Five, Six, Seven, Nate!

by Tim Federle

  Oh God. Am I supposed to come up with the next clue in the list? I’m terrible at these games. Plus, I’ve got fans waiting outside.

  “P-words?” I say.

  “Nate?” I hear from the floor below Jordan’s. “What’s going on? This is ridiculous.”

  Heidi’s voice sounds more mad than confused at this point. Almost nothing can get her back from this state, unless anybody’s got spare brown sugar Pop-Tarts sitting around.

  “I gotta run, Jordan,” I say. “It was amazing of you to, like, congratulate me though.”

  “Nate, I gave you the gifts.”

  “What?”

  “The penguin drawing. The pirate bear. The Heinz ketchup. Things from Pittsburgh, like us.”

  What?

  “The orchid?” I kind of yell.

  “What about orchids,” Heidi says, pushing her way into the dressing room. “Oh. Oh, hi.”

  “Hi,” Jordan says, not even looking up. Man, he looks depressed. Like how I feel when the Tonys are preempted by a shooting in the Hill District or something.

  “Where’s your mother?” (She actually says this to Jordan.)

  “She’s at home, probably thinking I’m taking the longest bath ever,” Jordan says. Now he laughs to himself. Okay, I guess he finds some normal stuff amusing, because I’m laughing too.

  “Do you need me to call her?” Heidi says. Good for her for just sort of running with all this. I’m as baffled as she is and trying to piece together this new revelation.

  Jordan’s the gift giver?

  “Don’t bother calling her,” Jordan says. “We’re subletting around the corner. I can run home in two seconds.”

  “You look terrible,” she says.

  “You sound like my publicist,” he says. “Mom made me Skype with him tonight. They’re trying to get a human interest piece placed in the Village Voice about how shows should cancel their first previews when the star can’t go on.”

  “Nobody reads the Village Voice,” Heidi says, without thinking. That’s when I realize she’s roping me close. Holding me just like in E.T. when he’s cooped up in the metal death chamber.

  “Yeah,” Jordan says. “And who cares even if anyone did read that paper? They shouldn’t cancel previews just ’cause somebody can’t go on. Not when the understudy is as good as Nate.”

  He’s not even talking to us, he’s speaking into the floor. I’d never noticed the carpet. It’s a weird off-brown that reminds me of my pierogies. My stomach groans.

  “Let’s get to Sardi’s, buddy,” Heidi says. “You must be starving.”

  But I’ve stopped staring at the mysterious carpet and started staring at the mysterious Jordan.

  “We’re closing the theater in two minutes,” Eddie’s voice booms out.

  “Let’s go, boys,” Heidi says. “After you, Nate.”

  But it’s funny, because she runs ahead first. And then Jordan and I take a bunch of heartbeats to follow her out. And when Heidi pops into the ladies’ room on floor two, that’s when I have my chance.

  “You gave me those gifts? They weren’t from Genna?”

  “Genna?” Jordan says, blast-laughing. His tongue is yellow with cough drops.

  “Um,” I go, like an idiot.

  “No. No, Nate. I mean, I had her leave you the first note. For me. But . . . she’s chasing Keith, now. After I kind of turned her down flat.”

  Keith!

  “The orchid?” is all I can say in return.

  “I Googled your mom’s flower shop.”

  “She doesn’t have a Web site.”

  “Yeah. It took some research.”

  Heidi’s washing her hands. The sinks in the theater are a million years old, and they all splat water like hyperactive geysers. This should buy us another minute in the hallway, because she’ll have to mop up her blouse with one-ply paper towels. In fact, you can hear her swearing pretty bad right now.

  “But eventually I found a story your brother Anthony wrote online,” Jordan says. “In the school paper. About his workout regimen . . . or whatever—”

  No whatever. Regimen is exactly the word Anthony would have used.

  “—where he’d lift weights near your mom’s orchids. In your garage.”

  Jordan’s eyes brighten with each revelation, like I might be truly freaked out that he’s a stalker. I am. But it’s also wonderful.

  “I haven’t made a single friend in New York,” he blurts. “You were—you, like, are—the only person I could relate to.”

  “Please, Jordan. You’re famous. And mean. And rich.”

  “I’m not. And only kind of. And are you kidding me?”

  “Let’s go,” Heidi says, shouldering her way out of the bathroom.

  But somehow she sees that we’re talking about something. Something real. Her face changes; you can actually see the little muscles make up their minds to switch around.

  “Three minutes,” she says. “And then I meet you outside the stage door.” She’s off.

  “All I’m saying—” Jordan goes.

  “I thought you hated me.”

  “My mom hates you.”

  “Great.”

  “No—wait,” he says. “I mean, she called you the ‘confident and clueless type.’ Which she claims is more dangerous than ‘jaded and experienced.’ She wanted me to, like, intimidate you.” He rolls his eyes at this. “This whole thing . . . she set me up to take you down, Nate.”

  “Um . . . is this supposed to be a confession?”

  “No, it’s supposed to be . . . all I’m saying is that I sort of watched you in rehearsal. When I wasn’t front and center. And I thought we might be . . . maybe . . . the same.” He waves it off. “I secretly hoped we could be friends or something.”

  “You sent me a pirate bear so that we could be friends?”

  “To be fair, my mom thought I was giving that to Dewey. Same with the orchids. Which are really expensive.”

  “You didn’t even sign the cards.”

  “I didn’t want you to think it was weird,” he goes, struggling hard past a lumpy throat that’s probably one-part scratchy and one-part feelings.

  “It was weird, though,” I say.

  He bites his lip. “I didn’t want you to think I was . . . you know.”

  Oh.

  I scrunch up my face in a really over-the-top bad actor way, to show that I couldn’t possibly know what he’s referring to. But I want him to say it, so bad. I want somebody else like me to say it.

  “I didn’t want you to tell other people,” he goes. “Especially, like, if my mom found out. She’d go on and on about how a real leading man has to behave like . . . a real man.”

  “Oh.”

  He looks like he’s going to cry. He looks like he’s crying. He’s crying. He’s bawling.

  “Oh my God, Jordan. I don’t—” I look down to find my words in the linoleum stairs. “Look, it’s actually really nice, what you did.”

  The lights from three floors up shut off, clinking to darkness from a circuit breaker somewhere. Must be Eddie.

  “The penguin drawing? It’s up on my aunt’s fridge.”

  The hallways above get darker, darker, humming quieter one by one.

  “And the pirate bear? Honestly? I’ve slept with it. I sleep with it. Because my aunt doesn’t have good heat in her building.”

  “At least we’ve got heat in Pittsburgh,” Jordan goes. We both laugh. I’m still looking away. It’s like too much truth all at once.

  “And the orchid? It was really pretty, even though Garret didn’t allow it in my dressing room. In your dressing room.” I look up now. “I’m not even allowed to be near my mom’s orchids. She has names for them. Somebody asked her once, totally as a joke, if she liked her orchids more than her children—”

  Now the hallway is totally purple, darker than black. The only light peeks from around the stairwell, Eddie’s little TV, with our eyes adjusting in the bug-lamp blue.

  “—and my mom goes, �
�I don’t like to pick favorites,’ ” I say. “She literally said that. About choosing between orchids. And me.”

  “Nate?” Jordan says. It’s the smallest sound.

  “Yeah?”

  But I barely get to the Y of the Yeah before Jordan’s brushing something soft and warm, like the inside of a bagel, across my lips.

  And then I feel a boiled breath all over my cheeks. An exhale. And I’m sweet and sour and hot and cold all at the same moment. An ice cube doused in diesel.

  “Oh wow,” Jordan says. He’s far away now, backed into the wall. “Was that—I’m sorry.”

  Doused in diesel and lit on fire.

  “I didn’t,” I say. Because I didn’t. “I don’t,” I say. Because I don’t.

  “Me either,” he goes.

  “I’ve never had—I’ve never done that.”

  “Me either,” he goes.

  I have, actually.

  I did it to Libby. With Libby? But not for real. Not for real because it didn’t mean what this meant. It wasn’t actual. It was like when you have Sweet’n Low instead of sugar. But then afterward it’s bitter.

  “Whoa.”

  It’s not bitter now. It’s weird and different and foreign and disorganized. It’s not bitter. It’s incredible.

  “Let’s get out of here,” one of us says.

  There’s a thing, a true thing we learned about in Spanish, where people can wake up after a traumatic head injury and suddenly speak another language. Word for word. In perfect sentences. Languages from countries the person’s never even heard of. That’s this.

  I want to stand on a roof in Jankburg and go: “Look! I didn’t get struck by lightning.”

  I want to tell everyone.

  “We shouldn’t—” I start.

  “—tell anyone,” Jordan says, completing my sentence.

  Except, no. “Oh. I was actually going to say that we shouldn’t kiss by the stairs. In case we lose our footing.”

  And then: happy adult voices, suddenly. “So we’ll start at the top of two, and work through.” Loud ones too.

  We grab the railing and hang our heads over, watching the production staff passing Eddie, on their way to meet Garret and Monica for filthy martinis, or whatever they’re called.

  Dewey follows last, even after the P.A.’s and the assistant lighting designer and a janitor. He looks like he was left totally out of the discussion after the show.

  “Dewey!” I call, letting my face catch in the cast-off TV light. He stops.

  “Who is that?”

  “Troublemakers,” Eddie says, turning down the game and putting on a big camouflage coat. We gotta get out of here. I bet Eddie hunts kids in his off-hours.

  “It’s Nate,” I say, stepping into the little glow. Dewey shields his face to see me.

  “Oh,” he says. “Wow. Hey.” He looks so tired. So broken by what should be, like, the best night of his life.

  “I didn’t see you after the show,” I say. “And I . . . um . . . I just wanted to say thank you.”

  “For what?” he says, laughing. “According to everyone, E.T. is a hit in spite of my worst efforts.”

  “I heard it was amazing tonight, actually,” I say.

  “Oh yeah?” Dewey goes. “Stay off the Internet. Believe me. You can lose an entire month reading your reviews on Amazon.”

  “No, not the Internet,” I go. “I don’t have a smartphone.”

  Dewey laughs again. “Maybe I’ll get you one for opening night. I haven’t decided on the cast gift yet. I was just told I should have given out first preview cards tonight. But apparently I’m the last to know everything about etiquette.” Here, he sort of picks his nose.

  “All I’m saying,” I say, loud enough for it to travel backward, “is that somebody really cool saw the show, and told me in person how amazing it was. Even the video parts. All of your parts. Your vision.”

  Dewey takes a big breath. “That’s nice, Nate. Thank you.” He pulls out his phone. “Here, I’m sending your info to my assistant.”

  “Calvin?” (Please, Calvin knows my name. Calvin is my secret weapon!)

  “No, my assistant from the world in which I actually know what I’m talking about,” Dewey says. “He’s in California. He’ll hook you up with a new smartphone. For free.”

  Come to think of it, Jordan’s got a pretty old phone too. “Make it two,” I say.

  Dewey grunts. “Should I get you a tea while I’m at it?”

  “Nah,” I go, channeling Libby’s timing. “Who do you think I am? Garret?”

  Jordan laughs in the dark.

  “Who is that? Is somebody else up there?”

  I don’t know what to say—does Jordan want to be seen? So I just get quiet.

  “Too long of a day,” Dewey says, shaking his head. “Get some sleep. You’re on again tomorrow night. Oh—and we’re stealing the bit where you almost kneed E.T. in the nuts. We’ll make sure to teach that to Jordan.”

  He shuffles away into the cold outside.

  And you know what? Those fans are still out there. Because you can hear them sigh in unison. Sighing that he’s not me, I just know it. They don’t even realize he’s the director.

  “I’m sorry you had to hear that,” I say to Jordan.

  “What? About kneeing E.T.? It was hilarious. I was going to steal it anyway.”

  “Ha,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “You go first,” Jordan says. “I’ll hide behind you and run home.” He wraps his ears into the scarf, and looks like a little pierogi.

  Eddie hacks up a lung and flips off the TV.

  “Friggin’ kids.”

  The blue around us is gone, replaced with an emergency exit red.

  “I’m locking up,” Eddie announces to nobody at all.

  “Jordan?”

  “Yeah?” he goes.

  “I don’t think we should feel bad about it.” In fact—“I’m going to tell my best friend.”

  He doesn’t say anything, so I just say it again: “I’m going to tell Libby we did that. She’ll be cool.”

  Jordan steps forward, and it scares me, his face flickering a cast-off crimson. “Okay?” he says. And then: “Okay,” again—and this time he means it.

  And we rush past Eddie, before he can draw his rifle and hunt the two of us. Just Nate. Just Jordan.

  Just two normal boys, fleeing their stage door in one vacuum-packed whoosh, greeted by an army of girls—and a couple boys—all screaming their brains out. Somebody takes an iPhone photo, and then everyone does, and Aunt Heidi has somehow found an upended crate and is standing in the back of the crowd, documenting the whole scene on her Nikon. I guess she found it after all.

  And somebody yells NATE!

  And somebody yells ELLIOTT!

  And I couldn’t have done any of this tonight if I hadn’t been cut from every number, and sat out on the sidelines, and studied Jordan doing it all before I had to. Got to.

  And just when he ducks out to run home, I grab his scarf and spin him back to me, and I toss the pierogies to Aunt Heidi, and I hand Jordan the silver Sharpie.

  “You sign first.”

  What Just Happened

  “Are you playing Elliott now?” a girl asks (I think).

  “Can you sign underneath your photo?” another one does (I think).

  “Will you take a picture with us?” a boy says (I think).

  It’s hard to keep up with. It’s fantastic. It’s disorienting. I’m mostly thinking about What Just Happened. About Jordan running ahead after signing just one program, escaping into the alley, back to his Mommy. No—to his mom.

  I wonder what’s he’s thinking right now. If he’s as nervous—as hyped up—as I am.

  “Did you replace Jordan?” somebody calls out, and that finally breaks my spell.

  “No!” I shout. I must be really screaming, because a mother pulls her daughter back, and another kid starts to cry even, I think. “No, Jordan’s really awesome. You all have t
o come back and see him in the show!”

  “I already have tickets to four performances in March,” says a girl in a Spring Awakening hat. She is holding an actual house cat, swear to God.

  “Cool,” I go, shivering.

  Heidi is snapping pictures, and I’m trying to greet everyone who stuck around so long for me, but my Sharpie hand is cramping. No matter. I hate writing longform but will make exceptions for autographs.

  “Do you have a fan page!” a girl hollers.

  A fan page. I don’t. Not anything like that.

  “Nope, ma’am,” I manage.

  The girl is probably nine, but I call her ma’am. It’s just that I don’t have a fan page and so it kind of knocks me over, the question.

  In fact, last year somebody created a Nate Fagster page on Facebook. Believe it or not, a hundred people Liked it in the first twenty minutes, and then Libby and I filed a complaint with Facebook and they took it down.

  But still, somebody in my grade took a screen shot of that hate-page, where somebody else had uploaded the photo of my very worst school portrait. My eyes were blinking. I wore an unstrategic striped shirt that made me look a million pounds. My world-famous underbite was sticking out as far as it possibly could, making even the photographer recoil in horror.

  And so even after the Nate Fagster page was taken down, people spread that photo around, and it went kind of mini-viral. Like a cough that never becomes a total infection but still keeps you home.

  Libby pulled me aside in the cafeteria and showed me the photo on her iPhone, because everyone in the world has an iPhone, except for me and Jordan and Anthony (who has a Droid and might be getting an iPad). “You’re not going to like this, Natey,” Libby said.

  She was right. I not liked it so much that I not went to class the rest of the day.

  Mom didn’t understand. “It’s just a photo, it’s not even real. It’s on a Web page site.” She said all of this while bathing her little dog, Tippy, in our kitchen sink. She never cleans the sink out afterward, by the way—which is why, so often, our dinner salads smell like wet mutt. Not that we have salad that often. Not that we eat as a family.

  “Well, we’re going to make a fan page for you!” a girl squeals. I must look her dead in the eye in a way she’s never been looked at before, because her friends giggle, and she sort of turns in on herself.