Playing Keira

by Jennifer Castle

  The “most amazing journey” thing always makes me want to laugh, or barf, or larf. Maybe Lance and Leslie think it’s amazing. First, their humble credit-card-funded documentary was the toast of the film festival circuit and hit theaters in several big cities. After it ended up on cable TV and won a bunch of little statues, they announced their idea—and the big funding to go with it—to do a follow-up documentary every five years until we were twenty-one.

  They never asked us to commit for three more films. They just assumed we would. So far, they’ve assumed right.

  On the page titled “The Kids,” there’s a picture of each of us at six years old, paired with one from when we were eleven. At six, I have shoulder-length, straight light brown hair with a barrette to keep it off my face. I’m looking at something above the camera with an arched eyebrow, a slightly slanted expression of Are you freaking kidding me?

  The photo next to it shows me with a short pixie cut, my hair brown-black then, my mouth open in the process of saying something, because in the second movie I was always saying something. Of the five of us, I’m the one who’d visibly changed the most. People thought that at eleven I’d dyed my hair and wow, that is so rad and how did her parents feel? Truth is, it just got darker naturally. But I didn’t correct them.

  I try to imagine what the new picture will be. My hair is once again shoulder-length. Sometimes I use a single barrette to keep it off my face. So it’s possible that I could just look like a larger version of my kindergarten self.

  Shudder.

  I’ve had five years, since they shot Five at Eleven, to get ready for this. After what happened that time around, I was sure the amazing journey had screeched to a halt, sparks flying, brakes burning.

  This is not a soap opera, folks. This is my life.

  And it is absolutely, positively as unamazing as you can get.

  TWO

  The next morning, my sister, Olivia, drops me off at school on her way to class. She’s a freshman at the college now but has discovered that zipping through her old haunts is a quickie feel-good fix. Like, she may still be living at home and failing two classes and been through three boyfriends already, but at least she’s not in high school anymore.

  “I’m stopping by Dad’s house tonight. I really can’t break the news yet?” she asks as I get out of the car. It’s my father’s handed-down Saab station wagon, which has turned out to be a surprisingly awesome set of wheels, even if it does have a forever-stink of moldy bagels and spilled coffee. She calls it Sob or, alternately, S.O.B., depending on whether or not it starts on a cold morning.

  “I know it’s torture for you, but no, you really can’t.”

  We’ve decided not to tell Dad about Lance and Leslie until we can all be together to talk about it. Olivia makes a pouty face and starts to drive away, then screeches to a stop. I hear the whirr of the passenger side window lowering and see Olivia’s oversize black sunglasses peeking out.

  “Hey, Justine?” she yells.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can just say no if you want to!”

  Despite the big round shades covering her eyes, Olivia is able to deliver a glance loaded with meaning, and then she speeds off.

  You can just say no. Is that true?

  My cell phone chimes with another text message—I’ve gotten about a dozen so far this morning and that’s an alarming statistical spike—and I head inside to check them. Once I step into the main entrance lobby, I look up at the rushing current of students moving past me. Most of them are doing something unusual in my direction: smiling, or flicking their eyes sideways, or actually saying hi.

  I know a lot of people. Some of them I hang out with and consider friends. Fortunately, it’s been five years since Five at Eleven and most kids have forgotten that my face was ever on a movie poster. There’s no reason for anybody to dislike me—at least I hope that’s the case—but I’m nothing special. I just sort of exist at this school.

  All that’s about to change, because when I glance down at the first message, I see it’s from a girl in my homeroom and it says, SO excited about the movie!

  Oh, crap. Word is out. And I know, instantly, how that word got a jet-powered blastoff on its speedy journey through the cell phones and social networks of our student body.

  I’m going to kill him.

  “Why, Felix? Why?”

  “Oh, come on. You know you love it.”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I don’t.”

  We’re in line for lunch in the cafeteria, where at least all the staring is concentrated in one place at one time. By now, there isn’t a single being at this school—not the kids nobody talks to, not even the French teacher who won’t let you address her in English—who doesn’t know. All morning, people have been asking me questions I can’t answer.

  When do they start filming? Is everyone else doing it too?

  My standard response is to shrug, while in my mind, I’m curled up at the back of a closet with the door closed, pleading go away go away go away.

  Felix, though, grins at them, all teeth and confidence. His face is so bright and open, his enthusiasm so uncomplicated, that for a second, I see the world he sees. It’s not a bad world. I’m sure it would be a lovely place to visit.

  “Haven’t you been waiting for this?” he says to me as he grabs a bowl of pudding. “I mean, I’ve got plans! If I can get two new videos online by the time they come . . .” His eyes light up. “Actually, they could shoot me shooting the videos!”

  Felix is a first-generation American, says the Five at Six website. The son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, he’s already navigating a tricky multicultural, bilingual landscape. Will his parents’ American dream for him happen?

  When I worry about how well I know this stuff, I think of Felix. If I have it memorized, you can bet your ass he has it framed on the wall. (Well, that’s not quite fair. I’ve been in Felix’s room. He does have it framed on the wall.) Judging from his daily photo blog and the video clips he posts of himself performing original songs on his electronic keyboard, Felix would like nothing better than cameras following him 24/7.

  We reach the cash register and when we’re both done paying, I start to follow him toward our usual table. “Oh,” he says, looking over his shoulder at me. “I’m having a screening party on Saturday. To watch Six and Eleven. You have to be there.”

  I frown hard at him. “Do you have any idea how narcissistic that is?”

  Felix’s smile drops, but only a little. “I thought it would help people get used to the idea of the cameras being around.”

  He’s not watching where he’s going and when he turns forward again, he almost walks right into another kid.

  Oh. Not another kid.

  Nate Hunter.

  How do I sum up Nate Hunter? Let’s just say that if I merely exist around here, Nate blazes, through hallways and classrooms and the swimming pool. He blinds and dazzles, if you’re into that sort of thing.

  Nathaniel is about as “homegrown” as you can get; he lives with his mother, who is young and single, and his grandparents, the owners of a long-established local farm.

  Felix and Nate stare at each other, frozen by some invisible force field between them. If I could snap a picture, it would be a study of opposites: Nate is blond and green-eyed, pale and lanky, his hair short and even vertical in places, while Felix is dark and small and shaggy-headed. This kind of moment with Nate happens sometimes, when Felix is distracted and not on his guard. Usually, I grab Felix and snap him out of it, but right now we’ve both got these damn trays in our hands. It’s extra awkward today, given the news about the film. All I can do is stand there and watch, and wince.

  Felix tries to like everyone and be the universal buddy, but I know if there’s one person he would want to make disappear from the planet, it’s the guy who was once like a brother to him.

  Nate looks away from Felix, then quickly around the room as if searching for someone, anyone, else. His gaze land
s on me for a split second, then jumps off as quickly as possible. That’s all I rate.

  I remember what Leslie said, that Nate actually called them to see if there would be a third film. Well, of course he did. He’s got the best story out of the five of us. His will be the most dramatic “Then” and “Now” footage, and all I can feel is angry. For what he did to my best friend, and what he did to himself.

  Nate continues to search the cafeteria beyond Felix, then, apparently finding what he was looking for, moves away.

  “Come on,” I say, walking in front of Felix. I snag our table and he follows, still a bit dazed. We eat in silence for about a minute, both trying very hard not to look over to Nate’s table, which is filled with other swim team guys and their assorted female counterparts.

  “Hey, Justine,” says a voice, and I glance up to see Ian standing there with his tray, my face reflected in his thick-framed so-uncool-they’re-cool glasses. He tosses his head to flick back a lock of curly black hair. “Do you have room?”

  There’s just Felix and me at the table, so duh we have room. But I just nod and slide down the bench to make space for him.

  Felix shoots me a look, one eyebrow raised, and in return I pop my eyes at him so he gets the hint. “Oops,” he says to me, too dramatically, “I forgot napkins. Be right back.” He gets up and walks toward the napkins, but stops on his way to chat with two guys at another table.

  Ian sits and shakes up his bottle of juice, which is something that always drove me crazy (I like the froth, he’d say), then slides his straw wrapper down to an accordion. Those hands. I remind myself that those hands used to stroke my hair, rub my shoulders, hold my face right before he kissed me. I do this because clearly, I’m a masochist.

  “How do you feel about this movie thing?” Ian asks, and the fact that he’s the first person to care, the first person to consider that maybe the news is strange and difficult, pierces me a little.

  “I’m not sure,” I reply, the closest thing to the truth I’ve got at the moment.

  Ian smiles, takes a bite of his hamburger, then considers while he chews. “I can totally understand how it would be weird. But I’ve got to tell you, I thought the first two movies were awesome.”

  We’d never talked about the films. I kept waiting for him to ask about them, but he never did. I took that to mean he wasn’t interested and I sort of loved that.

  “I haven’t seen them in a while,” he continues. “But I remember how funny they are.” He glances at me, then down at his burger. “How funny you are.”

  “Oh yeah? Funny good or funny bad?” I try to make it sound like I’m teasing, not fishing.

  “All good,” Ian says.

  Would you care to elaborate? I want to ask. Because it was my understanding that for him, being funny did not equal being totally hot and datable.

  Instead I shrug and mumble, “I never know who’s seen them and who hasn’t.”

  “My parents bought the DVDs. It made them so proud that it was our town and our school. For a while they begged me to be friends with Nate so he’d have more kids to stick up for him.”

  We laugh. It’s hard to remember a time when Nate Hunter needed charity buddies.

  Then we’re silent, and I’m trying to think of what else to say during this sweet, surprise treasure of a few minutes together.

  “Well,” Ian finally says. “I think it’ll be cool to have the cameras around again.”

  Something about his manner feels off. Then comes the thought I shouldn’t have but do anyway, because we already know I’m a masochist: Is this news about the film the only reason he came over to sit with me? I don’t know what to do with that. Let’s just toss that under the table with those hard, runty french fries that always end up on the floor.

  Instead, I’d like to make him laugh somehow. If I can say one thing that will make him bust out, it’ll rocket me onto a high so lovely I can make it through the rest of the day. See? I really can be that kind of girl.

  “Smile!” he’d always say to me during those seven weeks he was my boyfriend. We’d be out somewhere, doing something categorized as Fun. We’d be in a group of people and someone just said something hilarious. We’d be kissing, his hands so warm and mine so cold. Then he’d stop and look at me, and brush my hair away from my eyes and examine my face like he’d never seen it before, and say it. Smile.

  I couldn’t. Not just like that, on cue, as if taking direction. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was, I thought I was smiling.

  He’s gulping down his juice in a very unsexy way I’ll ignore, and I’m about to chirp something at him when the notion hits: Whatever we are, or might possibly, miraculously, be again, would be part of the new movie. There would be no escaping it.

  A girl from my biology class is suddenly next to me. “Hey, Justine,” she says. “I heard about the documentary. Do you know if they’re going to need interns or assistants or anything?”

  “I really don’t,” I reply, trying to sound disappointed for her, “but I’ll let you know what I find out.” I look over to Nate’s table again. Nobody’s coming up to him like they are with me. Although with Nate, maybe you have to request an audience in writing. I don’t know how popularity works.

  Felix returns with a handful of napkins and follows my gaze. After a thoughtful moment, he asks, “Do you think Keira will do it, after last time?”

  Oh. Yeah. That is the bonus winner-take-all question.

  Then I realize why Felix has asked this. Normally, Keira would be at the Nate Etcetera table. But she’s not there.

  “Has anyone seen her this morning?” I ask.

  “She wasn’t in homeroom,” says Ian.

  So Keira has skipped school, probably knowing what was in store. Smart girl, they always say about Keira, and today she does not disappoint.

  Felix is waiting for me after school in a window booth on the second floor of Muddy Joe’s, the bakery/coffeehouse/laptop mecca in town. It’s the realm of college students too cool to hang out on campus and they’re all LBNF: Loud But Not Funny. The space looks great but has terrible acoustics. You can’t even hear yourself drink.

  “Hey,” I say as I sit down across from Felix, who has his computer open on the table. “Thanks for the assist at lunch.”

  “Just spreading the joy because, guess what? My visitors more than doubled since news broke about the film.”

  He slides the laptop over so I can see the screen. It’s a graph of traffic statistics for Felix’s blog, where he posts a lot of sci-fi fan art and stills from The Big Lebowski, with what he thinks is brilliant commentary but is really stuff like, “The Dude is the bomb, yo!” And then there are videos of him performing original songs on his electronic keyboard while sitting on the floor of his bedroom. His music is either brilliant or awful, I’m still not sure. I tell him it’s the former.

  “I’m happy you’re so happy,” I say.

  “I hope my stats will climb even more between now and the start of production. Lance said they’ll be here in a month.”

  “Maybe that’s enough time for me to figure out a hobby.”

  Felix tilts his head and regards me with a sad familiarity. “You watch a lot of movies. Even the old ones nobody’s heard of. Being a film buff—that’s a hobby, isn’t it?”

  “I think that involves way too much lying around in sweatpants to count.”

  “If you start a hobby now, won’t it be obvious you’re just doing it for the cameras?”

  I shrug. Yeah, maybe. Probably. That could be my “story.” Justine at sixteen, trying to find something to keep her from dying of boredom.

  I glance out the window, which overlooks the sidewalk in front of Muddy Joe’s. One of the employees is on her break. She’s leaning against a tree with her apron thrown over one shoulder, smoking a cigarette. It’s this striking, almost bittersweet picture because she looks totally at peace with the world, but it’s wicked cold and I know she only gets a few minutes before having to go ba
ck to the kitchen to decorate five hundred red velvet cupcakes or something.

  “Be right back,” I suddenly say to Felix. I grab my jacket and head downstairs. Outside, the snappy air hits me hard, but I try to look unfazed.

  The girl tips up her chin in greeting. “Justine, right?”

  “Hey.” I have no idea what her name is although she’s waited on me countless times, and they even wear name tags.

  “What’s up?”

  “Would you . . . can I . . . bum a cigarette?”

  She smiles at me in this condescending, Oh, you little high schooler way. After a long few seconds where I get the sense I’m being appraised, she produces the pack and holds it out to me. I hook my finger around a cigarette and slide it out. She’s ready with a lighter and a hand cupped around it, and I lean forward to get the thing started.

  I don’t smoke. Olivia does, sometimes, and she taught me how to do it one night when we were home alone during a thunderstorm and the power was out. I didn’t feel one way or another about it, which I took to be a sign that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

  I take a drag on the cigarette, avoiding Felix’s What the hell? face in the window above. I blow the smoke out slowly, remembering Olivia’s coaching. Fight back a cough. It feels a little great. Even shivering and with the bakery girl watching, I get a sensation like, I could do this. It would give me something. All the people who wanted me to be some kind of symbol of youth in revolt would expect nothing less.

  I’m on my third drag when I turn my head casually and see this sudden weirdness: the petite figure of Rory Gold walking down the street, her too-big, aggressively puffy down coat zippered all the way to her chin. She stops dead when she sees me. I’m wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that says “STOP WARS” in the Star Wars logo, and the familiar blank look on Rory’s face stabs me a little right on the O.

  Rory Gold and I have not spoken in almost five years. To my credit, or at least I like to think, for the last year I’ve been meaning to change that.