The Me You See Read online

  She’s a beautiful instrument; a specially ordered red Gibson F-style mandolin. A ridiculous price tag, but I guess that’s the perk of having parents with money. Or should I say, parents who want to see you on stage and happen to have money to blow.

  At the theater, I sat in the unlit house as the actors milled around on stage, collecting their things after rehearsal. Although I wasn’t a fan of being on stage, I enjoyed sitting in the audience. The cushion of the seat, the anticipatory silence, the crisp air, the way each person enjoyed a different performance of the same show depending on what seat they chose and where their mind traveled to when they sat down.

  I knew Stefia hadn’t left yet. She was in the wings, stage left, talking to Niles. Niles often came to the theater just to check up on things. Neither he nor my parents ever really helped out with much—directing, stage stuff, or casting—but I guess when you’re part owner you like to hang out and see what’s what.

  After a minute, Niles walked down the steps to the right of the stage and out the exit door into the parking lot. From my estimation, that left Stefia and I as the only people in the theater.

  From a lit stage, it’s hard to see past the second row of the audience. I was sitting in the 14th so I stayed well concealed. Well, that was until I started playing my mandolin.

  I don’t mind saying that I’m good at playing. I wasn’t good at much—I’d barely graduated two years earlier and I was never popular because I didn’t care for sports—but music, I was good at music. I was good at the mandolin— as good as Stefia was on stage.

  The kicker, and the entire reason I was sitting in the audience playing, was that I happened to know that Stefia liked the mandolin. A lot.

  How did I know that? An introvert listens. An introvert observes. And an introverted quiet mandolin player will sit in wait until the skills he has can win him something he wants.

  It didn’t take long until Stefia appeared around the corner of the curtain, craning her neck to see where the music was coming from. She shaded her eyes from the stage light that, for some reason, was still on, trying to see if she could identify who was playing the music. She closed her eyes, swayed her head with the classical tune I delivered, and lilted around the stage. When I finished the song, she clapped her hands.

  And I wished those hands were around me. I wished she would take those hands and…

  “You’re good,” she said in my direction.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “God…like, really good. Have you been playing long?”

  “Awhile.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “No.”

  She left open a silence just long enough for me to slip into another song. I didn’t think about the notes. I have never had to think about the notes. It left me free to study her face while she listened to me play. My fingers frisked along the length of the strings, her lips spreading into a smile that seemed too big for her face. She punctuated the end of my song with a well placed sigh.

  “I absolutely love the mandolin,” she said, opening her eyes. “You’re very talented.”

  “I’ve heard the same about you.”

  “Do I know you?” she asked again.

  I didn’t answer.

  She walked to the stairs off the side of the stage.

  “Stay on the stage,” I said. “Or I’ll stop playing.”

  She grinned like we were playing a game.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “I mean, do you have a reason to be here? Are you picking someone up? Because I don’t think there is anyone left to…”

  “I’m waiting for someone. I thought I’d sit and play while I waited.”

  “But there’s no one else here…”

  “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t respond although I could tell she wanted to. She wanted to know who I was; she wanted to know how I knew who she was. It was right there on the tip of her tongue. But hearing the music that I refused to stop playing was mind-numbing, and she had no problem giving herself over to its power.

  See, people who don’t understand music can’t possibly conceive that it’s the same as a drug. It can screw with your mind. It can give you power. It can weaken you. It can take over your head—both playing it and hearing it. Know how you’re driving and you hear a song on the radio you like and you look down and you’re going eighty miles an hour? That’s the music speaking to you. Music gives you power. Music inspires. Music can take away your troubles…or give you everything you want. I guess it was all in how you looked at it.

  **

  My hands had never been clumsy. My fingers were always nimble and quick like Jack. But somehow when I pushed her against the door of the orchestra pit, one palm pressing into her hip bone, the heel of my other hand under her jaw, my hands felt thick and stupid. For half a second, I wasn’t so sure of what I was doing anymore.

  Fuck. Help me. I need to finish this.

  She felt small in my hands. When I pushed my open hand from her hip up along her ribcage, spanning my fingers to take her all in, I was stupefied at how minuscule she suddenly felt. This girl I’d watched for four years, who had tangled herself into every corner of my brain, who commanded respect from her peers and applause from her audience, now felt little. Inconsequential. How could that be?

  My lips brushed at her neck and I pulled in the smell of her; the mix of a nameless flowery perfume and sweat from a two hour rehearsal. She was there, right in front of me. I was inhaling her. I was tasting her. It was real.

  My thumb wrenched into her ribs right under her breast and my other hand was wrapped behind her neck. I would take her. I would take her and everything that was in her.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  She wasn’t fighting. She acted like she should fight, but she didn’t fight. And something about that was surprising enough…weird enough…wrong enough…that it caught me off guard and I found myself watching her eyes.

  I mean, really watching. Searching for something. And I found it.

  Something that was wrong.

  Her transparent eyes brimmed with a sentiment I’d never been able to see from the audience. A disturbance you’d only notice if you got in close to her. If she let you in.

  Fear.

  I don’t know how exactly I could tell, but I knew the fear wasn’t directed at me. I sensed a fear like I’d stepped into a nightmare that was all hers and had nothing to do with me. Her eyes were full of something raw and desperate and somehow even though she was still fully clothed, she was more exposed than I’d ever imagined seeing her. And just for one second, I stopped. I stopped pushing and just held on.

  “Help me,” she whispered. And the inflection in her voice told me it was not a suggestion, it was a pleading and desperate solicitation.

  “What?” I asked. “Help you?”

  “Help me, Kristopher. Please.”

  Fuck. She said my name. She said my fucking name.

  “You know who I am?” I clamored, my voice cracking with disbelief.

  “Kristopher, please…”

  “Wait. How do you fucking know who I am?”

  My hands fell off of her, shaking. This changed everything.

  “Just…help me,” she breathed and blinked away a single tear.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  And I didn’t have the first clue what was going to tumble out of her mouth. Reasons filled my mind—she needed me to take care of some asshole for her, she needed money, she wanted out of some mess at home. Fuck, why was she confiding in me? I came here to…

  “Kristopher.”

  “What?”

  “Finish what you came here to do.”

  I questioned her by staring just a half second too long and she answered by moving my left hand to where she thought it belonged.

  The button of her jeans.

  All at once, I didn’t know what was happening. It was like she became my music. My skinny, long fingers danced across and inside
her as if she was somehow predictable like the frets of my mandolin, which she wasn’t…but somehow I knew what to do. I pressed and plucked and strummed and she sang like something amazing and beautiful and rare and impossible to recreate.

  It wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t me going to the theater to do what I had planned to do. This was something entirely different. I wasn’t forcing anything. I wasn’t getting away with something I’d thought about every day since I’d first seen her. So what was I supposed to call it now? Unexpected, for one. Unexplainable, for two. Amazing and holy and screwed up and one hell of a mind game, for the rest.

  Stefia was hurting. And she wanted me to take it away.

  Of all people, me.

  **

  She stared up into the flies where the scenery hung, dragging her fingers across her bare stomach. She’d never been as beautiful as she was then; somehow broken, exposed, and turning me into a mystified mess. I got the feeling I’d touched upon something of hers that no one yet had, and I didn’t mean any specific part of her body. No, it was deeper than that. Something she kept well hidden.

  Stefia was an amazing actress.

  “Play a song for me,” she said, and then added, “Please.”

  As if I wouldn’t have done it anyway if she’d demanded it like a snotty nosed two-year-old. As if I wouldn’t help her in any way I possibly could.

  My fingers danced across the instrument, hopping from one fret to another, jumping strings and making them ring out in ways that people would never imagine they could.

  She continued her gaze into the flies of the theater, lost in thought, millions of miles beyond the roof of the building we were in. Off in the stars. Off to the things that shone almost as brightly as she did.

  “Lost in thought?” I asked. I didn’t know if I should even ruin the moment with the noise of my voice because sometimes words can be so ugly.

  “Not really lost,” she answered. “Just trying to figure out what I want.”

  “Sometimes that’s hard to do.”

  “No,” she corrected. “It’s not hard to know what you want. It’s hard to get what you want.”

  The irony of her statement almost made me laugh, since what I wanted basically opened itself up in front of me and begged.

  “What is it that you want, Stefia?”

  “I want someone to hold me and mean it. I want someone to talk to me because I’m me, not because I’m Stefia.”

  The way she said it made me cringe. The simplicity of her words up against the complexity of what they meant disturbed me and I stopped playing mid-song.

  “Don’t stop playing. Please.”

  “You don’t have to say please,” I smirked.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, with more weight in her words than seemed necessary. “I’m not special. I don’t deserve special privileges.”

  “But you are special,” I said, setting my mandolin down. “Don’t you get that? You are so goddamn amazing, Stefia. You…”

  “Don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Just…don’t.”

  And there was that look again. That fear. That heavy burden of something bigger than she could explain with words but couldn’t hide if you got close enough to really stare into her eyes.

  I wondered how many people had gotten that close.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” she said, sitting up and zipping her hoodie. “It’s not worth arguing over.”

  “Were we arguing?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Can I ask a question?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “How did you know who I was?”

  Stefia smiled.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” she said. “Your parents own the theater.”

  “But I’m never around. I’ve stayed hidden.”

  She paused before speaking, allowing a thoughtful smirk to dance across her lips.

  “One can see a lot from up on stage,” she said.

  “But I’ve made it a point to hide.”

  “Sometimes we think we’re hiding,” she said. “Those can be the times we are most exposed.”

  A yawn finally escaped from Stefia’s tiny perfect mouth. I checked my phone. 2 am.

  “Time to shut this party down?” I asked. “Don’t want your chariot to turn into a pumpkin.”

  “I’m no Cinderella, Kristopher.”

  I opened the stage door and let the both of us into the crisp fall air.

  “Thanks for playing for me,” she said. I was surprised that in all the events of the last three hours, she chose to talk about the music.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. “Anytime.”

  “You mean that?”

  “I do.”

  I didn’t know if I should kiss her. I didn’t know if I should open her car door or follow her home or what. I still didn’t understand exactly what had happened or where any of it had left us.

  “Kristopher?” she asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s not tell anyone about this.”

  “Oh.”

  I tried to hide it. I tried to hide that I’d hoped she would say we could just vanish together. Or that I could be the person she chose to walk next to her; the one who everyone else knew was her protector. The person to breathe her in every night and lift her up every morning. I tried to hide it but there was just enough pain that eked through in my pathetic oh. And she heard it.

  Shit.

  “Shit,” she said, at almost the same time I muttered it under my breath. “Kristopher. I don’t…”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I mean, I’m not sorry it happened. Don’t worry about the…”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s just that…”

  “You don’t have to explain it, Stefia,” I said. “I get it.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Really?” She laughed. “Because you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t. I don’t get it. And I couldn’t explain it if I tried.”

  She leaned her back against her driver’s side door and looked like she was going to cry. Real tears. Right there, in front of me.

  “Shit, Kristopher, I hate this. I don’t want to have to fucking worry about what anything looks like. I’m sick to death of worrying what people think and who will say what and how it will affect things that shouldn’t even matter.”

  I wanted to throw up. My guts were turning and my throat was tight and I had to close my eyes because seeing her lash out made my insides come unglued. Watching her was like seeing a crystal ball shatter against a brick ledge.

  “Stefia, it’s okay. It’s…”

  “It’s not okay, Kristopher. Stop saying that.”

  She put her head down and started shaking—little tremors that swelled and surged—and when she finally took a breath I could tell from the catch in her inhale that she was crying. Real crying, not blocked out stage crying. I didn’t know this side of Stefia existed. I mean, she was Stefia. Solid and sure.

  I couldn’t stand it anymore. I hadn’t understood anything about the night so far; I didn’t know if I ever would. How was it that I’d shown up with the intention of taking everything I wanted, and ended up ripped apart because I realized she was hurting? I don’t know why I cared. And maybe I should have, but I did.

  Life is a funny thing.

  I slid up to her, wrapped my arms around her shoulders, and pulled her into me. My long fingers weaved through her hair. I held her. I just held her and thought about how life twists and changes more than it stays the same and yet it catches us off guard every time.

  “Just once,” she said, “I want to be the one who writes the script.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I’m tired of reading the lines other people make up, Kristopher.”

  I knew she wasn’t talking about the theater.

  If she could have melted into my chest, if I could have tugged her into my being
, if I could have wrapped her up and pulled her into my heart I know I could have kept her safe from all the hurt she was feeling. And standing there with her head fit into the curve under my chin, her soft hair like a safe cushion for my thoughts, I felt like I could.

  But I forgot that every now and again, things have a way of happening unexpectedly. And therefore, I completely failed at protecting her from the one thing she needed protection from.

  Herself.

  -Anna Marie-

  I miss drinking coffee from a ceramic cup. For most of the past one hundred and seventy-two days, I’ve drank coffee from Styrofoam. I’m not supposed to have a ceramic mug in my room because they are afraid I will drop it. I’ll admit I threw a bit of a temper tantrum and then Rowena, my nurse, she showed me right where they had written in The Policy that residents are not allowed to have ceramic cups in their room.

  I don’t like the coffee here. By the time it gets to my room it’s lukewarm and my hazelnut powdered creamer doesn’t mix right. I said to Rowena why can’t you bring me hot coffee? Rowena said something back about The Policy and me dropping my Styrofoam cup and burning myself.

  I’ve been drinking coffee longer than Rowena has been alive. I told her that. She just smiled and left for the next resident’s room.

  I’m a resident now.

  The four walls of my room are pink. The first time Stefia came to visit she said the room reminded her of a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I told her the first time I ever drank Pepto-Bismol I threw up. She giggled at that, and I knew we’d get along fine.

  **

  I didn’t know why Stefia came to visit me. She wasn’t family. I hadn’t known her before I became a resident. All I knew about her was she acted at the Crystal Plains, she worked at the coffee shop in town, and she visited me once a week on Wednesdays. Sometimes you don’t need to know everything about someone to talk about everything with them.

  And oh, did we talk. About everything.

  “I’ve got this situation with a guy,” Stefia said the third time we met, “and I’m kind of wondering what to do about it.”

  “Stefia, dear,” I said, sighing. “Have you ever raised goats?”

  “No. What does that have to do with a guy?”