Tell Me How You Really Feel

by Aminah Mae Safi

  Deep, deep breaths. Because the next line was real and true and Sana felt it in her bones that if she sang it out loud, she’d never be able to get them back, never be able to hold on to the feeling inside of her. It would be beyond her control.

  “I should be lying on that sun-swept beach with her.” Sana could only look in one place—at Rachel. “Caressing her warm, brown skin.”

  For the first time, Sana wasn’t really performing. Not for a goal, not for a cheer, not for a team, not for an eventual position. She was singing—making an idiot of herself, honestly—because she wanted Rachel to know how she felt. She wanted her to express the joy buzzing inside her. Wanted to share what she felt rather than keep it tamped down and locked inside.

  Last chorus. Hope she doesn’t wanna kill me. Sana kept singing, kept reading the prompter. But she didn’t look away from Rachel as she sang. About going the whole wide world, just to find the one girl she was meant to be with. The whole wide world just to see where that one girl had been hidden.

  Except Rachel had never been hidden to Sana.

  Maybe Sana had been the one who had been hiding all along.

  But that didn’t matter anymore. Sana was letting out the best kind of secret. The kind she never wanted to keep to herself in a million years.

  Wham wham wham wha-wham. Bang bang bang sha-bang.

  The song ended and Sana was startled back to reality by the whoops and cheers from her audience. She ducked her head, feeling a blush creeping up her face all the way to her hairline. She didn’t blush often, but when she did her skin went a bright, hot red. Practically magenta. Sana handed off the mic, not noticing who she passed it to.

  And then Rachel was standing in front of her, giving Sana a look that she couldn’t quite read. “Sometimes I really hate you, Khan.”

  And then Rachel leaned in, wrapped her arms around Sana’s neck, and kissed her.

  Rachel Recht is kissing me. The thought flashed and was gone. Because for once in her life, Sana was done thinking. She was too busy kissing Rachel like a madwoman. All hands and mouth, everywhere. Anywhere she caught sight of a flash of skin. She was beyond volition, beyond thought, and into pure and unadulterated instinct.

  Rachel pulled away first, breathless. She looked over Sana’s shoulder, maybe gauging whether or not the adults were paying them any attention. But they must not have been. “Let’s get out of here.”

  And then Rachel was pulling Sana out the door, through the dark hallway. She was trying every door down along the way. She apologized a couple of times when she walked in on another group’s private room. She hit a few locked ones. But then one door handle slid down with only the tiniest of clicks—unlocked—and the room inside was dark, empty, and entirely their own, at least for the moment.

  Rachel clicked the door shut, pushed in the button for the lock on the door. She found a notice on the wall—about returning mics when done with them—and taped it over the one window on the door. The room got a bit darker, became a space that belonged only to them, only to this moment that was somehow frantic and still all at once. Then Rachel pulled Sana toward her. Sana did her best to suppress her laugh; she didn’t want Rachel to think she was laughing at her. But she didn’t need to worry.

  “You can laugh,” said Rachel. “I love your laugh. You sound like a subversive Victorian lady when you laugh.”

  Now Sana did laugh, her lips nearly brushing against Rachel’s. Their breaths mingling together. “I don’t feel like a Victorian lady right now.”

  “Good.” And then there was no nearly, no almost. Just two lips meeting—softly at first. Quietly. Sana smiled, and then she felt Rachel’s mouth pull into a smile, and that’s when she used the opportunity to test her tongue against Rachel’s lips.

  The kiss changed after that.

  It was as though every untamed thought Sana had ever had about Rachel hadn’t been tucked away and buried down deep as she had so desperately tried all those hours working together. No, instead the thoughts had been tagged and filed NSFW, so that Sana could boot them up, all at once, with perfect recall for here and now. And now this running catalog of ideas wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop. It was too much and not enough. Each idea flashed, then was replaced by the next and then the next and then the next.

  She pulled Rachel over her, onto the bank of cushioned benched seating in the room.

  Sana wanted it all. Big curling hair, soft rounded shoulders, wide thick hips. That mouth that so rarely pulled into a smile. All Rachel. Each a smaller piece of an irresistible whole. How could she prioritize this staggering list? It was incomprehensible. She couldn’t keep her hands still. Sana felt short of breath, like she was being tossed in the air over and over and over again without ever having to land. Her hands were frantic—even the one in the cast—her mouth couldn’t keep up with her thoughts, and all she had humming through her was yes and now.

  She leaned back again, desperate for air. Desperate to regain some level of control over her wandering, and now shaking, limbs.

  “I want you.” Sana’s hands hovered above the button of Rachel’s jeans.

  “You’ve only got one good hand.” Rachel’s words came out in puffs of breath.

  “You’d be surprised what I can do with one hand.” The only thing Sana could hear was Rachel’s breath as she steadied herself. The only thing Sana could feel was her own thumping heart. “May I?”

  “Yes,” said Rachel, like she was answering

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” said Rachel.

  Sara’s hand went back to the button. She tugged it open, then put her hand under the now opened waistband.

  Rachel yelped. “Your hand’s cold.”

  Sana moved to pull her hand away but Rachel grabbed her wrist. They looked at each other, and then they were kissing again. Sana kept her hands light at first. She kept her attention on Rachel. When Rachel deepened the kiss, Sana knew she was on the right track. When Rachel grabbed at her wrist, digging nails into Sana’s forearm, Sana knew she was close.

  “This is not a great way to get me to give up swear words,” said Rachel, catching her breath between each word.

  Sana leaned in close to Rachel’s ear, kissing her way along Rachel’s jaw to get to her. “You can swear as much as you like.”

  But instead of swearing, Rachel kept quiet by kissing Sana, so that there were no cries to echo out into the room. Just a kiss to take in what belonged to them.

  After, Rachel nestled her head into Sana’s shoulder, fitting where she should not have. “You’re wrong, you know.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m not surprised with what you can do with one hand,” Rachel said. “But I am pretty impressed.”

  Sana giggled and Rachel returned the laugh. They stayed there, wrapped around each other, refusing to let the rest of reality intrude for as long as they could.

  23

  There Goes Your Social Life

  Sana

  The door snicked shut behind Sana. The porch light was on, but that was automatic. The hall light was off. The entryway was dark. The car wasn’t in the driveway, but it was likely that the old Summit Eagle would never be in the driveway again. And while Sana knew where to step so as to not make a sound, she didn’t bother. She hadn’t expected for Farrah to be home and all signs pointed to the assumption being correct.

  Except the light clicked on in the kitchen and Farrah was standing there looking like the reaper of death. “Have fun?”

  It was such an unexpected question, Sana nearly stumbled. “Yes.”

  “Good. Because you’re not having fun for a very long time after this.”

  “There it is. I guess I’m grounded.”

  “Don’t be flip about this, Sana. You’re in trouble.”

  “Don’t be flip? Don’t be flip? When in my life have I ever been flip about anything? Ever? I took my Brownies meetings seriously, Mom. I was seven and I did the minutes because I thought Ms. Piper was writing them too casually.”<
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  That didn’t slow Farrah down. “You never used to come home at one in the morning either, so I’m having to improvise.”

  “And what would you know about my coming home at one in the morning? Are you home all the time?”

  “That’s it. You’re not to see that girl again. I don’t know what she’s doing to you but you’re not acting like yourself.”

  Sana laughed. A harsh, bitter thing. “You know what, for the first time in a while I have honestly been acting like myself. Not Perfect Sana. Not Future Ivy League Sana. Not Cheer Captain Sana. Just me. And it’s driving you nuts. You go on and on about how Mamani and Dadu ruined your life and made you be something you weren’t and here you are doing the exact same thing to me.”

  Farrah sucked in a breath. She stared at Sana. And then she left the room. Vacated it like a coward.

  Sana followed her. “You’re going to leave in the middle of this?”

  “I don’t have to put up with this, not from you,” Farrah shouted.

  “But I have to put up with it from you?”

  Farrah turned around, stared for a long moment. “That’s it, huh? You’re going to throw your life away over some girl the way I threw my life away over some boy?”

  “I’m not throwing my life away over a girl!”

  “Really? Because that’s not what it looks like from here. Go ahead. I can’t stop you anymore. You’re eighteen. You can do what you want. You’re a grown-ass woman. Make sure she’s worth it.”

  “And I wasn’t?”

  Farrah shook her head. “You’re smarter than that. This isn’t about you. I love you. You’ve always been worth it. You know that I gave up so much of my own life to have you. And I don’t want you to have to give up your life, not like I had to. I want you to be able to make your decisions on your own terms.”

  “You mean your terms. You’re the one who never sent me to see the old country with Dadu and Mamani. You’re the one who kept me from them. So I could be like you and not like them.”

  “You really feel that way?” Farrah stepped back, stood motionless.

  “I do.”

  “All right, then.” Farrah nodded. “Ruin your life. Throw it away. You’re still grounded. But do whatever it is you’re gonna do. I can’t stop you.”

  And then Sana was left standing in the hallway. The floors creaked and the pipes hissed as she went to her room.

  Rachel

  Rachel sat at her laptop in the Royce film lab. But she was staring at her phone.

  The message was from Sana. Can’t make it to the lab today. Grounded. Will come up with a plan for tomorrow.

  A reprieve. That’s what Rachel was being given. An extra day where Sana still wanted to hang out with her. Where Rachel wasn’t a pariah to Sana. Because once Sana saw this cut of the film that Rachel was making, Rachel would definitely be a pariah to Sana.

  She had one more day. Twenty-four more hours before Sana came by the lab and helped finish up the editing of the project. Rachel had been rewatching the cut before Sana had messaged.

  It sucked.

  Not, like, it was the worst movie ever. Not even like it was actually bad. Douga would be impressed with this cut. She would be happy that she had been listened to—obeyed was the better term, really.

  It was just that—this cut of this film, it didn’t hold a candle to what the movie could be. This edit was fine. It was solid. It was technically well done. And the acting was good. But the totality of it, the sum of the parts was shitty. It was something you could get anywhere. It was exactly what someone who had seen Rachel’s earlier work would assume she would go, if she went down a commercial vein with her films. Rachel wasn’t against making commercial films. She was against turning a film that didn’t need to be commercial into palatable schlock.

  It was easy to digest, this film. A consumable kind of feminist vision. The pretty girl was bad and the quiet girl was good and she had warned them all. But it didn’t question why those women had been pitted against each other in the first place.

  Rachel had never wanted to make a movie that was easy to swallow. She had wanted to make art. This wasn’t art. This was expected. This was going to ruin the only good thing Rachel had ever had going on in her personal life.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  Rachel started. “Who is it?”

  “It’s me,” said the voice. A male voice. Young.

  “Ryan?” Rachel looked up from her laptop.

  “Yeah,” said Ryan, walking into the room. “Douga gave me a key finally and I thought I’d come in and work on my freshman project, but then I saw your car and I figured you were out here and I didn’t want to disturb or anything.”

  Rachel waved him in, turned back to her computer. “Can’t disturb me while I’m editing unless you’re gonna ask a hundred questions or you click super loudly with your keyboard shortcuts.”

  “I promise to do neither.” Ryan took a seat two away from Rachel. Nearby, so not like insultingly across the room, but also not directly next to her, which she appreciated.

  She stared at the screen for a while longer before she heard a cough.

  “You need to talk about it?”

  “Didn’t you promise to stay silent?” Rachel was starting to see double she’d been staring at the screen in a darkish room for so long.

  “You looked stuck. I thought it might help to talk it out.”

  “I don’t need help. I know what I’m supposed to do.”

  Ryan turned back to his screen in his whirly, twirly chair. He didn’t even glance over. Damn. Rachel had done that. Had taught people to turn away immediately and instantly and not even press for help. In the early days, it was because she knew if she took a single wrong step she’d be labeled as someone who didn’t deserve her spot, as someone who had been given a chance and found wanting. She’d had to figure it all out on her own and she would. But now, that just seemed like the norm. Rachel does it all on her own, even though that wasn’t how most people got anything done in the film world.

  To be a woman, to be on scholarship, to always be looking over her shoulder had taken so much from Rachel. But this, this was the worst thing it had taken. Because nobody asked if she was okay after the first try. Nobody pushed even a little bit harder to get underneath the surface.

  Except for Sana.

  Rachel had to avoid that thought. Had to push that idea away for now. Had to keep away the anxiety that pressed against her chest, that stuck to her ribs, when she thought about Sana right now. “Okay, I’m stuck.”

  Ryan turned again, his expression overeager and excited. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing is wrong, per se. But nothing is clicking to be all the way right. I know I’m missing something. I’m not sure what.” That was a lie. Rachel was sure what was missing. The heart of this goddamned story.

  “Have you tried cleaning up from the beginning? The knot is almost always earlier than you think it is. In the story. In anything.”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes. “That’s a fair point.”

  “It should be; I learned it from you.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. You’re always saying, ‘Wait, go back to the beginning,’ when we’re filming and it stuck. Because you’re right. Sometimes you gotta go back to the beginning and see where it all went wrong, you gotta find the turn or the knot that needs to be untangled before you go any further, or you’ll be pulling the knot tighter and tighter and making it harder and harder to undo.”

  “Good advice. Even if it’s mine. I guess thanks for listening. Both times. All the times.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” said Ryan with a shrug. He went back to his own project.

  Rachel stared at hers. He was right. Or she had been right all along. Maybe she could find a spot earlier in the film to squeeze the newer Helen scenes back in, in the right way. The narration had to go somewhere. Maybe she needed to fix that first thirty minutes, the rough cut that Douga had seen. Maybe she could find a way.<
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  She was in for a long night of it.

  24

  Putting Baby in a Corner

  Rachel

  Rachel was bleary-eyed. She couldn’t stare at another screen ever again. She was sitting in front of her laptop again, except instead of being in the nice film lab with the ergonomic chairs, she was hunched over her laptop like a computer gremlin on her bed. But she’d have to get up and do all of it again tomorrow if she was going to finish this project in time to hand in next week.

  She was still trying to solve for Helen of Troy. It was a three-dimensional math problem from filmic hell.

  Her phone went off. She went to pick it up when she saw it wasn’t her dad calling.

  A new inbox notification.

  Rachel checked it, expecting nothing. Maybe a camera equipment sale that she couldn’t afford. Maybe a price drop on some items she was currently watching on eBay. You could find some good camera equipment that rich people had bought and didn’t use for next to nothing on eBay if you knew how to look.

  It was a notification from NYU.

  Rachel clicked it. Your financial status has been updated.

  Cool, cool, super cool. Rachel was probably going to vomit on the floors she had cleaned not a couple of weeks ago.

  She sat down. She cracked her fingers. She could do this. She would do this. She clicked through the link. She typed in her password.

  But she couldn’t click through just yet.

  The mouse hovered over the log-in button. All she had to do was click it. All she had to do was see her status update and she’d know her future. It was second away—clicks away. But every confident mantra she’d told herself faded away. Revealed itself for the trick that it was. She was just a girl, applying to a school, against the odds.

  Because the odds were against everyone, particularly when applying to one of the best film schools in the country. It took talent, yes. It took hard work, yes. It also took luck—luck that Douga had found her work in that program. Luck that she’d applied when the world was looking for filmmakers like her. That admissions counselors were looking for students like her.