My Life

by Maryrose Wood

  make per week

  The number of seats couldn’t go up, the number of performances couldn’t go up—Emily was no math whiz, but even she could see that the only thing that could go up was the ticket price.

  Emily ripped the notes for her paper out of her notepad and crushed them into a crinkly yellow ball. If, by giving this assignment, Mr. Henderson had wanted to demonstrate that facts had the power to persuade, he’d done it. Emily was persuaded: there was no way Broadway shows could be free. As far as she could tell, it was nearly impossible for them to be produced at all.

  Philip also awoke on Sunday with an uneasy feeling. Even in the abstract, the stop clause concept was causing him no end of discomfort. He didn’t like the idea behind it: everything could seem fine, life was putt-putting along without any significant bumps in the road, and then—one moment of weakness or inattention or plain bad luck and goodbye, Charlie, as Emily’s Grandma Rose liked to say.

  He took out his Aurora spreadsheets and tried to calm himself with numbers. But his mind kept racing back in time to that awful day three years before when he’d sat at this very table, listening to his mother’s end of a phone conversation that contained the following information: his father was getting remarried only six months after moving out—the minute the divorce was final, basically—and he and his new garlic-farming wife would be relocating to the other side of the continent of North America immediately following the wedding. . . .

  After the phone call Mrs. Nebbling locked herself in her bedroom, and Mark yelled a few choice swear words he’d learned from Grand Theft Auto. Then he stormed out to spend the night at a friend’s house.

  Alone, ignored, abandoned, thirteen-year-old Philip couldn’t hold still—he paced around the living room, which was still piled high with unpacked boxes (they had just moved into Birchwood Gardens, and they were all trying not to mention how much smaller it was than their old house). He shoved his hands into his pockets and took them out again. He literally felt like he might explode.

  So he swiped the grocery money from the glass jar on the kitchen counter, walked at top speed with his head down the whole way to the train station, and headed into the city on his own, which he’d started doing since his father left. Rules and limits didn’t seem to apply anymore.

  He bought his ticket on the train, which cost extra, but he didn’t care. He half ran from Penn Station to Times Square, and then, as the razor edge of his mood finally began to soften, he walked up to the first box office window he saw and bought what turned out to be the very last available ticket to the very first public performance of a new musical called Aurora. . . .

  “Dude!” Mark slapped a greasy pizza box right on top of Philip’s papers. “I made you some lunch. Bon appétit!”

  “Gross,” Philip said, snatching his spreadsheets away before they were ruined. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Watching your figure for the ladies, huh? Have you kissed that Emily yet?” Mark made noisy kissy lips.

  “Would you please just die?” Philip retorted. “Emily and I are just friends, I keep telling you that. Do you kiss your friends?”

  “ ‘Just friends!’ I rest my case, Your Honor. The ‘just friends’ alibi is Exhibit Gay, Philip Nebbling versus the State of Denial.” Mark grabbed a hot slice out of the box and took a big, cheesy bite. The stink of garlic hit Philip like a slap. “ ‘Just friends,’ ” Mark said, the sauce dripping down his chin. “That’s a good one.”

  Thankfully, this unpleasant conversation was interrupted by the little snippet of “Never Be Enough” Philip had made into his IM alarm:

  Never be enough,

  My love for you could

  Never be enough . . .

  It was Emily, summoning him to the computer for three o’clock, Sunday matinee time. He and Emily would chat online and play the overture together and Philip would feel much better.

  Philip moved a pile of dirty laundry from the chair to the floor and sat down in front of the screen.

  AURORAROX: hey

  AURORAROX: u there?

  AURORAROX: u have to be there u have to be there, pleeeeeeeze

  BwayPhil: Okay! Relax, I’m here.

  AURORAROX: OMG! have you seen the message boards?

  BwayPhil: No, what’s going on?

  AURORAROX: OMG OMG you have to look

  BwayPhil: Which one?

  AURORAROX: all of them

  AURORAROX: just look

  AURORAROX: i’ll wait

  With a few clicks Philip got the TheatreGeeks.com message boards open on his screen.

  Something’s closing, did you hear?

  I heard something long-running

  I heard it might be a stop clause situation—

  That stinks, producers are such greedy bullies

  Yeah but there wouldn’t be any shows without them . . .

  He switched to a different message board.

  I think it’s phantom

  probably, that’s been running 4ever

  still sells out though, who’d kick out phantom?

  Well it’s not “lion king”

  No, you still can’t get tickets to lion king—

  That was BroadwayDish.com. There were dozens of these sites; Philip had all the big ones bookmarked.

  Where’d you hear?

  I read it on ThespNet.com

  I read it on BackstageGossip.com I heard it from a friend in the business—she’s in the chorus of Mamma Mia, she heard it from her friend who’s the assistant stage manager at Avenue Q who got it from his friend who’s the swing for Hairspray—

  What did he say?!!!

  Only that it’s a show no one would expect, the theatre owner is closing on a technicality to make room for something else

  Something even bigger

  but no one knows what

  Philip’s heart was beating very fast. His ears suddenly filled with a horrible, piercing, high-pitched sound.

  AURORAROX: p, you there?

  AURORAROX: ?

  BwayPhil: Sorry, back now!

  BwayPhil: Mark burned PopTarts & the smoke alarms went off.

  BwayPhil: I had to go yank out all the batteries to shut them up.

  AURORAROX: oh

  AURORAROX: so did you see

  BwayPhil: I did.

  AURORAROX: it makes me so nervous

  AURORAROX: what if it’s true after all

  AURORAROX: what lester said about aurora

  AURORAROX: and the stupid stupid stop clause—

  BwayPhil: Hang on now—

  BwayPhil: Has it occurred to you that maybe WE started this rumor?

  AURORAROX: ?

  BwayPhil: Remember? There were those guys in Don’t Tell Mama.

  BwayPhil: Maybe they heard us talking.

  BwayPhil: Or maybe somebody saw Morris limping.

  BwayPhil: Or maybe it’s just a coincidence.

  BwayPhil: Okay?

  AURORAROX: okay

  AURORAROX: maybe . . .

  12

  “A BOOK REPORT ON PETER RABBIT”

  You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown

  1967 (Off-Broadway), 1971 (Broadway).

  Music, lyrics, and book by Clark Gesner

  Monday was a dark day.

  In the theatre a “dark day” meant it was the actors’ day off, there was no performance, the theatre was “dark.”

  In real life, of course, a dark day was one that was full of dread and despair. It was the day on which you would be required to turn in a long-overdue paper you have not, for the most part, written. A day when there was nothing but cold pizza for breakfast, since your brother’s definition of the five food groups was pizza, Fritos, salsa, more pizza, and Red Bull.

  Above all, a dark day was one in which the thing that gave your life meaning and purpose, the ritual that filled your Saturday afternoons with music and your tender heart with joy, might or might not be threatened with oblivion, and there was no way to find out for sure.

  Monday was
a dark day indeed.

  Even Marlena Ortiz was having a bad day. . . .

  “Thank you for all your concern!” Marlena Ortiz typed. The blog format made it look like the thumbnail-sized head shot of her on the screen was talking, and the picture seemed so happy and carefree that she was often tempted to write really nasty things coming out of its mouth. She didn’t, of course. Marlena had worked awfully hard to get this far; she wasn’t about to screw it up.

  Marlena typically spent twenty minutes a day posting on the official Aurora blog. She answered questions from fans and slipped them thrilling tidbits of personal info (“Hey, I’m from the Bronx too!”). When she was pressed for time, she’d make sure to post a “hello” message so “her people” knew she’d at least logged on to read their gushing. Her contract didn’t require it, but the Aurorafans loved it. Aurora had been good to Marlena and she believed in being a good sport in return.

  “Everything is fine,” she typed. “Don’t worry about all the rumors, Broadway’s full of them! AURORA is still here and still going strong, see you tomorrow at eight!”

  As she sat there, the comments and questions kept piling up on the Aurora blog, and Marlena finally allowed herself to wonder: Is it us? Could Aurora be closing? There’d been rumors before, but never anything like this.

  She looked around her lovely two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive, with its view of the Hudson River. Marlena had been shaking her booty in low-budget music videos when she’d gotten plucked out of an open call to star in this show. Now she had an agent, a manager, a lawyer, a stylist, and a life coach who’d been meditating with her once a week to “gain clarity” on her next career move.

  Unless I already blew it, she thought anxiously. Her manager already had clarity; he’d been killing himself getting the big record companies interested in her, but six months ago her theatre agent had urged her to renew her contract with Aurora and she had. Now she was stuck for a year, and even after all that meditating she still wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice.

  “Beyoncé!” her manager had yelled, furious, when he found out what she’d done. “J Lo! They make a lot more money than you do, little Miss Broadway Star!” It was true, but how did you walk away from a dream? Marlena had wanted to be on Broadway since she was a little girl taking tap in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, and now she was going to quit?

  She thought of her boy band costar. Nice kid, pretty hair, not much voice but that’s what microphones were for. He was doing Aurora on the advice of his agents, to shake up his image so he could make the transition to feature films.

  “He’s a bankable star,” Marlena’s manager had said sternly, when she’d first complained about having to work with Mr. Pretty Hair, who didn’t know stage right from stage left. “That’s what you need to become, Marlena Ortiz!”

  She looked at her smiling face on the screen, an airbrushed memento of her former naïveté. The public always thought the actors were the big deal, but Marlena knew better. The real power in the theatre was not onstage but in windowed offices and wood-paneled conference rooms, with the producers and directors, the ad agencies and critics and investors.

  And the writers, she thought. But Marlena didn’t know who’d written Aurora. She’d been given a phone number on the first day of rehearsals. “In case you have any questions about the role, and the director is unavailable, call and leave a message here and someone will call you back.” That’s what the stage manager had told her.

  She’d only called the number once, after the opening-night party when she was a little tipsy and feeling fine. She’d left a message saying congratulations and asking whoever it was out on a date, just for fun. After that she was told not to call except in an emergency.

  But now something was up, and she’d be damned if Marlena Ortiz was going to be the last person to know what it was. If Aurora was closing, she needed to get her manager back on the phone with RCA, today. It wasn’t too late to plan a fall concert tour, but first she needed to get in the studio and lay down the album they’d been talking about before she renewed her contract with Aurora.

  Emergency? I’ll make it an emergency, she thought, and picked up the phone.

  “It’s only five paragraphs, you can do it!” Philip was trying to be encouraging, but Emily’s writer’s block had reached crisis proportions and he was nearly out of patience. It was study hall for both of them, and they sat at adjacent computers in the school library. Philip had found a helpful Web site that gave sample outlines and topics for persuasive essays, and Emily was staring at a blank screen, freaking out.

  “Henderson’s class starts in thirty minutes,” she said anxiously. “That’s six minutes a paragraph.”

  “Too bad it’s not a math class,” Philip joked, but she didn’t seem to get it. He turned back to the screen. “How about one of these topics? School uniforms, yes or no? Capital punishment, yes or no? Violence in the media, harmless or the end of civilization? Hey, here’s an easy one: which make better pets: cats or dogs?”

  “You know I’m allergic to fur,” Emily said. “Look! Oh my God, twenty-nine minutes.”

  “Pick anything!” he urged. “Better to turn in a bad paper than blow off the assignment and get a zero averaged into your grade.”

  “My topic: Why RuneScape is dumb!” Emily snarled pointedly. A bunch of goth gamer kids were hovering around waiting for the computers, but since Emily and Philip were attempting to do actual schoolwork, the massively multiplayer crowd had to wait.

  “Eat me,” one of them snarled, but they backed off.

  Philip looked at the retreating mob and let their wardrobe choices inspire him. “School uniforms, then,” he suggested to Emily. “You can’t be allergic to them.”

  “If they’re wool I am,” Emily said. “Twenty-eight minutes! What am I gonna do what am I gonna do—”

  “Just write something. Anything!”

  “Okay! I’m just gonna write anything.”

  “Good.”

  “Shhh!” Her eyes were closed and her fingers hammered at the keys. “Don’t talk to me. I’m writing.”

  Good, he almost said, but stopped himself. Highly practiced at making it look like he was doing something educational when he was, in fact, surfing the theatre chat rooms, Philip quickly logged on to planetbroadway.com. Somebody IM’d him almost immediately.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Hey, isn’t it a school day?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Aren’t you supposed to be coloring inside the lines right about now?

  BwayPhil: Well, hello there.

  BwayPhil: We’re in the school library, it’s study hall.

  BwayPhil: Aurorarox is sitting next to me.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Hi ’rox.

  BwayPhil: She would say hi but she’s trying to finish a paper.

  “Oh God,” Emily moaned, typing away. “Twenty minutes! That’s four minutes a paragraph. . . .”

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Are you following all the rumors? The Internuts are having a field day.

  BwayPhil: Somewhat, yes.

  BwayPhil: I guess people who like to gossip will always find something to gossip about.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: You don’t sound too interested. I’ll keep my scoop to myself then. . . .

  “Pompous jerk,” Philip said under his breath.

  “Who’s that?” Emily asked.

  “Just write, okay?”

  “Rrrrr.” But she went back to work.

  BwayPhil: Why, what have you heard?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Just what everybody’s heard. That something’s closing.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: ’cept I know what, tee hee.

  BwayPhil: Do you really?

  BwayPhil: Because it would be really mean and f***ed up for you to play with our heads.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Wouldn’t it, though? Lucky for you I’m actually a nice person, in my fashion.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: And yes, I do know. Really.

  “Hey, Em.” Philip spoke in a calm voice, suitable for libra
ries but totally unsuited to the import of what was happening on the screen. “You better come here.”

  “Not now!” She looked at the clock. “I have fifteen minutes to write a five-paragraph essay. That’s three minutes a paragraph.”

  “It’s SAVEME. He says he knows what’s closing.”

  Emily spun around in her chair and all her notebooks fell to the ground.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Still there, Bway?

  BwayPhil: Yes, sorry. Are you going to tell us which show?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: It’s one of ’em.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Ask me too many questions and I’ll say no more.

  Philip looked up at Emily, who was digging her fingers into his shoulder so hard it hurt.

  “Don’t ask him anything,” she whispered.

  Philip let his hands hover over the keyboard for a long minute before entering his reply.

  BwayPhil: Notice how we are asking no questions at all.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: The silence was deafening, good boy. Now listen closely, only saying this once:

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: If I were you I’d go see your favorite show again soon.

  BwayPhil: Why?

  Emily punched Philip in the shoulder. “He said not to ask him any more questions!” she hissed.

  “Wait, he’s typing,” Philip said.

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: That’s not for me to discuss. Just go. Buy the tickets today if you can.

  BwayPhil: Today? What are you saying, SAVEME?—

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Saying nothing, just a hunch is all—

  “I would really love to sock this guy in the face,” muttered Philip as he typed.

  BwayPhil: This IS NOT a question, but does the magic 8 ball have an ***opinion*** about which perf we should buy tix for?

  SAVEMEFROMAURORA: Saturday night, two weeks from now would be ideal.