Free The Me You See by Shay Ray Stevens Page A

kind of gorgeous that took her beyond
trying to look like every other girl our age that followed some fad to be
pretty. Stefia was her own breed of beautiful. She didn’t even have to try.
Watching her was the closest thing to being her that we’d ever get.
    Stefia had this guy friend named Elliot who was always
following her around. They weren’t together or anything. He was more like a
brother, she said. He was a year older than us; kind of cute and awfully nice,
but his younger brothers were jerks. One of them, Mitch was his name, hated me
for about a thousand unknown reasons. Probably because I was homeschooled. Or
wore too many beaded bracelets. Or because I wouldn’t date him. Who knows. But
this one day Mitch and Elliot came into the coffee shop just about the time
Stefia and I were done with work. 
    “Can I get an Americano?” Elliot asked Stefia. “And
Mitch…he wants…Mitch, what do you want?”
    Mitch was watching me wipe coffee grounds off the back
counter.
    “Hey, Taylor Jean!” he said, way too loudly, ignoring his
brother’s question.
    “What?”
    “Are you lezzing out over there?”
    “Huh?”
    I realized that while I’d been wiping coffee grounds off
the counter and into the trash can, I’d been staring at Stefia the entire time.
And he’d seen me. I rolled my eyes at him and went back to straightening the
counter.
    “Should I call you TJ?”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
    “You know, TJ. Like a guy’s name, so you can stare at
Stefia all you want and no one will think anything about it?”
    “Don’t be an ass, Mitch,” said Elliot.
    Stefia had started making Elliot’s Americano but left it at
the machine.
    “Yeah, Mitch,” she said as she walked over to me. She spun
me around, held my cheeks in both of her hands, and kissed me squarely on the
lips.
    Then she glared at Mitch.
    “And don’t be jealous,” she said to him, and winked.
    Stefia was always doing things like that. One minute she’d
be quoting Shakespeare or rattling off stats from the New York Stock Exchange.
The next minute, she’d pull out something totally random—like kissing her
female co-worker—and knock everyone off their feet.
    Being around Stefia was magical. It made me feel like I was
worth something. I would stare at her and imagine that indescribable thing she
had that everyone wanted oozing off of her and right onto me.
    Actually, Stefia and I kind of had a thing about being
watched. It was an inside joke that turned into a huge philosophical
discussion. It was just after my sixteenth birthday and I had invited her over
to my house after work to hang out, eat crappy food, and watch YouTube videos
because I had faster internet. We tripped upon a video titled How to Make
Hair Dye with Ketchup and discovered it was actually a ridiculously lewd
journey through what the YouTuber wanted to do with each and every girl on his
local softball team.
    “That’s a little far,” I said, as I clicked on the flag
below the video to report it. “I mean, who makes this stuff?”
    “People with too much time on their hands,” Stefia said,
dismissively.
    “It’s disturbing.” I closed my laptop and shoved it further
back on my desk.
    “Oh, come on, Taylor Jean,” Stefia said, flopping back on
my bed and flipping her feet up on a stack of pillows. “Everyone likes to
watch.”
    “What is that supposed to mean?”
    Stefia grabbed a handful of butter spindle pretzels and
shoved three in her mouth at once. She chewed slowly, and I could tell she was
carefully choosing her words.
    “Why do guys go to strip clubs?” she asked. “Why do we
watch talk shows where people freak out and fight with each other?”
    “I don’t think those two things are the same…”
    “Why not? What makes them different?”
    “For one,” I said, rolling my eyes, “guys are desperate
perverts. That’s why they go to strip clubs.”
    “I don’t think that’s true,” Stefia said. “Okay, some guys
are