The Me You See by Shay Ray Stevens Page B

wrong.”
    “Don’t you get it?” she asked. “It was okay for you to
watch. Everyone was watching and no one was judging anyone for watching. I
mean, think about it. You can witness something like that, something you don’t
normally see every day. You’re drawn to it. You’re part of the experience. You
don’t have to look away. Everyone is gawking so it’s okay if you do it, too.”
    “I wanted to help, Stefia. I wanted to jump in there, but I
just couldn’t…”
    “And that, Taylor Jean, is why you watched. You could have
looked away, you could have ignored it, but you didn’t. You watched.”
    I watched.
    **
    I’m still wearing the Band-aid over where the nurse plunged
that needle under my skin a month ago to suck out my blood. It’s a multicolored
Band-aid that says “Give” and it doesn’t match at all with the dress I’m
wearing to the funeral.
    And I really don’t care. Because right now I’m stuck on
thinking about the things we see, and what we watch, and how it tells a lot
about us when it’s all said and done. I’m choking on the bitter realization
that in the end, the Stefia that everyone got to see was not the beautifully
perfect, warm maple syrupy Stefia that they wanted, but instead a broken Stefia
fallen in the middle of five of her fellow actors in a puddle of blood and
piss.
    Not exactly what the audience paid to see.
    But, then, everybody likes to watch.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
-Kristopher-
     
     
     
    If people were honest, they’d all admit to being like an
iPod left on shuffle. No one’s song fits in any single file.
    “Why is that, Kristopher? Why do you say that?” she had
asked me that night.
    “Because we are all different people with every person we
know,” I answered.
    “How do we know then who anyone really is?”
    “I guess we don’t. No…I know we don’t.
    My dad, James Harper, started up the little Crystal Plains
Theater about four years ago with his old college buddy, Niles. My parents were
wannabe actors with old money; Niles was a stage wizard with a penchant for
collecting odd things. The three of them imagined that our little town needed
some culture and figured community theater was the way to put Granite Ledge on
the map. At first, everyone laughed. They said this isn’t New York and what’s
wrong with the plays at the elementary school?
    Stefia changed all that. No one would admit it, but I think
she was a big reason people came to the theater. The other actors were good,
but Stefia…holy shit. She seriously belonged somewhere else—like New York.
    I mean, just to watch her on stage? Holy shit. You know how
someone walks in and you just know they’ve got it? That was her. My dad said
so, Niles said so, the directors said so, and the audience said so—over and
over again. It’s like the mighty gods of theater dropped her in this little
town as an itty bitty present for all of us to unwrap and enjoy.
    Merry freaking Christmas. And Happy Hanukah, too.
    My mom and dad were all about theater. They were crazy
hyper, in your face extroverts who aspired to be awesome actors but never quite
got there. Because you know, you can either act or you can’t. That’s just the
way it is. But they had passion—and money—so they opened a theater instead. How
they ended up with an introverted, mandolin playing son is beyond me. They
always pushed at me to bust out of my shell and pop up on stage with everyone
else. But there were only, like, four people in the world who were ever allowed
to hear me play.
    Stefia made five.
    I had watched Stefia from the audience since the first show
she was in, way back when she was fourteen and I was just old enough to drive
myself to the theater to watch her. I never talked to her. I made it a point
not to talk to her. It was easier to keep my fantasy alive that way. It was
easier to pretend the reason we never talked was because there was no time, not
because she wouldn’t give the time of day if there ever