April offered her an oddly professional handshake. Monica shook her hand quietly.
Monica had promised her abuelita she would not be shy. Her awkward silences made people uncomfortable. Monica could perform in front of hundreds of people, but felt uncomfortable with just one person. But it looked like April wasn’t too bothered. She saw the power in Monica’s silence. Or maybe she just had a lot to say.
“Would you like to see something…?” Monica asked shyly, digging through her backpack.
“What?” April was curious.
Monica pulled out a similar diamond-shaped weaving from her backpack. Hers was made of smooth wheat reeds and woven much tighter. “Ojo de Dios,” Monica finally said, in a voice that was gentle but strong.
April’s eyes widened, and her mouth opened in shock.
“God’s eye,” Monica translated for April. “They are said to have the power to see what we cannot.” Monica held the matching god’s eye up toward April’s. The two girls smiled at each other. “Insurance,” Monica repeated.
They both laughed again, more comfortable with each other now.
“So what happened to Tabitha?” Monica asked.
“One day she was here and the next day, poof!” April said, shaping her hands like fireworks.
“Poof?” repeated Monica.
“Who leaves two weeks into rehearsal? She said this place gave her the creeps. Said she saw something onstage late one night.”
“Like what kind of something?” Monica trembled.
April ignored the question. “Personally? Stays between us?” April gave Monica a serious look. Monica nodded. “I think whatever it was, Tabitha was faking it.”
Monica had to think about that for a second. “Why?”
April ignored the question again. Then she decided to answer it: “She probably thought this show was going to be a flop, like all the other shows at the Ethel Merman, and she didn’t want her name attached to a flop. People,” April said with a huff. “And now we have less than a month left of rehearsal time until opening night.”
Monica had to process that. Then a wave of panic washed over her, but she forced a nervous smile.
“So, how many Broadway productions have you been in?” April asked. “We could take down Tabitha’s posters and put yours up.”
Monica looked at the wall of Tabitha’s posters, which were way more than April’s, and just continued to smile.
Four CENTER OF BALANCE
When Monica and April returned to dance rehearsal, a new person was standing on the stage. April grabbed Monica’s arm. “Don’t freak out, but that’s Hugh Lavender!”
“Who’s Hugh Lavender?” Monica whispered, not freaking out.
“ ‘Who’s Hugh Lavender?’ ” April squealed. “Hugh Lavender is only one of the most famous doctors on TV! Beverly Hospital?” Monica shrugged. “You’ve never watched Beverly Hospital?” Monica’s family didn’t watch much television.
Hugh looked exactly liked you’d imagine a famous TV doctor looking. Tall, chiseled, with sandy hair, and piercing blue eyes that caught the light just right. His confident posture revealed that he seemed to be quite aware of exactly how striking he was. Artie and Hugh were childhood friends. It was no coincidence he had put his television career on hold for a few months to give Broadway a try. Was he perfectly cast as the rat-faced lead bad guy, Patrick Murphy? No. A little too… pretty. Could he out-dance anyone in an audition? Absolutely not. But he was Hugh Lavender. “I’ve always wanted to play a bad guy,” Hugh had said with a soapy wink and a smile when Artie gave him the part. Most important, Hugh Lavender’s name looked good in marquee lights outside the theater. Artie’s show would draw in the crowds with a name like that. It was the perfect plan.
“This is a barrel,” Maria said as she rolled out a large brown barrel. “This barrel will be your best friend in the chase scene.” She went to the wing of the stage and rolled out another barrel.
“Welcome back, ladies. Much better attire, new Tabitha.”
“Her name is not new Tabitha. It’s Monica. From California,” April stated.
“Fine then, Monica from California… you’ll be sitting out today, but you will be warming up and taking notes from the house.”
Monica looked down at her dance outfit. April shrugged.
Relly went over and stood next to one of the barrels. It came up past his chest.
“These puppies are big.” He leaned in. It was hollow but for one wooden step inside to stand on.
“There’s a lot of fightography in this scene,” April whispered to Monica. “Maria’s brought in a special fight coach for us. It can get aggressive onstage, but you should be fine.”
Monica was a little nervous about that.
* * *
From what Monica knew from the script she had read, Our Time was about four friends—Tony, Froggie, Pax, and Crash—trying to figure out how to save their local arcade, the Tilt, from being bulldozed and turned into a luxury hotel. The kids decide the only way to save the Tilt is to find a treasure thought to have been hidden in caves in the woods behind Tony’s house, and use it to buy the Tilt’s building and games back. The first act took place in a typical suburban neighborhood. But in act two, the set was magically transformed into dark woods with an underground cave.
Throughout the show, there were a lot of comical dance routines. A lot of chases. There was an actual tomato fight onstage, and an actor pulling the fire alarm of the theater. Glow-in-the-dark foam noodles came out. The highlight and central piece of the set was a fifteen-foot waterfall with real water that the kid actors would slide down in the middle of a scene where the villainous hotelier chased them. Monica hoped she’d get a chance to try it. If the stage crew could get the waterfall to work, that is.
There was a set that looked like an underground cave that was able to be moved to float above the stage when the stagehands pulled the ropes from the fly rails off stage right. Special gears had been designed to rotate a platform as scenes changed. It was an elaborate set, with a lot of complicated choreography. And that meant there was a lot that could go wrong.
The chase scene that Monica was watching happened in act two of the show. It was one of the harder routines.
“Now,” said Maria. “During this scene, each one of you will at some point climb into a barrel, climb out of a barrel, hide behind it, race in front of it, and be its dance partner. That’s when Hugh and his gang come in.” Hugh took a bow. “You following?” Maria rolled out two more barrels. Four total, one for each child character.
“The scene opens with Froggie. April, you’re here.” She positioned her at one of the front barrels. Relly, you’re there. Hudson, you and Monica from California will be at the back barrels.” They got into position except for Monica. Maria stood in her spot.
“April, you will jump onto the overturned barrel to provoke the bad guys. You three will use your barrels to block the bad guys’ lunges. Got it?”
They did leap after leap and turn after turn, over and over again. “Stop!” Maria would interrupt. “Flexibility—where is your flexibility!” She would call out, “You are not a brick wall. Keep up, keep up.” Monica pulled out her black-and-white composition notebook and took notes. She took her notebook everywhere with her. She had dozens of notebooks at home filled with lyrics and ideas for songs, poems she liked, and weird facts Freddy would tell her, mostly about animals: Did you know snakes smell with their tongues? Stuff like that. But the notebook she pulled out that day was blank but for a small title Freddy had written on the first page for her, in large, messy letters: Notes from New York. Monica started writing, not song lyrics, but details about barrels, and flexibility, positions on the stage, and dance moves. Anything Maria yelled out, Monica wrote down.
The routine was more physical and complicated than anything Monica was used to. Worse, rehearsing onstage meant not having a mirror. A mirror was every performer’s best friend. Monica got a lump in her throat just watching them. She could
tell the kids had practiced this scene before. Maybe a few times, or maybe for a few weeks? She didn’t know. But she did know she had a lot of catching up to do. And quickly.
“No, no, Hudson! Find your center of balance.” Maria stopped them again. “When you step forward, Hudson, it cues the crew to drop the ropes behind you. Then you roll. Please try to remember!” Hudson’s face glowed red.
“Cue the roll.…”
They went over that roll a dozen times, and Hudson was still off by a beat.
“Hudson!” Maria stopped the music and jumped in his spot. “If you move too slowly, everyone is having to adjust, and then everything is off.”
Finally, after a dozen more times, Hudson got it right.
“Remember, this scene is the dramatic climax. Good guys meet bad guys. High energy. The audience must feel the intensity. It is your job to make them feel the intensity. Every line, every single move must be perfect. Every crossover, every sequence, every jump and stomp exactly in time with the music. Are you listening? Monica from California, write this down: No missteps.”
Monica wrote it down.
“One misstep can ruin the entire scene. No missteps!”
Maria’s eyes trained on Hudson.
“Bad reviews are the kiss of death in this industry. And I don’t attach my name to bad reviews.”
The kid actors looked at one another nervously.
Maria inhaled. Hugh inhaled. The kids inhaled.
They all slowly exhaled together.
Monica took more notes.
After two hours spent on the same sequence, Maria finally said, “Well, okay. You’re done.” The kids cheered. “Go do a pizza lunch or watch cute videos online or whatever you kids like to do to celebrate the end of a hard rehearsal,” she said.
The kids were just hopping off the stage when a loud thud-thud-thud, followed by a hollow scream, came from the side of the stage. The group turned to see a tipped-over barrel and Hugh Lavender writhing in pain at the bottom of the stage’s side staircase. Blood was gushing from his nose. It looked broken.
“No! Not Hugh!” Artie yelled. He came racing down the aisle in a panic.
The four kids looked at one another in disbelief.
Interlude
“Mama”
Look, Ma, I finally made it
I’m first in line
I can see it in your eyes
The tears we’ve cried
Today I’ll try harder
I’ll be better than before
We dreamed the dream together
And I want to be the one you’re always
rooting for
It was never easy being the youngest of three
It was always my fault when my family couldn’t agree
“Be more like your brother,” you’d say every day
I just wanted your love
To tell me I was okay
So I had to break the rules
There was nothing to lose
Spent my life running from the pain
You all had put me through
But this is my chance to make things right
To prove once and for all that my star shines bright.…
Five WHAT KEYS ARE FOR
After rehearsal the other three kid actors made plans to go out for dinner later that evening and left together. They had invited Monica, but she declined. She wasn’t sure why; maybe it was because she felt like an outsider. Monica sat quietly in one of the auditorium seats, studying the cracked walls, the glistening chandelier, the ornate details in the molding that framed the stage. She was tempted to call home, but Freddy needed to rest, and probably so did her mother and father after a long night at the hospital. She wanted to call Marissa, but she would be in school. So she left the theater.
Fortunately, Monica’s abuelita was standing outside the Ethel Merman Theater with two warm corned beef sandwiches wrapped in white paper, and a side of pickles in a round plastic container that was leaking juice. Her abuelita had this sense of always knowing when to be there when Monica needed her. Monica figured it was just something abuelas were good at. Being there. It was about to pour, but her abuelita was too wrapped up in the magic of New York City to notice anything as commonplace as clouds.
“Worth flying three thousand miles for!” Monica’s abuelita said, raising the sandwiches above her like a trophy. Her fancy feathered derby hat had been replaced with a New York Mets baseball cap.
“Did you get your nails painted?” Monica’s tone was gently curious.
“Big Apple red! I couldn’t resist,” her abuelita laughed.
Monica politely took a sandwich. She wasn’t hungry.
“Tell me about your first rehearsal on Broadway!” her abuelita said licking her wrist of pickle juice. “Bet it was different from rehearsals back home. What were the other actors like?”
“Talented.” Monica looked down at the pavement.
Monica didn’t want to have to explain the Hugh Lavender incident. And she really didn’t want to tell her abuelita that Maria hadn’t even let her rehearse with the rest of the kids. She had sat out the entire time while Maria stood in her spot, at her barrel, sang her lines, and performed each move perfectly. “Are you taking notes, Monica from California?” she’d say on occasion. But mostly it seemed Maria had been focused on the other three. It made sense to Monica, but it wouldn’t make sense to her abuelita.
“Did you meet Maria Marquez?”
“Yes,” Monica said quietly.
Her abuelita said, “Eeee!” and did a little shimmy. “What’s she like? Is she strict? Did she yell at you?”
“Abuelita… can we talk about this later?”
Her abuelita looked at Monica. They walked in silence for a few beats.
“How about I tell you about my day, then.” Her abuelita smiled. Monica nodded. “Well, after I left you at the Ethel Merman, I hopped in a cab and dropped all our bags off at the hotel. Don’t worry, I didn’t check into the room. I want us to do that together. Then I went searching for the Stage Deli. It’s famous, you know. Old Broadway.” Monica’s abuelita divided Broadway into two categories: old Broadway and new Broadway. Old Broadway was when none of the actors had mics and they could still belt out ballads to a packed house. Old Broadway was when people dressed up for the theater and when ticket prices were cheap. It was a slower pace, but still exciting. New Broadway was fast and bright and big entertainment.
“When I got to the Stage Deli, there was no deli. It’s now a nail salon. But”—she waved her nails again—“this is America, Kita. When one door closes, another door opens. Plus, I had time to kill. Then a man selling baseball hats told me about another deli with even better corned beef sandwiches. So I bought a hat from him and walked twelve blocks.”
“Twelve blocks? Aren’t you tired, Abuelita?”
“I’ll sleep when we’re back in Reedley.” Her abuelita laughed and kept talking. “New York! Broadway! Kita!”
Monica couldn’t bear the thought of telling her abuelita that the Ethel Merman Theater was cursed. That it smelled like a swamp and was held together by duct tape and glue. It would break her heart. It was her abuelita who had helped get her here, who had driven her to every vocal lesson, audition, and rehearsal.
Whenever Monica was in a new production, she would enter her abuelita’s kitchen to scraps of fabric and paper patterns. “I may not be the best seamstress, but I know what Broadway costumes are supposed to look like from the album covers,” Abuelita would say. Monica was always the best-dressed character in every production. When her parents were working, or busy with Freddy, back and forth to doctor’s appointments, Monica spent endless nights at her abuelita’s house watching old movies and singing Broadway tunes. Each new script for each new show, Monica’s abuelita would say, “Let’s attack!” and get the highlighter out to note Monica’s lines.
How was she going to tell her abuelita that her one and only chance on Broadway didn’t stand a chance? That they’d spent their l
ife savings and flown all this way for a flop that probably wouldn’t last on Broadway for more than a week?
By the time they reached the hotel, the wind was gusting so hard, people were scampering into cafes and restaurants to wait it out. The famous Novelotel didn’t look that famous or even much like a hotel from the outside. Wedged between two nondescript six-story brick buildings, it could be easily passed by. “What made this famous?” Monica heard herself asking her abuelita.
“It’s a very old hotel.”
“It’s famous for being old?”
“I guess so. Oh, I just love the smell of old hotels,” her abuelita said, with her hands to her chest, as they entered the dark, musty lobby. To Monica, famous old hotels smelled like Freddy’s lizard tank. The walls were the color of leather, the ceiling a brilliant blue to replicate the sky. Everything about the snug space felt dated and heavy.
A toad of a woman was hunched over on a small, uncomfortable-looking stool behind the check-in counter. She seemed to be napping.
Startled by the pair’s movement, she shot up with “You checking out?”
“No,” Monica’s abuelita said eagerly, “we’re checking in. Garcia. G-A-R-C-I-A.”
The woman typed lethargically on her computer.
“Just two of you?” Her voice was groggy and slow.
“Yes. I left our bags here earlier.”
The woman stared at Monica’s abuelita, trying to trigger a memory.
“Right.” The woman pulled herself off the chair and got their bags from the back room.
“My granddaughter is starring in a Broadway musical,” her abuelita said, lifting her bag.
“I’m just kind of an understudy,” Monica said, meekly picking out a peppermint from a candy bowl on the counter.
The woman stared at Monica and with a yawn said, “Room 304,” and handed Monica two sets of keys.
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