Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Rachel couldn’t believe she’d never noticed this before. Today was the day to change that. “Okay, everyone, gather round.”

  The whole set stopped. This was unprecedented. Nobody could figure out what was about to happen. Even Douga stopped, the unblown whistle dropping from her mouth. There was a stillness that went around in the air. If nobody knew what could happen, then anything could happen.

  Anything.

  “We’re gonna try something a little differently,” said Rachel, ignoring the tension on set. It was hard enough to get through this without having to worry about what people were thinking and how they were going to judge her for this new and unprecedented step. She had to charge through the way she always charged through and hope for the best. Of course, when it came to other humans, the best rarely happened. But when it came to her art, it often did.

  Rachel felt she had at least a fifty-fifty shot on this one, which was better than most of the times in her life when she went up in front of a group of people and tried to explain herself.

  Rachel cleared her throat, though goodness knows she didn’t need it. Everyone was as quiet as could be. Unnervingly quiet. “This movie is an epic beast. I’ve been having trouble focusing on what the actual through line is.”

  Deep breaths, Rachel. Deep breaths. “And with that in mind, Sana has helped rework the script. Helen is our through line. I’ve got some revised scripts now.”

  Rachel had wanted the script to be a tangible, touchable thing. Thank God for free printing in the library or it would have cost her a small fortune. Rachel scanned the crowd to look over at Douga. She was flipping through her script and doing that thing people do when they evaluate work by slightly raising their eyebrows and slightly jutting out their bottom lip.

  A hand went up.

  “Yes,” said Rachel, pointing to Ryan. She couldn’t believe he was brave enough to ask a question after their last interaction. Maybe he was made of sterner stuff than he had let on.

  “What purpose do the changes serve?”

  Rachel nodded. “Good question. The Odyssey is, after all, several stories nested within stories. Most of my reshoots have been trying to find a solid strand to connect them. Most of them have failed. But this one won’t. Apparently, I’ve underestimated Helen. At least, until now.”

  Ryan’s hand shot up again. Rachel had barely pointed when he started to ask, “Does that mean that there will be less contained arcs and more of a meta arc by the time the story ends?”

  Rachel laughed. The whole set held their breath again. But his eagerness was infectious, if in a slightly irritating but also winning way. “Yes. Anybody else?”

  Anybody else was still too stunned to speak.

  Rachel called for places and began setting up the shot with the blocking. They had to rehearse a few times. She usually grabbed people and moved them around on set. But she couldn’t imagine grabbing Sana and moving her around and positioning her, and since she couldn’t very well position everyone but Sana (how weird would that look, honestly), Rachel just pointed and let people figure out their blocking on their own. For the most part they made better choices than the ones she usually made by manhandling and trying to control the situation.

  When they weren’t working, everyone was ducked over their script, making the notes Rachel had suggested, highlighting their parts, annotating what the lighting was supposed to be doing in any given moment.

  Sana understood that set was a professional space. That she was there to work, do a job. Rachel realized it must have been the years of cheerleading, of running a practice, until a performance was set and practically perfect in every particular. Rachel hated to think that making a movie was anything like cheerleading. But the repetitive, drill-like nature of it, combined with Sana’s patient competence, led Rachel to the startling conclusion that the two were not so unrelated as she had held them to be.

  Watching Sana performing on set was like nothing that Rachel had ever seen.

  Natural was possibly one way to put it. Effortless was another. Fucking fantastic was how Rachel would have put it.

  Fucking fantastic.

  She really was like a South Asian Elizabeth Taylor. At once feminine and aggressive. Threatening and docile. She made a perfect Helen, and Rachel was flooded with regret that she’d underestimated the Helen that she had written—her own character—so much. Without Sana’s input, Helen would have remained flat and boring. A basic mean girl villain from a nineties teen B movie. Watching Sana play her was like reading about Helen of Troy for the first time—startling, mesmerizing, and honestly overwhelming at times.

  Filming today was somehow the longest and shortest two hours of Rachel’s life.

  As Rachel was wrapping up cords at the end, most of the crew stayed to help. She couldn’t quite believe it. She didn’t have to yell or make passive-aggressive, or even aggressive-aggressive, faces. She just called it for the day and started packing up and for the first time she wasn’t alone doing so. Everyone pitched in. They were talking mostly to one another. Or Sana. Everyone wanted to talk to Sana. Half of the people were trying to touch her in some way.

  A surge of some unnamed emotion went through Rachel. They shouldn’t get to touch her. It’s inappropriate. Rachel watched Sana’s ponytail swinging back and forth as she responded to everyone in a friendly, calm way. Like she was used to that kind of attention.

  And maybe she was.

  “You did well today.” Douga was at Rachel’s side.

  Rachel garbled nonsense for a moment—more guttural than an um but just as space filling. That was probably the nicest thing Douga had ever said to Rachel, excepting the time she’d told Rachel that Rachel had talent, way back when she’d been offered admission to Royce. “Thank you.”

  Douga nodded. “I’m impressed with your work here today.”

  Rachel coughed. Squeaked her toe against the floor. “Thank you.”

  Douga reached out and touched Rachel on her shoulder. “You’ve come a long way in a quick time. Good work.” Douga nodded, dropped her hand, and began to walk off.

  “You know me, always very non-terrifying,” Rachel said to her teacher’s back.

  A snort sounded. It was Sana. “Sure you are. You’re basically the monster in Young Frankenstein.”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. Was Sana teasing her?

  Sana smirked.

  Holy shit, Sana was teasing her. Like they were friends.

  “I’m off,” said Sana. “You need any more help?”

  “Nope. I’ve got the rest myself.”

  Sana nodded once. “All right. See you.”

  Rachel watched the swish swish swish of Sana’s retreating ponytail with a sinking suspicion that it would haunt her dreams that night.

  13

  Trying Really Hard, Actually

  Sana

  Mom wasn’t available to give Sana a ride home. She’d told Sana she’d be shooting overnight and through most of the day. Even if Mom had gotten home, Sana didn’t want to wake her. It just seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. Diesel had already left. Sana thought about taking the bus. She didn’t mind riding it out into the Valley. It was usually a solid time she could sit to herself and either get some homework done or listen to a podcast or scroll mindlessly through her feed. But she checked the schedule on her phone and everything was delayed by at least half an hour—traffic combined with one of the lines breaking down.

  It wasn’t an emergency, so Sana couldn’t really justify calling a ride from an app. She remembered one more way she could get home. It was free of monetary charge, wouldn’t take an extra ninety minutes, but was probably going to cost in emotional overhead.

  Sana rolled the dice. She went into her contacts list. The phone rang once, then twice. Massoud picked up in the middle of the third ring. “Speak of the devil, and she appears. I was just talking about you. I never thought I’d see your name flash up on my screen.”

  “You’ve stored my number?”

  “I
s that a joke?” When Sana didn’t laugh, Massoud added, “You’re my kid.”

  Sana was starting to seriously regret this, but she couldn’t turn back now. “I need a ride home. From school.”

  Massoud paused for a moment, but less than a second later he was saying, “Your wish is my command, Sana-jaan. Gimme a minute to wrap up here and I’ll be there in a flash.”

  By the time Sana got to the parking lot, she had only had to wait about fifteen minutes for Massoud to show up. He pulled up with all of the flash and noise and fanfare that Sana had come to expect of him and his love of imported vehicles.

  “What happened to your regular ride?”

  “I missed it,” said Sana.

  “Bummer,” said Massoud. “Wanna talk about it?”

  Sana shook her head. “I appreciate the ride, but let’s not play happy families right now.”

  Massoud gave her a once-over as she buckled herself in the car. “You’re the one who made the call.”

  “You’re the one who answered it.”

  “I’m not the enemy, beti.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Massoud swerved—it was a controlled motion, crisp and direct. He pulled over to the side of the road with a screeching halt. “That’s it. You don’t have to like me. You don’t have to forgive me. But you do owe me some respect, kid.”

  Sana crossed her arms and pointed her knees toward the car door. She didn’t have anything to say to that. At least, nothing that would be productive.

  “Oh, I see,” said Massoud. “I’m the bad guy. I’m the one who left.”

  Sana whipped her whole body toward him. “You leave over and over again. It’s not that you left. It’s that you’re in a perpetual state of being gone. For some very important reason, I’m sure.”

  Massoud stared at her for a long moment. “That’s rich coming from the kid who applied to a fellowship all the way in India without telling a single family member.”

  Sana drew in a breath. Holy Hades. “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew, kid. I got a call from the board for the foundation when you applied. You did, after all, put me on the application. They needed to know you could afford to travel there. That you had family support. Thank God they called me and not your grandmother.”

  “That’s why you called your friend at Princeton.” Sana’s stomach dropped. It was her one secret, the one thing that had belonged to her from the beginning. And it turned out, it had belonged to her father, too. Somehow, it was worse that he’d kept her secret. Worse that he’d held on to it just as tightly as she had.

  Worse, because they were so alike, her father and her. Two tightly wound peas in the same kind of escape pod. Sana resented ever having to confront that truth.

  “I needed to know,” he said. “How serious you were. I needed to know what you were up to.”

  Sana’s ears were vibrating, somehow. Sound was muted. And an underlying sensation of dizziness, of not quite knowing where her body was in space, overtook Sana. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I thought you’d tell me.” Massoud shook his head. “I thought I could help. I thought you’d need someone to talk to.”

  He’d held on to the secret just like she had. He’d held on so she would talk to him, which he knew she hated doing. He’d held on to her secret because he knew information was power and in this situation, he held all the power cards and she held none of them.

  Not anymore.

  The one thing that had been solely hers. The one thing that had belonged to her hopes and her dreams and her honestly admitted doubts. It had been his, too, all along. It had never honestly belonged to her. It was something she’d been allowed. Something she’d been loaned by him. It was an inheritance, and nothing to do with her at all.

  Sana had trouble breathing. She took in a ragged inhale, then out again. Her chest was tight, tight, tight with the sensation that she couldn’t breathe. That the light was dimming in the car and there wasn’t enough air. There would never be enough air again.

  “Beti. Breathe.” Massoud had a soothing, lulling voice. The calmest voice on the planet. It made him good at his job, those lulling, intense tones.

  Sana hated the sound of it. She turned to directly face him and did her worst. “So you’re blackmailing me into being your child now, is that it? I have to hang out with you or else you’re going to tell Dadu or Mamani?”

  Massoud stared—his eyes went wide for a moment. It was only an instant, but Sana registered the shock, the hurt. Then his gaze narrowed, hardened. Turned into the flinty journalist he was on camera. He shook his head and faced the windshield. He turned the car back up onto the road. He turned up the radio, and between that and the thrum of the overturned engine, Sana didn’t have to speak or hear another word spoken to her the whole way home.

  Rachel

  Two weeks. Rachel had two weeks to finish her project.

  Rachel was wiping down a table where the customers had taken forever to get up after they had closed out. The rag in her hand was wet and cold. It made this horrifically wonderful sound when she dropped it onto the table.

  Splat.

  But it was no good. Rachel was distracting herself and she knew it.

  The dailies from her first set of reshoots with Sana were good. She’d watched them, edited them down a bit. But still—she had two weeks. That was one week to get all the necessary shots and another week to edit like a damned madwoman. She wasn’t sure if it was enough time.

  It had to be enough time.

  “Rach, I think that table’s clean. It only needed a standard wipe, not a full wax and tune.” Jeanie was shouting from the counter.

  “Right. Sorry.” Rachel stopped cleaning table seventeen. She put the rag back away. “Can I take my five now, Jeanie?”

  Jeanie looked around the hall. “You didn’t take it an hour ago?”

  “I forgot.” More like, she’d been happy to work through her break. Glad to have the distraction.

  Jeanie shook her head. “You gotta take your legal breaks. Go. Be back on time, though.”

  That was all Rachel needed. She pulled off her vest and apron and went into the break room. She didn’t want to check her phone right away. She had plenty of other things to do. Like eat a snack. Or look over her shooting list. Or count the tiles in the ceiling. Anything but check her phone.

  Rachel got her phone out of her locker. Hi

  Rachel wasn’t sure what else to say. She knew she wanted to say something. She couldn’t get it out of her head. Sana had been so spot on. About Helen. About her story.

  You were right. about the script. I’m watching the dailies. They’re good

  Three bubbles popped up on Sana’s end. Then disappeared. Then reappeared.

  Rachel couldn’t take it. Sorry I didn’t listen.

  It’s okay, I get it

  No it isn’t. I needed to let it out. needed to write it. Rachel had prided herself on being so forward thinking, so feminist. She had thought of herself as the filmmaker who saw every angle. And how had she missed this—that she thought of Helen of Troy like everyone who had written her before, and most of those everyone were men.

  Given what you thought, I get it

  I hated you. Rachel didn’t know why she’d said it. Didn’t know what had made her feel so particularly confessional in this conversation. She just had to say it.

  I know, wrote back Sana. and now?

  Rachel thought about that for a moment. What were they now? Not enemies. Not nemeses. Just two people who worked together. Colleagues? But that wasn’t right either. That didn’t describe what they were. They had some level of mutual respect. Of camaraderie. She wasn’t sure how to describe that, but she could approximate as best as she could. now we’re friends

  I’d like that

  Then three more thinking dots appeared, but Sana didn’t send a message.

  Rachel stared at that emoji. Wondering if Sana tacked it on to all her conversations. She seemed like s
he’d be a prolific emoji user, to be honest. But sometimes Sana went and surprised Rachel, so she couldn’t be sure. So. As friends. I have to bail. I can’t meet at your place this weekend. I’ve got to work late. I have to edit this. I don’t have time for more movie watching.

  The trail of thinking dots disappeared entirely. Okay

  Rachel breathed out a sigh of relief. it is?

  Yeah. I’ll ask my mom for the car. Meet at your place. I can help you edit.

  No. God no was more like it.

  Oh

  That was all Sana sent. Oh. And all Rachel could think of was the hurt and the bewilderment on her face before she pasted on a bright smile and made everyone else feel comfortable when she was clearly feeling like hell. Rachel couldn’t believe she knew Sana well enough now that she knew how the girl would react. But she did.

  Rachel typed out a new response. Meet me at work?

  Rachel regretted the message the moment she sent it. But it was out there and there was no getting it back now. Maybe she could go to film school in New York or London and never come back to this place. That was a good way to avoid Sana for the rest of forever.

  Rad. Back to orgo. See you soon

  Rachel sent back a bye even though nobody sent “bye” messages and she could see herself staying unread because Sana probably actually did go off to do her homework.

  The break door rattled open, startling Rachel.

  “Rach. Your five minutes were up five minutes ago. Get to getting.”

  Rachel stuffed her phone back in her locker and threw her apron back on. Nothing like a conversation with Sana Khan to throw off the rhythm of her entire life.

  14

  Not on Rex Manning Day

  Sana

  Sana was up before dawn. Farrah, who hadn’t gone to sleep yet from work the night before, was just out of the shower. A hopeful thought threaded through Sana’s chest.