Nate Expectations

by Tim Federle

  Who takes his hat off.

  “First,” Mr. English says, “I should tell you the SparkNotes version of Great Expectations, since most of you will be using that, anyway.” This makes me and me alone laugh, but I don’t get the scowls I would have gotten in the old days, and in fact, my laughing makes three girls and one neutrally dorky boy laugh too. Look at me, I’m an influencer.

  Mr. English fiddles with a Smart Board that proves finicky, and he gives up and is so generally over teaching he doesn’t even sigh.

  “Off the top of my head: It’s the penultimate novel by Charles Dickens, and penultimate does not mean best or ultimate. Does anyone know what it means? Of course you don’t. Penultimate means second-to-last.”

  Ben shoots his hand up. “Then why not just say second-to-last. Why does nobody speak English in English class?”

  “Because life isn’t fair, Mr. Mendoza,” Mr. English says. “But thank you for taking your hat off. That’s the Mr. Mendoza we want.”

  “When is the assignment due?” cries out a small girl from two rows over.

  Okay, now Mr. English sighs. Proud of him for mustering the energy. On Broadway, kids and adults are peers—the chorus gets paid the same whether you’re eight or eighteen, or eighty—so I’m weirdly pulling for Mr. English, because I know what it’s like facing an unruly matinee audience.

  “You haven’t even let me get to the good part,” he says, and, curiously, eyes the American flag in the corner of our room, like it’s the only thing in the room that’s been through all of these years with him. “There’s graveyard encounters in Great Expectations, and children stealing alcohol, and—really, it’s a whole lot of fun, if you’re willing to give Dickens a shot.” He pauses, quarter smiles, remembers something good. “Anyway, the assignment is due in a month.”

  Universal grunts. A month? To read and report on a book, uniquely? You really can’t go home again.

  “But, listen up, I don’t want to read generic reports!” Mr. English says, over the amount of clamor usually reserved for a car accident. “I’ve done too much reading in my life. Fifty years of terrible book reports on Great Expectations. My expectations are, at this point, not even good.”

  He drinks from the mug now, swishes it around a bit, gulps. “There’s only so many ways you can summarize Pip—the name of the leading character—learning vital life lessons.”

  This reminds me that one of the most underrated musicals out there is Pippin, which is not as dry as it sounds on paper (chain-link costumes, a love song called “Love Song”) because the guy who wrote Wicked wrote it, so there’s belting.

  “I want you to put down your phones for twelve seconds tonight, and make a list of a couple innovative ways you could do an English project about Great Expectations. A couple ways that aren’t a book report, aren’t a summary, and aren’t an oral presentation in which you speak in a terrible English accent and I have to pretend to be charmed.”

  This guy is tough as heck, and half the class is nodding off—but somehow I’m not. I eye the American flag and I swear it waves a little at me, a sign. When the period bell rings, I weirdly know exactly how to get my first-ever B+ in English class. At least, the first-ever B+ that I earn.

  That’s why I stay behind when the rest of the students take off, swearing under their breath and texting each other. And, in Ben Mendoza’s case, putting his baseball hat back on and saying to me, “Welcome to the hardest class in America.”

  People Who Call Musicals “Plays”

  “You wanna do what, now?”

  “E.T. only rehearsed for five weeks. I can totally pull it off.”

  Mr. English is either half smiling or half frowning, but whatever it is, it’s half.

  “Forgive me, Mr. . . . uh—” he says, checking the seating chart for my name, “Foster—but, have you considered how time-consuming putting on a full-length play of Great Expectations would be?”

  People who call musicals “plays” are the trickiest people of all. I clear my throat and breathe into my gut like my New York voice coach taught me to. “Technically, Mr. English, it would be a musical.”

  “Would it, now?” He leans back in his chair. “And who would write the music?”

  Huh. “I haven’t cracked that part yet.”

  “And where would you perform the play?”

  I step on my own foot in order to localize the pain. “I’d put on the musical in the auditori—” I catch myself. Crap-eroo. We don’t have an auditorium anymore. And I sure as heck am not putting this thing on in a lacrosse field.

  “Look, if you can find a space to put on your little thing, and you can get enough kids to participate, I suppose it could count as your project—even though it sounds a bit wild to me.” He lets the chair spring him back upright, as the bell rings and another group of yawning freshmen enters. “But you’re gonna need to figure out a lot of logistics. Last year, a boy named Tansal did Great Expectations as a single-page website that he apparently created for free, in about ten minutes. Yours seems a tad overly complicated.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Mr. English says, handing me a late slip for my next class. “I’m a tough grader.”

  But I wave the slip around like I’m Charlie going to the chocolate factory, and head out.

  “Oh, and Mr. Foster,” Mr. English says when I’m at his door. “Who exactly is going to direct this thing?”

  I lean against the wall and say, “I am, Mr. English,” with a kind of wise-guy smile. Except I accidentally lean against a switch that turns off the classroom lights.

  Everyone Loves a Montage!

  The next part, if it were a movie, would be called a montage, which I think is French for: “All the good parts, set to a great song.” So, picture your favorite song, and a whole sequence where I run around asking for favors.

  Right at lunch, I text Libby, and we meet up outside the shop class. I point inside, feeling harried. “What’s up with the fact that the shop class has no machinery now?”

  Libby looks at me like I’ve transformed into a regular boy. “You mean like buzz saws and stuff?”

  “And stuff, yes.”

  “Yeah, the school board eliminated all that. Said that manufacturing jobs are on their way out. Now they just teach us how to build our own apps in there.”

  I glance back in, panicked to see a bunch of students quietly working over iPads. “Well, how am I going to build a set if I don’t have an army of cheap labor?!”

  Libby picks something off her shirt. “What are you even talking about?”

  “I’m putting on a musical version of Great Expectations for my English project. It’s due in like a month. I’m thinking first-B-plus-ever territory here.”

  Now she perks up. “Do you need a casting director?”

  “Hilarious, I thought you’d say ‘female lead.’ ”

  She waves her hands around. “Nah, overrated. The joy is behind the scenes, where you can boss people around.”

  The teacher in the not-shop class comes outside and says, “Can I help you two?” in an unhelpful way.

  “Only if you have the ability to create a complex Dickensian London backdrop using apps,” I want to say, but instead shake my head like I speak a different language. Which, I do.

  The language of Broadway, duh.

  Libby grabs my bookbag by the fabric hook and pulls me away.

  “Yes indeed,” she says as a strange segue. “By my calculations, we’ll need to start casting right away . . .” And I stop her.

  “Libster, I’m directing. And adapting. And having to, like, figure out the music part of the musical. So maybe before we cast the show, we figure out what the show is.”

  “Ah,” she says, “like if it’s a Hamilton scale or it’s a Scottsboro Boys scale.”

  And I say, “Def,” and Libby’s eyes squint up like she’s thinking of something.

  “What?” I say, and she goes, “I’m late to lunch and just remembered it’s t
urkey salad day.”

  Yeck. “What is that?”

  “The school’s health initiative program—but don’t worry, because I see you worrying: They have this blue cheese dressing that is like seventy percent hydrogenated, so it’s delicious and you can dip things in it that you bring from home.”

  She pulls out half a baguette from her bookbag, and I love her.

  I follow Lib toward the cafeteria, stepping over spilled pencils and a bunch of unfinished homework and one lone, half-chewed-up eraser.

  “What you’ll need, more than anything else,” Libby says, now in full-on producer mode, “is a space to put on the musical.”

  See, at least she calls it a musical. She gets it. This is why you keep a best friend by your side. Or, in our case, two feet in front of me, owning the hallways and now the cafeteria.

  “Any ideas?” I say, right as we’re bypassing the fruit stand and heading straight for the carb station.

  “Only one,” Libby goes, grabbing a side of pudding. “When is P.E. for you?”

  I shudder. “Why bring up something so terrible when we’re talking about something so beautiful?”

  She slides the pudding back and grabs some kind of approximation of a “health cobbler,” which apparently has 14 grams of “vital nutrients,” according to a small handwritten sign.

  “You’re not thinking big enough,” Libby says. “The gym’s got wooden floors, a lot of lighting, a decent sound system, and in-the-round seating with the bleachers. Put on your show there.”

  This is all happening so fast. It’s such a good idea I almost chug an unpaid-for chocolate milk to celebrate. “You’re brilliant.”

  “Duh,” she says. “But good luck getting past the coach.”

  Right. Crap-eroo. The man who helped Anthony bring home about twenty different trophies in six different disciplines. I’m basically back to square one. Picture your favorite song ending. The montage is over.

  “Natey,” Libby says, gesturing toward my out-of-date jeans. “You just spilled chocolate milk all over yourself.”

  President of the Dork Union

  So I’m already sweating, because the gym smells like one hundred years of foot-ozone.

  Mind you, I’m not sweating because I’m actually, like, moving, or anything outlandish like that. Other than my foot tapping, outside the coach’s office, between classes.

  He’s on the phone, hollering at somebody about helmets, when my pocket vibrates. And now I’m seven times as sweaty, because just when I’d stopped obsessing over him, it’s Jordan. On the set of his TV show. Sending me the cutest selfie in the history of selfies.

  I’m not sure how to reply. His eyes are way too blue and his skin is so, like, pure, that there’s no way he’s not in a thousand pounds of makeup.

  “you look like a drag queen, in a great way” I start to reply, but autocorrect turns it into “yow! Looks like a drag” because apparently my phone is a cowboy?

  Regardless, time stands still and a hundred other clichés that are clichés for a reason, when I hear, “Why are you in my gym?”

  Oh, right. “Coach,” I say like a four-year-old, just namin’ nouns.

  “That’s my name. What’s the problem?”

  The problem is, I haven’t responded to Jordan’s text, which makes me hate the gym more than I usually do, which is truly saying something.

  “I have a favor to ask.”

  “Right,” the coach says. “I assume you’re trying to get out of class because of a bogus condition like asthma. You’ll have to go to the nurse and get her to write a note.”

  There is an outside chance that I’m biting off more than I should be chewing on my first day ever of regular-kid high school. Only time will tell. Watch this space.

  Coach turns on himself and whaps the doorframe with his shoulder and grunts like a Neanderthal. But he’s got me all wrong.

  “No, actually—I’m here to ask if I can use the gym. For, like, a thing.”

  His neck goes the color of purple that I experimented with back in New York, when Heidi was on a date and I found some of her blush. But makeup isn’t really for me and I have to say this color purple is not really for Coach, either.

  “Use my gym?” he says, or grunts, really.

  He is basically the second-to-last guy on the evolution chart, hunched over, not yet ready for a suit and tie but still capable of making your life horrible.

  “Yeah, like, to put on a musical show-thing—for credit! For English credit.”

  He turns fully back around to me, and attempts to crack his knuckles but can’t, because his hands are too meaty. God, I hope my hands are never that meaty. How would I open a jar of peanut butter at midnight for my second dinner, with hands so meaty?

  “You’re Anthony Foster’s little brother, aren’t you,” he says, squinting like there’s a surprise wind in here.

  “The one and only,” I attempt, but my voice cracks and it comes out like an apology.

  “And you wanna do what, now? Some kind of Broadway thingy here?”

  To his credit, he seems to think I’m crazy, but he’s not, like, disgusted with me. Just looking at me like I’m a butterfly who’s loose in his gorilla cage. Could be worse.

  “I mean, technically, not Broadway, because not New York”—I hold for laughter. Not coming. Not coming. “But, uh, yeah—I have to do a Great Expectations project and I want to put on an all-singing, all-dancing version. And—” I gesture to the space like it’s a million-dollar listing on one of those home TV shows Aunt Heidi pretends not to be obsessed with. “Look at this place. It’s sort of . . . ideal for an audience?”

  He snorts, hocks a loogie, spits it into a trash can. He’s still squinting.

  “Fine.”

  He turns and whaps his shoulder into the side of the doorframe again, and I realize maybe he’s doing it on purpose. Like when you are at the zoo, and a rhino rubs its back against a tree.

  “Fine, as in: yes?” I say.

  “You can have the gym.”

  My head jerks back so hard and with such surprise force that I finally crack a tricky neck vertebrae that’s been fused stuck for two months, ever since I had to wear a ten-pound fiberglass alien head costume back in E.T.

  “Um, thank you, Coach!”

  “Provided,” he says, holding up one meaty finger that’s the size of two regular fingers, “you cast my niece.”

  He holds up his phone now, to show me a picture of her—and I recognize her. It’s the frizzy-haired girl from my homeroom, the girl so dorky even I thought, Wow, what a dork. And for a while I was considered the king of dorks here. Like, if dorks had a union, I’d be the president.

  “She’s excited that a fellow theater kid is ten feet away from her in homeroom. She’s been talking about it for a week. She’s different, a loner. If you want to use the gym, you have to cast my niece.”

  I snap my fingers. “Done,” I say.

  Aunt Heidi always says the showbiz is all about connections, “who you know.” So, sure, if I have to cast the coach’s niece in the chorus in order to use this expansive space—suddenly the gym seems magical—then, of course. Duh.

  “Give her one of the leads,” the coach says, kicking the door shut on me.

  The ozone-sneaker smell comes back to me in a wave, and my phone vibrates, and Jordan has responded: “uh, it’s not a ‘drag’? It’s literally almost a lead in a TV show?”

  Apparently I did send that autocorrected text by accident. Yow.

  And as I’m typing back my reply about “sorry” and “autocorrect” and “nvm, start over: you look amazing,” the coach opens the door and says, “Get to your next class, Anthony’s little brother.”

  Bad British Accents

  “Start over,” Libby says, “and talk slower. You’re making me seasick.”

  I’m pacing in her basement.

  Libby’s mom has left us celery with low-fat peanut butter and we thanked her and then immediately ordered pizza on Libby’s Domino’
s app, because she has the kind of mom who lets you store her credit card number on your phone.

  “It’s just, now I’m nervous, because Great Expectations is basically a cast of thousands.” I’ve got my phone out and I’m looking at the character list on the internet and reading it to Libby. “How am I going to find this many talented students in one high school in Pennsylvania?”

  Libby holds up her hand. “Couple things. First: don’t be ignorant.”

  “I’m not!”

  “You’re being a smiiiidge ignorant.”

  Oh, in Western PA we say “ignorant” for “arrogant.” Not kidding. If I say “arrogant,” though, it doesn’t mean ignorant. For actual-ignorant, we say “uneducated.”

  Another reason I should have stayed in New York.

  “So, yeah,” Libby says, “let’s get the ignorance under wraps.”

  I reach for a celery stick because at least if I’m being insulted it can be padded by food.

  “Second,” she says, “you’ve been speaking in an incredibly vague British accent ever since coming back from New York, and I need to know literally right now if you’re aware of this.”

  I choke on the celery. “I am n—” Like, I’m choking. I am deceased. Okay, maybe I’m just laughing. “You are ridiculous. I am so not speaking in anything but my regular, nasal voice.” She fiddles with her phone, holds it up—and then plays back my voice, because apparently she’s been recording me. Sneaky.

  But—“Wow, yeah.” I’m speaking in the weirdest faux-Cockney accent. She’s right.

  “Like, I know you’ve been to Broadway now,” Libby says, quickly sending off a selfie to a sophomore on the soccer team, “but I’m going to need you to take the attitude and the accent from a nine, where you are now, to, at most, a three.”

  I swallow the celery. “Got it.”

  “Back to our show.”

  It’s hot down here, stuffy, and she oozes off the sofa and onto the shag rug and puts her feet up on a cushion. “I think you just build the show around the cast who shows up to audition.”