You Look Like That Girl: A Child Actor Stops Pretending and Finally Grows Up by Lisa Jakub

so well and now I said something stupid about pizza. I wished I could see him and search his face for a reaction. Finally the silence was broken.
    “Oh man, I bet the pizza over there is so good!”
    I was saved. My man also liked pizza. All was well in my world.
    “So, what do you look like?” Scott asked, his mouth half full of peanut butter.
    I didn’t know how to answer the question.
    “Do you want more to drink?” I stalled to buy more time to come to terms with my appearance, because clearly that is something that a girl can work through on the way to the fridge.
    “I’m good, thanks. Seriously, what do you look like?”
    “I have brown hair.”
    He laughed. “Doesn’t help me. I don’t know what brown is. Never seen it.”
    “Oh, right. I’m short.”
    He sighed at me. “What else?”
    “I don’t know. It’s a hard question.”
    “Are you pretty?”
    There it was. The question that I would struggle with for the first thirty years of my life. It was unanswerable and yet, the only person in the world that I cared about at that moment wanted me to answer it.
    “No.”
    “Liar. You sound pretty.”
    “Sounds can be deceiving,” I said.
    “Not really. Can I touch your face?”
    “Okay,” I answered too quickly.
    I reached out for his hands as he reached out for mine. After a moment of awkward grasping, I guided his hands to the sides of my face.
    “So, here’s my face,” I said, completely unnecessarily.
    He used the softest touch to feel my cheeks. He silently slipped the bandana off my eyes. I could finally see him, looking even more lovely than I had remembered, his head tilted to the ground with a look of concentration on his face. He outlined my eyebrows and grazed along my lids. I tried to mirror his intense look as I felt this was a serious moment but I couldn’t help my lips from forming a dopey grin.
    “You’re smiling,” he said when he outlined my mouth.
    “It tickles.” I didn’t mention that the feel of him was the most wonderful thing I had ever known.
    “As I suspected,” he declared. “Pretty.”
    My heart leapt out of my chest and bounced along the floor.
    “Here, let’s get your blindfold back on. Margaret wanted you to wear it all day.” I had a hard time getting the blindfold back on over my slightly swollen head.
    I tried to go back to eating my sandwich, but it’s hard to chew and grin at the same time. Suddenly, lunch was over as Margaret interrupted our date and put us back to work. She placed Scott on one side of the room, acting as bait, and I was twirled around and had to find him by tracking the sound of his voice. There was a stereo playing loudly and I was supposed to block out the ambient noise.
    “Hey, Lisa, I’m over here,” Scott shouted at me.
    I could hear that he was down low and figured that he was sitting on the floor. When I got to where I thought he was, I knelt down and reached out, intending to touch a perfectly proportioned shoulder. Instead, I grabbed something soft and warm and thoroughly unfamiliar. Over the stereo, I might have heard Margaret gasp and I whipped off the blindfold. Squinting through the bright sunlight pouring into the room, I saw Scott sitting in a chair in front of me, my hand squarely inhis crotch. I was frozen, slowly registering what I held in my hand. With a look of surprise in his face, he squirmed slightly to get away from my grasp. Margaret stared, appalled by the sight of the actress on her knees, hand in her student’s lap. I finally retracted, as if I had been bitten. Hot, humiliated tears filled my eyes. I was molesting the blind kid.
    “Well,” My victim spoke. “You found me.”
    My unshielded eyes watched him break into a smirk. I smiled, too, and my tears poured out onto the carpet.
    “Let’s move on to more cane work,” Margaret suggested in an unnecessarily loud and high-pitched voice. Less penis-grabbing involved in cane work, I suppose.
    Far too soon, the day with Scott was over. I thanked