The Me You See Read online

  She skimmed through the paper I’d handed her.

  “What’s it about?”

  “A young woman who gets diagnosed with HIV.”

  “Oh god, really? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  So she started reading it. Her voice shook with nerves through the first paragraph.

  The first time I was tested for HIV, the test wasn’t conclusive. So I had another one. That was inconclusive, too. So I had one more. Five days after I turned twenty-two, the results came back positive. The doctor gave me some time alone, before my folks came in. I began to cry. I looked out the window, and the clouds were moving against the sun, swirling.

  But the farther she read down the sheet I had handed her, the better she sounded.

  My mother was the first to come in. She knew as soon as she looked at me. She came around and just lunged onto the bed and cried and hugged me and pushed my hair back and...comforted me. She talked about her own parents, who’d been killed years before in a car accident and how they’d be waiting in heaven for me, along with Grandma Zebleckas and even their dog that died, too. I think if she could have put everything that had ever lived into heaven for me at that moment, she would have.

  By the time Stefia had reached the end of the monologue, I was completely captivated by her voice, her face, the way her mouth formed the words that others had written, the way she conveyed a meaning beyond what the author had known.

  When we’d calmed down, my father came in. That was harder... He shook, and he cried... I said, “Put your head on my shoulder,” and he did. And I... petted his head, and said, “It’s going to be ok. We’re going to get through this.” And Mom was rubbing his back, and he just kept crying and crying. He kept saying it had to be a mistake, that he didn’t believe it, that it can’t be. It just can’t be. And I said, “Dad, it is.”

  After a full ten seconds of silence and multiple deep breaths, she asked, “Well, how did I do?”

  Oh. God.

  How could I even attempt to describe how she’d done? Even if my throat wasn’t completely dry I would not have even known the words to explain the passion, the intensity, the emotion. All from an almost fourteen-year-old girl.

  She was a natural.

  Oh. God.

  “Really, really well,” was all I could get out before I had to swallow.

  And that was the understatement of the year. People always talked about actors who were naturals, people who were just born with the art in their blood. I had never believed it was possible. I figured talented actors took a ton of classes and honed their art through mentors who had done the same thing. Have a love for the craft? An interest in the art? Sure. But to be a complete stage virgin, cold read through a monologue…and totally nail it?

  I’d found a diamond. I’d struck gold. And this girl was going to bring the Crystal Plains Theater to life.

  “You should audition for the part of Candace in the upcoming show,” I said, calmly.

  “Why?”

  “Because you look the part.”

  I handed her a copy of the script, and she thumbed through the first few pages scanning for Candace’s lines.

  “But…Niles, it says Candace is the lead female.”

  “Yes. You can handle it. I have faith in you.”

  “But…it says here that Candace is seventeen. I’m only thirteen.”

  “You’ll be fourteen in a few days,” I said. “And besides, people always mistake you for way older. Look, this is acting. It’s all about appearances. It’s all about what you can make people believe.”

  She pondered that, letting it swirl around in her brain and take on whatever meaning it needed to have for her.

  “I can make people believe a whole lot,” she finally said.

  “Good. It will make things a whole lot easier.”

  **

  She was so nervous. She was sweating buckets and her hands were shaky. I told her not to be so nervous, that she was wonderful at what she was doing and she’d practiced.

  “But look at everyone else who is here!” she said.

  “Don’t worry about them. Focus on yourself.”

  It seemed weird to say something like that. It’s counterintuitive to how we are brought up. Think of others. Think of how you can help. Think of how they might feel. But in the theater, it’s different. It’s cut throat. It’s every man for himself. It’s push yourself forward and say why you’re the best person for the part.

  It’s drama.

  Stefia was called up on stage for her audition. And while she weaved her tale, the director looked up. He set his pen down and relaxed in his seat and actually smiled. Then he looked at my friend, James Harper. And James looked at me.

  And mom was rubbing his back and he just kept crying and crying.

  He kept saying it had to be a mistake, that he didn’t believe it, that it can’t be.

  It just can’t be.

  And I said, “Dad, it is.”

  The audition panel erupted into applause and I knew she had the part. She deserved it.

  She stood on stage, surprised but soaking in their applause. I waved her off stage and she bolted down the side stairs and wrapped her almost fourteen-year-old arms around me.

  Oh, God.

  Don’t.

  I patted her back and smiled.

  “Now what?” she said.

  “Now you wait for a phone call or an email to tell you if you got a part.”

  “I think I will die waiting!”

  “Anticipation is good,” I said. “It makes the prize better.”

  **

  Two days later, on her birthday, they called to offer her the part of Candace.

  I heard her screams all the way over in my yard. She came flying out the front door of her house

  “I got the part, Niles! I got the part! It’s for real!” She jumped at me with a hug.

  Please.

  Don’t.

  Just stop…

  I hugged her back.

  “That’s great!” I said. “Congratulations!”

  “Oh my god, Niles,” she said, excited and out of breath, “I’m a real artist now. A real artist!”

  I couldn’t wipe the smirk from my face. She thought she was the artist, but she was actually the art. Like a masterpiece forgotten in an attic that I’d stumbled upon at a yard sale and knew the world needed to see.

  Now, let’s be honest. Stefia would have gotten the part even on her own merits, but between you and I, the part of Candace had been secured for her. James Harper owed me a favor, and seeing Stefia play Candace in the show was something I wanted more than most things in my life.

  Yes, James Harper had owed me a favor. And his granting of said favor opened a floodgate that changed Stefia’s life forever.

  And mine.

  **

  After the first run was done and the cast party had ended, I drove her home from the theater. As her commentary whirled around on the ecstasy of completing her first official role, I pulled my olive green classic Cutlass into my driveway and parked.

  “Thanks for driving me home, Niles. You’ve been such a huge help to me. I don’t know how I can ever thank you.”

  “It was worth every minute,” I said. “Totally my pleasure to be of assistance.”

  She got out of the car and headed down the driveway to her house.

  “Oh, hey,” I called after her, like it had been an afterthought and not a plan. “Do you want to come in for a second? I have this new piece that I think you should take a look at.”

  “A new piece? For what?”

  “Just come inside for a minute,” I said. “Take a look at it. I think it will be perfect for your next audition.”

  She nodded and I unlocked the front door of my house.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” I said, motioning to my red leather couch. I went to get the scene that was still sitting in the printer. She sat down, checked her phone, and laughed as she returned a text.


  “Someone sending you jokes?” I asked as I walked back into the room.

  “No. Just another you were so wonderful in the production text. I still can’t believe how awesome it all is.”

  “People love you. You’re a natural.”

  She smiled.

  “Now,” I said, sitting down next to her and handing her a copy of the new scene, “this is a piece for two people. I know your last audition you only had to give a monologue, but there might be callbacks for this next show and you’ll probably be asked to read against someone in a scene before they make their casting choices.”

  “Well, if I got called back…”

  “Yeah. If.”

  I smiled at her and then looked down at the paper.

  “Shall we?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  She read her part and as she concentrated on the lines, my hand crept across the cushion of the couch and rested on her thigh.

  “Niles,” she said, scanning her eyes quickly down the page. Her eyes fixed on my fingers spread out on her thigh. “That’s not in the script.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  “Niles, don’t…”

  I slid a finger up to my lips to shush her, and then pushed her back to lie down on the couch. Her eyes were fat with panic and her breath tangled somewhere inside her chest. I watched her head meet the cushion, her hair spill out all around her face, and her lips part to say something—but I never heard what it was. All I knew was that my hot breath on her face as my hands fumbled with the hem of her skirt was melting what little bit of girl was left inside her.

  The look on her face.

  Oh, god.

  I will never forget that look.

  **

  At 6:30 am on a Sunday morning, two weeks after that first run ended, I sat at my dining room table drinking a mug of equal parts Baileys and coffee. The slow swirl of light into dark was mesmerizing and I resisted the urge to stir it all together with my spoon.

  A quiet tap on the front door shook me and when I looked up to the etched pane of glass I’d just changed out three days earlier, I saw the outline of someone who looked a lot like Stefia.

  I opened the door and neither of us said anything. I could hardly believe she was standing in front of me.

  She’d come back.

  “Hi,” she squeaked after a minute.

  “Hi.”

  It had snowed the night before and her boots made prints on the porch.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked. “It’s cold…”

  “No.”

  The knitted red mittens she wore looked warm, but she rubbed her hands together and blew on them even so.

  “Look,” she said, agitated and almost impatient. “Auditions are the beginning of next month.”

  I watched the squint of her eyes as she focused on a drip of paint that had dried on the spindle of the porch. She wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Niles, I need your help to audition.”

  “I’d be more than happy to…”

  “Don’t say anything,” she said, looking to the ground and kicking her boot at the snow that had warmed to slush under her feet. “Just let me talk.”

  The cold air drifted into my house and I heard my furnace kick on. I didn’t dare ask her a second time to come inside, so I stepped out on the porch and pulled the door closed behind me.

  “I need to be on stage, Niles. I need this theater. I can’t even explain it to you because it doesn’t make any sense to me.”

  “You don’t have to explain it to me, Stefia. I…”

  “I shouldn’t even be here talking to you. You get that, right? The last thing I should have done this morning was walk over here to talk to you. But I couldn’t stop.”

  Stefia pulled her hat down further over her ears and then wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I was ready to quit. I was going to just be done. I was going to…”

  She looked at the railing of the porch, unable to finish. The cold had crisped the features of her face, pinching at her cheeks and eyes. Tears clung to the edge of her eyelids, but I knew it wasn’t because she was crying.

  “Theater is like a drug, darling,” I said, breathing out a long sigh that looked like a string of smoke in the cold air. “It’s addicting. Makes a person do all sorts of things they wouldn’t normally do.”

  She finally looked at me. Our eyes connected, hers boring into mine with a mix with ferocity and hope.

  “Wait,” she asked. “Are we talking about me…or you?”

  “We’re both her slave,” I said, ignoring the question. “Once you’re a part of the theater, the lines between real life and life on stage start to blur.”

  “And that’s okay?” she spit. “It’s just suddenly okay that everything is a blurry confused mess?”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s okay,” I said. “It’s just the way it is.”

  **

  And so our odd life of being together—but pretending we weren’t—went on. The blurry confused mess that was us made perfect, beautiful sense.

  I know it did. Because she told me it did.

  In the end, our secret died with Stefia. I know she never told another living soul because she told me she wouldn’t. And I believed every word she ever said.

  She was always good at making people believe.

  -Taylor Jean-

  I actually missed the first call about the shooting. When it rang through, I was laying on a table in Spencer Grove, waiting to donate blood for the first time. Afterwards, the irony made me gag, because it was Stefia who had always told me I was wimp for not having donated the minute I turned eighteen.

  The nurse swabbed iodine all over the vein and then checked her watch.

  “This has to sit on your arm for thirty seconds,” she explained, “and then you’re ready to rock.”

  She unwrapped the needle and placed it next to where she was going to punch it under my skin and into my vein.

  “If you think you’re gonna be one of those people who don’t like to watch,” she said, “now would be the time to look away.”

  “Nah. I’m okay,” I said. “I actually like to watch.”

  **

  Stefia and I were the same age but since I was part of that underground, radical unschooling, hippy Christian world, we weren’t in the same grade. I first knew Stefia from church. We became good friends at thirteen when we were old enough to join the choir. The older ladies called us the Giggle Girls because we were always chatting and laughing while the other sections practiced their parts. We’d talk about beads and bands and books we’d read and boys we thought were cute.

  And we talked about coffee. My family owned the coffee shop in Granite Ledge and I got Stefia a job there as soon as she turned fifteen. I thought I would have to work pretty hard to convince my parents that Stefia would be a worthy addition to our list of employees, seeing as how she wasn’t part of the underground we normally associated with. As it turned out, they thought it was a great idea. Actually, they were completely enamored with Stefia—like most adults seemed to be—and jumped at the opportunity to employ her. See, everyone thought Stefia was mature. And responsible. And had a pleasing personality.

  To be honest, she was just about everything you could want in someone else.

  Stefia had this voice that was syrupy and maple, a voice that stuck you to what she was saying or singing. It was like the cinnamon sugar I put on my warm buttered toast every morning. She was the perfect complement to everyone around her, a chameleon who could talk to anyone. And yet, as much as she seemed to be able to meld herself to any situation, she wasn’t fake. Her interest in people was completely genuine.

  And maybe that’s why I clung so tightly to her as a friend. If I was with Stefia, maybe a little of what everyone wanted would rub off on me.

  I could only hope.

  I think that’s why I liked to watch her. Probably why we all did. I mean, she was gorgeous. A kind of gorgeous that took her beyond trying to
look like every other girl our age that followed some fad to be pretty. Stefia was her own breed of beautiful. She didn’t even have to try. Watching her was the closest thing to being her that we’d ever get.

  Stefia had this guy friend named Elliot who was always following her around. They weren’t together or anything. He was more like a brother, she said. He was a year older than us; kind of cute and awfully nice, but his younger brothers were jerks. One of them, Mitch was his name, hated me for about a thousand unknown reasons. Probably because I was homeschooled. Or wore too many beaded bracelets. Or because I wouldn’t date him. Who knows. But this one day Mitch and Elliot came into the coffee shop just about the time Stefia and I were done with work.

  “Can I get an Americano?” Elliot asked Stefia. “And Mitch…he wants…Mitch, what do you want?”

  Mitch was watching me wipe coffee grounds off the back counter.

  “Hey, Taylor Jean!” he said, way too loudly, ignoring his brother’s question.

  “What?”

  “Are you lezzing out over there?”

  “Huh?”

  I realized that while I’d been wiping coffee grounds off the counter and into the trash can, I’d been staring at Stefia the entire time. And he’d seen me. I rolled my eyes at him and went back to straightening the counter.

  “Should I call you TJ?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

  “You know, TJ. Like a guy’s name, so you can stare at Stefia all you want and no one will think anything about it?”

  “Don’t be an ass, Mitch,” said Elliot.

  Stefia had started making Elliot’s Americano but left it at the machine.

  “Yeah, Mitch,” she said as she walked over to me. She spun me around, held my cheeks in both of her hands, and kissed me squarely on the lips.

  Then she glared at Mitch.

  “And don’t be jealous,” she said to him, and winked.

  Stefia was always doing things like that. One minute she’d be quoting Shakespeare or rattling off stats from the New York Stock Exchange. The next minute, she’d pull out something totally random—like kissing her female co-worker—and knock everyone off their feet.

  Being around Stefia was magical. It made me feel like I was worth something. I would stare at her and imagine that indescribable thing she had that everyone wanted oozing off of her and right onto me.