by Tim Federle
And that’s when I hear it. Or actually, feel it, first. The room tenses up, all eyes on Pip, who is whimpering.
“S-sorry,” he says.
“Is this about your cousin?” I say.
“Yeah, but she’s good! She’s actually alive and fine now! It was just crappy for a while. I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“It’s all good, man,” says Jim-Jim, blessed Jim-Jim, so big that anything he approves receives over half the room’s blessing, automatically, since he takes up over half the room.
Mona Lisa puts her hand on Pip’s shoulder, which is cool, but I’m not having it. If an actor’s crying, I’m using it.
“You’re at a gravesite!” I say, to get the scene back up and running. “You’re visiting your dead family, you’ve got a British accent—and boo! A convict appears . . .”
Pip sniffs twice, laughs at what it looks like to be a boy, crying—I wish all my fellow boys would just get over it and cry like three times as often; it’s very cleansing/good for your skin—and shakes it off. Mona Lisa squeezes his shoulder and runs back to her place at the top of the scene, and the stage manager stands in front of the window, to get the room darker.
“Now,” I say, “go.”
If You Give an Adult Enough Chances
Sometimes you have to corner an adult and demand to know exactly what’s going to stand between you and an A+. Like, let’s cut the nice stuff and be real, right?
After English class the following Monday, I ask Mr. English if I can have five minutes.
“And cut into my precious internet time?” he says, and I can’t tell if he’s kidding. Free tip: Five minutes is a good unit of time for adults because in theory it shouldn’t overwhelm them; it’s just five minutes.
“I mean,” I say, tugging my bookbag strap as a makeshift security blanket, “I guess I could come back during lunch?”
“It’s fine.”
I perch on top of one of the desks, and am kind of silent, and then I remember that I asked him for the meeting.
“Oh!” I say.
“Oh.”
“So, what’s your favorite music?”
He looks at me harsh, like I’m the sun except not bright. His lips sputter trying to form thoughts, then words. “In what context, Mr. Foster?”
“Like, we’re choosing pop songs for our musical and I want to get a good grade, so I want to give you what you want. Song-wise.” A pause. “Since you’re grading.”
He grunts and it turns into a snort. He pulls out an energy bar and undoes the wrapper and puts his feet up on his desk.
“Do you drive your parents crazy?” he says mid-bite.
“Excuse me?”
“No, it’s just: Precocious students—my most precocious students throughout the years—their parents always seem surprised when I say that despite their getting a D in my class, they’re among my most entertaining students.”
“Wait, I’m getting a D?”
He swallows too big a piece of the energy bar and hacks for a sec, and I wonder if I’m going to watch Mr. English die before he can change my grade to something better.
“Never mind,” he says. “I’m just saying I get a kick out of you, in spite of you.”
“Thank you?”
“None necessary,” he says, standing to indicate he’s either still choking and needs help, or this meeting is over. “It wasn’t by definition a compliment. More of an observation.”
I hop up, turn toward the bulletin board, notice it isn’t decorated at all. Mr. English has been around so long he doesn’t even bother with things like decorating the bulletin board. I have to respect that, the same way I came home and took down all my old Broadway posters because now that I’ve actually been on Broadway, it’s just a lot to be surrounded by your job, at home.
“Have a decent afternoon,” he says when I’m apparently just standing in the middle of the room.
“You too,” I say, and start walking toward the empty bulletin board, and the exit.
And then, quietly, I hear a sigh, and: “Elvis, Simon and Garfunkel, and Joni Mitchell.”
I turn around.
“Is that,” I say, “like, a law firm?”
His jaw clenches and he’s got a mad-dad look, but then he laughs and rubs his eyes. “No. They’re my favorite singers. Per your request.”
I tap my hand on the doorframe. An in!
“See if you can work them into your outrageous musical project thing, which will be due before you know it.”
I’m about to correct him—it’s a musical, not a play—but he got the terminology right this time.
If you give an adult enough chances, they can actually learn.
You Can’t Tap-Dance to a Ballad
“This music is sloooooowwwww,” Libby says. “The sixties were just ballad city.”
She’s in her bedroom and so am I, even though we’ve crossed the critical age when most moms don’t let a boy and a girl hang out alone with a door shut. But Libby’s mom isn’t like most moms, and let’s be honest. I’m not like the other boys. Sometimes I feel like I’m three life choices away from having a signature wig line.
“No, this music could be so good!” I say, mostly to convince myself, and trying not to yawn at all the acoustic guitar strumming.
We’re streaming Mr. English’s songs and trying to imagine a good place for them in the show, but the best place for them would be far underground, in a coffin. “Seriously, we can make these work.”
“Uh, mm’kay,” Libby says, “so you’re confident that the story of a crazy old British lady will pair well with your grandparents’ folk songs?” She produces, from her pocket, a temporary tattoo, and proceeds to hunt for a place to put it on her forearm.
“What I’m saying is I want Mr. English to give me a good grade.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have cast the gym coach’s niece. Paige’s voice sounds like a cat on a piano.”
“What if—wait, what if we just have everyone lip-sync the original songs?”
I jump up.
It sounded good in my head, and unlike most of my ideas, when I said it out loud, it still sounded good.
“Like, we’ve got this awesome sound system in the gym. And these songs that Mr. English loves. What if we just have the cast lip-sync the songs, and it’s up to me to make sure the song makes sense in the plot?”
Libby licks her forearm and slams the tattoo down, right over a place where she’s got a tricky mole she hates and is always looking for ways to cover it. She does all of this without breaking eye contact with me, by the way. “Intriguing,” she says, and then looks at her iPhone, which we’re using to DJ tonight’s song stream. “Okay, pop-quiz time.”
I kerplop back down on a beanbag chair that long ago lost its oomph.
“Can’t help falling in love,” Libby says, and I go: “Are you—wait—am I helping write a text exchange with a boy for you?” and she goes, “Noooo, it’s an Elvis song. 1961. ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’ ”
“What about it?” I’m lightly punching the beanbag chair.
“Find a place for it in Great Expectations. You’ve got ten seconds. Ten, nine . . .”
I throw my head back into the beanbag nothingness and look up at Libby’s ceiling, to a poster from a flop musical production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s that we used to throw our bubblegum at, just to try and make it stick. It’s a good poster to lose your thoughts in.
“The marriage scene at the end of the book!” I say, and I actually snap my fingers like we’re in a movie, which we’re not. We’re in Jankburg, PA. As cinematic as it sounds. “When Pip stands at the altar. He can sing ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’ and we can do a big tap dance.”
“It’s a ballad, genius.” She blows on her tattoo to dry it. “You’re gonna have the cast tap-dance? To an Elvis ballad?”
“Then we’ll do a waltz! Work with me here.”
“Okay, fine. We’ve got one song down.”
She
holds her tattooed arm up for approval.
“Love it,” I say. “Never change.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere. Okay: ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ ”
“Easy. The Act One closing number. Prison reform is a giant theme in Great Expectations.”
“How do you know, you only got ten pages in.”
“I read the complete and entire SparkNotes twice.”
She laughs.
“Next: ‘Scarborough Fair,’ a.k.a. ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme.’ ”
“Now you’re just making me hungry.”
“C’mon, it’s a Simon and, let’s see, Garfinkel song. Find a place for it, because I’m still not convinced this is the right ide—”
“The Christmas dinner scene!” I yell. “When Pip comes back with the stuff that Mona Lisa the convict convinces him to steal.”
I dance around a little. I’m on fire.
“What does any of that have to do with a series of four spices?”
“Somebody can be like, This recipe is delicious, and Pip can be like, Thanks, the secret is a pinch of thyme, plus a little rosemary, and a big serving of parsley.”
This makes Libby chuckle so hard that she hits her head on a shelf. “The pain is worth it. Your insane idea about using these folk songs for our musical just might actually work.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” I yell, and punch right through the beanbag chair fabric, spilling Styrofoam balls everywhere.
“Welp,” Libby says, not even getting up. Just watching as the beanbag chair expels its insides all over the floor. “I’ve hated that chair for a while now and I am insulted it’s not filled with actual beans. You’re a liar, bean chair.”
“I am so, so sorry,” I say, trying to pick up the tiny balls as they scatter every which way and disappear into Libby’s old carpet.
“Don’t be,” she says, turning her phone around to show me the screen. “Just know that we’ve picked a grand total of three songs, and we need about another fifteen, and we open in two and one-half weeks.”
My own phone goes off, my ringtone for Jordan: a medley from Dreamgirls that I ripped from online.
“Uh, excuse me,” Libby says, “we’re supposed to be on airplane mode.”
I hold up the screen to show her who it is.
“Ew,” she says. “You drew hearts on his contact photo.”
I giggle-sigh and shush her and pick up. “Jordy! I’m with Libby! We just had a really good music idea for my show!”
But he’s not interested in my really good music idea for my show, or my anything.
Instead, he tells me “how much money!!” he’s making on his show. His TV show. Which does not take place in a high school gym.
“No way. Wow. That’s a lot of money.”
Libby rolls her eyes, leaves the room, and comes back with more temporary tattoos from the crafts closet in the basement. Giving me enough time to ask Jordan why he erased all the photos of us on Instagram—“not to make this awkward”—and enough time for him to pretend like he had to get back to set before he could answer—“what a terrible time for me to be pulled back to work!”
And we hang up without saying goodbye.
“You know, isn’t that just life,” Libby says, taking my phone and hiding it under her mattress. “You have one good moment, one great breakthrough on your ridiculous project, and then a dumb boy comes along and makes you feel small again.”
I choose a dragon tattoo, and wonder if putting it on my neck would seem like a cry for help or an edgy new definition of myself. Every other day, these days, I just want to start over as the kind of boy who likes dragons just ’cause they’re dragons, and not because they’re friends with unicorns.
“He’s making a lot of money, Lib.”
“Tell me. No, wait, don’t tell me.”
She chooses a butterfly in a leather jacket and holds it up to her forehead.
“Boys are the worst,” I say, and Libby says, “Amen, sister.”
And then, the way best friends do, we read each other’s minds and don’t even put on the tattoos.
We just go downstairs for a snack break that turns into a second dinner that turns into an accidental burping contest. Libby wins, and I head out to her yard.
“Since when did you start riding a bike?” Libby says from her doorway, after my snack/second-dinner combo settles down a bit.
“I dunno. Ben sort of got me into it.” I don’t blink. Libby smirks.
I don’t tell her that Ben promised to teach me how to skateboard or that I promised to teach him how to dance.
“So you do know,” she says, but I’m already pedaling off, and thinking how my mom should probably make a bigger deal out of me not wearing a helmet.
At the stop sign I turn back around. Libby’s in her front yard practicing her splits. When you’re fourteen, you’re basically sixteen but also basically twelve.
“Do you think Paige is actually terrible in the show?” I ask, and Libby says, “Did Hamilton deserve to sweep every Tony category?”
I’m confused because actually, yes, I genuinely think it did? But Libby likes going against the grain, on purpose, so I take it that she disagreed with Hamilton’s lighting design Tony or something.
“What am I going to do about her?” I say. Libby looks up at the night clouds for an answer, and comes right back with, “Give her a bunch of Joni Mitchell songs. Mr. English is a dad. Dads always like Joni Mitchell, if my dad is any indication.”
“Solid.”
“Duh.”
I ride home, my mind a fuzz of food and Ben, and it’s the perfect temperature out, which only happens like three nights a year in Jankburg. I don’t break a sweat, but I’m definitely out of breath enough to count it as solid exercise.
Maybe I’ll be the kind of high schooler who exercises. Yeah. Maybe.
I walk into the kitchen and say hi to my mom, and I eat an entire sleeve of butter crackers and ask where Dad is, not for any good reason, just ’cause. And Mom goes, “Who knows,” and gets up and does the one dish that’s in the sink.
Not Like an Ocean or Something Pretty
What would we do without water fountains to fake-pass the time?
I’m in gym class (I know, ugh), the next day. (Seriously, pity me. I’ll wait.) And during my fourth water break in twenty minutes, the coach must catch onto me avoiding any exertion, because he blows a whistle and says, “Foster, get in here.”
I take one more epic and truly long sip of water, until my stomach autofills with pee, and then I blurt out to the coach: “I’ll have to make this quick, because I am about to actually use my shorts as a bathroom otherwise.”
He bounces a half-inflated soccer ball against cinderblock office walls that look like the stage manager’s room back in New York.
“It’ll be quick,” he goes, not bothering to look at me.
Typical. Male. Adult.
“Am I—wait, am I in trouble for missing seventeen hoops in a row? Because, the hoops are so high and I am so short.”
He catches the soccer ball in his yard-wide meat hand and spits something into his wastebasket.
“No, I don’t care,” he says. When we actually make eye contact, he mumbles a little and then goes, “I was just going to thank you. My niece is having the time of her life in your English project skit. Says you and the Elizabeth girl—”
“Libby,” I half say, and he gets the dad-look where he hates being interrupted, so I make the son-sign of Sorry, I’ll shut up, go on.
“And that you’re both making her feel very welcome, and like she’s doing a not-bad job.”
A kid runs into the coach’s office and says, “Coach, Mindy has a nosebleed,” and the coach stays in his seat for one second too long and goes, “Okay, tell her to go to the nurse.” My bladder is beating in time with my heart. It’s a real medical achievement.
“So, there,” he says.
“Anything else, coach?”
“Nobody’s been nice to Paige si
nce she was a little kid, so I appreciate it, is all. The band kids aren’t even cool with her. She’s gone through a lot and I appreciate it.” His eyes are liquid, not like an ocean or something pretty, more like a rough suburban swimming pool, and he goes, “Now get the heck outta here.”
Some Days
Some days, unlike most days, you wake up and your head isn’t heavy, and when you swing your feet out from under your covers, they find your slippers without you even having to look down.
In other words, some days it all comes together.
Some days you don’t step on any cracks on the sidewalks, your teachers leave you alone, and there’s a fire drill during a social studies quiz.
Some days—not most days, but some of them—your cast of actors high-fives you in the hallways, and a few of the teachers stop you, to say they hear you’ve got something “special on your hands, Mr. Foster” (their words; this happened literally twice today).
Some days the coach tells you that you can just “skip gym class this semester as long as you go work quietly in the library.” I’m telling you, this actually happened.
Jim-Jim pulls me aside later, by the trophy case in the entry hall at school, and says, “What do you think?”
And I’m like Of what? with my face.
So he goes, “Of my costume!”
I remember then that I’d asked the cast to wear their costumes to school today, so I can approve them or offer . . . feedback. And Jim-Jim looks pretty good: khakis that nearly fit (the kid grows an inch a week, so he’s showing a lot of sock), and a neutral hoodie that’s made of like a brown knit material, that looks kind of generically old-fashioney. I ask him if he’s willing to take his earring out for the day of the show, and he’s like, duh.
Then Ben walks by at the same moment, and goes, “Ta-da!” Except the thing is, I don’t love Ben’s outfit—“I don’t think there were light blue jeans back then in Great Expectations days,” I’m forced to say. But I know the kid has a rough home life. And so some days, you make a plan with a cute boy to stop by the nearly deserted mall after school, because you’ve got a gift card from your aunt to a department store, so how about you buy him some pants? Just for the show.
