Look at Me

I’ve never written with anyone besides Candice, so working with Niall is, at first, like acclimating to life in a different country. He writes bits and pieces, small phrases here and there, and tries to fit them together until they make something. Until the story emerges.

Me, I start with the story, or with a feeling. With the broken coffee mug, he’s working off the description and I’m working off the image, the taste of blood in my mouth when I’m sucking a cut to stop the bleeding.

Our first day, we’re too much strangers to argue. We tiptoe around each other, afraid to object, afraid to suggest a change. We get nothing done. I go home that night afraid that I’m once again wasting my time, going nowhere, destined to fail in this industry.

The next day is different. When I step into the studio, I hand Niall my journals.

“Here,” I say to his raised eyebrow. “I read yours, so it’s only fair that you get to read mine.”

In my hands are my two journals, not only my purple journal, the one I bought in Los Angeles, but my last one too, the one from my senior year of college. Mixed in with recipes and lecture notes, there are pages about my friends and my fears and why I want to be here, doing this, making music. Exposing the private bits of myself.

In these journals are the bits of me that make me distinct from television Minna. So far, Niall’s only seen her: the way she holds her guitar and the way she tucks her hair behind her ear when she’s nervous. But now he’ll see that the only thing television Minna and I share are those two things. While she was performing in school talent shows and stunning her friends (and enemies) with her nasally bubblegum pop songs about being late for homeroom and crushing on the boy next door, I was awkward. I was awkward around Jeff Kirsch, my costar and fictional Minna’s love interest, whenever the camera wasn’t rolling. I was awkward around Candice, who I met at the Kids’ Choice Awards, until she told me to knock it off because, she promised, she was just as uncomfortable in the spotlight as I was.

I’m no stranger to being misperceived. My first week in college, I (awkwardly) followed my roommate to a frat party, where a group of boys pushed a ukulele into my hands and insisted I play them “Lost Lipstick,” which I sung on “Minna and the…” when I was 13 years old. I’d already downed two shots of clear liquid that didn’t not taste like nail polish remover, and they’d barely finished making the request before I threw up on the floor—and the uke.

And then there was Jake, who ditched me at prom. A few months ago my mom threw me a graduation party, where he showed up, stared at my tits, expressed surprise that I’d “managed” to go to college, and then tried to flirt with Candice.

“He’s cute,” my mom had said in my ear when she spotted me watching his attempt at flirtation. “Don’t let her take him away from you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Did you forget what he did to me at prom, Mom?”

She shrugged. “People grow up, Minna.”

All I could think then was that I did, but Jake Brooks certainly didn’t.

Now, I’m not so sure. I try not to quake with fear as I hand Niall my journals. I’m not sure what’s driving me to do this, to expose myself in this way. I have no reason to trust Niall—I don’t really know him. I spent hours last night reminding myself of this in some attempt to keep away the emotional connection that I felt to him after reading my diary. Now, I tell myself, I just want to put us on even ground.

Or maybe I want him to feel as connected to me as I do to him. I know that’s selfish, so I try not to think about it. This is a huge risk, but it’s one that I need to take.

Niall takes the journals without saying a word and settles himself on the couch. Unsure what to do with myself, I sit down at the other end of the couch and close my eyes.

Before I know it, Niall wakes me up with a gentle hand on my shoulder. The journals, all three of them, are closed on the table in front of us and Niall’s guitar leans against the couch.

“Late night?” he asks me, smiling. Even though I’ve only known Niall, really known him, for a few days, I’ve begun to suspect that he always manages to smile.

“You could say that,” I say. “Do you think I stole your intellectual property?”

He smiles again. “Not at all. You don’t need to steal it, anyway. You’ve got plenty of good intellectual property of your own.”

I rub the sleep out of my eyes. “What?”

Niall gestures to my journals. “Those funny stories from uni. I never had anything like that. Reading about it was like stepping into another world.” He shakes his head and lets out a long breath. “And your mum, shit, Minna. You didn’t have to share that stuff with me.”

I pull my legs up onto the couch and hug my knees to my chest. There’s certainly nothing good about my mother in the journals. She only visited me once my first year of college, didn’t even come with me when I moved in. When she got there, all she did was complain about how unfortunate it was that I had to share my space with a roommate. “I forgot I wrote about her. I didn’t meant to dump my baggage on you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Niall shake his head again. “Don’t apologize. I’m glad you shared it with me. Now I feel like I know you better than you know me.”

Despite my embarrassment, I find myself grinning. “Oh yeah? When’s my birthday?”

Niall taps my college journal. “March. When you turned 21 you waited to celebrate until St. Patrick’s Day and then you got raging drunk before 9 PM and had to be escorted home by campus police.”

Now I’m definitely embarrassed. “I can’t believe I documented that.”

Niall laughs, but I can tell from the way he’s grinning that he’s not laughing at my expense. “You drew pictures, too.” He picks the journal up and flips through it until he finds the page. “Here, look.”

I take it in my hand, and there, indeed, is a cartoon-esque drawing of Finally 21 Minna, head hung over the toilet bowl. “Gross,” I say, wrinkling my nose.

“I dunno,” Niall says, leaning over to study the picture. “I think you’re pretty talented. Might consider a career in comic books if I were you.”

I imagine it, a whole series of cartoons about my boring life. In the first one, Minna smiles at the bag boy at the grocery store, thinking his stare means he’s flirting. In response to her hello, he says, “Hey, you know Candice Mellon, right? Can you give me her number?

“That’d be atrocious,” I say.

“Atrocious,” Niall repeats, turning the word over on his tongue. “Uhh-troe-shissss. You have a funny accent, Minna Locke.”

I laugh at the way he crosses his eyes as he speaks. “You have a funny accent, Niall Horan.”

He grins widely. “Wouldn’t be me without it.” Then he reaches for his pencil. “I like that word. You think we can use it in the song?”

His easy transition makes me less uncomfortable, too. We spend the next few minutes determine that no, the word “atrocious” doesn’t fit in the song, and things progress naturally from there. As I watch Niall poke his tongue out of his mouth when he plays, I wonder if he’s acting extra friendly to make me more comfortable, or this is just the way he is. Something tells me it’s the latter. Even though he has baggage like everybody else, he doesn’t let his affect the way he smiles. I admire that.

I take my journals with me when I leave. The purple one has lots of blank pages left, and I have a feeling I might want to fill them tonight.