The Me You See by Shay Ray Stevens Page A

of disgust and guilt
and anger and disbelief. I kept avoiding Stefia because I didn’t want our
“thing” to come up. But two weeks later as we sat in the choir loft and waited
to sing for service, she passed a slip of paper down to me. It made its way
across the music folders of Jeanie and Thomas and Albert and finally over to
me.
    “This better be good,” Albert whispered, shooting a look
that conveyed just how inappropriate it was to pass notes during the sermon.
    I opened it up.
    Taylor
Jean,
    I know
now why people watch.
    Stefia
    After church, when we’d put our music away and descended
from the choir loft, I pulled Stefia into a corner by the church office.
    “What do you mean?” I hissed. “What’s this note supposed to
mean?”
    She didn’t say anything, just walked out the front door of
the church with a look like I should follow her. So I did. All the way across the
street to Beidermann’s Ice Cream Shop. She ordered two salted caramel sundaes
with pretzel topping, carried them outside to a table, and sat down.
    “Here,” she said, handing one to me. “I know you like
pretzels so I ordered extra topping.”
    I sat down and took the sundae from her. After a minute of
silence, in which I wondered what she was trying to do, I finally spooned a
glob into my mouth.
    “What’s wrong?” Stefia finally said. “Why are things so
weird between us now?”
    I didn’t say anything. Mostly because I didn’t have an
answer to her question. I didn’t know why things were weird. They shouldn’t
have been.
    “So, here’s what I figured out,” Stefia said, like someone
had cut the scene we were in and started a whole new one. “I was thinking about
our thing. You know, why people watch? And ever since that accident, I’ve been
stuck on figuring it out.”
    “Stefia,” I started, but she cut me off.
    “No, it’s fine. I think sometimes we learn the most in
uncomfortable situations. And that was definitely uncomfortable.”
    “You were uncomfortable?” I said, incredulously. “You?
Stefia, you jumped in there like you knew exactly what to do! The rest of us
just stood there like complete dumbasses, just…watching.”
    And at watching, I lost it. I stabbed my spoon back in my
sundae, set it on the table, and sobbed into my hands.
    “Taylor Jean, stop,” Stefia said. “Don’t beat yourself up.
Besides, it only looked like I knew what I was doing.”
    “Well, you’re pretty damn good at looking like you know
what you’re doing.”
    Stefia took a bite of her sundae, putting the spoon in her
mouth upside down and sucking the ice cream off the back of it.
    “I’ve been told that before,” she said.
    I rubbed beneath my eyes with the tops of my pointer
fingers and said, “I’m such a baby. I bet I look stupid.”
    “Nah,” she said, and then added with a smirk, “do you
believe me?”
    I smacked her on the shoulder.
    A chickadee sat in the branch above our table, sputtering
out his call. I looked up into the leaves and wondered what it would be like to
wing around over everything, watching people live their ridiculous lives. Had
the chickadee been at the accident? Had he flown over Marissa’s car moments
before Old Man Jenkins rammed its engine into the backseat?
     “So what did you figure out?” I asked. “I mean, about why
people watch?”
    “Oh,” she said. “That. Well, like I said, after the
accident I really started thinking about this whole thing. Why were people
standing around watching? I mean, it wasn’t pretty at all. I think the top half
of Melissa’s body was thrown about fifty feet from her car.”
    “Yeah,” I said, shaking the memory from my head. “I know.”
    “And I guess what I decided was that people watch so they
can be involved without really being involved. They can part of something. They
can say they were there, but at a safe distance.”
    “Wait a second. I did not keep watching because I wanted to
be a part of the carnage,” I told Stefia. “You’re