You Look Different in Real Life Read online

Nate nods, looks stricken.

  I fight those impulses back down. Be gone. “But then . . . later?”

  “Will you meet me later?” Nate’s face is earnest now. Hopeful.

  “Where?”

  “The boat launch down by the river. Three o’clock?”

  I brush my fingers across his. “I’ll be there.”

  And now I do let myself flee, running to the car, but this time, not away from something. For once, I’m running toward.

  Look at me. I’m in such a state.

  Olivia’s car may as well be flying, one of those jet cars you see in bad futuristic movies. I don’t even care that Lance and Leslie might be home and I’d have to face them.

  The sweet spring sun and air on my face through the open window, this road I have traveled a thousand times in my life. The trees, fully swollen with leaves at last. I breathe it all in and glance at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Then again, and again. Each time, I recognize that girl.

  Lance and Leslie are renting half of a duplex just outside of town. I’ve never been there before, but I know where it is. When I drive up, I notice the front door open and just the screen door closed. I’ll have to be quick.

  I hop out of the car with the camera bag, prepared to drop it on the porch, knock, then dash off. Even if they see me, they can’t stop me. But when I get to the porch and put the camera bag on the doormat, I find it hard to pull my hand away. I picture the camera sitting in there, feeling abandoned. Missing me.

  Or me missing it.

  No, no. It’s not mine. It’s one thing to borrow but at this point it would be stealing. I will return what doesn’t belong to me.

  I take a step away, but look back at the camera bag again.

  Then I figure it out, what’s calling to me. It’s not the camera. It’s the footage inside it.

  You were telling our story. And I think that’s your story.

  Suddenly, the thought of handing over the film, our film, my film, to Lance and Leslie seems wrong in every possible way.

  I hear movement inside the house. Someone running down the stairs.

  I unzip the bag and scoop up the camera, and the old videotape Nate gave me. I’m holding them tenderly in my arms when Leslie appears in the screen door, only half-visible.

  “Justine,” she says. “Oh, Justine.”

  “Leslie,” I say.

  Then she opens the door and I see her face, flushed with concern and regret. She starts to reach for me, out of instinct, I guess. Or out of love. I can accept that. But she stops herself.

  We know each other so well. I can accept that too.

  There is so much else I can say at this point: apologies and explanations and confessions. But when I open my mouth, this is what comes out first:

  “Listen, I have an idea.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  If the audience only knew how well I can hear them.

  Every time a seat creaks with someone shifting their weight. Every whisper, laugh, and sniffle. I listen to all of it, even over the sound of the film, and even from where I stand backstage, which is so close yet also so far removed from the hundreds of people watching Five at Sixteen on the other side of this theater curtain.

  I hear them loudest when they make no noise—when what they’re seeing on-screen has them riveted to silence.

  “Just a few more minutes, right?” asks Felix, who’s standing nearby. He swigs from his water bottle and glances nervously at me.

  I listen for the voices on the audio track, then nod.

  Rory’s here too, traveling the length of the dark, narrow space by putting one foot precisely in front of the other along the lines in the hardwood floor. Keira sits on a folding chair, reading the film festival guide. We are one of the highlights, apparently. This screening was sold out.

  Keira raises her eyes to me and points to the guide. “I love this picture of you,” she says warmly.

  “Thanks,” I say, touching my hair. I recently changed out the pink streaks for turquoise, and I daresay I’m rocking that color.

  We’ve already been told what’s supposed to happen. The film will end, and they’ll take a minute to set up chairs for the Q&A session before a moderator—some famous magazine movie critic—introduces us one by one. We’ll listen for our names and fill in the chairs starting from the far end of the stage. It all sounds so simple, except for the fact that we’re terrified.

  Here it comes. The last lines of dialogue I now know so well. Then, the moments of a blank screen—I count them out, one, two, three—followed by the song that runs over the closing credits. It’s a great song. Perfect, really. I’m still so proud of that. But I only hear the first few notes, because it’s suddenly overpowered by wall-shaking, whooping applause.

  Felix, Rory, Keira, and I look back and forth to one another with various combinations of surprise, relief, and curiosity. Felix peeks his head through the curtain that separates us from them, then turns around with a smile. “They’re standing.”

  “You bet your ass they are,” says Nate, who is suddenly beside me. Lance and Leslie asked that we not be in the audience, so we were escorted backstage through a special entrance only ten minutes ago. That was fine by most of us, but Nate sneaked out to watch the last scene.

  My pulse is pounding and my stomach, of course, is churning, and I have to keep looking down at my feet to make sure they’re still there, because I don’t feel connected to the ground.

  A petite young woman with blue horn-rimmed eyeglasses and a clipboard ducks through the curtain. She could be twenty-five, or thirty-five, or fifteen. She’s one of those.

  “We’re ready! Do you hear that applause? You’ve got a great audience out there.”

  Nate slips his hand in mine and squeezes. Just like that, I’m plugged back in to where I need to be. I squeeze back.

  The moderator introduces Keira first, who takes a deep breath and shakes out her wrists before stepping onstage. Then Felix, who flashes us the smile that will somehow get even bigger as soon as he sees that audience—the confident grin that pulls you into his world. Next is Rory, presenting us with a carefully drawn Gah, can you believe this? look before marching out there.

  As soon as she disappears, I turn to Nate. “You’re on.”

  He grabs my face with both hands and stares at it for several long seconds. I have seen so many versions of him in the past year. Nate at six and eleven and sixteen, over and over in a computer’s video editing program. Nate in real life, present tense. From a distance, and in extreme close-up. I know them all by heart.

  The moderator calls his name. Nate doesn’t move, except for stroking my cheek with his thumb. For a moment, I’m worried he hasn’t heard. He just gazes at me and I gaze back, and between us swings the weight of everything we’ve discovered about ourselves since that weekend in the city.

  Then he kisses me, quickly but deeply, before turning to run through the curtain.

  I’m still feeling Nate on my lips and his palms on my skin when someone else touches me on the shoulder. I turn around to see Leslie, and Lance behind her.

  “Ready, kiddo?” she asks, her eyes welled up in a good way.

  “No,” I say. “Never.”

  “There’s a lot of love out there,” Lance says proudly, “and you deserve all of it.”

  I hear the voice of the moderator now.

  “And finally, please welcome the three codirectors of Five at Sixteen: Lance Rodgers, Leslie Rodgers, and Justine Connolly!”

  Leslie nudges me forward through the curtain.

  A blur of hands clapping, their flutter like wings in a flock. Warm faces with bright eyes. Unfamiliar, but affectionate.

  I step fully onto the stage now, and let them all see me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Whoa. Now that I sit back here, past the book’s final pages, I can feel the rush of gratitude. This space won’t fit individual mentions of everyone who bolstered me creatively and emotionally on my journey with this novel, but I’ll sta
rt with a sweeping shout-out to my family, friends, author compadres, and heck, even my cats, who all sure know how to make a writer girl feel loved.

  Thank you as always to my agent, the whip-smart, bunny-loving Jamie Weiss Chilton. I’m blessed with an amazing editor, Rosemary Brosnan, who empowered me to accomplish everything I set out to do with this manuscript . . . and then some.

  Heartfelt thanks to Andrew Harwell, Andrea Martin, Olivia deLeon, and Barbara Lalicki, along with the rest of the wonderful team at HarperCollins—a publishing house I’m thrilled to call home. Designer Laura DiSiena and art director Cara Petrus created this dazzling cover, and thus I think they pretty much rule.

  I’m forever indebted to Bari Pearlman for letting me tap in to her expertise as a documentary filmmaker, and to Nora Snyder for sharing her gorgeously personal insights on teens with autism. Thank you also to the folks on Facebook who weighed in on such important story points as dorm decoration, drunken pet-naming, and barn animals.

  Ten-gallon plastic tubs of Thankful to my readers—every one of you who has written to me or shown up at an event or recommended my work, or simply connected to it personally, silently, and held it close. To all the booksellers, librarians, and book bloggers who have so enthusiastically supported what I do: I can’t fully express my appreciation without a lot of colored markers and heart stickers, and maybe not even then.

  Finally, I send infinite thanks and love, love, love to Bill, Sadie, and Clea. You make so many things possible.

  BACK AD

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JENNIFER CASTLE’s first novel, The Beginning of After, was named an American Library Association Best Fiction for Young Adults selection and a Chicago Public Library “Best of the Best” Book. She wrote many unproduced movie and TV scripts before returning to her first love, fiction . . . but she’s still hooked on film and the way we can find and tell our stories with images. She lives with her family in New York’s Hudson Valley. You can visit her online at www.jennifercastle.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER CASTLE

  The Beginning of After

  CREDITS

  Cover photo of girl © 2013 by Getty Images/Ray Kachatorian

  Cover texture © 2013 by Getty Images/Andrew Paterson

  Cover design by Cara E. Petrus

  COPYRIGHT

  HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  You Look Different in Real Life

  Copyright © 2013 by Jennifer Castle

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Children’s Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022.

  www.epicreads.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Castle, Jennifer.

  You look different in real life / Jennifer Castle.—First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: “Five teens starring in a documentary film series about their ordinary lives must grapple with questions of change and identity under the scrutiny of the camera.”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-06-198581-2

  [1. Documentary films—Production and direction—Fiction. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Celebrities—Fiction. 4. Identity—Fiction. 5. Family life—New York (State)—Fiction. 6. New York (State)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C268732You 2013

  2012051743

  [Fic]—dc23

  CIP

  AC

  13 14 15 16 17 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

  EPub Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780062209771

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  http://www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East–20th Floor

  Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada

  http://www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1

  Auckland, New Zealand

  http://www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  77–85 Fulham Palace Road

  London, W6 8JB, UK

  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  10 East 53rd Street

  New York, NY 10022

  http://www.harpercollins.com