To Monica’s relief, the buzzer of the stage door sounded, breaking the moment. Jimmy opened the door to Hudson, who hustled in with wet hair and a Tupperware of baked goods, “Cronuts!” Hudson said in his usual grand voice. “Croissant-doughnuts!” he explained.
Onstage, Relly was curled up in a sleeping bag with headphones on, bobbing his head with an extra nod to Monica as she walked in.
“Did you sleep here?” Monica asked, studying Relly’s sleeping bag.
“Huh?” He removed his headphones.
“Did you sleep here?” she repeated.
“My mom had an early-morning shift at the hotel. I came in with her. Theaters are great places to nap.” Relly yawned. His mom worked two jobs. One was cleaning rooms at one of the largest hotels in all of Manhattan—1,966 rooms. Evenings she waitressed at a small diner near their apartment.
“Lunar eclipse last night. Did you see it?” Relly asked, sitting up. “Can’t see stars when you live in the city, but you can see eclipses.” Relly lived in a small, two-room basement apartment in Harlem with his brother and mother. On warm nights he would sneak up to the apartment building’s rooftop garden. It was nothing more than a wooden platform with a few chipped urns, some abandoned raised planter boxes, and a couple of old trellises laced with dead vines. A few years earlier it had been a lush oasis. The garden had been tended his father. But then his father passed away. Now Relly headed up to the rooftop to talk to his father in the sky.
Hudson came in, announcing his Cronuts, with a few already taken off the platter, followed closely behind by April.
“Rush hour on a Saturday. I can’t even!” April had the farthest commute of all of them. She, her three older brothers, her mother the schoolteacher, and her dad the dentist lived in a nice suburb in New Jersey about an hour outside the city. They all took turns driving her into the city. Monica wasn’t really sure what town she actually lived in because April just referred to it as Planet Mars.
When they were all together, Relly said in hushed tones, “Did you hear what happened last night?”
None of them had heard anything.
“A security guard got scared away by the curse of the Ethel Merman in the middle of the night. He was seen running for his life down Forty-Fifth Street,” Relly said, looking excited.
“How do you know that?” April asked.
“I overheard the stage crew. When they saw me, they stopped talking. Then, when I asked them if I had heard them right, they denied it and told me to go run my lines or something.”
“That’s weird,” Hudson said.
“Yes. But it’s a clue. Now we know something’s going on. Not just monsters under our bed.” He raised an eyebrow, glanced around the room. “So we investigate.”
“How do we investigate?” asked Monica.
“What do we investigate?” emphasized April.
“We start by interviewing the security guard.” Relly smiled and nodded.
Amanda breezed in, interrupting their scheme.
“Oh how glorious! The lights are on and everyone’s back to dancing and singing today!” She smelled like clean laundry. Her auburn hair was perfectly set in big curls. “Mr. Fernando will be happy to see this,” Amanda continued. Her eyes widened as she saw Hudson’s offering and took a Cronut. “Oh! Did you make these? Don’t mind if I do,” she laughed. She looked at the Cronut and started to sing to it in a quavery voice, lyrics from the The King and I:
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you
Getting to like you, getting to hope you like me…
And then she took a big bite.
April pulled out her phone and snapped a shot of her own Cronut. #cro-whats?
Hudson looked at Monica. “Theater people.”
“Who’s Mr. Fernando?” Monica asked April.
“Fernando Speldini, a.k.a. Mr. Fernando,” April answered, holding the aaah to make his name Fernaaaando, “is our vocal coach. He took a break for a few days. We weren’t sure if he was coming back.” April gave Monica a sideways glance, like Monica should be figuring something out.
“He worked on The Phantom of the Opera and Aladdin,” April said.
Monica raised her eyebrows to say she was impressed.
“Yes, I was in Aladdin with him. He’s brilliant. You’ll love him,” April said.
“Twenty days until opening night, people!” Maria walked onstage and threw each of them a golf ball. “And in those twenty days, you will each learn this.” She tossed one, then two, then three golf balls in the air above her head with one hand, and in perfect rotation caught each one in the other.
“Juggling?” Hudson’s voice hit a pitch higher than usual. None of the kids knew how.
The “ballroom” number. The second scene of the musical, when the kids eavesdrop on a conversation the golf-course developer is having with a neighbor, and discover that it’s the kids’ houses that are set to be destroyed. The scene begins: “A bulldozer?” “A bulldozer!”
April took a quick phone shot of the group with golf balls in their hands. #golfanyone? She would wait awhile to post it. April had just under ten thousand Insta followers but planned to get her numbers up before opening night with some fun behind-the-scenes images. “People who post between two and ten images a day get the best results,” she explained to Monica.
“This is where Mr. Morton’s professional ballroom-dance experience will be beneficial,” Maria said.
“I mean, I wouldn’t call it professional,” Relly said, looking at the golf ball as if it were moldy bread. “But I did rock a sequin jacket in a ballroom regional championship. Pretty sweet,” he added, smiling and nodding. That had been his dance teacher Miss Sandra’s idea. She lived in the apartment above Relly’s and had begun taking him to her dance studio after school to help out his mother, who needed childcare. One day Relly was goofing around in the mirror to music, and Miss Sandra immediately recognized that he had talent.
“You, my little Relly Button, are a natural dancer!” She was right. He trained with her for years, but never in any sort of dance-competition kind of way. Then her ballroom-dance partner broke his hip a week before a big tournament, and Relly was the only one who fit into his costume. As you can imagine, Miss Sandra’s dance partner was a small man, but big in moves and personality. Relly and Miss Sandra went all the way to the championship that year. And won.
Maria grabbed a roll of blue painter’s tape. “We’re going to work on our blocking for this scene today.” She stood there for several seconds, tapping her mouth and looking at the stage. The kids watched with curiosity as she marked off new areas. She began with the center line. “Center, here.” The center was most important when actors sang their solos. Monica had learned that the hard way. When you didn’t hit your center mark, you didn’t hit the spotlight. When you didn’t hit the spotlight, you sang in a shadow and no one could see you. It had happened her very first show. It never happened again.
“Hudson, can you do a backflip from a standing position?” All the kids looked at her with wide eyes. “Never mind, we’ll skip that for now.”
She took three large steps, pulled another piece of tape, ripped it with her teeth, and placed another mark. Then three equal steps to the other side of center. Everything was precise. The symmetry was critical. She looked at the stage floor, satisfied.
Mr. Fernando walked in. He was a short, stout man with a turned-out walk and a really long purple scarf. “Good morning, everyone!” he said in a friendly way.
Everyone welcomed him eagerly.
“Mind if I borrow one of your dancers, Maria?” Mr. Fernando studied the children, and his eyes landed on Monica. “Ah. You must be Ms. Monica!” Monica smiled. Mr. Fernando shook her hand cheerily with both his hands and gave her a little hug.
They walked down the hall to the rehearsal studio. He asked her what part of California she was from. He’d never heard of Reedley. “But I’m sure it’s beautiful!”
They turned in to Studio B. It
was a small room with a piano and a wall of mirrors. A petite woman with round glasses like her abuelita’s waved from the piano bench.
“We’re going to work on your eleven o’clock number,” Mr. Fernando said, referring to the big, showstopping number that happened toward the end of the second act. Monica’s character would be singing it. “You’re nervous,” he added.
She nodded.
“Don’t be nervous. I saw your audition tape. You’re good.” He handed her the music, then indicated the woman on the piano bench. “This is Mrs. Bigsley. Mrs. Bigsley is Broadway’s most illustrious piano player.” She took a sip of coffee, and then the lesson began.
They did a few voice exercises to loosen Monica’s throat and wake up her diaphragm. Things like “Ha ha ha ha ha ha” and “He he he he he” and “Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho” and “Aaaaaaaaahhhh” sloping downward.
Mr. Fernando explained things clearly and started sentences with “We’re going to…” a lot, which Monica liked. “We’re going to see if you can hit this note without cracking.” And “We’re going to try that scale again.”
They started to go over her eleven o’clock number. Just the first few bars. Monica’s throat felt tight, and her voice kept cracking. “I’m sorry,” she would say, and then they’d start over.
No matter how many times Monica goofed up, he would laugh this funny little hee-hee and wave it off. “We’re going to work on that.” He had a severe scar across his chin that stretched as he sang. Sometimes it looked like a second smile. Monica thought he was the perfect person to have two smiles. If it had been on Maria’s chin, she would just have looked like she was doubly angry.
As much as he made her feel comfortable, she was doing a terrible job. She wondered if the Ethel Merman had taken away her superpower.
“Monica, how do you usually feel when you’re singing?” Mr. Fernando interrupted as Monica flatted another note. “Just in general.”
Monica thought for a moment. Did he mean physically?
“Don’t be afraid to answer with your true feelings,” he continued.
Be present and enjoy, her abuelita would say.
“I guess I don’t feel so much like an underdog.”
“An underdog! Oh, my dear, hardly.”
“I guess maybe I feel a little special when I’m singing,” she said quietly.
“Good, good. That’s a very good answer. That’s the feeling of talent.” He paused. “And how do you feel when you’re singing here at the Ethel Merman, on Broadway?” He smiled.
She thought for a moment. “I feel a lot like an underdog.”
“And it’s presenting itself in your voice.” He smiled again.
He walked toward Mrs. Bigsley at the piano. “When you have a special talent, you must do something about it. Don’t ignore that feeling of thinking it’s special.”
Mrs. Bigsley took another sip of coffee.
“What do you love most about singing?” he asked, looking at Mrs. Bigsley but speaking to Monica.
“When I sing, I can turn into anyone I want to be.” For a split second, she had a visual of her dad watching Elvis on TV and listening to Elvis’s records. Her father had a terrible voice, but when Elvis came on, the sky was the limit. She and her father would sing along, doing Elvis’s signature leg shake. They were Elvis. She would sing Madonna. She would sing Bette Midler. Julie Andrews. Anyone she wanted to be in that moment. Any feeling she wanted to feel.
“Tony has two big solos. Your voice is the reason you got the part.” Monica wanted to correct him. She didn’t get the part—she got the part after two others got the part. She wondered if Mr. Fernando knew that. Of course he did. Then she wondered if he had left her the key. She was tempted to ask him about the curse, but instead she asked a question that she immediately wanted to take back: “Mr. Fernando, am I good enough?”
How embarrassing. Why had she asked him such a silly question?
Mr. Fernando looked at her. His warm smile turned into a frown. “Never be good enough” was all he said. Mrs. Bigsley sipped her coffee.
When Monica returned to the stage an hour later, still having not quite sung very well, she expected to hear Maria yelling at the full cast. Instead she was standing center stage with a bag of golf balls around her wrist, writing notes in the margins of the script.
“Where’d everybody go?” Monica asked.
The cheeriness of earlier that morning had vanished.
“Your friend Hudson is missing.”
“What do you mean, ‘missing’?”
“Gone.”
“He left the production?” Monica knew Hudson had been frustrated working with Maria. He would explain that his character wasn’t meant to be graceful on his feet. But Monica had never imagined he would abandon the production entirely over it.
“Just gone.” Then Maria explained. Relly had had no problem with the complicated dance moves, and April had managed as well, but Hudson was finding them impossible. My body just doesn’t move that way! Hudson had complained. He slowed down the rehearsal. They took a long water break. Hudson was tired. “After break, everyone returned but Hudson.” Maria shrugged. “If he doesn’t return soon, we’ll get his understudy out here.”
She slapped the pen down on the script and looked straight at Monica.
“Sometimes these shows just don’t work out.”
She tucked the script under her arm and left. Monica sat down on the wing of the stage. Her eye caught sight of a golf ball in the orchestra pit. She heard and then saw Artie enter the theater from the rear. He was with a tall man in a gray business suit. Monica could make out their words very clearly, because the tall man had a very loud voice, and Artie had an even louder voice.
“I don’t want to say it—I dread it, really—but this might be the end of the line for the Ethel Merman,” Artie said with his arms crossed.
The man in the gray suit put a gentle hand on Artie’s shoulder. “Hard choices, but I think you’re making a wise decision, Artie.”
“Truth is, Broadway musicals need to run a really long time just to break even.” Artie took a long look at the theater’s grandeur and sighed. “What did you say your vision is for the place?”
“A luxury hotel. Bigger and shinier than NYC has ever seen.” The man in the gray suit corrected his posture so as not to appear too eager.
“Huh, don’t we have enough hotels on Broadway?” Artie said with a furrowed brow.
“Not like this one! A place to look down on Broadway from the roof deck swimming pool!” The men’s voices trailed off as they walked out the same way they came in.
Monica studied the golf ball.
Moments later, April, Relly, and Hudson returned to the stage, arguing.
“I wasn’t missing; I was stuck in the bathroom!”
“You were gone for like thirty minutes.”
“You think I don’t know? The door was jammed. Didn’t you hear me screaming?” Hudson was sweaty, furious, and embarrassed all at once.
“We thought the curse got you,” April said.
“Can you imagine Artie when the headline reads ‘Actor Goes Missing Inside the Ethel Merman’?” Relly slapped his knee, laughing.
“There are like a dozen bathrooms in this theater, and I get the one with the sticky lock!” Hudson said.
They noticed Monica and went over to her.
“And then my mind started imagining things.”
He explained that when he was in the bathroom, he thought he’d felt the temperature drop and a presence of something. Then the lights had started to flicker. “Did the temperature really drop? Was there a presence? Did I imagine the lights? I don’t know. I freaked out. When I tried to open the door, the lock broke and the door jammed shut. I stayed there a long time, not moving. Just hoping the presence would go away and the lights would stop flickering.” Hudson sat down on the stage. He was growing pale. “This place is getting to me.”
“How’d you get out, then?” April asked.
“I don’t like small spaces. So finally I just freaked out and busted through the door.”
“Cool!” Relly said, raising his fist in the air. Hudson rubbed his arm. Everyone noticed for the first time that his sleeve was torn and he was bleeding.
“And because of me, Maria left, and we’ll be even further behind schedule.”
He slid his Our Time script across the stage floor. “Let’s just write the reviews ourselves: ‘Artie Hoffman’s Production Biggest Flop Ever on Broadway.’ ”
“One plus: When you went missing, I found the number for the security guard who was on duty last night,” Relly said.
The kids perked up.
“Wanna call him?” Relly was already dialing the number.
April politely reached for the phone. She smiled. “I’m really good at talking to adults.”
Relly gave her a sideways glance and handed the phone over.
The guard answered on the third ring. He was still rattled by the events of the night before.
“I’d never seen anything like it,” he said. He was a soft-spoken guy. “Haven’t been doing this job long, but some things just aren’t right.”
“What did you see!” yelled Hudson in the background.
“Shhhhh,” the others said in unison.
“What did you see?” April asked with an air of authority.
“Last night, I was doing my normal rounds through the theater. That’s part of the job. To make sure things are secure, you know? Well. As I was making my rounds on the second floor, I heard a noise.”
“What kind of noise?” Relly said, leaning into the phone.
“What kind of noise?” April repeated.
“Like a scratching, or rustling,” he said with a shiver in his voice. “A lot of scratching and rustling.”
“Scratching and rustling?” April imagined a terrible image of a trapped person. “Where was it coming from?”
“Well, it was coming from one room, but the door was closed. And I’m not that familiar with the theater yet. I just only started working there, you know.”
The kids nodded in anticipation.
“You know?” he repeated.
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