by Tim Federle
He rolls his eyes, opens the storage room door, and says, “Jump on the step stool, because I’ll hurt my back if I try to pull down that big Tupperware.”
Suddenly my life is all Tupperware, a mystery wrapped in microwaveable plastic.
He points above, and the container says “Dad’s Old Junk” in magic marker.
And I’ll exactly die if he’s attempting to give me a tool belt or a knife set to turn me normal.
Maybe he hated the show? And a tool belt or a knife set is his way of saying, Let’s not forget you’re still my son.
But that’s not what happens.
I get on the step stool, and pull Dad’s Old Junk box off the shelf, but it doesn’t jangle like tools would. Dad grabs my shoulder because I fall back, thinking the box would be heavier with Guy Stuff. And when I’m back down on the safe cement floor, I’m so lost I could use a GPS, or a clue.
“What are you, about five foot five these days?” he mumble-says, and I squinch up my face and say, “My résumé says five three, since I’m still trying to play young. But yeah, technically, I’m about five five–ish.”
“Good.” He cracks open the top of the container and it’s got closet breath, old and mothy, but he waves it off and pulls out a big ash-grey clump of fabric.
“What’s this?”
He shakes it out, unrolls it, revealing a suit. A man’s suit. And he holds it up to me and it’s one of those moments where you can tell it’ll fit perfectly.
“Go show your mother. Get her opinion on if it looks too old-fashioned or if it’ll work.”
“For what? Dad, you’re totally confusing me.”
He shuts the closet door and clicks his tongue, the thing he does when he’s nervous.
“For Homecoming, you little doofus.”
He clicks his tongue again and tries a smile that gets all caught up in his mustache.
For the Homecoming dance, if you missed that.
“Are you . . . sure?”
Is he sure about lending me the suit, I guess I’m asking, but also: Wait, you’re sure about me?
Somehow I end up hugging him. If I pull away, he’ll see my face, all out of order, a Rubik’s Cube before solving. So I keep hugging him.
“Yeah,” he says, and he’s the one who pulls away, but only barely.
He hits the lights, which is always our cue to go upstairs. “That Ben kid was good in your little play.”
Musical, I don’t say, because I can’t say anything right now.
“If you’re going to go to Homecoming, might as well go with someone as talented as you.”
News flash—listen, up, important, here: If you stop believing in your parents long enough, it turns out they can occasionally come around and rock your entire world.
At the top of the stairs, right before opening the door to show off the suit for Mom, I say, “You know what, Dad, you’re alright,” and he just clicks his tongue again, and his voice cracks, and he says, “Well, are you going to try on the suit or not, you little doof.”
And it does. Fit perfectly. By the way.
When Mom sees me in the suit, she cries. “You look like your dad when he took me to Homecoming!”
They met so young, you wouldn’t believe it.
So I cry too—sure, why not, it’s been a big day. And my dad doesn’t exactly cry, but he does pet Feather in a way that’s so aggressive it’s like he’s sending his mixed emotion–rays into the dog via its fur. But Feather’s into it, and shakes her leg a bunch.
So two of us are crying and one of us is clicking his tongue and Feather is in heaven. Which is sometimes as good as real life gets.
When I’m barely falling asleep about an hour later, I realize something kind of big.
What I realize is that I am the sign.
That it’s not on Ben to give my story a good ending. That it’s on me.
“did u get home okay?” I text him.
And he texts right back: “yeah, got caught in some rain but it felt good.”
I take a look at the grey suit, hanging on the handle of my closet. I can’t believe my dad was ever as short as me. No, wait—I can’t believe I was ever as tall as him.
“by the way, mendoza……of course I’ll go to homecoming with you…if you’ll still have me????” I type, and hit Send, and hold my breath so hard that I might pass out.
“akjdsflasjglkjasadf;asljdalklkgj,” Ben texts right back, and then: “Phew! Yes! Yay!!!!”
And when I lick my smiling lips, it’s like for two seconds I can still taste the chicken adobo on them. But not in a gross way. Sometimes the savory stuff is the sweetest stuff, too.
Airplane Mode
I’m in the midst of this amazing awake-dream where I’m literally inside the pages of one of Aunt Heidi’s self-help books. The ones she keeps by the toilet back in New York, next to a “Harmony”-scented candle.
Anyway, moving home has made me a big softie, because here I am, half-conscious, balled up in bed, feeling like I’m skip-dancing from page to page inside this big ol’ Nate-size advice book. Picture a medically small boy jumping from inspirational quote to inspirational quote, most of them involving “breathing deep” and “honoring the moment.” Swinging from letter to letter, like Tarzan, except: no abs.
But then, hours after that savory sweet exchange with Mendoza, I’m buzzed out of my sleepy, smiley haze by a text. From Jordan.
He’s not checking on me, though. Or circling back on how I’m feeling after my show got canceled. He’s not saying he’s still sorry about the interview drama, or asking when he’s going to see me again. None of that, nope.
He just sent me a link to an article in the Hollywood Reporter that says his show just got picked up for season two.
And if you think that’s bad (I hope you do; that’s bad, right? Like, kind of insensitive?), it’s coming in as a group text-chain. With twenty other randos whose numbers I don’t even have stored.
“Wow,” I say to the stuffed animal I accidentally still sleep with.
But what’s funny, if you can call it that, is that gently burned over my corneas is the last self-help quote I was dream-reading, in Heidi’s giant book. Like, I’m seeing Jordan’s article, here in my bedroom, but superimposed above are a bunch of touchy-feely words that I’d only moments before been frolicking around with. And the quote that’s lingering says: Sometimes you have to say goodbye to someone before you can say hello to yourself.
An actual quote I’d made fun of Aunt Heidi for, back in New York, because she briefly considered tattooing the word goodbye on one inner wrist, and hello on the other. In Chinese. Inspired by this very dopey quote that she came out of the bathroom, reading to me, before I moved back to Jankburg.
“Cool,” I recall saying, “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind?”
But tonight—or, this morning, actually; it’s almost 4:30 a.m.—I sort of see the point of this phrase. I mean, I really see it; it’s hovering there in my groggy state, floating like debris in a swimming pool that nobody in my part of town could ever afford to maintain.
Sometimes you do have to say goodbye to someone before you can say hello to yourself. To your Nate.
Right as Jordan is following up his link with the prayer-sign emoji, which either means “Can’t believe I’m this blessed” or “Pray for me, since I’m going to lose so many of you as friends,” I switch my phone on airplane mode.
The first time I’ve ever not responded to a text of his in under fifteen seconds.
And then I roll back over. And hug my own dang self.
And now, bouncing across my inner eyelids, all I see is the faintest etching of the word Hello.
The Story of the Day I Was Born
It’s Monday—Great Expectations presentation day in English class. And I’m able to see just how overly ambitious my production was.
I see it in the way that McKenna and Kaylee S. deliver their misfire of a Great Expectations scene, in which they read one passage from the book, don’t even a
ttempt to do British accents, and aren’t in period clothing. Mr. English looks pained.
I see it in the way Ethan, Ollie, and Xander present a Keynote slide show called “If Great Expectations happened today,” an interesting-enough premise except the lead slide spelled “expectations” as “ecspectations,” and it never got better from there. Mr. English looks tired.
And ultimately it’s my turn, and since I don’t have anything formal to present, I just hand Mr. English my “director’s notes”—all the observations I pecked into my iPhone as I was taking notes on run-throughs of the show. For Paige to talk louder so they can hear her in the back row, for Jim-Jim to cue the music at a different time.
Bullet points that I added some adjectives to, for Mr. English, because English teachers are obsessed with adjectives. I made the font of my director’s notes really big and shrank down the margins and printed it out, and even then it only ended up being two pages. But it is what it is. It’s all the gas I’ve got left in my tank of creativity right now.
I still can’t believe a bunch of freakin’ lawyers shut down my gymnasium musical.
When the other kids file out of class, Mr. English keeps me, and asks me to read my director’s notes out loud. Which is so dumb. But, fine.
And midway through, he cuts me off and looks at me like he’s solving a problem, and finally goes, “Fine, I’ll give you a B. Look at you, you’re on your way to an A.”
I click my tongue the way my dad does. “Wait, were you always going to give me an A?” My stomach races and my heart gurgles. “Is this just a long, extended metaphor, all our meet-ups and—”
“No. I don’t in any way believe every kid starts with an A. I think teachers who say that are liars.”
A B. I’ll take it. It’s better than average but still not perfect. Frankly, a B is very me.
“Ya know, Mr. Foster,” Mr. English says, “I taught your dad.”
“You did?”
“You bet. I’m old.”
In this strange moment it’s as if I’m meeting a yeti, or Patti LuPone; somebody epic and unreal. He knew my dad when he was my age?
“What was he like? Like, then, I mean?”
Mr. English smiles and it turns into a yawn. “He was the type of boy who would have given you a tough time in the hallways, let’s just put it that way.”
“People can change,” I apparently blurt, and also, apparently, I’m now sticking up for my dad. He gave me his Homecoming suit, ya know? The one he took my mom to, at this very school, in the very gym where I tried to put on my show.
Mr. English holds up my director’s notes. “I’m too past my prime and too tired and, frankly, don’t care enough to give you a big speech about how you should be applying yourself—how you’re inherently brighter and funnier than both your dad and your brother, Anthony, whom I did not teach but whom I do know about, since he’s a ‘legend’ at the school.” Mr. English does air-quotes around the word legend. “But let me say: These terribly formatted director’s notes show promise. You’ve got a voice.”
“Thanks. Usually people just say I’m loud.” Nothing. “That was a joke about my voice.”
“Right.”
He stands, and knocks twice on the two-page director’s notes, which I three-hole punched and bound into a black folder, just like how stage managers hand out scripts on Broadway.
“You got out of this town once, Nate,” he says. “And that is very impressive. But if you want to get somewhere again, you’re going to have to pull your grades up. Way up. All around.”
I feel my face do its game-show host impression, eyebrows all surprised, overly smiley smile. “Ahhh, but Mr. English, casting directors don’t care about grades.”
“Casting directors don’t run the world, Mr. Foster.”
“They run my world, Mr. English.”
A girl from my class pops in and grabs a calculator that she left on her desk, and she says “Sorry” like she’s interrupting some kind of important moment.
And that’s when I realize maybe it is one.
“You’re only a freshman,” Mr. English says. “And I want you to graduate this class with a solid A.”
I stick out my hand, which does its used-car-salesman impression. “Then it’s settled!” I say, “Let’s just gimme an A!” all funny. But Mr. English grimaces again.
“Charm can only get you so far.”
“As far as New York,” I point out, both not unhelpfully and not helpfully.
“I’m going to give you an extra, bonus-points assignment I give my most gifted seniors,” he says, and walks over to a tall filing cabinet, straight out of the fifties. He pulls out a photocopy and hands it to me. “Most of the seniors don’t finish it because most of them don’t quite ‘get’ it.”
“The Story of the Day I Was Born,” I read, and when I look up, Mr. English’s eyes aren’t exactly watering but they also aren’t not.
“That’s easy,” I say, confused. “You want a thousand words on the day I was born? I can interview my mom. I mean, my Playbill bio for E.T. was fifty words, this can’t be that much harder.”
Mr. English goes back to his desk and pulls out a metal bell and dings it—one of those old-fashioned bells you put at the front desk of a place where you want someone’s attention.
“I’m going to ring this every time you’re talking when you should be writing.”
“But—”
He dings it again, and I shift on my feet, and I realize my toe hurts and that my shoes are too small now. That I’m growing in real time.
“I don’t care about your birthday, not the actual one,” he says. “I want to know about the day you picked your own birthday.”
“I’m lost.”
He hovers his hand over the bell, and I close my mouth up like it’s a bookbag on the last day of school.
It’s quiet for a while.
“Wait, do you mean, like, the day when my life started getting good?”
He smiles and puts the bell back in the drawer.
“Like, the day I count as when I really became myself?”
He half nods, sits back down, and takes out his phone and starts playing with it.
“Can I start the paper with some backstory? Like, about how my parents never recorded me on their home video recorders, but Anthony had everything meticulously recorded?”
“Eh.” Mr. English waves his hands around like I’m boring him. “Nah. No backstory. Nobody cares about backstory. Overrated. Jump into the good stuff. Free writing tip. Start with an action scene.”
I chew the inside of my cheek.
“Well, that’s the day I ran away from here. The night, really.”
He looks interested, and puts his phone aside but not down. “Okay?”
“My parents were away for the weekend, and Libby found out about the audition for E.T.”
He mimes writing with his hand, and when I suppose I look sufficiently confused again, says, “Don’t tell me, tell your paper.”
“So, wait—you want a paper about the day I ran away to New York?”
“I want you to write yourself out of this place,” he says.
“I don’t follow.”
“I want you to tell the story of how you became the best Nathan Foster possible. Because the key to getting ahead in life, at least in this English class, is to learn how to tell your story in as compelling a way as possible. It’s how you’ll get scholarships, how you’ll get to college, and how you’ll ultimately have a satisfying adulthood. Trust me.”
I look around the room. “You mean, because your life is so satisfying?” I don’t mean it to come out sassy. I just don’t quite get any of this, and why he’s being so hard on me.
“No, Mr. Foster. Because my life is not so satisfying. And because I waited too long. This is my last year teaching. Thank God. I wish some adult had told me, a long time ago, what I’m telling you right now. The only thing that is ultimately interesting about you is your truest story. So, go write it down.”<
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“How long do I have to get the assignment in?”
“However long it takes.”
Which could take forever.
I walk out of his classroom, and sort of zombie-strut myself to science, but it’s a lab day, so I fake my way through the physical act of pouring some liquid on top of some rock that makes some smoke.
And really what I’m doing is writing my story in my head.
And when I get to lunch, I grab an apple and a string cheese and I break into a music practice room, and open my voice recorder app. And stare at it. And stare at it. And then erase the silent recording and start over.
I decide that maybe he’s right. That my way to a good grade will be to tell the truth, the whole truth, and (mostly) nothing but the truth. With frequent dance breaks.
“I’d rather not start with any backstory,” I say into the voice recorder, and I time-warp myself back to that October evening in my backyard—before Ben, before Jordan, before opening night, before Dad gave me his suit, or Aunt Heidi yelled at me for wandering the streets of New York alone, or before I met a thousand people who believed in me so hard that I somehow ended up believing in myself.
A couple days later and I’m already four chapters into my story, and decide that maybe I’ll keep going and not turn it in quite yet. I keep deciding that maybe the story should start later—that I’m getting born all the time. That life is all action scenes if you start thinking about it like it’s a novel.
So, I continue voice-recording it, and I start just telling the good parts: the night I first saw two guys kissing in the doorway of a club in New York, and nobody beat them up; the time Anthony took me to Bible camp, and I cried onto Genesis and made the ink bleed.
Mr. English said I could take as long as I needed to tell my story. So I decide to keep telling it till it’s finished, whatever my grade ends up being.
Homecoming is in a month. Anthony will be back from Penn State for Thanksgiving. Mom and Dad announced they’re going to put in a hammock in the backyard, and Aunt Heidi is coming home for Christmas for the first time in twenty years.
I charge my phone up in anticipation of a lot of voice memos.
