Kate in Waiting

by Becky Albertalli

  “No, but you can train.” I turn to face him. “You can improve your breath support, expand your range—”

  “But why? What’s the endgame? I mean, yeah, if you’re going to Broadway or something, but 99.9 percent of people literally just end up singing in the shower, so—”

  “Are you serious?” I yank out my earbuds. “That’s like saying what’s the point of playing high school baseball if you’re not going to join the MLB.”

  Noah smiles hugely. “The MLB?”

  “Major League Baseball?”

  “Yeah, but you don’t say ‘the MLB.’”

  “Why not?” I cross my arms. “You say the NFL, the NBA . . .”

  Noah shakes his head, still beaming. “The MLB.”

  “Anyway.” I side-eye him. “Unless you plan to play in the major leagues, you don’t get to say voice lessons are pointless.”

  “Okay . . .” Noah nods, like he’s considering this. “But hear me out. Maybe the point of playing high school baseball has nothing to do with baseball itself. Maybe the whole point is, say, impressing girls.”

  I shrug. “Maybe girls are more impressed by singing than they are by baseball.”

  I glance at his sling, feeling suddenly guilty. Maybe I’m being too mean. Am I mean? Is it shitty to tease a baseball player about baseball when he can’t actually play baseball?

  The bus stops at our street corner, and Noah scoots out, pausing to wait for me in the aisle. “Hey.” I look up at him. “Sorry you broke your arm.”

  “Ah, yeah.” He smiles. “Life of an athlete. You know.”

  “I totally know.” I make a grab for his backpack. “Hey, I can carry this.”

  He laughs. “Little Garfield, you are not carrying my backpack.”

  “You don’t think I can handle two backpacks?” I follow him off the bus and fall into step beside him. “I can handle ten backpacks. You don’t even know what I’m capable of.”

  Scene 9

  Turns out, Ryan’s home. Dad too—he leaves work early on Wednesdays when he can. He’s a lawyer, but not the kind who sues people. He does family law, like divorces and custody and child support. Truly an area of expertise for Neil Garfield, PC, who himself is a divorcé, joint custodian, and child Supporter.

  “Hiya, Peapod.”

  Why yes, I’m sixteen years old and my father calls me Peapod. Apparently, that’s what I looked like when I was six weeks old in a swaddle. A pea pod.

  The dogs burst into the kitchen, so Ryan must have picked them up from Mom’s house right after school. Charles is so excited, he’s vibrating. I’d say we’re at threat level yellow for Charles peeing on the floor.

  Dad scoops up Charles with one arm, letting him lick his chin long past the point where it’s cute. And then Dad uses his other hand to give Camilla a deep tissue massage on her hips. Now Camilla’s leaning so hard into her butt rub, she’s curved into a question mark, and Dad’s entire neck is owned by dachshund spit. It’s a classy situation.

  “So how did it go?” Dad gently deposits Charles on the hardwoods.

  “How did what go?”

  “Auditions. The musical.”

  “Auditions haven’t happened yet. Not till next Thursday.”

  Dad’s not good with details. He’s the opposite of Mom in that way. But he’s the one I physically resemble. Ryan too. Everyone says that. Not in the hair, because he’s pretty bald, though pictures prove he had a mop of hair just like Ryan and me when he was in college. But he’s got the round cheeks and hazel eyes and heart-shaped mouth.

  I ditch Dad and the dogs and head upstairs to my brother’s room. Ryan gets one warning knock before I open it, but by now I know better than to wait for permission. He’s a chronic knock-ignorer.

  He’s tucked into a gamer chair, thumbing an Xbox controller and wearing the headphones our grandma got him last Chanukah. Ryan’s room is honestly a teen boy wonderland, even though the décor hasn’t changed since elementary school: blank chalkboard walls punctuated by framed athletic jerseys, a Fathead decal of the Atlanta Falcons logo, and a giant Bulbasaur made from neon lights. But there’s no mess anywhere, ever. I swear, Ryan’s an even bigger neat freak than Anderson. His room at Mom’s house has two twin beds, and even though he only sleeps in one of them, he always makes them both. If Ryan stays local for college next year, he’ll probably come home every day, just to keep changing his unused sheets.

  He cracks his eyes open when I walk in and slides his headphones off, looking at me expectantly, like what do you want. Like he can’t even comprehend a world where a sister might pop into her brother’s room with no ulterior motive. It’s insulting. Also accurate.

  “I need your keys.”

  He scoops them out of his pocket and tosses them to me, and I guess that’s the upside of not driving. Pretty easy for Ryan to trust me with his keys when he knows perfectly well I’m not taking his car out.

  “Thanks, Ry,” I say, but he’s already lost to his headphones. I watch him for a moment. Ryan never sings along to songs, or even mouths the words, but his lips always twitch like he wants to. He can actually sing—he just never does anymore, not even the heavily ironic falsetto some guys do on Snapchat or TikTok. That’s the one thing I don’t get about straight guys—okay, it’s one of many, many things I don’t get about straight guys. But seriously. Why are some guys so opposed to showing off their singing voices? If their goal is to hook up with girls, shouldn’t they lean all the way into it? Even jock girls get melty over boys who can sing. It’s a legit romantic superpower, and they don’t even use it.

  But Ryan’s one of those guys who never really dates, even though he’s got rumpled brown hair and long lashes and is objectively above average in cuteness. Andy calls Ryan a gorgeous waste of space. But he’s kind of shy, and even though I’m pretty sure he likes girls, he’s intensely weird about them. Not that it’s the kind of thing we could ever talk about. Like. EVER.

  My relationship with Ryan is kind of hard to explain.

  Honestly, I don’t even understand it. I swear there are times when no one gets me like Ryan does. Like when our parents are being weirdos, and we have a whole conversation with just our eyes. Or the way certain phrases, certain words, will hit us in just the same way.

  But then he sneaks in late from some f-force party, or he fist-bumps Jack Randall in the hallway, and I get this pang in my chest. I guess I wonder sometimes—if Ryan and I weren’t siblings, would we even talk to each other?

  I mean, we used to be inseparable. We’re only eighteen months apart. Mom calls us Irish twins, even though we’re not Irish, and I’m pretty sure a year and a half is way outside the Irish twin window. Ryan turns eighteen next month, and I’ll be seventeen in March. We used to play Hot Wheels and Playmobil dollhouse and Pokémon Rumble Blast and Pokémon cards, and we were Ash Ketchum and Pikachu for Halloween two years in a row, and okay, I don’t want to name names or call anyone out for being obsessed with Pokémon, but only one of the Garfield kids still has a florescent Bulbasaur on his wall. I’m just saying.

  Anyway. At least I’ve got his car keys.

  I head straight downstairs, back through the kitchen, where the pups are snoozing on the floor. My guitar’s waiting for me right in the trunk, next to a mitt and a few baseballs. I hoist the case up by its handle and hug the whole thing to my chest.

  I love this stupid guitar. It used to be Mom’s when she was younger, but Ryan rescued it from the basement a few years ago. He never actually learned to play—he just posed with it a lot for Instagram. Hashtag: “jammin.” I’ll never let him live that down. I don’t think I could even call myself his sister if I did.

  Though, to be fair, Ryan’s the reason I play guitar at all. After what happened with Eric, I really thought I was done with music forever.

  Scene 10

  Eric Graves. The shittiest guy. My shittiest day. Even now, I want to throw up every single time I think about it. But it’s always there. I guess it’s kind of my origin story.
>
  Here we go.

  Once upon a time in eighth grade, Queen Kate the Clueless fell in love with Sir Dickbrain Fuckmonster Eric the Taintweasel, Level 69 F-boy.

  It’s hard to explain. Yeah, he was cute. But there were massive red flags from the start. For one thing, Anderson wasn’t on board with it. It didn’t matter how many times I mentioned the time Eric held the door for me once. Anderson couldn’t be persuaded—his belief in Eric’s dickbrained taintweasely fuckmonstrousness was unwavering.

  It was the opposite of a communal crush.

  But eighth-grade me didn’t care what Anderson thought about Eric.

  I let my crush brain soar. I wrote Eric’s name in notebooks. I orchestrated drive-by encounters in the hallways. I stared at the back of his head so long in social studies, I memorized his neck freckles. And in the evenings, I was even more of a love story fiend than usual. It was practically a chemical craving. I mainlined To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before almost weekly. I inhaled every YA rom-com in the library. And then the squad discovered Ella Enchanted, which I watched so often, for so many months that my dad could quote it. Obviously, I had Queen’s “Somebody to Love” totally memorized, and I could sing it just like Anne Hathaway in the movie. I had it down to a science. Every inflection, every pause, every tiny dynamic shift. Even King Perfectionist Anderson was impressed.

  I mean, here’s how much I was feeling myself: I performed it for my mom.

  And she loved it. She acted like I’d performed a solo at the Kennedy Center. She sprang up from the couch, full-on applauding, dropping brava after brava. There were seriously tears in her eyes. For weeks afterward, I’d hear her bragging to her music teacher friends about the crispness of my consonants, or my stage presence, or how much my voice had matured.

  So I guess I should have seen the whole variety show thing coming.

  It wasn’t exactly a new conversation. Mom had been trying to talk the squad into singing in the variety show since sixth grade. “You four are so all-in on the musical. Why on earth are you so shy about the variety show?”

  I could never quite explain it. Maybe it was a matter of context? When you sing in a musical, you’re a character. There’s a script. You’re telling a story. You’re being directed.

  In the variety show, you’re you.

  But Mom can be kind of a bulldozer when she wants you to do something. And I guess she got it in her head that I should do Ella.

  Okay, that’s not entirely it.

  She wanted me to, yeah. And at first I said no. But then I kept picturing Eric Graves in the audience, staring up at me, entranced. He’d be in the front row. He’d think, how have I never noticed Kate Garfield before?

  It was pure cliché nonsense.

  I guess I let myself be bulldozed.

  My hair was so long back then, it took me an hour to dry and straighten it. I dressed like Ella, too—at least the second-rate mall version of Ella: white peasant top, blue maxi skirt, thick belt. The variety show was just one night, always a Friday. But we did our dress rehearsal as an assembly during the day for the school. I was so wrecked with nerves, Mom had to play the opening notes twice. My voice trembled at first, but I shut my eyes and kept going.

  And then the song did what songs do. It took over. It pushed me out of the driver’s seat. I was Freddie Mercury and I was Ella and even Rachel from Glee, and I’d never felt so beautiful, ever. I opened my eyes after the first chorus, and there was Eric. Front row, center. The house lights were down, and I couldn’t quite make out his expression. But he wasn’t sleeping or whispering or even texting, like Mira Reynolds was doing beside him. He was paying attention. And when I finished, he clapped and whistled.

  I just about bubbled over with joy.

  For the rest of the day, I floated through the halls, feeling quietly triumphant. I didn’t breathe a word to the squad. But I could just picture Eric on the walk back to homeroom, trying to explain it to his friends. Her voice. I think I’m falling for her.

  I kept thinking he’d text me. Not that we were on texting terms. But maybe he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who had my number. Maybe he’d look me up. Maybe he’d follow my Instagram. It’s funny—I remember almost nothing about the variety show itself. I just remember being backstage, checking my phone over and over.

  Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  But as soon as we got home, my brother followed me straight to my room. That’s how I knew something was up. He passed me his phone, already open to Mira’s finsta page.

  There I was.

  Thirteen-year-old me, my peasant shirt coming untucked, and a crease I hadn’t noticed on the side of my hair. It was the shittiest possible angle—tilted up from below, making me look like a front-facing camera meme in motion. And my painstakingly modulated Ella voice sounded as high as a six-year-old, with round choir-girl vowels and overly enunciated consonants.

  There were already thirty-two comments.

  yikes lol

  saw it live, that was some good shit wow

  I’M SCREAMING

  Is that Ryan garfield’s sister??

  What is her face doing at the 32 sec mark? haha

  this is so embarrassing, I literally can’t watch

  “Don’t read those,” Ryan had said, snatching the phone away.

  I could hardly form words. “Mira filmed me?”

  Ryan showed me the caption.

  Shoutout to e-dawg @sirEricGeneric for this cinematic masterpiece

  Everything froze.

  E-dawg. Eric Graves.

  “Don’t sweat it, okay?” Ryan shifted awkwardly beside me. “It only has a hundred and three views.”

  “A hundred and three people have seen this?”

  I remember I could barely breathe. I remember wondering if you could puke your own heart out.

  “It’s not actually that bad,” Ryan said.

  I didn’t reply.

  “I mean, at least you sound—”

  “Oh my God, just stop.”

  Ryan stopped.

  I flopped backward on my bed, arms crossed over my chest like a corpse.

  The next day, someone started a new account on Instagram called Kate Garfield Singing. It consisted entirely of ugly screenshots of me from Eric’s video. Square after square of my jaw hanging open, lips curled, eyes half closed. The bio said simply: I die a little. I cried, texting the link to the squad.

  FUCK THIS, Raina wrote. I WILL DESTROY THEM. HOLY SHIT

  This is garbage, sweetie, I’m so sorry, Brandie wrote.

  Anderson never wrote back to the text, because he was already at my door.

  “That fucking monster,” he said. He didn’t even pause to say hello.

  I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Which one?”

  “Eric. Mira. Both of them. Every single fucking fuckboy who followed the page.”

  By then, there were seventy-eight. I couldn’t stop checking. Some were faces I recognized from the f-force, but some were strangers.

  Ryan was on the living room couch, but I plopped down anyway, peering up at Anderson. “I’m never singing again. Ever.”

  Ryan didn’t even look up from his phone.

  But I woke up Sunday to find Mom’s old guitar propped outside my door.

  Ryan was in bed still, but awake, thumbing through a textbook. He didn’t exactly look surprised to see me.

  I gripped the door frame. “You know I don’t play guitar, right?”

  “I’ll text you a tutorial.” He stretched his arm sideways, expertly plucking his phone from its charger. A moment later, my phone buzzed.

  I glanced down at it and then back up at him, glaring.

  “‘Somebody to Love?’” I asked. “Yeah, that’s not—”

  “It’s a good song. Don’t let a bunch of assholes ruin it for you.”

  I pressed play, and the video was pretty basic—just some guy running through the chords and finger positions on an acoustic guitar. But there was something about how
the threads of sound came together.

  My eyes were glued to the screen. “Who would I even play for?”

  “What do you mean, who would you play for?” Ryan said, shrugging. “Just play for yourself.”

  Scene 11

  I think Mom’s self-destructing. Cause of death: Shabbat dinner. She’s got no fewer than eight printed recipes fanned out on the table, and she’s making everything from scratch. I don’t know if she realizes we have one oven. And she’s one person.

  Needless to say, we Garfields aren’t exactly Shabbat-dinner-level Jews.

  “Katy, stick the mini soufflés in the toaster oven. Can we do that? They’ll cook, right?”

  I survey the kitchen: cabinet doors flung open, pans on every surface, Mom’s cheeks streaked with flour. “Wait, so how many people are coming to this?”

  “Well. You said Anderson’s busy, right?”

  “If by busy, you mean at home watching Tangled.”

  “Hasn’t he seen it twenty times?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  Not that I’m one to judge. I’m closing in on that figure myself. Tangled happens to be the best movie of all time. It gives me legit Ella Enchanted vibes, but without the weird f-boy baggage. Plus, there’s Flynn Rider—the animated floppy-haired wiseass scoundrel boy of my dreams.

  “Okay, so us,” Mom says. “Ryan, Ellen, and Ellen’s bringing her son.”

  “So . . . five.”

  “Mm-hmm. Oh, you’ll like Ellen’s son. We got dinner the other night when you were at your dad’s house. He’s a cutie. Looks just like his dad, and let me tell you, Paul is handsome. A total schmuckboy, but handsome.” Mom purses her lips. “Very conservative. He grew up right in Mentone, right by camp. But he’s turned into one of those Fox News Republicans. It’s very sad.”

  “He went to camp with you guys?”

  “Oh, no, he was a townie, and of course, that was this whole other thing. Ellen thought I was being a snob about him living in town, but it wasn’t that. No ma’am. I didn’t like the way he talked to her. Very condescending. I don’t know, it all seems so silly now. Can you imagine losing your best friend over a guy like that? I’m just so stinking grateful for Facebook—otherwise Ellen and I would never have reconnected. I’d never have known she was back in Georgia.”