you hold out on information.” Diesel was mad. But not the permanent kind of mad. The kind that bristles and rushes through, like a vacuum-sealed explosion.

  Sana winced, but she didn’t say anything about it. “I so do not want to turn around right now.”

  “If you don’t, I think he’s gonna head over here.” Then Diesel did the impossible—he raised his arm into a light wave. The irony coating his face was unmistakable.

  “Are you crazy?” Sana yanked his arm down.

  “He’s waving. Seriously. You’ve got probably forty-five seconds until he walks over and starts to chat with me. I assume you don’t want him to chat with me?”

  “I don’t want him to chat with anyone.” Sana straightened her bag on her shoulder again. She set her spine straight, with her shoulders down. Her ponytail was still slicked down; she didn’t need to worry about that. She wiped the edges of her mouth with her finger, lest there was errant lip balm around them. She smoothed her eyebrows.

  “You better tell me about this later.” Diesel gave a nod and walked off to his own car.

  And then Sana turned, with a perfectly placid expression on her face. She tilted her head when she caught her father’s eye. He stood in front of an impossibly obscene sports car. Give-me-a-ticket red. With rims that gleamed in the last of the day’s remaining sunlight. Sana refused to eye the badge. That would only encourage him.

  She walked toward him briskly, and with purpose. “Hello.”

  He must have sensed her formality, because he said with some contrition, “I asked your mom when you got off. She said you had cheerleading practice until now. Sorry, kid. I thought she would have told you I was coming.”

  “She didn’t.” Sana was going to leave it at that, but somehow he’d made this whole situation her mother’s fault and that wouldn’t do at all. “Did you tell her you were coming today?”

  “No,” he said. “I assumed she’d figure it out.”

  Sana raised an eyebrow and said nothing. She opened the red door on the passenger’s side and slid into the shining black bucket seat. It must have never spent a day unpolished. Sana wondered who her father paid to have that chore done.

  Sana’s father opened the door and peeked his head in. “Your friend need a ride?”

  “He was my ride.”

  “Right,” he said, hopping into the driver’s side seat. “I’ll never understand how a kid of mine ended up hating driving.”

  Sana said nothing to that. After a beat, the engine purred to life, a whooshing, throaty noise that set Sana’s teeth on edge. Sana sat upright, her scapulae lightly resting on the back of the passenger’s seat. She stared straight ahead, watching as the road lined with cars and palm trees wound through the city.

  Sana normally loved the drive home from school. Something about watching the dusty yet green roads by school give way to the wide boulevards of Hollywood, then farther east as the businesses grew shadier and grimier. Like LA wouldn’t let the gleaming, moneyed hills forget its roots as the Wild West. Los Angeles was a city with grit, with dirt underneath its manicured sheen. And for a moment, after she had left school grounds and before she’d reached the increasingly polished suburbs of Studio City, Sana could see all the dust that lay underneath. Like a secret that only the worthy could see, could discover, would appreciate to the fullest measure. The AC was on full blast in the car, but all she wanted was to roll down the windows, let in the dry air of sunset and smog. Sana didn’t touch the window button, though. She tried her best not to touch anything that she didn’t have to in Massoud’s car.

  “How are you doing?” he asked, glancing over quickly as he curved the car around a winding section of road.

  Sana turned, staring Massoud directly in the eye. “Same as always.”

  The car jolted. They’d hit a particularly nasty pothole. “Yikes.”

  “Yeah,” said Sana. “Not the best city for this car. There are potholes everywhere now.”

  He looked over at her, catching her expression. For a moment, Massoud looked like he wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “They don’t look so bad.”

  “They’re nasty.” Sana didn’t flinch.

  “I see,” he said, putting his eyes back to focusing on the road. “Well. I asked about how you are since I’ve heard all your good news from your grandmother. Getting into Princeton? Congrats.”

  “Thanks.” Sana felt her stomach slowly form a knot.

  “Funny, too,” he said carefully, so carefully that it checked the next sarcastic comment that had come to Sana’s mind. “Because I checked in with a buddy of mine after you got in. He works admissions—no, don’t worry, I waited until all the applications were through like you asked—and it turns out the school still hasn’t gotten your deposit.”

  “So?” Sana turned to face her father. She could tell he was about to say something important. It was the way he focused so casually on the road, the way his tense shoulders belied his otherwise easy posture. Sana braced herself.

  “So didn’t you have to pull your other applications since you went in early action?” Massoud hadn’t meant it as a sucker punch, but Sana had felt it all the same.

  “I did.”

  Her father looked over. He let out whatever breath he had been holding. “Christ. Sana-jaan. If you don’t put down that deposit, you’re not going to college at all next year.”

  I know. “I’ll get it done.”

  “When?”

  The car rolled to a stop. She should have noticed that the rocketing sensation had lulled long ago. They’d pulled off the wide, main boulevard onto the narrow streets of her neighborhood a little while back. She looked over at her father. He really was handsome. Whatever everyone else said, Sana knew her good looks and the trouble they brought with them didn’t just come from her mother’s side.

  “Soon. Tomorrow.” Sana wasn’t going to tell him about the fellowship. She wasn’t going to tell him about a future that had less structure, that had more space. He wouldn’t understand. Not the way he had turned out.

  “Sana. I really am here for you.”

  The gray streak that was forming through the front of her father’s hair should have aged him, but what it really did was lend him some distinction. A sense of gravity that he hadn’t had before. He was aging like a dream. And with a teenage daughter and salt-and-pepper hair in his mid-thirties, he looked the part of debonair and worldly journalist, long before he had any right to the title. That was Sana’s father for you.

  Sana nodded, because it was easier than telling him she didn’t believe him. Easier than getting into an argument with him. She opened the door and swung her legs out. She pulled her schoolbag out of the car without looking up. She closed the car door without slamming it, and also without looking back.

  When she got into the room of her empty house, she closed her door. Then she dropped her bag, curled up on her bed, and began to cry.

  8

  Tumbling

  Sana

  It was the worst pep rally in the history of pep rallies.

  First, with Sana in a boot, the squad had to do cheers with none of the stunts. The sophomore they’d pulled up from JV still wasn’t ready. Now, this didn’t have to be horrendous. Enough spirit, enough pep in your step, enough crowd-favorite cheers and the squad could overcome this one. But Alexis and T were making the whole situation so much worse. Alexis, who felt responsible for dropping Sana in the first place, kept stepping out of Sana’s way.

  And—as if the entire squad going in and out of formation in order to avoid Sana and not having the star flyer weren’t bad enough—half the squad had lost their voices practically overnight from some kind of a cold that was going around.

  Sana spent the majority of the rally trying not to put her head in her hands. So much for leading the squad with dignity and grace. So much for finishing out her senior year strong.

  After the squad finished to mild applause, Sana should have gone to the nurse’s station and gotten s
ome kind of painkiller. Should have gone somewhere she could sit alone, calm and quiet.

  Instead she headed toward the film lab. It was a strange impulse. But Sana had stopped thinking too much about sudden impulses. She had at least kept herself from ordering pineapple shampoo or conditioner, so far. She’d take that as a clear win right about now.

  Rachel looked stunned as Sana walked in. “You’re here.”

  Sana shrugged. “I said I would be.”

  “Yeah. After school. You’re like three hours early.”

  “I can go.” Except Sana felt arrested to the spot. She ought to go. Come back later, when they’d decided to work on this insane project together. But instead, Sana stood there, staring. That’s how life had felt since January. Frozen, waiting. For something to happen. For someone to shake Sana out of her stupor.

  She’d applied to her fellowship. And for a while that had helped. But now she was waiting to hear back. And waiting to decide about Princeton. And waiting as she watched everyone else cheer and do stunts.

  Sana was sick of waiting. She wanted the space to do something. Anything.

  “Here.” Rachel reached into a stack of papers on the desk where she worked. “This is your script. Read through and let me know if you’ve got any comments or notes. Tell me what you really think.”

  Sana was in motion again, grabbing the papers. They were three-hole punched and had metal brads in the top and bottom holes. “You take notes?”

  “Not really. But you elbowed your way into this and now you’ve got to put in the work.”

  Sana took a seat next to Rachel. She grabbed a pen off of the desk. “You have a plan?”

  Rachel nodded. The nod was knowing, confident. Full of the kind of self-assurance that Sana could only dream of in a situation like this. Rachel created worlds, built stories. She took nothing and turned it into tales with scope and brilliance. “The classics.”

  “Of what?” Sana wasn’t sure. The movie itself was based on the classics, in the literary sense of the word. The kind English teachers talked about—the thousands-of-years-of-the-written-word kind of classics. Sana sensed that Rachel meant another kind of classics altogether here.

  “The classics of cinema.” Rachel said cinema like cinemahh, like she ought to be smoking a hand-rolled cigarette out of a long holder and wearing all black.

  Sana resisted the urge to laugh. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I know those. My mom does work in the industry.”

  Rachel ignored this. She had clearly planned a whole speech out and no fact that Sana could include was going to interrupt Rachel and her already formulated procedure. “The classics are always changing. They’re the ideal. The heart of movies. They’re supposed to be stable. And sometimes they are. But they’re also subject to whims. Like. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. That’s a classic. But it’s gonna be dead in twenty years, because it’s got Mickey Rooney in yellowface. And eventually that’s gonna make people uncomfortable. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But one day, it’s gonna fade out. It’ll be too distasteful to be a real classic, beyond the halls of film school.”

  “You mean, it’s like scientific research.”

  “Scientific research? How is my version of the classics like scientific research?”

  “You know. Peer-reviewed papers. New science replacing the old. But some stuff, well, it lasts. Like gravity and laws of motion.” Sana shrugged. It was the simplest thing in the world.

  “Then, yes. Except with feelings and aesthetic rather than data.” Rachel paused, scrunched up her face, examined Sana for a long moment. “If you wanna help make a movie, I’m going to need you to watch movies.”

  Sana stared for a moment. She loved watching movies. Cheesy movies, artistic movies. Action to romance back to Oscar bait. Her mother had given her a love of the movies, and years in LA had only honed that love. “Okay.”

  “Okay?” Rachel’s voice sounded like she believed Sana all of about ten percent. Maybe less.

  “Okay.” Sana nodded. She wondered if Rachel knew that Sana had seen all of her movies, had loved watching her artistry change and grow. “I mean, I need to have a sense of definitive time. I do have some practices to go to and lots of male athletes to make feel like gods. Plus schoolwork and labs. So how many hours per week? One movie? Two?”

  “We’re going to have to watch at least a movie a week together. Maybe two. So make time for that,” said Rachel. “Plus filming and working on scripts. I’ll handle shooting schedules, because I know how to do that efficiently now.”

  For a moment, Sana fiddled with the hoop on her nose ring. It was thin and small and sometimes she needed to check that it was still in place. Needed to ground herself and know she wasn’t on some other plane of reality and that she had in fact heard Rachel correctly. “Why do we have to watch together?”

  “Look, Khan, I don’t like it any more than you do. But I can’t trust you to do your end of the work. Especially with all those labs and hardcore math classes you’ve got going on. Plus your cheerleading. You must be some kind of idealist to say that and think I’d believe you.”

  Sana sucked in a breath. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I want to make sure this gets done. I’m volunteering my time to help you, you know.”

  Considering Douga had punished them both with this assignment and Rachel needed Sana to be in her movie not to fail, Rachel was awful sure of herself as holding a position of power in this moment.

  But the fight had gone out of Sana. “Fine.”

  Rachel eyed Sana warily. “Sunday nights?”

  “Can’t Sunday nights; I’ve got a standing dinner date with my grandparents.” Good luck finding time for us to watch a movie together.

  “You have a standing dinner date with your grandparents?” Rachel shook her head. “Who are you?”

  “Someone who has to explain family time to a lot of people who don’t still understand it.”

  “Oh. Don’t you have a social life? Aren’t cool girls supposed to go out on weekends? Isn’t that like a law or something?” Rachel asked.

  “I’m not a cool girl. I’m a cheerleader. This isn’t an eighties movie. And I do go out on Fridays, since I can’t go do masjid because of the games anyway.”

  “Okay. Saturdays. I don’t work in the evening. Are you free on Saturdays?”

  Sana hadn’t expected Rachel to give up her Saturday evenings. But maybe Rachel was like Sana and enjoyed having the excuse to stay in and get some work done on Saturdays. “I am.”

  “Good.” Rachel paused for a moment. “Saturday it is.”

  “Where do you work?” Sana let her curiosity get the better of her.

  “Factor’s Famous Deli.” Rachel raised both her eyebrows. “You can go now. Get some notes on those pages, though. Class dismissed.”

  “But I don’t know where I’m meeting you. I don’t even have your info. Am I meeting you at work?”

  Rachel got out her phone. “I live off of Palms Boulevard.”

  “Palms?” asked Sana.

  Rachel looked momentarily smug. Like she was scaring Sana off from her place.

  But that wasn’t what Sana was thinking at all. “You drive all the way from Palms up to Royce? You must be exhausted. That’s, like, an hour and a half each way at least. Every day.”

  Rachel’s jaw set. “I have a car.”

  Sana realized Rachel did not want to talk about it. Fine. “I should be able to catch the bus down to Palms.”

  “The bus?” It was Rachel’s turn for incredulity. “Can’t you drive?”

  “I can, technically, yes. But I typically don’t.”

  “Crippling fear of operating motorized vehicles?”

  Sana cracked a smile at that. “Something like that. Also my mom’s on night shoots right now, so I don’t think I can borrow the car for nights for a while. I’m only supposed to use ride shares in emergencies.”

  “I’ll meet you at your place, then. Drop a pin and send it to me.” Rachel fou
nd an errant piece of paper on her desk and scratched her phone number on it.

  “Sure.” Sana took the paper. “See you there.”

  “Whatever.” Rachel hunched over her work, scribbling across her pages of dialogue.

  Rachel

  Rachel usually kept her phone locked away in the break room during work. She didn’t want to be tempted by it. But she’d asked Sana for notes. And even though Rachel had told Sana to bring them the next time they met, maybe Sana would send the notes sooner.

  Rachel felt her phone buzz in her apron pocket.

  She ducked around a wall and checked her messages. An email. Rachel felt her heart kick up a beat.

  It was from Sana.

  Be cool, be cool. It’s just notes.

  Rachel clicked through into the message. She felt a surprising twinge of disappointment to see how short it was.

  Project Notes

  Attached.

  s

  Rachel opened the attachment.

  Helen is an object here.

  That was it. The first note. And all throughout—every time Helen was on the page.

  Why does she do this?

  How is she furthering the story?

  Helen. Mythological damsel. She’s like a prop. You could replace her with a sexy lamp and the plot wouldn’t change.

  Sana saw Helen of Troy in a way Rachel never had. To be honest, in a way Rachel maybe wasn’t able to. The worst part was the line right at the end—Helen isn’t an object. Everyone just thinks she is.

  Rachel stashed her phone back into her apron. She needed to sit down, think about something else. Keep that last line from reverberating over and over again in her head. She grabbed a seat at the counter, even though she was still on the clock, and thunked her head down on the linoleum slab in front of her. The contact between her head and the counter made a satisfying thump.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.