by Tim Federle
“Thanks, kiddo,” Libby says. “What have you prepared for us?”
“I thought I’d take a stab at Miss Havisham,” the girl says, naming the part you’d put Meryl Streep in if you wanted awards recognition. She’s the crazed old cat lady with the adoptive daughter. She’s meaty. She’s the lead. She’s basically exactly what I promised the coach I’d give his niece, who stands before us now with the approximate innocence of a toddler in the middle of rush-hour traffic.
And I bellow, “Terrific!” right as Libby says, “The central female role, eh?”
And because Libby’s sentence is longer, she wins, and I want to push my chair away from the table and into a hole.
“I mean, I thought I’d try?” says the girl, and I catch her name on the sign-in sheet—Paige, an old-fashioned name for a girl reading an old part.
“Go for it, Paige,” I say, and Libby shoots me an Are you running this audition or am I? look. And Paige, God love her, goes: “Please: Call me Miss Havisham,” and winks.
I giggle, but Libby snorts.
Paige closes her eyes and shakes her head back and forth a couple times like she’s going to wrestle an animal for money. And then she opens her copy of Great Expectations to the middle, and I can see she’s highlighted a part to read, and it really moves me. I know what it feels like to not have the chance at something, before you even speak.
“So proud, so proud, moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey hair with both her hands,” Paige says, and she’s moaning, and she’s pushing her hair away, and Libby holds up her hand like they do on televised talent competitions to signal they’ve had enough. “Just great,” Libby says, “great.”
And Paige goes, “G-great?” Because in six seconds, greatness is hard to tell, unless you’re listening to the Newsies album.
“Are you willing to dye your hair grey?” Libby says, but not in a mean way. “For the show?”
“I mean . . . wow? I guess?”
Libby pops gum and waits it out.
“I mean . . . sure!”
“There we go,” Libby says, and Paige giggles like you do when you want to die, and pushes her definitely-not-grey hair behind her ears. She’s the kind of kid whose ears still aren’t pierced. She’s pure as heck.
“If you’re willing to go grey, the part is yours.”
I can barely believe it. This is . . . so easy. Toooo easy?
“Thank you, for real!” Paige yells, and approaches the desk to hug us.
I leap up to hug her back (duh), but Libby remains planted in her chair, and simply shakes Paige’s hand like they’re a pair of female senators who are only nice to each other to further the women’s movement.
When Paige leaves, Libby yells, “Mom, will you tell the next kid to hold on just a second!” and her mom goes, “Sure!” from the top of the stairs.
I’m about to blurt out, “Paige is really solid, right? Like a total natural!” when Libby goes, “That oughtta make the coach happy, right?”
And if Libby had right then turned into forty baby eels, I’d probably be less surprised.
“You did promise the role to the coach, no?”
“How did you—”
“I know everything, Nate. While you were busy learning the ins and outs of Broadway, I was nailing my freshman psych class. I’ve got a B-plus in mental gymnastics. Practically an A, if you round up.”
She taps her head, twice, and says: “From now on, we share all decisions about the show, up front. Especially the sneaky ones. You’re semi-famous now. Everything you do spreads through the school like fire. Or lice. Or lice on fire.”
I realize I’m sitting on my hand and that it’s gone tingly. So I shake it out, and nod my head too.
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
And this time when we fist-bump, it’s just right.
“Okay, Ma!” Libby yells, dumping the plate of oranges into a garbage can and pulling out a Snickers. “Send in the next kid.”
Poor Connection Quality
One thing I learned today is that if you’re going to write your upcoming-first-day-of-rehearsal speech on your phone, you should hold it under your desk instead of out in the open.
“Mr. Foster, I appreciate your enthusiasm for the project.” This is Mr. English, pulling me aside after class. Yet again. “But it won’t do you much good to get an A on your play but flunk the rest of English class. That’s still failing.”
“It’s a musical,” I want to say, but instead I channel my best actor self and pretend like what he just said is a beautiful piece of poetry. “Mr. English,” I say, nodding my head a bunch, “that makes a whole lot of sense.”
“So we’re good?” he says, and I say, “We’re good, but—” and he sighs and turns back around and drops a stack of papers on the corner of his desk. A paper I sort of forgot was due today, hence my being kept after class.
“But?”
“But this project is a big deal to me.” I hold up my phone. “This speech? That I’ve written, to say to my cast at the first rehearsal this coming weekend? I’m pouring my whole heart into it, and honestly, I wouldn’t be writing it if it weren’t for your English class, and—”
“Very moving, Mr. Foster,” he says, retrieving the stack of papers and fanning them absentmindedly. He’s got the look on his face of a grown-up when they’re thinking of a tropical destination where no children are allowed. “But unfortunately, I’m not able to grade a speech that’s stuck on your phone. So, unless that’s a speech about how adverbs ruin otherwise good pieces of writing, a paper that was due twenty-five minutes ago, leave it out of my class.”
He pulls out his own phone, sits down, and begins typing.
“What are—are you texting someone right now?” I say, shocked. Appalled! We’re having a conversation.
“Yes,” he says, throwing his feet up on his desk. “It’s after class. This is the appropriate time to be playing on your phone.” And he waves me off.
* * *
There’s a big ancient bathroom stall on the third floor of the school, behind a strange failure of a planetarium (halfway through construction in the mid-nineties, the school board ran out of money, so they turned it into a teachers’ napping room). Anyway, no kid ever comes to this stall because who wants to do three sets of stairs if you don’t have to, but I’m hiding in here during a free period, and going over my first-day-of-rehearsal speech, and it dawns on me that a good audience to try it out on is Jordan.
Also, I miss his face.
My FaceTime call doesn’t go through, it just rings and rings, when Jordan texts me: “Gimme 2, I’m going back to my trailer.”
And, like, great, right? Jordan is calling me from a TV-set trailer and I’m in a bathroom stall. The glamour of a long-distance relationship!
My side rings. I let it go two times, enough not to seem overly excited.
“Jordy!” I say, “surprised” to be hearing from him.
He flops down on a tiny couch in his big trailer, and goes, “Are you ready?” and I think, “For what?” but don’t say it, because I want him to always think that yes, I’m ready, for anything.
He angles his phone to a gigantic bleeding gash in his forehead.
I’m screaming.
“It’s just makeup!” he says, but I’m still screaming. The bathroom stall turns into a haunted house, echoing my own shout off the walls and back at me in horror-movie surround sound.
“It’s so realistic!”
“Well, if it isn’t clear, I die in this episode,” Jordan says, super casual, now chewing on ice. If he ruins those perfect teeth, his mother and I will kill him.
On the metal maroon bathroom stall wall, I see a scratched piece of graffiti—Mr. English sucks—that looks like it’s a hundred years old; like he’s been teaching here for centuries, and that maybe this bathroom really is old enough to be haunted. I reach out and run my finger over the graffiti, and it’s so rusted out and sharp that it almost hurts.
“Bu
t don’t worry,” I hear, and look back, and Jordan has set his phone down against the dressing mirror to futz with a little curl on the end of his hair. I love that curl. “They bring me back in two episodes and apparently I have a monologue as a ghost that my manager predicts could get Emmys buzz.”
“Oh!” I say, trying my best not to eye-roll/snort. “That’s why I was calling. I’m practicing a speech. Not as a ghost, ha-ha. As, ya know, me.”
Jordan’s eyes flick over and I hear an adult come into his conversation, and then he says to me, “Make it quick, I’m back on set in two minutes.”
He pauses for a sec, and tilts his head, and goes, “Hey, I miss you, by the way.”
He misses me.
Hey.
He misses me.
By the way.
Hey, he misses me, by the way. A boy with a curl like that misses me.
I want to pull out a penny and scratch Jordan doesn’t suck in graffiti in this stall, or on my bicep, if I had a bicep. I suddenly see the appeal of having a tattoo—he said he misses me. I’d love that in permanent ink.
“Gee, don’t say you miss me back or anything!” he goes, taking a swig of soda. And I go, “No, I totally do! It’s just, I’m, like, distracted. This is my only free period and I’m just waiting for a teacher to barge in on me.”
Jordan gets up and smoothes back his eyebrows in the mirror. “So,” he says, “are you gonna do your first-day-of-whatever speech for me?”
“You have to run,” I say, brushing it off, “so maybe later.” I don’t want to ruin the mood or the moment or the missing-me.
“Nate,” he goes, pulling on an uncharacteristically Jordan hoodie. Must be a costume for his death scene. “Just gimme the gist.”
“The gist?” I look up, to try and see the speech in my head. “The gist is: Welcome to the first day of rehearsal. Prepare to work really hard. And if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll meet a great friend here . . . or something even more.”
I’m trying so hard to send little Nate-waves of flirtation energy through the screen—but I’m getting this annoying Poor Connection Quality message on my phone. All I can hear is, “Nate? I can’t hear you, if you’re talking. Natey?”
I’m yelling Yes! back, but he’s not hearing me.
“I gotta run!”
Poor Connection Quality. Poor Connection Quality.
Poor Connection Quality.
One, Two, Three—Improv!
On Broadway, we have “bagel meet and greets.” It’s for the first day of rehearsal, when the producer supplies carb platters, and everyone stands around drinking orange juice or coffee (which I’ve heard is growth-stunting), and pretending not to be nervous, and “accidentally” spouting out their extensive résumés to each other.
Libby and I decided we’d do donuts and water for our first rehearsal. We’re also announcing who got cast in what part—so vast, unchecked amounts of sugar should help offset any heartbreak. That’s the theory, anyway.
The kids arrive to Libby’s basement in small groups, some carpooling, some riding over and leaving their bikes on Libby’s front lawn. It’s that kind of neighborhood. No one’s gonna steal your bike.
You’d think people would be super loud at a first rehearsal, talking a mile a minute as they make the loop down Libby’s spiral staircase. But nah. It’s pretty silent.
Then Libby’s mom brings out the donuts and it’s like a Christmas party, it gets so hyper.
Everyone’s going to town when I realize we’re already six minutes after the hour—that’s no way to run a rehearsal!—so Libby clears her voice, steps up onto a chair, and says: “Look at our amazing cast! Just look at you!”
In New York, people would burst into applause, at this point, but here they just murmur-laugh.
She double-bops her eyebrows at me and says, “I believe our director has a little something he’d like to say, to kick us off into our journey.” I’m proud of her, because I taught her that on Broadway, when words fail you, you just mention your “journey” and people nod.
“Um!” I say, like an idiot. My knee starts to vibrate and I can picture it burrowing a hole into her carpet, so I lift my leg and shake it out, like I’m some kind of athlete. And before I can launch into my welcome speech, Libby has rerouted this journey, and is giving a speech of her own.
“As your producer,” she says, now stepping off the chair and onto her old pine coffee table, “it’s my job to make sure there’s no big bumps on the way to opening night.”
A semi-random girl yells, “I already know I have to miss next weekend’s rehearsal because of my cousin’s Bar Mitzvah!” and this creates a small uproar that is difficult to tone down.
That’s when I notice Ben Mendoza—the homeroom boy in the hat, with “zero talent” according to Mrs. Mendoza—slink in, from Libby’s kitchen upstairs, the last to arrive.
Which isn’t so weird. There’s always somebody late to rehearsal. Always.
The weird part is: We didn’t cast Ben. As in: He didn’t show up to audition last week.
“People,” Libby says, clapping, “people.”
I’m three bites into what I call a “thinking donut”—the kind that’s dusted with so much sugar, it actually jump-starts the best areas of your brain—when Libby says, “So, Nate, like I said, is there anything you’d like to say to your loud, beautiful cast?”
From the crowd comes the heckling of a six-foot-tall freshman boy who, back in middle school, would have called me a mean name here. Instead, he appears to have butterflied himself into an artist, while I was away—high school really is different—and he goes: “C’mon, Broadway boy!” in a purposefully goofy voice that makes two of the girls who I’ve heard haven’t had their first kiss yet laugh too hard.
“Thanks, Libby.” I wave at her, up there on the coffee table with her hands on her hips. “I’m gonna stay down here where it’s safe.”
Nobody laughs.
Somebody’s phone goes off and somebody else coughs, and I pull open my iPhone speech to read. But in my sweaty haste, my big dumb thumb highlights the entire paragraph and deletes the thing in three seconds flat.
One, two, three—improv!
“So, here’s the thing, as your director,” I say, punting. I slowly turn like I’m the world’s most theatrical chicken rotisserie. There is nothing quite like eighteen kids staring at you expectantly to make you need to pee and puke at the same time. On Broadway, I wouldn’t bat my eyes at two thousand strangers staring me down. Here it’s different. You don’t have an orchestra pit between you, as a buffer.
“I know better than maybe anyone what it’s like to not always get the part you want. And I know how weird it is to put on makeup and to, like, try to balance schoolwork with rehearsals.”
“Just skip the schoolwork!” some kid yells, trying to kiss the director’s butt. That’d be me. Whose butt they’re all kissing.
It is fantastic.
“What I don’t know, though”—I catch Libby’s eyes here, and they are wide like I’m a scary movie with no ending—“is what it’s like to be you. So, bring what’s special about you to your part. Ya know?”
One of the less-bright upperclassman boys shouts, “I just learned how to juggle!” and I’m about to say, “That could be useful!” when Libby butts in with, “Different show, but we love the effort,” squeezing my shoulder as if to say, “Was that your speech?”
“So let’s announce the cast, after that stirring intro from Nate!” Libby exclaims.
I see him again, Ben, fidgeting with his hat and sneaking a couple spare donuts into his bookbag. Frankly, I admire the petty crime. It makes me miss Times Square.
Libby runs through the cast list announcement with such energy that nobody has time to be heartbroken or particularly happy, either.
“The role of Compeyson,” Libby says, taking her shoes off and tossing them into the corner of the room, “which is written to be for a man—and is, of course, our main antagonist, a criminal mastermin
d who leaves Miss Havisham at the altar!—will be played by Rebecca G.! Because screw the patriarchy and girls can be villains too.”
Rebecca G. looks stunned, but two of her friends offer her the kind of side-hugs you give someone when you don’t want to mess up their hair, and they both go, “You can totally do this, Bec, you’ve so got that mean side to you.” And she goes, “Thanks?” and they’re still hugging her and not making eye contact.
“. . . and the role of Pip’s best friend,” Libby says, scanning the crowd, “will be played by Jim-Jim Tyers.”
Jim-Jim is fun, a junior who is so big that everyone calls him his name twice.
“Why that part?” Jim-Jim says, though not in an aggressive way.
Libby points to me, and I say, “Ah, I’m on! Okay, we thought you’re perfect for ‘John Wemmick’ because he’s a clerk in the book, and everyone knows you work at the golf pro shop in the summers at the country club, Jim-Jim.”
He looks like he isn’t sure what the word clerk means.
“Ya know, like . . . an employee at a retail place.”
And Jim-Jim pumps a fist and says, “Right on.” And you just cannot tell me there’s anything more heartening than a group of kids putting on a play without irony. Sorry. Musical.
And just as I’m about to make another announcement—that we’re using pop songs for our score, since it’s a tad too ambitious, even for me, to write an entire musical in three weeks—my Miss Havisham, Paige of the coach lineage, says: “Would anyone mind if I had my mom bring my flute to the next practice?”
Rehearsal, Paige. Rehearsal. Practice is what you do when you’re about to lie to your parents about something.
“I keep hearing this is going to be a musical,” she says, “and I’m happy to contribute what I’m able to.”
“Yeah, we’re actually using pop songs!” I blurt, licking final sugar remnants from my lips. “We’ll grab the karaoke tracks online and find perfect songs to correspond to your characters. That’s how we’re handling the music portion of our musical.”
Libby’s eyeing me like I’ve lit her basement on fire, because this was Libby’s idea.
