Better Nate Than Ever (2 page)

I’m sweating so bad that I think this might be the first time I actually need deodorant, right here in the backyard, by the garden gnome and weird miniature Japanese bridge Mom put in when Dad had the affair.

“Listen,” Anthony says, walking over to us but stopping a full eight feet away, like we’re going to infect him with terminal jazz hands or something, “I’ve got a huge meet tomorrow, in Aliquippa. And I have to
be up at the crack of butt. So if you’re planning on staying up all night playing your theater games, howling at the moon like a couple of actresses, you might as well sleep at Libby’s. I’m serious. I’ve got to get my rest, Nate.”

Perfect. He’s playing right into the plan.

“Well, gee, Anthony, if this game is such a big deal, maybe that’s a sensible idea.”

“It’s not a game, homo. It’s a
meet
.”

He makes for the broken sliding screen door (years ago, Anthony wrestled me through the kitchen and out onto the back patio, smashing through the screen, ending up grounded for the first/last time in his whole flawless life) and disappears within, reemerging a moment later. “And don’t do anything stupid tonight, guys. I’m serious. Mom and Dad will kill me if they have to ID your body at the morgue.”

Anthony is supposed to be watching me this weekend, though I don’t know what parents, in their right minds, leave their gentle-souled thirteen-year-old in the charge of their girl-addicted sixteen-year-old.

This is not to say my parents are in their right minds.

Only that they’re broke. Only that they can’t afford a babysitter, let alone the special weekend Dad is treating Mom to, on account of their admittedly remarkable seventeen years together. I think Dad
was just too cheap to afford a divorce, so he splurged on a fancy hotel, someplace that probably has terry-cloth robes and heart-shaped good-night chocolates. Someplace parents like mine will renew their vows and think life can always feel this refreshed, from this anniversary night forward. Until they get home tomorrow and find that their younger son was sold into child slavery in New York City.

Mood killer!

And now, with Anthony and Feather inside, and Libby and me alone, there’s nothing left to do but leave.

“I’m scared, Libby,” I say, choosing to pretend the almost-kiss never happened.

“Why?” Libby says, but I can see she’s scared for me, too. Or wishing she could come. Wishing she could be the co-adventurer in the fantasy she lit in the first place, introducing me to the magical escape of musical comedy. “There’s nothing to be scared of, Nate. You’re small and scrappy and can get out of any situation the world throws at you.”

Just this past week, I’d been stuffed into a locker by a seventh-grade nose picker who is shorter than I am.

“Okay, your cab to the bus station is supposed to get here in, like, ten minutes,” Libby says, walking me to my own fence. “I told him to come to the bottom
of the hill, so Anthony wouldn’t see you bailing.” What would I do without Libby? What
will
I do?

“What if I make a schmuck out of myself? What if I forget the words to my song?”

“You’ve been making a schmuck out of yourself for years, Nate,” Libby says. “At least this time you’ve got the possibility of being paid for it.”

“What if I stutter my name?” I always stutter my name: N-n-nate F-f-oster. Like I’m confessing to the crime of being alive.

“Let go and let God,” Libby says, “or whatever.”

“What if I lose my voice? What if—”

“Nate, just stop.” She snaps her fingers. In my face. “You’re going to sleep on the bus and arrive at nine in the morning. You’re going to ask any adult who doesn’t look like a murderer which way it is to Ripley-Grier studios, and you’re going to find a bathroom and splash down your face and try to run the hot water long enough that it steams any wrinkles out from your shirt, and you’re going to be fine.” She looks me up and down. “Do you have cough drops?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have your water bottle?”

“Definitely. Duh.”

“Do you have your headshot and résumé?”

“Holy
Dance of the Vampires
, no!
Dance of the Vampires
!” (Instead of cursing, we shout out the titles
of legendary Broadway flops.
Dance of the Vampires
was an infamous musical from the early two-thousands, starring the original Phantom of the Opera actor, this time as a blood drinker. Evidently it featured an entire song called “Garlic.” Not even kidding.)

“Okay, okay, let’s not panic,” Libby says. I must’ve left my headshot and résumé at her place, last night, when this entire adventure scheme was hatched. “It could potentially be very charming to Broadway,” she reasons, “discovering a boy from off the street who doesn’t even have a photo of himself. Besides, let’s be honest about your résumé: You’ve only played a mushroom in a junior high pageant about the merits of eating vegetables.”

She has a point. Although I played the broccoli.

Also, I don’t really even have a headshot, so Libby and I just took my eighth-grade picture and blew it up, revealing my horrible skin and overuse of hair product and that blasted underbite that I always forget I have. I wonder if that’s what it’s like for people born with eight toes or a weird birthmark; if you always forget you’re different until you see a photo of yourself. This is one of the reasons I’m actually not so sad my parents didn’t document my life. This is one of the reasons I’m glad I left that picture at Libby’s last night.

The cab pulls up, and she hands me a fifty-dollar bill.

“Libby!”

“Just take it. Your dad might be a doctor, but it’s not like he shares the wealth.” My dad is not, in fact, a doctor. He is a maintenance engineer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center—he cleans toilets—but whenever classmates hear my dad works at the Medical Center, they just assume he’s a doctor, and who am I to ruin another kid’s dream?

“I’ll pay you back,” I say. “With interest. I’ll make this up to you.”

She looks around, checking for raccoons or stray mental patients on the frighteningly dark back road to my house, and sticks out her index finger at me. I do the same, and we touch them and smile, and she says, “Don’t forget to phone home, yeah?”

“Definitely. I’m just going to be gone for a day. I’ll be back by this time tomorrow night.”

“You better be. Your brother and parents will be pulling in at the same time, and you know he’s going to have a pickup truck full of trophies, and they’re gonna be ready to kill each other. And there’s something very, like,
specific
about arriving home and realizing your thirteen-year-old is missing. Even if they never notice you when you’re—you know—
here
.”

“You getting in, or what?” the cab driver calls out from an open window.

I look at my outfit, like maybe I’m actually dressed as SuperBoy and can just avoid this cab ride altogether.
Like maybe I could just
fly
to New York and avoid getting mugged in the Greyhound bathroom before I even make it out of Pittsburgh.

“Break a leg,” Libby says, hugging me and giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “And text constantly, and here”—she thrusts a mysterious manila envelope out at me, pulled from her bag. “Take this, and don’t open it till after your audition. After they fall completely in love with you.”

“Thank you, Libby. I will.” And they won’t.

And from just above, a star blasts a trail across the night sky—like a visor of fire on Libby’s head—leaving it glowing a finger-painted smear, something human and touchable and reachable. Like maybe I could make the same kind of mark in New York, somewhere that might actually understand me.

Maybe Libby wasn’t lying about the meteor shower after all, or can sense things about the future that even I can’t.

“Get right back on the bus, after the audition,” she says. “Don’t go to the wax museum in Times Square or anything. Buy me an ‘I Heart New York’ T-shirt and then just get here. Just get back here.”

I shut the door and roll down the window. The cab smells like a dead person, what a dead person might smell like if ever I’d smelled one. I’m sure I will on this trip, if I don’t end up one myself.

“Libby?”

“Yes, Nate?”

“If anything happens, you were always my favorite Elphaba.”

The cab skids away, and I hold my bag close and shut my eyes and say a frantic prayer that it all goes off okay. And when I turn around to wave to Libby, she isn’t there—just that streak across the sky, still glowing.

Burnt into the Big Dipper like a dare.

F
or the record, I now know why they’re called Greyhound Bus Stations, and it’s not what you think.

They lure you in with the promise of a sweet, fast dog with a cartoon rib cage, but you should just drop the “hound” part of the Greyhound Bus equation. It’s all about “grey.” Everything here is a different color of grey. The hair of the homeless people, even the young ones: grey. The lighting: grey. The hot dogs: grey (but actually pretty tasty). Everything is the color of death, of a foggy day that promises another D-minus on your History homework.

Everything is the color of a wilted flower from my mom’s shop.

God, she’d kill me if she knew I was here.

“And how much is a round-trip ticket to New York City, please?” I say at the counter. I am up on my tiptoes, trying to appear a mildly short boy and not a medically tiny alien child.

“Round-trip,” the guy says, looking half-asleep or perhaps dead; looking grey, “is a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars?” I say, losing my balance and knocking a bunch of Greyhound pamphlets to the floor.

“Yes, a hundred dollars. Or fifty-five one way. But your mom or dad don’t have to pay in cash. We accept credit cards.”

“Funny you should ask about my mom, sir,” I shout. “I figured you might do that, figured this might be the first thing you bring up when somebody as little as me—as little
looking
as me—walks up to your Greyhound ticket counter, a counter you’re doing one heck of a job manning, to request a ticket out of here.” I’m losing him. I’m losing him. “It’s downright ludicrous, I’ll admit as much, but on the topic of my mom: She’s just in the bathroom. And I’m sure she’ll be out in just a moment, but she’s going through a bit of a stomach ailment and asked that I please take care of my ticket, alone, before she gets out. Because it could take quite a while.”

Libby and I had rehearsed this speech, and perhaps even over-rehearsed it.

“You know stomach ailments, sir,” I say, attempting an off-the-cuff improv.

“You need to be fifteen years old to purchase your own ticket,” the man says, looking above at a TV monitor of the local news. Somebody was just
stabbed three blocks from here, which comes as a strange comfort: Perhaps New York will be safer than Pittsburgh.

I pull Anthony’s ID from my wallet, swallow hard, and slide it across the counter. If this man takes an even vaguely close look at this picture—the headshot of an international model, a brother who could be anything in the world he wants (though he’s lying about his height; he is
not
five foot ten)—I’m dead.

Thank goodness the coverage on the local stabbing is so dynamic—a lot of graphics and eyewitnesses, and one woman is crying and holding a baseball bat, getting great screen time—that the man is riveted, not looking away, taking Mom’s ATM card from my hand and going to swipe it when I stop him.

“Wait!” I say, pulling the card away. “I need to pay this in cash.”

Just what I’d need: a credit card statement arriving for Mom that says ILLEGAL PURCHASE OF NEW YORK CITY GREYHOUND TICKET BY YOUR UNDERAGE SON.

Luckily, I caught him in time.

Luckily, Libby and I prepared for this.

We worked out every covert detail of my trip, yesterday, when she showed up at my house after school. Picture it: I was pretending to rake leaves in the backyard, in actuality smack-dab in the middle of my
signature, chore-avoiding
Singin’ in the Rain
routine (it was pouring out). Libby arrived, panting, breaking the news about the audition in the first place. I get all my headlines from Libby; we still have a dial-up modem at home, and thus all Facebook monitoring is done at her house.

And news she had: “Jordan Rylance”—the lucky twerp across town who goes to the Performing Arts School—“announced a very special trip he’s taking to New York City, Nate,” Libby said, grinning like a Lotto winner. “To audition for a Broadway musical version of
E.T.
, called
E.T.: The Broadway Musical Version
.” (At that point, I grabbed on to Feather’s tail, for balance.) “And they’re looking for a young boy to play Elliott. And there’s an open call in Manhattan, this weekend.”

And Libby squatted and shielded her face, knowing how I always react to world-shaking news. Knowing I would launch anything on my physical person—coins; old friendship bracelets; the rake—thirty feet in every direction, like a supernova star explosion.

Knowing this was my one-shot ticket out of Jankburg, Pennsylvania.

And now,
almost
using my mom’s ATM card only twenty minutes into the adventure, I wonder how I could have managed the nerve to think I might pull this off.

I step away from the counter and fish through dollars from my plastic bag full of money, and when I return to pay, the sleepy man has been replaced by a woman who has the same non-look on her face as he did, but with more makeup.

“Can I help you?” She is eating potato chips and they look delicious, by the way.

“Oh, the gentleman before you was helping me, was all set to let the transaction go through.” Cool down, Nate. “But—uh—I figured you might do that, figured this might be the first thing you bring up when somebody as little as me—as little
looking
as me—walks up to your Greyhound ticket counter, a counter you’re doing one heck of a job manning, to request a ticket out of here. It’s downright ludicrous, I’ll admit as much, but on the topic of my mom: She’s just in the bathroom.” Shut up, Nate. Shut up, Nate. “And I’m sure she’ll be out in just a moment, but she’s going through a bit of a stomach ailment and asked that I please take care of my ticket, alone, before she gets out. Because it could take quite a while.”