Playing Keira

by Jennifer Castle

  I start to cross the street again, this time making sure I have the light, but he grabs me again.

  “Wait!”

  I step back from the curb, but don’t look at him. I try to ignore the feeling of his grip on my wrist. He hasn’t let go.

  “Keira, I have to know something.” His voice is unsure now, a little guilty. “Are you really going to see your mom?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been seeing her regularly since she left, right?”

  “No.”

  Garrett catches his breath. He knows this is a big deal. Not because we have an intimate relationship, but because he’s seen it in a documentary film.

  “Let me walk you there,” he says, his voice more assured. “You’ll need the support.”

  “You’re just curious to see how the story continues.”

  “Don’t insult me,” he says, and it’s that pleading edge that gives me the courage to actually meet his glance now. It’s one of concern. For some reason, this hurts me.

  “What about Mary-Kate?” I ask.

  “I can meet her later. It’s fine.” Our eyes lock and my skin blazes where his fingers circle my wrist. I should run screaming, but my feet don’t move.

  Truth is, I would love the company. Now that Garrett knows the full story—the surface of it, at least—I would like him to know the rest. Where I’ve come from today and who I’ve hurt, and then how it unfolds. But even if he were someone I knew well, like Nate, I would still need to do it alone. Whatever happens, I need to be concerned with only myself, and not how anyone is witnessing what’s happening.

  “No,” I say. “I mean, thank you, but I’ll be okay. I want to go on my own.”

  “Can I at least walk you there?” he asks.

  “It’s not far. I could use the time to clear my head.”

  “Are you sure? Are you sure you’re okay?”

  I nod. I’m lying again, because I’m not sure. Garrett takes out the Sudoku book and pulls out the pencil, then writes his number and email address on the puzzle we’ve been working on. He tears it off, folds it neatly in half, and hands it to me.

  “Be in touch with me,” he says, his eyes intense. I nod again, and this nod could be a lie or it could be the truth. I like the fact that I can decide later.

  “Good luck,” says Garrett. He opens his arms and I lean into him, and now his arms are closing around me. The pressure of his hands on my back. The jab of his chin on my collarbone. The warmth of his body, fanning the flames in mine.

  Before I can think of all the reasons not to, I wrap my arms around him and do what he is doing to me—press my palms against his back. We stay like that and my body counts off one, two, three seconds. This is where I usually break away. In fact, Nate is so used to me doing this, he’s become the one to separate first. Here, though, I let the count get to four. Then five, and six. I am not pulling free. Why aren’t I pulling free?

  Finally, Garrett releases me but keeps his hands on my shoulders.

  “I don’t know what to say here,” he says. “Good luck? Be strong?”

  “How about ‘Don’t hurl’?” I say, and we both laugh.

  “You’re going to be fine,” he says. His phone chirps and we both know that’s got to be Mary-Kate, wondering where he is. He gives me an apologetic glance and drops his hands, but doesn’t reach for his phone. “’Bye, Keira.”

  “’Bye, Garrett.”

  Garrett smiles and hangs his head before turning around, stepping away from me. The light is green and he starts to cross the street; he’s going east and I’m continuing north. Once he gets to the other side, he looks back and waves again, then keeps walking.

  I watch him move down the block, growing smaller. Less real. I keep my eyes on him, as if that might prevent him from disappearing, but eventually, he does.

  I cross in my direction now—checking the light again, yes, of course. I’m pretty sure I can still feel my skin pulse where Garrett’s hands touched it.

  I’ve got about ten blocks to go, and here comes that rush again: there’s no camera on my tail, no glances of recognition. I’m anonymous and small and insignificant.

  When I reach the block, I turn left, because I know this is the way to turn based on my map studying.

  This is where I’m starting to feel really nervous. This is where my steps slow down, heart beats fast. It feels like my stomach could be punching itself. Maybe I should have asked Garrett to come with me, so I’d be forced to hold it together to save face.

  There’s the number on an apartment building. I double-check it against the note. Yup.

  I check the time. It’s almost nine thirty. Maybe too early, still? Maybe I should go sit in that coffee shop across the street? Or just walk around the block a few times? But maybe she has plans to go out in a bit. I don’t want to miss her.

  Finally, I walk up the steps and into the vestibule of the building. I look at the directory and find the apartment number: 3B. There’s a last name on it that’s not Jones, my last name, or McIntyre, her maiden name, but I know that doesn’t mean anything. She could have changed it, or gotten a roommate.

  I take a deep breath and hold my finger over the button next to 3B. You can still change your mind, I think, like I did back at the bus station. You can text Garrett and meet up with him. You can do a million other things besides this.

  My finger, clearly tired of all this nonsense, presses the button anyway. The buzzer is loud and obnoxious.

  After a few moments, a voice says, “Yes?”

  There are so many things I can say now. But I open my mouth and state one of the few things I know for sure. It is true, even if I’m still figuring out what it means.

  “Hello. This is Keira.”

  KEEP READING FOR A SNEAK PEEK AT

  ONE

  Sometimes, I hit pause at a random moment when I’m on film and stare at my eyes, and try to figure out why they chose me.

  With the others, it’s obvious. Rory says those accidentally hilarious things, and Felix keeps bursting into song. Keira reads an advanced-level social studies textbook aloud. Then there’s Nate, with that whole Johnny Appleseed vibe. Maybe I was picked because my favorite answer to their questions was “Grrrr,” or because I wore pajamas to school three days in a row, or simply because they needed a girl with brown hair. It could have been all of these things, or none of them. So I search those eyes, those eyes I once saw the world through, and remind myself they’re the same ones I see it through now. But in all the searching, I’ve never found the spark that says, Watch this one.

  I’m guessing Ian Reid didn’t find it either, and this is why he dumped me.

  “You’re awesome, Justine,” he said as we sat in his vintage Jeep, not going inside to the party we were supposed to be going inside to. “But I feel like we’re better off as friends.”

  Translated, I’m pretty sure that means: The thought of kissing you—or touching you at all, really—makes me want to hurl, and when you look at me with love you resemble a chipmunk.

  My heart doubled over from the punch, hacked a bit, then fell to the floor of its little heart studio apartment.

  But on the outside, I just nodded and spun out words like okay and fine and cool. That was before Christmas and now it’s March, and there isn’t a single hour when I’m not thinking about the fact that for seven weeks I had someone, and then I didn’t, and how that works exactly.

  This hour, I’m pondering it while sitting on a low stone wall outside the town library. It’s snowing again, falling in bite-size chunks so fluffy they look fake. I’ve got an overdue copy of The Graduate on DVD tucked inside my parka and I’ll go in and return it, eventually. Well, yes, the stone is cold down there. Very, in fact. But this is so peaceful, with my mother at the supermarket and thus out of nagging range, and I love the way Main Street looks before the plows come through. The air feels eerie-hushed, and above me, everything is colorless, a striking shade of utter blank.

  In the distance to
the west, I can see our town’s mountains. They’re not normal mountains with peaks. They’re ridge mountains, low and wide and gracefully deformed. You know they’re beautiful but have no idea why. On top of one is a stone tower visible from miles away with windows that look like eyes, and if you stare at it long enough, it always seems to be staring back.

  I imagine that Ian is here, perched on the wall beside me, with his arm around my waist, his chin on my shoulder, and this time I don’t care how we look or that some idiot might yell, “Get a room!” No, wait. We lie down on the lawn and make snow angels. I know that’s the stuff of trite Hollywood movies but maybe that’s where I went wrong. Maybe that’s what he wanted.

  When we got together, people called us JustIan. The sun looked different in the sky, like it recognized me.

  And with that thought, the hurt comes again. It’s a familiar hurt, and literal too. It starts at my belly button and pushes into me, as if someone’s trying to dig a tunnel straight through to my back but dammit, there are all these organs in the way.

  “Justine?”

  The voice pops against the stillness of the air. Sharp and high. Familiar, but not really.

  I turn toward the voice. There’s a man and a woman standing five feet in front of me, wearing ankle-length puffy down coats and matching fleece hats right out of the clearance pages of an outerwear catalog. He’s in black; she’s in silver. They’re each holding a cup from the chain coffee place across the street.

  Then I realize who these people are, and the cramp goes supernova inside me.

  “Is that you, Justine?” the woman asks again.

  I don’t see how I can deny it.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” I force myself to say her name. “Leslie?”

  In that moment as her eyes widen, her brows lift—her face expands in every direction—I think about how I’ve seen her over the last five years, in pictures, but she hasn’t seen me, and that makes me feel a tiny bit powerful.

  “Oh my God!” she says, quickly passing her cup to the guy, her husband, Lance, and stepping forward. Her hands fly toward my cheeks, and I let them land, feeling the jolt of warmth transferred from her cup; then they jump to my shoulders to bring me in for a hug. My stomach still hurts, and for an instant, ridiculously, I think maybe she’ll notice.

  “You’re so grown up,” she says, squeezing tight. Her breath used to smell like cigarettes; now it stinks of a Cinnamon Dolce latte.

  “That’s what happens,” I say, and throw a look at Lance, who just winks. Lance is the kind of guy who can get away with a wink regardless of unfortunate outerwear.

  When Leslie releases me, I ask the question.

  “What are you guys doing here?”

  “What do you think?” asks Lance.

  Uh-uh. I need them to say it. I look at Leslie.

  Taking the cue, she says, “We’ve got the go-ahead for Five at Sixteen.”

  “Five at Sixteen,” I echo.

  In December, after my birthday, I was expecting the phone call, but it didn’t come. Then the holidays paraded by, and nothing. Winter dragged on. At the end of every day without hearing Lance or Leslie’s voice, breathing got 0.5 percent easier for me.

  “I didn’t think it was going to happen,” I say after a slow-motion moment. It’s all I can do not to ask, Who’s going to give you any more money after last time and that other movie you made that just plain sucked?

  “Neither did we. But it was meant to be, Justine, and it’s happening. We’re in town for a few days to talk to people at your school and line up somewhere to live for a few months.”

  “We were going to call you and your parents tomorrow,” adds Lance.

  “Running into you like this—it’s just so perfect!” continues Leslie. “I saw your face from across the street and instantly knew it was you. Like I said, meant to be! I have a feeling this film is going to be kick-ass.”

  For the record, Leslie is way too old to say things like “kick-ass.”

  “You will be part of it, won’t you?” adds Lance. At least he’s actually asking.

  “Have you talked to the others?” I nonanswer.

  “Just Nate so far, because he called us last week,” says Leslie. “They’re all on board over there. You were next on my list, because if we don’t have you . . . Well. That’s a lot not to have.”

  They’re wrong and don’t know it. “When would you start?”

  “We’ll begin preproduction next month,” she says. “But we need paperwork signed in the next week or so, to keep things rolling.”

  I know my line here should be, Of course I’ll sign your paperwork! Why would I not? In some alternate reality, I might add, I can’t wait for you to slice open my life for the world to examine and poke at with sharp instruments!

  I don’t say that.

  We’re all silent for a few long seconds.

  Finally, Lance says, “We should let you go, Justine. We’re due at the Realtor’s office up the street. We’ll talk later, yes?”

  I just nod. Leslie touches her cheek to mine and squeezes my shoulder, and I wonder if that’s some new version of good-bye they’re beta testing in Los Angeles. Lance pats me on the back, in the same way he’s always patted me on the back. Then they are gone, gliding away from me like graceful, overdressed angels of doom.

  My mother steps through the kitchen door with two steaming cups of cocoa and a bowl of popcorn, as if we were in a scene from a feminine-hygiene-product commercial. In this commercial, I sit at the table and she puts my drink and snack in front of me, then eases into my sister Olivia’s usual chair across from mine.

  “You think I should do it,” I say to her. It comes out sounding like an accusation, which it sort of is.

  “I do. But the decision is yours.” As she leans down to blow on her cocoa, I notice the streaks of gray hair now woven through her blond highlights. When she came to pick me up at the library and I told her about seeing Lance and Leslie, her eyes, which have looked so tired lately, suddenly sparkled to life.

  I don’t know what to say next, so I blurt out the first moronic thing that comes to mind.

  “I always thought I’d be thin in time for this one.”

  Instead of coming up with a You’re not fat! or You look great, my mom stares into her cocoa, then offers an encouraging smile. “You could still lose a few pounds before they start shooting.”

  She thinks she’s being helpful. That’s my mother, in a nutshell. I just shrug and make a mental note to seethe about it later.

  After a few moments I say, “Leslie said that if they don’t have me, that’s a lot not to have.”

  “Oh, I agree with that. So do the people who loved the first two films. I know that’s hard for you to hear.”

  A line from one of the reviews my mother keeps in a scrapbook ticker-tapes across my mind: The real breakout star of Five at Six is the sharp-tongued yet funny and sweet Justine, whose early rebellion gives you a sign of things to come.

  Things to come. Gah.

  “The intrusion will be a problem,” I say. Grasping. “I’m supposed to be getting my school act together, remember?”

  “It’ll just be for a month or two.”

  “Why is it so important to you?” I’m curious to hear what she’ll actually admit.

  Mom thinks for a moment, her expression warm but a little pained, and I’m glad for the pained part.

  “I guess I still believe in it. The original idea of it. From the very beginning, it seemed like such an honor.”

  That sounds sincere but I know there’s more. After the last time, her custom birthday cake business got a nice bump from the exposure. Now she’s branched out into cupcakes and what she calls “food art,” which mostly means bananas on sticks with candy faces, and she could use the free advertising. Then there’s the thing she won’t mention:

  It made us all kind of famous for a while.

  “You’ll feel better after the whole idea settles in,” says Mom now. I can see she’s hiding
a flash of excitement behind the concern. “I have to get started on a T. rex with red frosting.”

  I go upstairs to my room and open my laptop, unable to shake that dark-shadow feeling.

  The original idea of it.

  My hands, which seem to be much more motivated than the rest of me, open a Web browser and type the address I know so well but refuse to bookmark.

  Here it comes, loading into place: the website for the Five At movies. I used to go on here a lot, watching video clips of the films or interviews with Lance and Leslie. Every time I went back, I’d expect to see something new. Like it might tell me secrets I didn’t already know about myself. When I realized it never would, I stopped. But now I’m here again, and it’s like the site has been waiting for me all this time, that home page with the familiar logos of the first two films. Dangling them. You know you want to.

  Five at Six. The word six is carefully designed to look like some kid’s doodle, colored faux-sloppy with red crayon. In the Five at Eleven logo, the word eleven is written in chunky block letters with alternating polka dots and stripes.

  Then there’s the tagline:

  The award-winning documentary film series that’s captured hearts and minds everywhere.

  As corny and cringeworthy as ever. But I click on the Five at Six logo, which brings up a page of information about that movie, and start to read.

  Five six-year-olds, all assigned to the same table in their kindergarten classroom in a college town in New York’s Hudson Valley . . .

  For the record, that’s bullshit. I remember us getting moved to that table together right before the cameras came in. After they’d interviewed a hundred kids in a converted janitor’s closet, then twenty-five, then twelve, before finally finding five in one class who they liked best. Five of us, with the right shapes to fit together and make some bigger picture.

  Who are they? What do they care about? What are their hopes and plans, and what are their families’ hopes and plans for them? What can five kids and their families, their school and community, tell us about our times? Filmmakers Lance and Leslie Rodgers create a brilliant portrait of these children and their world, and ultimately our world . . . and begin what will become a most amazing journey for all of us.