A Heart Divided (2 page)

palms sweaty, stomach churning, heart pounding. Panic attack. It happened every time something I wrote was about to be performed. It was happening now.

It had been five years since my epiphany during
The Crucible.
That night, I’d fallen in love with plays the way some girls fall in love with horses or dolphins. If I could have moved a cot into the back of a theater and lived there, I would have been perfectly happy.

After I declared my goal in life, my mother immediately enrolled me in a junior writing workshop at the Public Theater. Then, to nurture my nascent muse, my parents took
me to a play almost every single weekend. Since they believed that anything shocking I might see onstage could act as a catalyst for discussion about societal values in general, and our family’s values in particular, we went to
everything.
The first time I actually saw a completely naked man was in a drama about gay lovers, at an off-off-Broadway loft theater in TriBeCa.

I also read every play I could get my hands on—Shakespeare, Chekhov, Lillian Hellman, August Wilson, and so many more. I’d lie in bed at night, trying to peel back layers of meaning, only to find new layers. I’d wonder if I’d ever be able to write like they did, with lives fully explored in the world of the play itself.

Now, in the Public Theater’s high school playwrights’ lab, I sat in the back row of the same space where I’d seen
The Crucible
and tried not to hyperventilate. My friend BB slid into the seat next to me. BB—short for Byron Bruin— lived in Harlem and went to Bronx Science. His mom was a jazz composer born in Suriname, and his father was a Swedish diplomat. In the looks department, BB got the best of both worlds.

“Deep breaths,” BB instructed, taking in the sweat on my forehead. He’d seen me in this state too many times.

“I’d settle for breathing at all,” I managed.

He reached into his backpack. “I know just what you need.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

“Ow!” A sharp pain throbbed in my upper arm. “What the—”

BB held up the metal ruler he’d just thwacked against my bicep.

“Jerk!” I smacked his arm. “That
hurt.”

He smiled smugly. “But notice you’re breathing almost normally. The actual pain-transmission neurons in your arm override the psychosomatic symptoms of panic,” he explained. “I’m running trials for a p-chem lab.”

That was just so Bronx Science.

Finally, the actors took their places; the house lights dimmed and the audience hushed. As BB gave my hand an encouraging squeeze, the stage manager read the title of my piece.

There was huge applause as the houselights went up, and I grinned. My labmates had laughed so hard during the play that a few times the actors had to hold until the
yuk-fest died down. That almost never happened, because everyone in Lab was so competitive. So I was psyched. But the opinion that mattered the most was that of Marcus Alvarez. He ran Lab. Still in his twenties, Marcus had already had two plays produced at the Public and been profiled in
Time.
I was sorta kinda crushing on him, as was pretty much everyone else in Lab, including BB. And BB was straight … most of the time.

Marcus bounded onto the stage, all kinetic energy in jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes. “Let’s start with the text of Kate’s play. Shout it out.”

I frowned. Wasn’t he going to say what he thought? Marcus wasn’t known for being effusive with praise. But the piece had been such an obvious hit. He could have thrown me a word crumb. “Nice.” Or even “Decent.” But he didn’t.

In the front row, Leigh Wong spoke up. “This girl runs into her ex with his new squeeze. Her best friend tries to make her feel better by putting down the new girlfriend and building up her friend. I found it rather trite.”

Bitch. I slunk down a little in my seat.

“Come on, it was hilarious,” BB called out.

“As a comedy sketch,” Leigh said. “In real life, no one is like those girls.”

“Only about half the kids I know,” BB shot back. “Get a sense of humor.”

“Chill, BB,” Marcus said. “Everyone’s opinion is valid. How about subtext? Someone else?”

“De girls talk like dey are all dat, but really dey both
feel insecure,” volunteered another of my friends, Nia Vernon, in her singsongy Jamaican accent.

Marcus nodded. “So essentially they’re giving a performance for each other, right?” He drifted up the center aisle toward where BB and I were sitting. “Think about it. In real life, anytime we’re with another person, we’re giving a performance. I’m giving one right now. So are you … and you… and you.” He pointed randomly at people. “But what’s behind that mask? You can’t write what you don’t know.” His eyes flicked over the group and landed on me. “Kate Pride, what’s behind your mask?”

Heat crept up my neck as Marcus pinned me with his gaze. I had no idea what he wanted me to say. Fortunately, he turned and addressed the group again. “I put that question to all of you. You want to be playwrights? Do the hard, scary work. Anything less, no matter how amusing, is just sound and fury and doesn’t signify jack.” He checked his watch. “Okay, we’re done for tonight. Those of you in Showcase, I need a page each on your one-acts by next week.” He gave us a quick wave and was out the door.

Kids gathered up their stuff, chattering about Marcus’s latest flash of genius, but I just sat there.
What’s behind your mask, Kate?
What had Marcus meant by that? And what did it have to do with his nonreaction to my scene?

“Up and at ′em,
chica.”
BB pulled me to my feet.

“What’s behind dat mask, girl?” Nia teased, joining us.

I looped my backpack over one shoulder as we headed for the exit. “Interpret what just happened,” I demanded.

BB waved it off. “Marcus plays mind games. You know how he is.” We pushed outside into the torpid July twilight, heat from the asphalt radiating under our feet. We stopped at Lafayette and Eighth to wait for a break in the traffic so we could cross.

“Was he saying that my scene lacked depth, or that I lack depth, or what?”

“Nah. He put you in Showcase,” BB pointed out. “I’d
kill
to be in Showcase.”

Showcase—Young Playwrights Showcase—was a special program at the Public Theater. Four high school playwrights were selected to work on one-acts with an elite group of actors for six months. Then, over a weekend in March, the plays would be produced at the Public. It was the biggest of big deals. Every Lab member, plus a couple hundred other people, had applied. Much to my joy—and shock—Marcus had selected me. So why was he all over my case?

When the traffic thinned, we crossed against the light and cut a speedy slalom through the river of pedestrians to the uptown subway. Tosca—I’d mentally named him years ago—was at his usual spot just outside the station. He was old, maybe seventy-five, with matted gray tufts of hair, leathery skin, and dirt ingrained in the wrinkles in his neck. His sad-eyed, scruffy mutt was tied to a fire hydrant with rope.

Most of the time, Tosca was just another street crazy who talked to himself. But when he tucked his violin under his chin to play, he was a god. Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky,
Paganini. His body snaked this way and that, as if the music was alive someplace deep inside of him.

Tosca was such a local fixture that most people didn’t even see him anymore. If they did bother to toss some change into his violin case, they didn’t stop to listen to his music. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did. It really did.

My friends disappeared down the station steps, but as usual, I waited until Tosca finished the piece he was playing. Then I reached into my backpack for the dog food and candy bar I’d stashed there, placed both in his open violin case, and hurried to rejoin my friends.

out at Port Authority and sprinted to the platform for the Englecliff bus. I found Lillith waiting for me, leaning against a wall, her skinny torso lost in a vintage Blondie T-shirt.