The Me You See by Shay Ray Stevens

off and pelting
her with a second pillow. “You don’t have to impress me with your deep wisdom,
you know.”
    I handed her the pretzel bowl.
    “What’s this for?” she asked.
    “Stick it back on your head. It’s getting way too deep in
here.”
    She smiled and flipped the bowl back over her hair. She
stepped up on the bed, blew me a kiss, curtsied, and sat back down cross-legged
right in the middle of my comforter.
    “You’re watching,” she said, pointing a finger at me.
    “Stefia,” I said, grabbing a bag of chocolate and tearing
it open, “shut up.”
    **
    For some reason, the whole why do people watch or oh
look, you’re watching became a thing between us. We’d be working at the
coffee shop and catch someone staring at the happenings of another table and
we’d snort to each other they’re watching and quietly hum the theme from The
Twilight Zone .
    Like, we had this regular customer named Heidi. She worked rotating
shifts in labor and delivery at the hospital and sometimes stopped by for a
pick-me-up before her shift started. One day she was sitting at her usual table
in the corner, reading on her Kindle, and the only other customers in the shop—a
teenaged couple—started sniping at each other. At first you could tell she was
annoyed, because the nitpicking was distracting her from the book she was
trying to enjoy. But the longer they argued, the less she looked at her Kindle
and the more she looked at them. She just stared, totally sucked into what they
were allowing others to overhear. Like it was a show she was watching. Like
they were performing for her entertainment. She set her Kindle down and sucked
off the straw from her to-go cup and only looked away from them when it seemed
they might look at her.
    We did a lot of people watching during our shifts, and what
we usually noticed was that lots of people were watching other people. But it
took us forever to figure out the why in why people watch.
    And then there was the day of the crash in front of the
coffee shop. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Friday and Old Man Rogers
fell asleep driving his farm truck right down Main Street. He plowed into a
little yellow VW Bug that had Marissa Jenkins and her twin toddlers inside.
Right in front of our coffee shop.
    A few customers stood up at their tables with their hands
over their mouths muttering Oh nos and Oh my Gods . One
mother held her young son and put her hand over his eyes so he wouldn’t see the
carnage, but she was looking herself. Two customers ran up to the full glass
panels of our store front and gaped at the gathering crowd. I ran but stopped
when my hand hit the front door. I wondered if I should go out. I wondered what
I would do. I wondered if I could do anything at all.
    Stefia, of course, ran out and jumped into the middle of
everything like it was part of a play that she’d been perfectly blocked for
what to do. I mean, she was out there a full three minutes before the cops and
firemen showed up.
    Old Man Rogers was all bloodied, his face smashed into his
steering wheel, head snapped at some odd angle. I couldn’t even see Marissa in
the puckered mess left of her little car. I noticed one of her kids in the back
seat, motionless and staring blankly; the other had flown from the car and
landed on the tar just two feet from one of the tables on our sidewalk. I knew
neither one of them was still breathing.
    The shriek of the sirens announced the emergency vehicles
were just making the corner. The sirens wailed and screeched, growing louder as
they sped closer. It was so strange to me that the louder the sirens got, the
quieter the air around us became. Except for Stefia, we all just stood there,
suspended in time, rooted to the tile or sidewalk we were standing on.
    And all I could think was We’re watching. We’re watching
and we can’t look away.
    **
    It was hard to talk about watching after that. It was hard
to even talk to Stefia after that. I suppose it was a mixture