by Tim Federle
“Well I for one think it’s all poppycock,” says an alto. Altos always have funny words for things, especially this one, a British woman who just got her green card. (According to a conversation I overheard the other day. While pretending to be interested in a new game Keith was showing me on his iPhone.) “I will feel silly singing fly when not a single soul is even in the air.”
I know what these people are doing. They’re bullying Dewey. I can spot it a mile away. Or a foot away, which is usually where a bully’s taunts are in proximity to my ears.
“You know what, guys?” I say. One of my vocal cords looks at the other one, like, What are you doing? And yet: “I think maybe we should just do it.”
Dewey looks at me and swallows.
“I mean. What have we got to lose? Everyone’s trying, like, their hardest. And we might as well just learn our new parts because, like. We just should.” This is my version of a pep talk. Yet another reason I’ll never be a gym teacher. “We just should,” I say again, changing the emphasis. Doesn’t seem to help.
“Good God,” some adult whispers.
“I’ll say,” somebody else not-whispers.
“Thank you, Jake,” Dewey says.
“It’s Nate,” Keith mutters.
“Right,” Dewey says. “Right. Nate.”
“If the kid wants to sing fly so badly,” says Asella, making a giant show of looking at her giant-for-Asella watch, “why don’t you just give it to the kid?”
Wait . . . what? “Oh, that’s okay,” I say, holding up my music. “It says here sopranos.”
“You got this, Nate,” Keith says. “Nate can totally twerk this out.” Keith’s words are as alien as E.T.’s.
“You wanna try it as a solo, Nate?” Sammy says.
“Nate, Nate, Nate,” a chubby alto tries. She’s never said my name before but is suddenly caught up in the action.
“Foster for Prez!” Hollie blurts.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, because I really don’t.
“Well, it can’t hurt,” Sammy says. “Since nobody else seems willing to sing it.”
“I’d try it,” the British alto says. She understudies the Mom role and is forever looking for standout opportunities. “I’d gladly try it as a solo. I didn’t realize it was a solo.”
“You’re an alto, Melba,” Sammy says. “Give it a shot, Nate. This is your chance to shine on the cast album.”
Um.
“Say that again,” I say, or my thoughts do.
“The cast album. The original cast album.”
“You didn’t know we’re recording a cast album?” Keith says. He’s chewing gum so toxic green, it burns my eyes when I look at him. But maybe I’m just crying a little. “You always record the cast album right after opening night.”
“Always,” Genna says. She is looking right at me, and playing with her hair.
“I guess I didn’t—I guess I hadn’t heard that confirmed.”
Libby and I dreamed of it, the chance for my voice to forever be captured in cast-album glory, available for illegal ten-cent download. But to hear it spoken aloud. . . .
“I’d love to try the solo,” I say, standing.
“Whoa, he’s standing,” a tenor says.
“Great,” Sammy goes. “Okay, measure forty-five, you’re doing the oohs.”
“The part that switches to dotted eighth notes?”
I’m no expert at music terms, but I’ve picked up on the biggies, having recorded every one of these vocal rehearsals on Heidi’s old tape recorder. You bet I sleep with her earbuds glued in every night, blasting the day’s rehearsals back to me. Sometimes I wake up hearing a high-pitched buzz, and it’s not even my alarm.
“Dotted eighth notes,” Sammy confirms. “You got it.”
“Three minutes till lunch,” Kiana the stage manager calls out.
Asella goes, “Let’s get on with it, then. And breathe, kid. This isn’t American Idol.” She turns to April, beside her: “Nobody knows how to support their voices anymore.”
She isn’t wrong. Libby and I lose our voices during every sleepover we belt our way through. But still. I’ve got this. I can hit any note if it’s just one time. That’s why I always sing the Tarzan call at the end of “Defying Gravity” when Libby and I trade off on Elphaba and Glinda.
“Here we go,” Sammy says, plunking the intro.
In this section, Elliott sings, “Gotta get to the woods before Mom finds out.” And his brother Michael answers—stupidly, it’s a stupid lyric—“Gotta get outta here ’fore E.T. starts to shout.” And the ensemble sings oohs and aahs underneath. I’ve practiced it a bajillion times.
And so naturally I come in perfectly on time with my oohs. This would be an ideal moment to latch on to my rabbit foot for strength, but Libby needs it more than I do. So I quickly touch the penguin cartoon in my pocket, the drawing from Genna. (A boy on a soprano solo needs all the luck he can get—even if he’s relying on the wrong animal.)
The music rumbles louder, louder.
“Keep those oohs going!” Sammy shouts.
“Breathe!” Asella screams, standing on her chair and pointing to her stomach, as if she holds a reserve of oxygen I can borrow.
“In bar fifty-four,” Sammy says, his mouth frothing, “instead of the aahs, sing flyyyyyyyyy.”
“Breathe!” the entire tenor section says in unison.
“Go, boy,” Keith shouts. “Get it.”
I go. I get it. I get to fifty-four and do just as I’ve been told. “Fly” is no problem—it’s a wide open vowel, easy to just let your jaw go and scream it out. And heck, this word makes perfect sense to me in the context of the scene. Of course we’re not telling E.T. to literally fly away; we’re foreshadowing. Maybe this is a great lyric, if I get to sing it on a cast album.
And we’re approaching that great lyric now.
“Flyyyyyy!” I sing, my voice filling the room like a tidal wave of melted caramel.
Or, no. Not at all.
“Flyyyyyy!” I go to sing. But don’t. Because something goes haywire. Worse than haywire. Hay-on-fire-wire.
Just as I’ve come to totally believe in this lyric rewrite—making the F with my lips, the L with my tongue—my voice trips on itself. Cracking in half. Shattering like every record Anthony ever beat in swim class.
I try to sing Flyyyyyy, but it comes out, fl-hack-hack-hack.
Sammy stops playing.
Dewey stops smiling.
“Actors, you’re on lunch.”
(I went to Broadway and all I got was this lousy voice change.)
And my heart stops beating.
Stairwell Races and You Won’t Believe Who Wins
(Two weeks and six days till first preview)
The back stairwell beckons. Kids like me always know about hidden stairwells, and I slip into its cement-lined chamber, with eight floors of steps and no windows in sight. Just the jail cell in the sky an idiot like me deserves, sentenced to a life of one low voice and no parts to play.
Who’s going to cast me as Inspector Javert?
“Oh God,” I say, pacing, hiding. Everyone’s off to lunch but I’m too nauseated to eat. Instead I’m clutching my phone, calling Libby but not getting a signal. (There’s no such thing as reception in prison.)
“You okay?” I hear. This lady from another show at our rehearsal studio is taking the stairs to the lobby. “Are you waiting for your parents?”
“No,” I say, instinctively hunching over, which is what animals do in the wild when they don’t want people to see them crying. “I just lost my contact. And I’m looking for it. My contact.” Smooth, Nate.
“Okay,” the lady goes, heading past and then stopping. “Do you need help looking?”
“Please, no,” I say. “Honestly. I just need some space.”
“Suit yourself,” she says, bounding away. I wish I could suit myself. If I could suit myself, all my waistbands would be made of elastic. Then, I wouldn’t be so constantly reminde
d of my pear-shaped body, which hasn’t even decided which fruit it’s going to turn into. Who knows if I’m overweight or not? What does overweight mean if you haven’t stopped growing? I’m a genius weight—practically stick thin—for a six-foot-tall guy, which I may very well become if my body echoes my changing voice.
“Oh God, my voice,” I say, sitting on a stair.
“It’s not such a bad voice.”
I look up. “Oh.” Ugh. “Hey.”
“Hello there, soprano soloist.”
“Aren’t you on lunch, Asella?”
“Aren’t you a little spitfire, Nate? Or is it Jake?”
She sits next to me, putting a bag down and pulling out a banana. Grown-ups are forever eating fruit.
“Ha. It’s Nate. But maybe I should just change it to Jake. Or not even have a name. Maybe I should just go by Anonymous Foster.”
“Anonymous Foster sounds like a speakeasy,” Asella says, peeling back the banana and taking a big chomp. “You turned all sorts of colors when your voice cracked, back there.”
She hasn’t spoken two words to me the whole rehearsal period. It’s like now that I’m officially a loser, I’m safe territory. Anybody could feel good around me.
“That wasn’t a voice crack, Asella. That was a voice fail. That was a voice . . . kaboom.”
“I coach people on voice, you know.”
“I didn’t know. I’m not surprised. I overheard you singing all the E.T. songs.” (You and you alone, I might add.)
“Yes, well.” She yacks up a piece of banana. “It’s paying the bills. And it better. I got a lotta bills.”
A group of dancers from another show moves between us, but we keep talking.
“You know what you could use?” Asella says.
“A good baritone solo?” I say, picking off the end of my shoelace.
“Exercise,” she says, throwing the banana into her bag. “Come on, let’s take the stairs to the lobby. I’ll race you.”
Great, another adult hounding me about cardio. Plus: racing a little person is like asking a toddler to do a counting contest to a hundred. There’s no way I won’t beat . . . oh, wait, Asella’s already ten feet ahead of me.
“Come on, kid,” she says, “let’s burn off some of that embarrassment.”
“Why are you talking to me?” I shout. “This is freaking me out.” Except picture all that with more gasping and the nagging whap of my bookbag slamming my lower back every third step.
“Because I need some help,” Asella says, spinning like a dust cloud ahead of me. “And I think you might be the guy.”
I bang my elbow into a stair rail, groan Bobbi Boland under my breath (closed in previews; starred an old-timey blonde called Farrah Fawcett), and genuinely try to catch up with Asella. Man, this lady is like a can of Jolt wearing spectacles and Keds. “Why do you need my help?”
“Look,” she says, putting on the brakes without warning (reminds me of Mom in the Caravan). I nearly trip over Asella on the landing between floors two and three, proud of myself for almost beating her. She’s breathing hard and practically panting. “I’ve got bad news and good news and then more bad news and then potential good news.” Her cheeks puff like pillowcases on a drying line.
“O . . . kay.”
“Which should I start with?”
“I don’t know. I got confused.”
Asella leans against the wall and removes a shoe, jabbing her knuckles into a bunion that looks remarkably like Lyndon B. Johnson (I did a report on him). “Okay, bad news first.”
I crouch and take a deep breath.
“Listen,” she says. “Jordan’s mom is refusing to let him do this ridiculous outdoor promo unless I’m there playing E.T.”
She pauses to let that sink in. It sinks in.
“What?”
“His mom thinks I’ll make him look good. She’s nervous. It’s just because I’m old.”
I feel the blood rush from my face and swirl around my empty belly, which babbles in protest. “What are you talking about?”
“But listen, kid. There’s someplace I’ve really gotta be that morning.”
I thought she had bills to pay. “What could be so important that you’d skip a whole extra paycheck?”
“Oh, kid, it’s boring stuff. Grown-up stuff. Small-claims-court, my-ex-husband-wants-custody-of-my-beloved-dog, not-over-my-small-dead-body stuff.”
Whoa. “Oh.”
“Besides. They just want me to stand there while Jordan sings, which I find kind of insulting. E.T. is the title role. It ain’t called Elliott: The Musical.”
Hear, hear! But still: “And Mackey isn’t doing the event because of, what, something about his contract?”
“Well, who knows with Mackey,” Asella says, rolling her eyes and pulling out an apple. The lady has an entire produce section in there. “He’s a loose cannon. Hasn’t been onstage in years. He’s a little unpredictable, Nate, and that’s what the media is reporting, if you’re keeping tabs.” She waits for me to answer, and appears to realize I’m not keeping tabs: “Garret and Dewey were very split-down-the-middle on hiring Mackey.”
My God. Maybe Garret wanted to hire . . . me.
“Garret wanted to hire me,” Asella says, side-eyeing me.
“But Dewey won out,” I say, “and Mackey got the role instead.”
“Mackey doesn’t do events. But they’re hoping he’ll pull in the video game audience, once we open.” She laughs.
Turns out Mackey starred in a bunch of Dewey’s games, donning a motion-capture suit to play an owl and a dancing bush and a warlock, and everything. He was recently named Motion-Capture Actor of the Decade, according to Keith. Mackey is somewhat of a celebrity among normal boys my age.
“Your forehead is sweaty,” Asella says. “It was only four flights of stairs,” she has the nerve to add.
“It’s not the stairs. It’s that . . . flipping Jordan, who has the gall to take this opportunity away from me.”
“Yes. Boys will be boys—even if his mother is leading the charge. Here’s the thing: I—I just can’t be there. And I assume you’re dying to do the event.”
Close. I’m living for it. For it and it alone. “I guess.”
“So how about we make a trade,” she says. She takes a bite of the apple, frowns at it like it’s a fruit, and leads me downstairs after folding it into a napkin. “We’ll stick you in the E.T. costume, say it’s me, and you’ll get all the glory. After we split the cash.”
I chuckle, here. “You’re crazy! I’ll get in total trouble. I’ll get, like, Broadway-grounded.”
“No you won’t. I’ve known Roscoe for years.” She does seem chummy with stage management. “He couldn’t care less about rules.” She stops just after we exit into the lobby, launching into a conspiratorial whisper: “We toured together in the second national of Show Boat, and let me tell you: I’ve got photos of Roscoe at a bar in Reno that’ll have him doing favors for me until Wicked closes.”
“Wicked’s closing?” I say, or scream.
“Relax. It’s an expression.”
Hollie and Keith are just leaving the building, probably having stayed upstairs to hang out with Monica in the choreography lounge. She loves those two, constantly trying out new steps and trading secrets, like she’s one of the kids. It’s infuriating: I’m not even one of the kids, and I’m literally one of the kids.
“You wish Monica would invite you into the cool club, huh?” Asella says. Apparently I’m staring at Hollie and Keith. Especially Keith.
“Oh. You noticed?”
“Listen. Some kids rely on natural talent,” she says, popping her chin at the two wonder-teens. “And some kids”—here, she whomps me across the shoulder—“work their buns off for a scrap of glory.”
Not fast enough. My buns have actually gotten buns-ier since getting to New York. All those street hot dogs. “You said there was a trade. So let’s say I do the event . . .”
“I need something from you, Nate.�
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“Anything,” I want to shout. But I recall this one time when Libby negotiated a lower pizza price after Papa John’s ran out of mushrooms, and so I just go: “I’m listening.”
“Kid, I can’t keep up with all these script changes.”
Asella drops her bookbag, zipping open the top chamber. Sure enough, behind an entire pineapple and a jar of travel-size Metamucil, Asella’s binder is spilling pages like a murderee’s guts.
“Listen, I’ve been away from the theater for ten years. Thank God for guest spots on Law & Order, may it rest in peace.”
Man, would I love to be on TV! Nate: The TV Experience, in 3-D even. Unless my zits would overwhelm viewers.
“And on TV, you get one take down and the director yells, ‘cut,’ and you never have to remember the lines again.”
The nameless guardian zooms past us in the lobby, trailing after Keith and Hollie. “Nate, we couldn’t find you upstairs. Are you taking him out to lunch, Asella?”
“Sure,” Asella says, flashing the fake dummy-smile of a ventriloquist act. “I adore kids.”
The door slams and she turns back to me, her smile disintegrating like a box of Cracker Jacks around yours truly.
“Listen,” she says. “Every lunch break. You and me. Till previews start. I need a scene partner, somebody to run the E.T. lines with me so I’m up to speed. At any moment, I could have to fill in for Mackey.” She shivers at the thought.
This is unreal. Asella sounds just the way I did when I first begged Libby to coach me in acting. I’d seen Libby, then a brand-new student to my school, bribe her way out of a History test, claiming the phrase “French and Indian War” was so racially insensitive, she was feeling light-headed. And I remember thinking: I need to know this girl.
“So you want me to just . . . read the other parts?” I say. “Opposite E.T.?”
“Sure. I’ve watched you in those rehearsals up there, Nate. You’re always beating yourself up. You’re always taking the blame. I like that in a scene partner.”
