Nate Expectations

by Tim Federle

  “Wait—but what if nobody shows up? To audition?!”

  “Right, so. Again, I’m sort of the unofficial president of the Nate Foster fan club—don’t let it go to your head—so I feel confident I can rally the dorks to show up for you. High school is better than middle school, trust your girl. When they tore the roof off the auditorium last month, I got five altos to picket with me. So I know they’ve got friends, and I know those friends know some tenors. We’ll be fine.”

  “Ugh, if you say so. I guess.” It’s just that if I can’t pull off Great Expectations as a musical, then I don’t have something to obsess over that isn’t Jordan or New York. Like, I’ve already chosen Great Expectations as my unofficial freshman major.

  Libby grins like a billboard that’s made of teeth. “It’s fun, ya know?”

  “What is?”

  “Seeing you nervous again. I was worried you’d come back a hundred percent cocky.”

  “You just said I’m a nine on the ignorant scale.”

  Libby throws her hands around like a flock of lost birds. “I’m exaggerating. You’re still the same old Natey. For instance, the way you keep checking your phone to see if you-know-who is gonna text you tonight.”

  Face: melting. Hope it at least takes off a few zits. “I’m actually so over Jordan,” I say, choking on words and not celery now. “For the record. In case you’re secretly audio-recording this, too.”

  “Surrre,” she says. She’s on her feet now, marching to a crafts closet where her mom keeps supplies. Can you imagine something so fun? Like, an entire Michael’s, but in your basement?

  “What are you doing?” I say.

  “Getting out poster board. We’re making signs to plaster all over the school, so people know to show up for auditions this weekend.”

  “Do we need permission?”

  “Of course, but it’s better to ask for forgiveness later than deal with the front office first.”

  I mean, I’m telling you, she has a plan for everything, this girl.

  She gets out stencils, glitter, a bunch of star stickers, spreads them out on a coffee table. She’s beaming. But it all looks . . . troublingly jazzy.

  “If I may?” I say, and she looks up at me like I’m interrupting a Bar Mitzvah. “I mean, it’s a show set in old-timey days, in England. I feel like maybe we want to use browns, and various neutral shades. If we’re designing a logo. Instead of, like, glitter. Right now.” She uncaps a marker. “Again, just an observation.”

  A quick refresher on Great Expectations is in order, right? Lord knows I don’t expect you to actually read it yourself. That’s what I’m here for.

  So, it stars and is narrated by a boy named Pip (imagine being named Pip—literally the other boys would be making fun of you as you’re leaving the hospital on the day of your birth). Pip is British, so probably has slightly questionable teeth but a fantastic haircut, and when he’s young, he falls hard for a wealthy chick named Estella, who is the adopted daughter of a crazy old cat lady named Miss Havisham—which would be a great role for Broadway legend Christine Ebersole, if I were staging this on Broadway, which I should be. The entire book—I know this, because in the forty-eight hours since Mr. English assigned the project, I’ve read the SparkNotes (twice!!)—is about Pip being literally obsessed with Estella, even though she ghosts him constantly and is, like, boy, bye, all the time. And at one point, Pip becomes a blacksmith, I think I read. Or a locksmith, but I don’t think it matters. He’s a something-smith, and he’s basically super-into a girl who doesn’t want him back. The book opens in a graveyard scene that involves a convict jumping out to scare Pip, and it will stun and frighten my future audience in the gym, once we cast this show and begin rehearsals. And get me on my way toward my first-ever B+.

  Assuming Libby can actually “rally the dorks” to audition.

  So, yeah: I’m just not sure if a glittery logo, which Libby is mid-design on right now, is going to serve the story of an obsessive English boy named Pip.

  “We aren’t designing a logo,” Libby says, fanning the poster board to make the glue dry. “We’re making audition posters. Very different intention.”

  I slump into the seat that was Libby’s rabbit’s favorite chair, when Libby had a rabbit. Cutest little guy. The rabbit’s name was Marin Mazzie, an amazing Broadway soprano with a very healthy chest voice.

  “Like, different, how?” I say.

  “Auditions are all about getting attention, being flashy—throwing as wide a net as possible out to sea, and seeing what you catch. For instance, you getting cast in E.T.”

  “Thank you.” I think.

  “The show poster itself is totally different. The show poster is about selling to an audience you hope buys the ticket. Don’t ask me how I know these things, it’s a gift and a curse.”

  She tests out a pink marker and my veins aren’t wide enough to accommodate the onslaught of rush-hour blood. Pink just feels so wrong for Great Expectations—but we agreed, yesterday at lunch, that we wouldn’t butt into each other’s departments.

  Oh, that would be good for you to know, ha!

  Here’s the title page for our Playbill program that Libby typed up for my approval, during physical chemistry class this morning:

  NATE FOSTER (director)

  &

  LIBBY JACKSON

  (designer, producer, casting director)

  Present

  Charles Dickens’s

  “Great Expectations:

  a shocking new musical”

  in the gym on November 19, at night, before Thanksgiving break

  $5 tickets and also ~cash bar in lobby~

  Libby, who knows a ton more than I do about the history of advertising (her mom let her stream Mad Men) explained to me how billing works. Since my name is first (the prime position), it’s smaller than her name, which comes second (only fair).

  The title itself is pretty famous—ask any nearby parent, one of them is 70 percent certain to have heard of Great Expectations—so we don’t have to make a big deal out of it. Hence, why it’s the same font size as the rest.

  And why our names are so big.

  “Do we really want to say ‘cash bar,’ ” I said to her when she sent me the title page, earlier today. And she said, “We aren’t making money on tickets, we’re making money on drinks,” and pointed to a statistic that Red Bull and Mountain Dew account for almost all of the daily water most high schoolers get. I can’t remember where she heard that statistic, but it sounds exactly right to me.

  “Ta-da!” She holds up the audition poster and, honestly, it looks fantastic. Violently sparkly. Here it is:

  ARE YOU TALENTED?

  ARE YOU SUuuUuuuUuUuRE?

  Come to Libby Jackson's backyard

  THIS Sunday afternoon at 11 a.m.

  for a ****rare opportunity****

  British accents a plus!!

  “I can’t believe you did all of that by hand.”

  You know how there’s always one kid in your class who can do expert hand-drawn bubble letters? That’s our girl Libby.

  “You’re a great producer,” I say.

  “Slash designer, slash casting director.”

  “Duh.”

  She waves the poster back and forth to dry all the ink and glue. And glitter. And a few odd googly-eyes, left over from the long-ago summer when we put on Phantom with sock puppets.

  “And you, my dear,” she says, affecting a truly terrible British accent, the kind that routinely earns older women Emmy nominations, “are destined to be a great little director.”

  By the way, I’ve been home for basically a week, for those keeping track. Everything in New York happens, statistically, a hundred times faster than anywhere else. I’ve brought that energy back home, like I’m an explorer returning with faraway spices.

  Libby and I fist-bump, but are terrible at it and it hurts my wrist a little. I miss when we used to hug, but now that I kiss boys and she has boobs, it doesn’t feel as norm
al.

  “Director, yes—and lead actor, in addition to director, possibly, if you cast me!” I almost say, but it’s not my place. We haven’t had auditions yet, so we don’t know where it will all end up. She’s the casting director. If she doesn’t see me as Pip (the lead), she doesn’t see me as Pip (the part I’m best for). Art isn’t “about” suffering, but it’s also not about suffering, if that makes sense?

  “Libby?!” we hear from the top of the stairs, and see her bug-eyed mom looking her version of mad, which is sort of bemused. Note to moms: Be the kind of mom who gets bemused more often than mad. “It’s nine-thirty p.m.! Did one of you order a pizza?!”

  A Short but Important Note on School Policies

  One good thing about having a dad who likes to disappear from his family into a toolshed for hours at a time is that he most definitely has at least one roll of duct tape for you to “borrow” without his explicit knowledge.

  In my dad’s case, he has five rolls, just sitting around, half-used, next to his screwdrivers and fishing kit. Don’t ask me why.

  One of these duct tape rolls comes in mighty handy when, the next day, I’m attempting to plaster Libby’s handmade posters all over the hallways on the second floor of school, to alert the masses to the weekend auditions for my show.

  I get caught in the act. “What’s this all about, new boy?” says Ben Mendoza, the kid in the baseball cap who likes to give Mr. English a tough time—but who, I’ve come to learn after a handful of classes, is also his secret star student.

  Every boy is basically a secret in a ball cap.

  “Auditions for my musical version of Great Expectations,” I say. And I’m sort of proud of it, and sort of proud of that. Maybe high school Nate just owns his full Nateness. “It’s for our English project. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be doing it. Obviously. Like, there are better things to musicalize, trust me.”

  “Oh, nice,” Ben says. I wait for him to make fun of me, but he doesn’t. He says nice and it’s just that. Nice.

  “You should come!” I say. “Auditions are at my friend Libby’s house.”

  Ben points to the poster, only half taped to the wall. “Yeah, I see that. Hard to miss. It’s all very glittery.”

  “Her idea!” I say, or shout. “I’m the director, but Libby’s the designer. Among, like, a million other jobs.”

  “I don’t think you want me in your cast,” Ben says. “According to my mom, I have zero natural talent!”

  He grunt-laughs, and backs away from me—again, goodbyes are always hard to predict in Jankburg—but I tear off a piece of duct tape with my teeth and say, “Gee, your mom sounds super sweet,” and Ben Mendoza says, “Yeah, she’s super not!”

  I smack a piece of tape down on a corner of the poster. “You should come, seriously,” I say. “I’m going to need boys, and your mom could be wrong. You could have more than zero talent.”

  He full-on laughs now, but doesn’t commit to showing up for the tryout. He just goes, “Later, Foster.” And I say, “Later, Mendoza”—and it’s the first time I’ve ever called a boy by his last name, and now I see why Anthony always did that, with his friends. It’s sort of fun, like an instant nickname you don’t have to try too hard at.

  Three posters later, when I’m nearly out of duct tape, the principal herself chases me down a back hallway, and tells me I need “a permit” (literally, a permit) for such an apparently flagrant violation of school policies.

  I try to affect the Aw, gee, and Who, me? innocent-kid thing I used to do when I was little.

  I mean, I’m still little—definitely on the short side of the boys in high school—but my voice is low enough now that when I bat my eyelashes, I probably look like I’m making fun of someone adorable instead of being someone adorable.

  “Maybe ‘permit’ is too strong a word,” the principal says, crossing her arms at me. “But you definitely need permission. These walls are very old and duct tape could damage them.”

  I’m telling you, adults worry about the dumbest things.

  So I go back and tear them all down, and then: “operation audition announcement didn’t go so hot,” I text Libby, with a or seven thrown in, and chase it with: “did you know u need a PERMIT to put up posters in this joint?”

  “of course i knew that, but being risky is what makes life in Pennsylvania worth living.”

  We make a date to meet over “health cobbler” at lunch. Turns out I’m not fully committed to my brand-new, all-lean-protein diet. Maybe next week.

  “Worry not, little diva,” Libby says, when she spies me not licking the plate, a rarity for me. “We’re not the only theater kids anymore. It’s high school. The dorks will arrive.” She grabs my plate and finishes my cobbler. “You even whisper the word audition, and the dorks always arrive.”

  Like She’s Thirty, or Something

  If we are lucky, I’m thinking as I bike over to Libby’s on the morning of the audition, we’ll get nine kids to show up, tops. Nine would be okay. A nice number.

  With me, as Pip, the lead, rounding out the cast at ten.

  But when I’m four blocks away, heading into Libby’s neighborhood—whose fences are wooden instead of my family’s chain-link—I see a whole group of kids gathered. Actually, lined up, snaking around the block.

  “Crap-eroo.”

  And I wonder if we counter-programmed the auditions for the day of some popular kid’s birthday party.

  But then I get a text: “you literally won’t believe how many people I recruited last night over like 40 separate group-texts to come to the audition. I said we’d provide chips and dip for anyone who showed up. KIDS LOVE FREE CHIPS AND DIP!! Also, we need ice for sodas. Please pick up ice. Just that!!!!”

  But I can’t. There are no convenience stores near Libby’s house; it’s that kind of subdivision that doesn’t have advertising. It’s just two-storey houses with all their windows intact.

  Anyway, I burst through her front door after plowing through a pretty big crowd on her front yard. Her mom is out there directing traffic, getting people lined up, making sure the boys’ shirts are tucked in to audition, as if she’s getting them ready for school photo day.

  “I mean,” I say.

  “I meannn,” Libby says.

  “I mean!” I say again, and she and I fist-bump again and it hurts (again), and she hands me a Diet Coke in a cup that honestly does need ice.

  “Aren’t musicals the best?” I say, and accidentally burp on “best,” and Libby goes, “My lady,” and we giggle and decide to start the casting process right away. Saturdays are our nights for YouTubing vintage cabaret shows, you see, and it’s already almost noon.

  * * *

  “I thought I would just sort of read from the book?” says the first boy, and Libby goes, “Great, that’s exactly what we were going to ask you to do.”

  Then she pulls out her phone and writes, for me to see, “That’s a good idea, right, for people just to read from the book?” and I nod yes. Great idea.

  That’s exactly how we’ll do the script, I decide, right here, because directors have to be decisive. Just highlight the lines Dickens wrote, as dialogue, and use all the other descriptions as stage directions.

  It’s all coming together.

  And as the first auditioner starts reading one of the hundred boring parts of Great Expectations, Libby texts her mom, “Tell every person in line to pick a part from the book to read, and we WILL NOT HESITATE to cut them off if they don’t demonstrate emotional complexity. Thx!”

  And her mom texts back, “Calm down, Sofia Coppola,” which is a movie reference that I don’t “get” until Libby explains it to me, moments after the boy stops reading and Libby and I both dismiss him without consulting each other, because he doesn’t have the range for our vision of the show.

  Cute shoes, though.

  “You’re going to kill me,” I say, and she goes, “Did you fart?” and I go, “No!” like I’m truly offended (I am), and then say: “I just feel l
ike . . . so many people are giving up a Saturday afternoon to be here, and—”

  “No.”

  She looks at her clipboard and yells, “Next!” at her mom on the stairs.

  And I go, “Wait, how did you know what I was going to say?”

  “Because you’re Nate, Nate. And just because someone auditions does not mean we have to give them a part.”

  “But, what about even the chorus?”

  “What about it. You said you wanted sopranos that make you laugh and belters that make you weep, basically a cast full of all-stars. You were very specific. I took notes.” She holds up literal notes. “I’m your casting director and I’m trying to bring your vision to life.”

  “Am I . . . interrupting?” we hear, but don’t look up from the table, which we’ve set up in Libby’s basement next to her former bunny’s favorite lounge chair. “Like, should I come back?”

  “Give us twelve seconds, dear,” Libby says, like she’s thirty or something.

  “I totally hear you right now, Lib,” I say, a technique I picked up from Heidi. People just want to be heard. Then you can ignore them. “I just think: We might want to remain open to really leading with kindness here, and letting anyone who wants to be a part of the arts be a part of the arts. Their auditorium got torn down, ya know?”

  Libby scowls at me like I’m a math problem. “You’ve changed—you’re, like, nicer and more grown-up now—and I don’t hate it, and I hate that I don’t hate it.”

  She pops an orange wedge into her mouth (her mom already took the peel off, she’s seriously the greatest lady), looks up, and whispers, “Oof, the hair on this one. It’s like we don’t even need a wig budget.”

  “Hi!” I say, too loudly, because now I see that it’s the coach’s niece who’s standing before us. Yikes. I still haven’t told Libby we are required to cast her if we want the gym. Which we do! The acoustics alone really have to be heard to be believed.

  “I’m very happy to be here,” the girl says, and my heart breaks for her, because nothing to me is more risky or beautiful than someone choosing not to be snarky.