Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Rachel looked up and saw how close they were. She scooted away slightly. Their knees no longer touching. Her hair no longer grazing against Sana’s leg. “Then what is it?”

  Sana didn’t know what to do, to make Rachel see. That her attraction wasn’t a joke. Wasn’t a trick of the light. It was real and solid and had been for years. “I don’t think you should underestimate any character in your story.”

  Rachel put her head in her hand. “Fixing this is going to be so much work. I’m going to have to track all these changes through and change the narrator’s dialogue.”

  Sana scooted closer. “I can help.”

  “Still. We’ll be here forever.” Rachel didn’t look up—maybe she wouldn’t look up, or couldn’t.

  Sana nudged Rachel with her elbow. “Then let’s get out of here.”

  “What?” Rachel looked up, startled and alert.

  Looked like Sana had to surprise Rachel into paying her any attention. “Let’s go to LACMA. Better to work in front of pretty things than in this hallway.”

  “Are you nuts? I’m not driving in this traffic.”

  Sana grinned. She had the final sucker punch. The kind of shock that Rachel wouldn’t be able to resist. “We can take the bus.”

  “The bus?” There it was, Rachel’s wide-eyed, incredulous expression. The face of a girl who didn’t believe what she was hearing but still had to hear more.

  “I take it all the time. Just take the 2 to the Fairfax hub. Be there in no time.” Sana gave a lilting shrug, got up, and knew Rachel would follow her.

  Rachel

  Of all of the luxuries Rachel had been afforded by attending the Royce School, not having to take the bus to school—or anywhere anymore—sat at the top of the list.

  And yet here she was, sitting next to Sana on a big, bendy, orange LA metro bus.

  Sana was bouncing, vibrating, practically shimmering with energy.

  Rachel nudged her. “Dude. People are going to think you’ve never ridden the bus before.”

  Sana made a quizzical expression—her head tilting just to the right as her mouth pulled slightly to the left. “I ride this bus all the time.”

  “Then why are you so excited?”

  Sana grinned like Emily Blunt—like a woman who could do a one-armed push-up and save the world and still kiss her sweetheart good-night. Rachel’s stomach dropped out from under her, like she was riding an airplane currently experiencing some very unexpected turbulence.

  Sana’s eyes flickered toward the front of the bus, out the big, open windows. She leaned across Rachel—wafting over a now familiar scent of jasmine and sunshine as she did—and pulled the rip cord. “Come on. We’re here.”

  Sana got up and Rachel had nothing to do but grab her backpack and follow in her wake. The bus rumbled to a stop and made a gassing whoosh sound as the hydraulics were lowered and the doors were opened.

  Sana jumped down off the steps, rocking unsteadily as she landed on one foot, then balanced on her boot. She skip-hopped ahead into the massive installation of streetlamps. Urban Light was the official name given by the artist. Though Rachel wasn’t sure who that was anymore. Normally the rows and rows of vintage streetlights made her want to roll her eyes. They made a dense grid of lamplight—with the front row slightly narrower than the rows behind it.

  Urban Light was somewhere everyone and their mother in LA took photos. Particularly engagement photos and coupled-up shots. They were so obvious, so overdone that whenever pictures from in front of the lamps at LACMA popped into her feed, Rachel literally muted the original poster. Oh, how original. Photos of being in love between the lamplights at the magic hour.

  There were even palm trees directly in the background, lest the setting not be quite staged enough for a photographer’s taste.

  But watching Sana flit and hop with various degrees of success through and around and in between the lamps just made Rachel reach into her back pocket and get out her phone. Sunset in LA really did make the light golden and perfect, combined with the engineered-to-look-incandescent LED bulbs—the lighting was off-the-charts beautiful. And that was without Sana fliting through the space like a half-hobbled, dark-haired fairy.

  “Could you hold still for half a second?” Rachel was trying to frame Sana, but she kept moving, kept shifting the composition.

  Sana popped her head around a lamp and stuck out her tongue. “Catch me if you can.”

  Rachel caught the photo in one snap.

  But Sana wasn’t one to be frozen in a single moment in time. She kept moving, kept swishing in and out of the lamp poles, just like her ponytail. Rachel kept taking photos—some of them a blur, a flash. Others more steady, more precise.

  “You’re not even trying,” Sana called out.

  She was close now, and Rachel was laughing. Sana reached out from behind Rachel and snatched up her phone.

  “Gotcha!” The camera on the phone clicked as Sana took her own picture. Then she turned, got both of their faces in the frame, and snapped a selfie of both of them together. Sana handed back the phone. “Come on. They’ve got an amazing Islamic arts section. Oh, but we should look at the classics, shouldn’t we?”

  But Rachel didn’t have time to answer that question. Sana was flashing her student ID and telling the woman at the window they were both seventeen, even though Rachel, at least, wasn’t anymore. She’d turned eighteen back in the fall. But the woman believed Sana. Her face was so guileless and open.

  They were in, for free.

  Sana led them into the building to the right of the ticket office and started climbing the stairs.

  “Don’t you want to take the elevator?”

  Sana shrugged. “I like the exercise. I’m not getting as much with this boot on.”

  “You’re a weirdo.” But Rachel meant that as a badge of honor. As a good thing.

  “Totally,” said Sana on a laugh. “Almost there.”

  And there it was—three flights up—piles of classical marbles and statues. Donated by some rich guy back in the day. A museum never used to be anything without a collection of Greek and Roman statues to lend it gravitas. Rachel snorted.

  “You can’t do that,” said Sana, waggling her finger. “You’re using the classics, too. You’re redoing The Odyssey. So you’re just as bad as whoever you’re making fun of in your head.”

  “Who says I was making fun of anyone?”

  It was Sana’s turn to snort. She stopped in front of a statue on a pedestal. “How’s this?”

  This was perfect, of course. It was a bust of a goddess—her face tilted down, her robes ceremonial. And on her head was a helmet—the clever goddess of war.

  Rachel stared at the marble for a moment. “Athena.”

  “Athena Pallas.” Sana had quite the self-satisfied grin on her face. She knew she’d done well. There was nothing else that half-ticked smile pulling across her mouth could mean.

  But Rachel couldn’t care that Sana had been right. She was too busy staring at Athena and thinking about the weight of stories and legends. “You know they say she created the whole Odyssey? That Cassandra clung to her temple for sanctuary after the fall of Troy, but Ajax the Lesser pulled her away. And invoked Athena’s wrath.”

  “Yeah,” said Sana. “And so Athena called on Poseidon to scatter the entire Greek fleet. And inadvertently set Odysseus on his voyage. Though in some versions, she helps Odysseus, working behind the scenes to bring him home. Either way, she starts the story, you know? Doesn’t looking at beautiful things help?”

  Rachel sat down on the bench, reached into her backpack, and got out her laptop. “It’s annoying that you’re so right all the time.”

  “Not all the time. Just with stuff like this.” Sana sat beside Rachel. She left an inch between their bodies.

  “How did you know?” Rachel pulled up the file. She began typing away. There really was something about looking at beautiful things, at connecting back to stories in a way that was so visceral, so eternal, that
gave her the push to keep going.

  “My mom. She comes here to think. She’s been taking me ever since I was a kid. Helps her with her designs—art in space, or something like that. Sometimes she goes to the Getty, too. But I think this place is her favorite.” Sana scuffed her booted foot against the floor.

  The movement brushed her knee up against Rachel’s, back and forth. The rhythm of it was soothing, lulling. An expected touch—maybe even a bit of expected turbulence. Rachel’s stomach fluttered, but not in an unpleasant way.

  “She’s a smart woman,” said Rachel, looking at Sana as she said so.

  A smile flashed across Sana’s face, and then disappeared just as quickly. “She’s definitely more clever than anyone ever gives her credit for, that’s for sure. Do you need me to read through your notes as you type?”

  “Yeah,” said Rachel. “That would be great.”

  They worked like that—in the otherwise empty room filled with marbles and statues and ancient stories—with Sana reading a mixture of her own and Rachel’s notes in quiet tones while Rachel typed, then paused, then typed some more as she worked through her snags in the script. The story was coming together—Rachel could see it now. Could see how she could edit all the disparate pieces of her existing footage together to make a coherent narrative. She might not even need as many reshoots as she thought she did.

  Eventually, the museum was ready to close, and they hopped back on the bus and retraced their steps back to school. They made it back to where Rachel had parked her car and, naturally, she drove Sana home. The ride to Sana’s was mostly quiet—just the sound of the thumps in the road and the wind whistling through the cracked windows.

  It was only when Rachel reached home that she realized she’d spent hours in Sana’s company without feeling the need to lash out at her at all.

  12

  The Correct Term Is Babes, Sir

  Sana

  When Sana arrived on set, Rachel was nearly ready. The cameras were in place. The crew had the cords coiled into a neat circle on the floor. The lights were diffused, though not clamped directly into position yet. The locker they were using was already opened, already set up with the right amount of decor—the young, modern version of Helen of Troy that Sana was playing had a photo up, just the one, and a couple of magnets. It was a sad, sparse locker. It filled Sana with longing to look at it.

  Spartan. That was the word. From Helen’s original homeland, Sparta. Utilitarian. Neat. Militaristic, even. The beautiful girl from the most warmongering of the ancient Greek states. If Helen of Troy had really existed, she would have been raised to fight, raised for war. Now she was known for being so pretty, she’d started a global conflict.

  Sana turned away from the locker to watch the crew. She would have assumed they would be quiet, subdued, but they were a laughing, unruly bunch. At the far end of the hall was Ms. Douga, the film supervisor, doing her best to look official with her reading glasses and her clipboard and her—was that a whistle around her neck? What in the world did she need a whistle for? And at the center of the organized maelstrom was Rachel—her camera on a tripod—adjusting something on the lens. Nobody was paying much attention to Rachel.

  Sana walked up to Rachel like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she’d been doing it for years. Like they’d been friends for ages. She’d envisioned doing this before—in specific, everyday kind of fantasies. Just two girls who hung out like this and nothing strange had ever existed between them. They were muted seventies family photos from the old country compared to this vivid reality.

  Sana stopped about a foot from Rachel.

  Rachel’s hair was pulled back into a low ponytail and covered by a Dodgers hat. She had on leggings and a soft, snug gray T-shirt that made her hair look darker and her skin look a deeper shade of bronze. Her sneakers were beat to hell and back. It took everything in Sana’s massive arsenal of willpower not to lean over the camera and flutter her eyelashes. Not to intrude into Rachel’s space and make her pay attention to Sana. Make her notice Sana.

  “You’re in the shot.” Rachel did not break focus from whatever she was setting on the camera. She was fiddling with the dials on the lens.

  Sana watched as her hands moved deftly across the equipment. Rachel was good with her hands. Sana cleared her throat. She would not be distracted by tight pants or an authoritarian voice. “I’m supposed to be in the shot.”

  Rachel looked up then. Her mouth twitched. It was almost a smile. Nearly a smile. So close to a smile. “All right, smart-ass. I’m already using your notes as new scenes. Now you want to tell me how to make a movie?”

  Sana chose not to be upset at Rachel’s words. She put her hands on her hips. “Maybe.”

  Rachel shook her head. “Fine. You can stand over there on the tape. That’s your mark. I had to estimate your height with a stand-in, but I didn’t know when your boot would get in the shot. Since you’re here, you can do the boring work of making a movie—standing around a lot.”

  “Sure.” Sana hopped over toward the little taped-down X on the floor. She faced the camera, then angled herself to the left and the right. “Wait, did you just grab a random kid who was walking down the halls to stand in for me?”

  “She was the right height.” Rachel shrugged. “Now, start with your hand on the open locker door, facing in, please.”

  Sana did as she was told. She hadn’t had years of cheerleading drilled in her only to fail at following simple instructions now. Especially since Rachel had decided to trust her. “Are you always this stressed?”

  Rachel’s face was obscured by the camera but her snort was loud and clear. “It’s the first day. I hate the first day. Sets the tone of the whole shoot and I’m always worried something’s about to go heinously wrong. And then it does go heinously wrong. First day is the worst. And this is my fifth first day with this film—stay in place, please. I need to make sure your leg stays out of shot. Plus I’m seeing if I need to move the camera for the close-up after the master shot. Your face goes out of frame with the smallest movements.”

  “Really?” Sana felt a bit breathless. She wasn’t used to so much focus on herself. Scrutiny, she was used to. But focus, not so much.

  “Really, really.”

  Sana stayed as still as possible, even as she spoke. “How many scenes have you got left to film?”

  “Thanks to your notes? Just a couple.” Rachel popped her face back up from around the camera.

  “Cool.”

  “But I might need your help editing. Is that something I can count on?” Rachel was ducked back behind the lens again.

  Sana was so startled by the request that she stepped forward, closer to the camera.

  Rachel held up a hand. “Don’t. Seriously. Stay right there. I just, I think I see where this needs to go, just hold it for like half a minute longer. And then I can call places for everyone else for the opening scene.”

  Sana didn’t move. Barely breathed. Finally, she responded. “I can help. With editing.”

  “Got it.” Rachel popped her head back up, gave Sana a good, long stare. Like she hadn’t been staring at her from behind the camera the whole time.

  Sana reached out; touched Rachel’s arm lightly. It was easy to move away from a light touch. “It’s gonna be great. You’re gonna do great today.”

  Rachel nodded, not quite making eye contact. She looked at the place where Sana’s hand touched her arm, almost unconsciously.

  Sana dropped her hand. She found the bright smile inside herself and said, “Ready to start?”

  Rachel looked at Sana. She nodded. Not like she believed Sana, but like she appreciated the effort to find some level of normality here. When she next spoke, she was only loud enough for Sana to hear. “Find your place. I’m gonna talk to the whole crew.”

  Rachel

  For Rachel, there had always been something otherworldly about stepping onto a set, seeing all of the props and the set pieces and the camera equipment and thinking
—I am the god of this world. The person who determined where they all went and how they all came together in a unifying kind of vision. There was a glow and a magic to the slow-moving process of the motion picture industry that necessarily helped anyone get through the boredom. Because no matter how good the day, boredom still remained. The waiting, the call times, the makeup, and the touching up of the makeup. The costuming, the marking of the lighting, the double-checking the monitor.

  Directors were in charge of all the decisions—of the underlying fabric of the film. It wasn’t only what shots to take, or what the vision was. It was keeping the actors happy and the crew appreciated (and, not to mention, empowered enough to make their own decisions about where to store equipment and how to set up the props table). Some directors created a general environment of ease and some—in the Rachel’s case—terror. That’s what kept the ship afloat, what kept everyone in line and moving forward to the same goal.

  Because that’s what directing was—uniting a whole bunch of disparate people and individual players into a single unifying goal that you had to work together to make. A vision was necessary in order to hold it all together. Call it gravity, call it glue, call it purpose. Everyone on set needed to be pulled in by it, one way or another, if a director was going to make something truly good.

  Rachel always had a vision.

  Her problem was getting everyone else to see it. She was so visual, she assumed everyone else was. Assumed they saw the world as she did. Saw what she was going for. But after watching Sana read the script in her screen test, Rachel realized that that was the first time anyone got her vision straight off the bat. But even talking over this project with Sana, Rachel realized that two people could come to set with that same vision, but still expecting a different experience.

  Rachel knew this, of course.

  But watching it in action was different. It was one thing in a critic. It was another thing in a member of the crew. People brought their own expectations and visions and their own ideas and their own experiences to the set. And each of their opinions could be true. They could all be true.