Read You Look Different in Real Life for Free Online Page B

when we were little, they all bribed me to spend time with him. His mom was always giving me his old toys.”
    Now, of course, I’m dying to hear more because this is the most Felix has ever talked about Nate, but he’s come to me for help and this feels good and I don’t want to blow it.
    “So what do you want my advice on?”
    “Well, you’re always great at avoiding the question when Leslie asks something you don’t want to answer.”
    “Am I?”
    “You make some funny smart-ass comment and it’s like gold, and then nobody cares that you didn’t answer. They only care that you gave them something good on camera. I need some tips in case I get into a corner. Because I’m not like you. I find myself wanting to please them so bad, I’ll tell them anything.”
    “You make it sound like torture.”
    Then we look at each other and laugh. We both know that it is a little like torture. Or, a lot.
    “I guess that’s the difference between you and me,” I say, and think hard about how to put this into words. “You like to please them. I like to piss them off.”
    Felix snorts, then smiles and takes my hand. “The real difference, Justine, is that pissing them off is your way of trying to please them.”
    This statement rolls over me like something big and fast with a hundred wheels. I can’t recover from it right away, and I can’t deal with what it means, and I don’t want Felix to know either.
    Finally, I compose myself and offer this: “Try to think of every question they ask you as the setup to a joke.”
    “Oh, that’s good,” says Felix, taking his notebook out of his back pocket.
    As he writes, it echoes in my head. Pissing them off is your way of trying to please them. Something rises in me.
    “I have something to tell you,” I say. Felix lifts one eyebrow into his hungry, gossip-munching look. I take a breath deep enough to push all the words out. “I’m not going to do the movie.”
    His face is empty for a few seconds. Then he bursts into laughter. I’d be totally insulted by this reaction if I didn’t expect it.
    “Ha! Good one.”
    “I’m serious, Felix.”
    “Let me see.”
    He leans in to examine my face now. I keep my mouthin a flat line and nod slightly. He leans out.
    “Hmm. Well, maybe you are. For the moment. But there’s no way you’ll stick to that.”
    An F-sound dances on my lips and I know it would feel so good to say the word, to throw it at him. Candy good. But post-Ian, I’ve been fighting my potty mouth tendencies.
    Instead I just say, “I can prove you wrong.”
    He smiles. “Keira said no too.”
    “How do you know?”
    “I have my sources. But I guess Leslie talked her into it.”
    “Of course she did,” I say. Leslie’s left me two messages that I haven’t returned.
    A sudden roar of laughter from the other room draws Felix’s attention from me, and without a word he bursts back through the bathroom door to check it out. I follow him.
    There’s me on the sheet-screen. I’m standing on a makeshift stage in our elementary school cafeteria, wearing red top-to-bottom long johns. Our teacher is off to the right, giving me line cues as I perform the lead role in our kindergarten version of The Emperor’s New Clothes .
    A few of the kids in Felix’s basement turn around to see me hovering nearby, their faces alight with pure entertainment. One of them flashes me a thumbs-up, and I just smile politely. It always feels strange and a little wrong totake credit. What was I doing, besides getting up, going to school, doing my thing, living through the day? I wasn’t trying to amuse. At least, I don’t think so.
    I move a bit so I can see Ian’s face. He’s grinning, totally enjoying what he’s seeing.
    Felix turns to me with both eyebrows raised. “You need this,” he says, almost tenderly. “You just don’t know it.”
    “You don’t know what I don’t know!” Yeah, that sounds moronic but whatever. I rocket toward the stairs and up, up, up to the