The Me You See (21 page)

There was a window that would show what I believed to be
the front room of the house, and I figured it would be a good place to start
looking. I stretched my neck to try and peek between a slit in the blinds. I
was just too short so I looked for something to stand on to look in. I found a
couple loose paver bricks and quietly stacked them to make myself tall enough.
I stood on the bricks, slowly moved my head to line up with the blinds and…

Oh. God.

Fuck.

I mean, Seriously. Fuck.

Now, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure about what I saw on
his red leather couch.

But I was sure enough.

My mouth watered with the acid of nausea and I heaved. I
lost my footing on the stack of bricks, which caused them to topple over.

A dog barked from inside the house.

I ran.

**

Even though it was 1:15 in the morning, I made up my mind
that I would wait for her. And because the bottom of a tree makes a pretty good
place to hide, I decided to camp out under the giant tree in her yard while I
watched for her to return home. Eventually, she would have to come back.

At 2 am, she snuck her way into her driveway. I waited
until her bare feet hit the grass.

“Hey,” I said, from where I sat.

She jumped and then clutched her hand to her chest,
gasping. She looked towards the tree, barely able to see me except for the
three quarter moon.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “You scared me.”

She took a few more deep breaths.

“Elliot, what are you doing here?”

“Looking for you.”

I looked across the street to the house she’d just come
from. The lights were all dark now, including the light that had illuminated
the front porch.

I stared at that house. And when she realized I was hyper-focused
on his front door, she knew.

She knew I’d seen I’d seen something.

“How long have you been here?”

“Long enough.”

She adjusted her bag on her shoulder and then pulled at a
rubber band around her wrist.

“Look. Elliot. I know it probably looks like something is
going on…”

“You’re right. It does.”

“But…it’s not what you think.”

Then she fixed the most charming and plastic smile on her
lips, almost like she was posing for a camera. Like, if she said it as
convincingly as possible, then I should believe whatever came out of her mouth.
The only problem was that she wasn’t convincing. At all.

 “Who lives there?” I asked, pointing across the road.

“His name is Niles.”

“What were you doing?”

“Are you spying on me?”

“No. What were you doing?”

“What are you…my father?”

“I’m only asking because…”

“Maybe you shouldn’t worry about it, okay?”

She jumped down my throat just a little too quickly for me
to believe that I shouldn’t worry about it.

“It’s theater stuff,” she said, finally.

“He’s in the theater?”

“He owns the theater,” she said, matter-of-factly. “We were
practicing for a scene.”

“Stefia, from what I saw, that guy is old enough to be your
dad. Shit, I bet he’s older than your dad.”

“We were just practicing a scene,” she repeated calmly.

“Why do you need to practice anything?” I asked. “You
should have everything down pat by now seeing as how tonight was your final
dress rehearsal.”

“How would you even know that? You don’t give a shit about
the theater.”

“I asked around. I found out where you were.”

“Are you stalking me?” She adjusted her bag on her shoulder
and turned away from me, pawing her hand through her hair.

“I’m not stalking you. I’m just worried about you.”

“It’s two in the morning!” she said. “Why are you out
wondering what I’m doing?”

“Why are you out so I have to wonder?”

“Great, just great!” she said, and she spun her body around
to spit more words at me. “I totally did not expect this from you, Elliot…”

“Expect what?”

“You’re jealous. Jesus Christ, Elliot, you’re just like
every other person in this town with a dick.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re mad if you’re not the one who gets to be with me.”

“Be with you?” I yelled. “Stefia, get over yourself! Not
everyone in this town wants to sleep with you…”

“Oh yeah? Name one.”

“Me.”

“Bullshit.”

“Stefia, it is possible to care about what happens to you
and not want to see you naked.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Me? Elliot? Who has known you since forever?” I yelled.
“How can you even think I would want to…I mean, Christ. What the hell is wrong
with you?”

“How about you not waste your time wondering…”

 “Listen, I don’t know if you’ve punched up the drama
because you’re part of the theater or what, but it’s annoying. It’s stupid. And
it’s not you, Stefia. I know you. I’ve always known you.”

“Shut up, Elliot,” she said. “I don’t want to hear it. How
about you go find something else to do? Go get drunk. Go find a girlfriend. I
don’t care what you do, but stop worrying about me.”

She turned from me.

“Don’t walk away…”I said, and grabbed her arm to spin her
back around.

“Let me go.”

“No, Stefia. Don’t walk away from me.” I grabbed her other
wrist and held her in front of me.

“I said let me go!”

She tried to pull away but I held tight.

 “God damn it, let me go!” she screamed, pulling at her
arms to free them. She raised her boot to kick me but I twisted my body and her
boot stuck hard, right in my thigh. I let go of her and squeezed at my leg,
trying to rub out the sharp ache her boot had planted where it landed.

“Stay away from me!” she hissed. “I mean it.”

Her porch light snapped on suddenly and I could see Naomi
peek her head out from behind the curtain in the front window. Stefia picked up
her bag and spun herself to head to the house.

“Stefia…” I started.

“I mean it, Elliot,” she said, barely above a whisper.
“Leave me alone. I have nothing to say to you.”

She walked in the house and turned off the porch light. I
stood on the sidewalk, still rubbing at my leg. I stared at her front door.
God, I wanted to bust down that door and follow her in, shake her until she
made sense. But I was taken over by my dad’s cautionary recommendation to not
get caught up in the mess.

And Stefia was definitely a mess.

**

Three days later, I heard it.

“Bro! You are a total dog!”

We were in the locker room after running the track and Ben
smacked me way too hard on the shoulder.

“Um, what?” I said, sitting on a bench between the rows of
lockers and pulling my shirt off over my head.

“Totally tried to score with Stefia?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Um…no, I didn’t.”

“That’s the talk all over school,” Ben said.

“It is? What are they saying?”

He looked at me, not buying my disbelief.

“El-Man, give it up. You tried to score with her and…”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I didn’t…”

“She pushed you off and you followed her to her house and
then had a big fight with her right on the sidewalk.”

“Oh, my god. That’s totally not what happened,” I said,
thinking back on how our conversation three nights earlier might have sounded
to anyone within earshot. “Not even close. I mean, we did argue about some
stuff but someone must have heard it and assumed…”

“So what really happened,” Ben said. “You did score with
her?”

“Shut-up! Nothing like that even happened. I wouldn’t want
anything like that to happen. It would be like…screwing my sister.”

“So…it’s a rumor?”

“Why is it so hard to believe it’s a rumor?” I said. “Shit,
Ben, why would I want to sleep with someone I’ve known since she was
like…born?”

“Um, because that girl is fucking hot.”

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up and something
told me Ben was going to take it too far.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I said.

“What…are you like, her protector or something?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Come on,” he said and laughed. “Admit it. She’s like a
piece of candy you’d like to play with in your mouth.”

“I said don’t talk about her like that…”

I stood up, still in my running shorts. I was a whole head
taller than him, but he didn’t back down. He adjusted his posture to look
bigger but still didn’t even come close to being my size.

“Like what? Is there something wrong with pointing out
she’s a sweet piece of ass and there isn’t one guy in this school who wouldn’t
like two minutes alone with her?”

“Wow, two minutes. That’s impressive, you fucking prick.”

“Two minutes is all it would take…”

And that’s when I fixed my wild and stupid eyes on him, and
barreled my fists into his chest. His stomach. His head. He held his arms up to
block me but I couldn’t stop punching him. I couldn’t stop until he shut up. My
fists connected over and over again with his skin, the flesh on his face
splitting as I pounded it open. He collapsed in a rigid heap to the floor, arms
wrapped around his head in a shell of protection.

Two guys jumped in to pull me off of him. They held me
back, both of them restraining an arm. That’s when I saw blood all over the
white tile floor—Ben’s, not mine.

Ben removed his arms from covering his head and grabbed at
the front of his face, blood gushing from his nose and lip. His ear was cut,
his cheek was sliced.

 “You broke my fucking nose!”

“Who did you hear the rumor from!” I screamed. The two guys
on either side of me pulled back harder, one’s fingers gouging into my bicep.

“It’s not a fucking rumor,” he said, spitting blood on the
floor. 

“How the hell would you know?”

He wiped blood across his chin with the back of his hand
and looked up to meet my eyes.

“Because,” he said, “I heard it from Stefia.”

**

I waited in the back lot of the Crystal Plains Theater,
knowing at any minute the stage door would open and Stefia would bounce out.
The show had been done for forty-five minutes. She had to be coming out soon.
My hands were sweating. I paced like a caged animal. I was almost done with my
third cigarette, and I didn’t even smoke.

“Hey!” I called to her when the door finally opened. She
walked out with a fellow actress, both of them laughing and smiling and
jingling their keys. I stood only fifteen feet from the stage door, but she
acted like she didn’t know where the voice had come from. So I walked right up
to her.

“I’m going to cut right to the point,” I said, serious and
biting. I sucked my last drag off the cigarette and looked at her. “You need to
explain something to me.”

Her cast mate shot a worried look, like I was some psycho
there to rip her apart, but Stefia waved her off with a roll of her eyes. The
girl hit the button on her key fob to unlock her door. She gave one more look
at Stefia, then got in her car.

We didn’t talk until the car was gone.

“Classy,” she started, “showing up here at the theater to
chew me out.”

“Far classier than you,” I said, tossing my cigarette butt
on the ground and smashing it with the toe of my boot. “Telling people I tried
to…”

“Stop being so dramatic,” she interrupted. “People start
rumors all the time.”

“You’re not even going to deny it?” I practically choked.

“Would it be easier for you if I did?”

I kicked at the ground and spattered rocks ahead of me.

“Could we maybe not talk like this is an unsolved mystery
where I need to decode all your answers into an actual dialogue?”

 “I’m not trying to be difficult,” she said, with a strange
calmness. “Sometimes the fatal flaw in a conversation is that the two people
talking view the world in different ways.”

“You’re not that different from me,” I said. “Stop trying
to drive a wedge between us that doesn’t belong there.”

“How do you know what belongs there? Who do you think you
are? God, himself? Christ, Elliot, just…”

“Stefia, don’t fuck this up. You’re going to screw up your
life and push away everyone who cares about you…”

“You act like I don’t know what I’m doing.”