by Amy Spalding
We go through warm-ups and run through a couple songs before Mr. Deans asks Sai and me to each sing a recent solo to give the rest of the Nation an idea of our voices and styles. I let Sai go first (he sings “Being Alive” from Company, which just further closes the case on his perfection, especially because he nails it), and then I sing “Now You Know” from Merrily We Roll Along because it’s kind of big and fast and showy but not as much as, like, “Getting Married Today” from Company, another song I love singing to strangers who aren’t expecting anything. (Also it’s clichéd enough for us both to sing Sondheim, even if he’s the greatest musical theatre composer of all time, but both singing from the same show on top of that would be pretty ridiculous.)
People here obviously act pretty cool about things (barely raising an eyebrow when Sai hit this seriously impressive note) but there is a little murmur of appreciation for me, and so everything feels okay.
“Interesting choice, Devan,” Mr. Deans says as I sit back down. “This can’t leave the classroom yet, but the fall musical’s going to be Merrily We Roll Along.”
Oh my God, I love this place.
Merrily We Roll Along is only one of my favorite shows ever. My freaking email address is even a reference to it. Justine pointed out (post-Tenor, of course) that it’s a show about friendship and not love, and maybe that’s why I love it so much, with me not having experienced True Love yet. (I haven’t experienced much True Friendship, either, but I didn’t leap to point that out.) There’s a lot about life I don’t get yet, but I don’t want people actually telling me so.
It’s a pretty ambitious show for a high school to perform, especially since I’m used to performing in the seemingly obligatory shows most schools do. Merrily We Roll Along is about this composer, Franklin Shepard, who starts off as a great guy who dreams of writing musicals with his best friend, Charley. But as he gets older, instead of staying true to his ideals, he falls for the Hollywood thing and abandons everything he once believed in. Totally, of course, losing Charley along the way because Charley actually holds on to his beliefs in the face of money and fame. The role I’ve been dying to play since I first watched a shaky video of this amazing production at the Kennedy Center is their other good friend, Mary, who doesn’t abandon Frank—mostly because she’s in total hopeless love with him—but does go from a successful writer to a washed-up alcoholic. (Which, okay, sounds pretty bad, but she gets amazing songs and scenes.)
Oh, and the whole crazy thing about the show is it goes backwards. When it starts, everyone’s old and jaded, and by the time the show ends, everyone’s young and sure they can make all their dreams come true. I guess that’s actually completely a little depressing, but I think you understand everyone’s relationships and loyalties better that way. Also the truth about life is sometimes it’s pretty depressing, and I’m pretty sure art should tell the truth about life.
“That should count as her audition, then,” says a blond guy wearing a preppy shirt with a little alligator on it and jeans that probably cost twice as much as even my nicest pair paid for by Reece Malcolm. “That was amazing, New Girl.”
The murmur of approval turns into something less positive upon that utterance. I guess I don’t blame them, but honestly I’m used to walking into new schools and almost immediately scoring roles kids who’d been there for years thought they deserved. If I hadn’t gotten used to how that felt I would have given up a long time ago.
“New Girl!” the preppy guy calls after class. I’m sort of walking with Sai, though we aren’t talking, really; he’s just trying to help me figure out where my next class is. “Hey, New Girl, wait up.”
“She probably has an actual name,” says a girl with black hair styled into something of a fauxhawk who I saw earlier in Women’s Choir, and who is also in the Nation.
“It’s Devan,” Sai volunteers, like he knows me so well. Go right ahead and spread that rumor, everyone. “I’m Sai.”
“You are to die for,” the guy says to me. He’s not much taller than I am, and he’s built kind of athletic, kind of small, like musical theatre chorus dancers often are. “Have you had voice lessons? I told my mom if she’d let me take actual lessons I’d be so much better.”
I’m way more comfortable with attention from a gay guy than I am figuring out how Sai can be so nice to me.
“I haven’t.” I shrug and try to seem modest. “Thanks, though.”
“I’m Travis Kennedy,” he says. “This is Mira Sato. What class do you have next?”
“Acting One.”
He wrinkles his nose. “I’m already in Acting Three. But don’t worry. There are a lot of crappy freshmen in there but other people, too. Oh, crap, you aren’t a freshman, are you? You don’t look like one, and they hardly ever let them into Nation.”
I learn that Travis and Mira are juniors as well, and that I have English lit with Mira and both world history and algebra II with Travis. And choir, of course. Part of me is pretty weirded out that barely into my first day, there are people who seem eager to talk to me, but then again my wardrobe has received a full upgrade, and I’m being seen in the presence of Sai-ness. When I walk into the cafeteria to get lunch (it seems most kids actually eat outside in the courtyard so I haven’t quite figured out where kids without friends sit), Travis waves me over to the line for sandwiches, where Sai is also standing, like we’re all friends already.
After we get through the line, Travis leads us outside, where I hear a little voice in my head think, Yay, the weather’s so nice today, which is kind of terrifying. No way am I going to start loving L.A. weather. The Midwest is my past and New York is my future, and this is just for now.
“Hey, Sai.” This girl appears, like, out of nowhere, the kind of girl who makes me feel like I’m some other species, tall and thin and with every blond hair in place. The kind of girl who should be talking to Sai. “You were going to eat with us, right?”
“Right, Nicole,” he says. “Hey, guys, you know Nicole?”
I wonder if there’s something wrong with Sai that he thinks we should be associating with Nicole at all. We’re in show choir. He just gets an exemption for looking like some gift from a God who’s spent too much time looking through my dreams for specific examples of what boys should be like.
“I promised Nicole I’d have lunch with her, meet some people,” Sai says to us. “But I’ll see you in Honors, yeah?”
This is the thing: he isn’t being a jerk. I want him to be a jerk because then I could hate him. But, no, he looks like he genuinely wants to honor Nicole’s offer of table location, not get away from us.
“I can’t believe it.” Travis pouts as he sits down across from Mira. “I thought we snagged the fresh meat. Then Nicole Ediss happened to walk by. It’s almost a cliché.”
“It is a cliché,” Mira tells him. “It’s probably for the best, though. I don’t know if I want someone like that sitting at our table. He looks too Disney.”
“What, like too Disney Channel?” Travis makes a face at the sandwich he just special-ordered. “New Girl, did they mix ours up?”
“No, too Disney,” Mira says. “He looks like Aladdin or something. It freaks me out. I feel like his teeth should sparkle.”
I can’t help laughing at that. “Thanks for letting me sit with you guys.”
“Where else were you gonna sit?” Travis asks. “There’s no other option. There’re choir nerds, that’s not you. There’re kids who think performing a lot’s gonna get them seen by an agent or casting director, that is definitely not you. There’re the few who rise to—well, Sai—and then there’s the rest of us. Geeks but, you know, not in a geeky way.”
For some weird reason, that makes me feel a lot better about Sai sitting anywhere but here.
“He spends a lot of time on this,” Mira says. “So don’t think he came up with that on the spot.”
“What?” A red-haired girl sits down next to Mira. She’s wearing a Ramones T-shirt with cuffed jeans, and her pale skin see
ms impossible in this setting. “Is Travis explaining social order again?”
“Of course.” Mira grins at her, and it’s the nicest she’s seemed since we met.
“This is Devan Malcolm,” Travis says. My heart pounds a little extra at my new name. “Devan, this is Lissa Anderson.”
“Hi,” she says, and smiles at me, and then her smile widens as she looks up beyond us. “Hey.”
A guy who you could probably find in the dictionary under Tall and Handsome and Brooding drops into the seat next to Lissa. He isn’t my type at all, all in black with eyeliner and black nail polish, but I get it. I’m sure he’s Lissa’s type, and the way they glance at each other makes me think they’re either something or they will be soon.
“Hey,” he says, not just to her but to the whole table. For some dumb reason the way he says that one word makes me think he must be nice.
“This is Devan Malcolm.” Travis is back in introducing mode. “This is Elijah Cross.”
“Hi,” he says with a wave. “Nation? I could salute instead.”
I laugh and nod. “Yeah. I mean, to the Nation part. Please don’t salute.”
“We almost got a hot guy for the table,” Travis says to no one in particular. “Laws of nature took him away.”
“Liss thinks we already have a hot guy,” Mira says like her whole tone is an eye-roll. If I were Lissa I’d curl up and die with embarrassment, but she laughs Mira off and it’s like it never happened. I’ve never been able to let stuff just go like that.
Travis tells Lissa about the close call regarding Sai and the lunch table, while I wonder if Justine is sitting alone at our old table. I mean, not alone alone, but we weren’t exactly the center of attention in the group of other girls from choir we sat with. Back there she’s probably being left out of conversations and here I am meeting people eager to hang out with me. Well, sort of eager at least? Travis seems eager, and no one else looks at me funny.
I walk to English lit with Mira, Lissa, and Elijah. It’s honestly nice to walk into an unknown classroom with a group, especially when Sai drops into the open desk behind me.
“This class is pretty awesome,” he says.
“English lit?” I have no idea what he’s talking about or why he suddenly seems like the hottest nerd in the world, so I just smile and shrug a little.
“We should hang out soon,” he tells me. “Exchange war stories.”
“War?”
He grins at me and I really really really hope I don’t visibly melt. Inside my brain it sounds like slosh slosh slosh. “St. Louis, war, whatever. We’ll talk.”
My mother is on time picking me up after school, which shocks me at least a little, and she has a blended mocha waiting for me in the second cup holder. “You don’t look traumatized. I take that as a good sign.”
“It was actually a totally good day. People are really nice,” I say. “How was your day?” It feels polite to ask, though I have no idea if that’s my business or not.
“Good,” she says. “Productive.”
“That’s good,” I say, as if I know what I’m talking about.
“I think Brad’s working late, so we should definitely go out tonight. And isn’t that what you’re supposed to do on first days of school? My mom always took me out.”
Something about her mentioning her mom in the context of us hits me weirdly. Maybe it does for her, too, because she’s quiet until we’re home. I have homework to get through, so I sit down in my room with it until I can’t take it anymore and pull up my email.
Of course, I don’t have a message from Sai waiting for me. What do I expect, that he’ll run home to immediately email me, when there’s now a tall, skinny blonde in the picture? (Honestly, Nicole or no Nicole, who runs home to email anyway? Besides me.)
My mother knocks on my doorway a little after six, and waits until I respond to lean into the room. Living with her isn’t like living with Tracie at all. “Dinner?”
“Sure.” I close my laptop and pick up my copy of Beowulf like I’ve been reading that and not looking up everyone from school on Facebook. (I don’t add anyone but I change out my last name for my middle name, which is a thing some people do for privacy but I’m doing it so I don’t have to explain to New City people why I’m listed as Mitchell or to Justine why it’s now Malcolm.)
“Oh, God,” she says. “English lit. I suddenly feel incredibly old.”
“It wasn’t that long ago,” I say for some idiotic reason. Feast or famine with what comes out of my mouth.
“I guess not, when you include college, too,” she says. “Trust me, it feels like a very long time ago.”
“What was your major in college?” Safe question, which means the filter is working again. Good brain.
“English. I minored in creative writing,” she says. “There were probably programs better-suited for me, but back then I was convinced I’d never leave New York.”
“I can’t believe anyone would leave New York,” I say. “Ever.”
“I needed a change,” she says. “L.A. was definitely that.”
I shrug, following her downstairs and out to her car. “I guess.”
“Dubious, I can tell.” She grins at me. “Just wait.”
No idea what to make of that, but I feel safer when she’s smiling.
“So I’m craving sushi tonight,” she says. “And you’re lucky—we live in one of the sushi capitals of L.A.”
“I’ve, um, I’ve never had it.” I restrain from adding that the very thought terrifies me.
“I wouldn’t dare lead you astray.”
I guess I’m dubious about this, too, but I keep it to myself. Plus the restaurant she drives to is beautiful, decorated in dark colors and bamboo, and just dimly lit enough to create ambiance or whatever on a bright day.
“God, sorry.” My mother digs her phone out of her bag and clicks it to answer. “Hey, what? No, Devan and I just got to Teru Sushi. Hang on.” She covers the phone with her hand. “Brad’s out earlier than expected. Should we send his codependent ass on his way or tell him to join us?”
The thing is, I do want one-on-one time with my mother. But the other thing is that one-on-one time is the quietest time ever. At least when Brad’s around, we talk.
“It’s fine if he comes,” I say. “Right?”
“Sure.” She uncovers the receiver. “Hey, yeah, meet us here. Right, I know. Yeah, yeah, you, too.”
She throws the phone back into her purse. “What do you think? Normal that he ends every damn call with I love you?”
I shrug because what do I know about that from experience or observation? “It seems nice.”
“It’s like talking to an elderly relative.” She places her hands on her hips and sighs very dramatically. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“I don’t know. Guy back in St. Louis? Guy here, magically, already? Are you one of those people?”
“No way, definitely not. And not in Missouri, either.”
“Yeah, I find dating very much overrated. Despite everything, I kind of liked that Brad was just Instant Boyfriend. Cut right through the crap.” She leans against the wall and fiddles with her hands. “For all that he annoys me, I shouldn’t complain so much. He could be making pancakes for someone much nicer than me.”
I don’t know what to say, because I know exactly what she means.
We’re still waiting for Brad when we’re seated at a back corner booth and opening up our menus. Probably based on my blank stare when my mother asks me a few obviously basic questions, she leans in next to me and nicely explains what the different sections mean and what some of the Japanese words are in English. I’m still fairly terrified of raw fish as well as her, but—weirdly enough—she makes everything sound less worrisome.
Brad shows up a few minutes later, and he slides into the booth next to my mother right before kissing her.
“Not in public,” she says, and I can tell Brad is sort of riding it out to see if she�
�s kidding or not. “How was work?”
“Fine,” he says in a way that I know it was totally not. “How was your day?”
“Productive,” she says. “Devan claims her day wasn’t awful, but I’m not sure that’s even possible on a first day of school.”
“It does seem unlikely.” He grins at me. “That’s great, if it is in fact true. Does everyone sing and dance constantly?”
“Oh, God, I meant to ask that!” My mother laughs as she flags down a waiter to place our drink order. I notice that her arm slips around Brad’s shoulder. It’s weird she has this other side, the one that explains unagi (eel, no way) and tamago (egg, not raw, so not scary), and tries to take away Brad’s less-than-fine day. I can’t connect that with the person she seems to be most of the time.
Plus, seriously, how do either one of those people go sixteen years without bothering with me at all?
After we eat, my mother and Brad bicker over who should pay for dinner. By now I’m used to the way they argue, always two steps or less away from laughing. No, I’m not included in their little routine, but the very fact that it’s routine already is somehow comforting.
“Seriously,” my mother says. “I’m paying. First of all, I’m positive you paid last time we went out, and there’s also the fact that you shouldn’t have to pay for her.”
I’m sitting right here, I think but do not say.
“Reece—”
Then they whisper back and forth while I focus all my strength on not bursting into tears.
It doesn’t make sense. One minute she could be so kind only to end up here the next. I have to figure it out, because if in her lurks the person who could ignore me for sixteen years, she has to be capable of ignoring me for sixteen more. Right?
