Kate in Waiting

by Becky Albertalli

  My heart flips. “He said that?”

  Matt smiles and nods.

  “Excuse me. You sweetheart.” I shove Anderson lightly. Anderson winks.

  “All right, Lindsay’s done,” Brandie whispers.

  Onstage, Ms. Zhao’s glancing between the sign-up sheet and the auditorium seats. “Raina Medlock, you’re up.”

  “Fuuuuuuuuck.”

  “Love you, Rain. You’ve got this.” I tuck my legs up so she can squeeze past me.

  After Raina is Emma McLeod, and then Colin Nakamura, then Brandie, then Lana Bennett, then Anderson, who absolutely crushes it—total theatrical domination, followed by a goose massacre from Noah. Though even I have to admit he’s kind of hilarious up there. Noah Kaplan has stage presence. Who knew?

  Suddenly, I’m up.

  I cross paths with Noah, who pauses to high-five me. “Good luck.”

  I freeze. “Noah! No! It’s break a leg.”

  “How about an arm?”

  “Okay, first of all, it’s just an expression—” But I cut myself off, because Ms. Zhao’s up there looking at me expectantly, and now my heart’s skittering all over the place. “Hey,” I remember to add, after a moment. “Good job up there, Noah.”

  “Why, thank you.” Noah grins like he knows I’m lying, but he approves of the lie. “Okay, Little Garfield, you’ve got this.” He taps his cast grandly.

  “All righty,” says Mr. Daniels. “What are you singing for us today?”

  Deep breath. “‘The Swamps of Home.’”

  Ms. Zhao nods slightly, and even that acknowledgment makes me blush. It’s this funny, unspoken thing. Zhao wants us to be flexible, so we’re not technically allowed to try out for specific parts. But we send her coded messages with our song choices. If there’s a part you want, that’s who you sing—and we know it, and Zhao knows it, even if it doesn’t always pan out.

  So now everyone sees me wanting Winnifred. Now they all know.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Zhao says, leaning toward Devon. Then she whispers something, taps a spot in his binder, and he scrawls a note.

  Mr. Daniels catches my eyes and plays the opening bars, pausing expectantly.

  Kate Garfield singing, my brain makes sure to remind me. I die a little.

  I take another deep breath.

  And then my mind exits my body and floats up to the ceiling.

  Scene 20

  So now we wait.

  “They’re both impossible to read,” Brandie says, for the twenty billionth time. She plucks a Coke bottle off Anderson’s nightstand and sips. It’s one of those personalized bottles: Share a Coke with Braden! True story: if Brandie sees anything remotely close to her name, she’ll buy it and save the bottle. Raina calls it her garbage collection.

  Anderson leans against his headboard. “Right?” He sighs. “Zhao’s a Scorpio, so yeah, that tracks, but you’d think Mr. D would have some kind of tell.”

  “There’s the Suckle,” says Brandie.

  “Yeah, but what does the Suckle really tell us?” Andy says. “B, I distinctly remember you freaking out last year when Mr. D didn’t suckle—”

  “Oh my God. Please stop talking about Mr. D suckling.” Raina shudders.

  “Rain, you’re literally the one who—”

  “I know.” Raina pokes Andy’s ankle. “But not as a verb.”

  Andy pokes her back. “Anyway. I’m just saying, I’m one hundred percent positive that Mr. D didn’t do the Suckle for Brandie last year, and, hmm, oh yeah . . . what part did Brandie get?”

  Brandie can’t help smiling into the mouth of her Braden bottle.

  “Maria, Maria, Maria, Maria,” Anderson sings.

  “Right,” says Brandie. “But remember, he did suckle for Raina—”

  “Ewwwwwwww.”

  Brandie ignores her. “And this year, he definitely did it when Vivian was singing.”

  “But not Kate,” Andy says, “and Kate was—”

  “Nope.” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  A straight-up lie. I totally want to talk about it, and they know it.

  It’s the traditional audition postmortem. We spent the car ride here dissecting every moment, from every angle. And since Anderson’s mom was home, we ran through the whole thing again for her benefit. She didn’t even ask questions. She pretty much just sat there working on her cross-stitch, letting us monologue, like the hero she is. And now we’ve taken over Andy’s crisply made queen bed, going for round three under the watchful two-dimensional eyes of Billy Porter, Lizzo, and Lena Waithe—Andy’s Gallery of Icons.

  “Kate.” Raina stretches and yawns beside me. “You know you were amazing.”

  “What? No.” I hug my knees. “Y’all were amazing.”

  Andy scoffs. “Excuse me, you three were amazing. My high note sounded like a shriek having sex with a grunt.”

  “Would that be a squawk?” Brandie sips her Coke.

  “At least your first verse didn’t sound like a sheep masturbating,” I say.

  “At least you didn’t sound like a toad farting out of its mouth.”

  “This is the single most fucked up interaction I’ve ever witnessed,” says Raina.

  “We’re not fucked up,” Andy says. “We’re just competitive. In a healthy way.”

  “You just said your voice sounded like a toad fart.”

  “Because it sounded like a toad fart,” Andy says.

  “What it sounds like,” says Raina, “is a little boy named Anderson Walker fishing for compliments.”

  “Hey,” Andy says. “I don’t fish.”

  And it’s true. Andy doesn’t fish for compliments. He just gets like this when he’s anxious. He goes into pendulum mode, swinging between cocky and self-deprecating. It’s like he simultaneously does and doesn’t know how talented he is.

  “Anyway, I’m calling it,” Anderson says, reaching past Brandie for a bag of Skittles on his nightstand. “Brandie as the jester, Raina as the queen—”

  “Stop! Don’t jinx me.” Raina’s cheeks flood with color.

  I swear, some people’s faces are legit neon signs. Raina has always been like that. She doesn’t blush all that often, but when she does, it’s so loud.

  Raina wants to be the queen, and she wants it badly.

  I probably could have guessed that. Raina’s always had a thing about queens. It’s why she picked the name Raina. I still have this crystal-clear memory of the first day of second grade, the year she socially transitioned at school. Her parents are so wholly and utterly extra, they’d bought her a whole wardrobe of skirts and dresses. But that day, Raina just wanted jeans and one of her sister’s old T-shirts, with a picture of Elsa from Frozen. The shirt said Snow Queen. And every time Mira Reynolds and Genny Hedlund deadnamed her or misgendered her, or asked weird intrusive questions, Raina pretended to be Elsa. She explained it to me once. She said the secret was acting confident—unimpeachably confident. Queen-level confident.

  And it worked. Mira and Genny moved on pretty quickly, and I think that was about the worst of it. Even in middle school, the f-force mostly left Raina alone. Honestly, I think a lot of people just forget she’s trans. She’s totally out, but she doesn’t talk about trans stuff much, except with us and Harold. Because even though Raina’s Elsa powers successfully repelled Mira and Genny, she’ll still never trust them. She has a hard time trusting anyone in the f-force, to be honest. And she’s probably right.

  “Oh!” Anderson nudges me. “Matt wants to know if we’re going to Sean Sanders’s party tomorrow night.”

  Raina laughs—but stops abruptly when she catches Anderson’s eye. “Oh, honey. You’re serious.”

  Anderson swallows a Skittle. “Why wouldn’t I be serious?”

  “A party.” Raina squints. “With Sean Sanders.”

  “And other people!”

  “Right, right,” says Raina. “I’m sure the whole gang will be there. All six of his abs—”

 
“Actually, eight,” Brandie says.

  Anderson smiles sheepishly. “I don’t know. It could be fun.”

  “I would.” Brandie smiles wryly. “But I have that movie.”

  “With your bestie,” chimes Raina.

  “Okay, that’s—”

  “And it’s not a movie.” Raina says solemnly. “It’s a film.”

  Brandie swats her arm. The two of them are so funny, I swear. My dad calls them the Odd Couple. They’re total opposites, but I actually think, in their own way, they’re as enmeshed as Anderson and I are. For a while, Andy was convinced Raina and Brandie were secretly dating. He had all this evidence lined up, like the day Raina showed up to school smelling like Brandie’s shampoo—or the way Raina lost her mind checking every grocery store for Cokes with Brandie’s name on the label. In retrospect, it was maybe a bit of a stretch, but I swear it made sense at the time.

  But no. It was just Anderson being full-throttle Anderson. Raina and Brandie laughed for hours when he told them. Raina’s bi, but she made herself perfectly clear: dating Brandie would be practically Oedipal. And to this day, we have no idea how Brandie identifies. I mean, there was one time she blushed and called Harry Styles “adorable,” but that’s it. That’s all we’ve got.

  Andy turns to me. “Kate, you’re coming, right?”

  “Of course I’m coming,” I say. “Like I’d miss out on all those fuckboy abs.”

  But Andy just snorts. “Like you’d miss out on Matt,” he says plainly.

  It’s like he pulled the words straight from my brain.

  Scene 21

  When the last bell rings on Friday, I head straight to the Bathroom Time Forgot. Andy’s meeting me there so we can walk down to Ms. Zhao’s room together. I can’t imagine looking at the cast list without him. Andy has a way of making bad news suck less. And he makes good news feel real.

  He’s already there, waiting in the bathroom doorway. No time to bother with stalls. The minute I arrive, he grabs me by the shoulder, rotates me around, and ushers me straight out the door.

  I laugh. “I take it you’re ready.”

  “I was born ready.”

  We’re only a few yards from Ms. Zhao’s room, just around the corner. But it’s impossible to see Zhao’s door, even as we approach it. There’s a throng of theater kids blocking it. People keep pushing their way through—everyone wants to get close enough to photograph the full cast list to analyze later. But here and there, people peel away to high-five or text or cry. Margaret Daskin stalks straight past us with both hands covering her face.

  “Okay, it just got real.” Andy exhales. “Should we push our way in?”

  I nod quickly. To be honest, we kind of have to. Otherwise, someone like Lana Bennett is bound to spill the news, and if I’m getting cast in a shitty background role yet again, God knows that’s not how I want to find out.

  “I see the back of Brandie’s head,” Anderson says. “Let’s do this.” He takes my hand and threads our fingers together, and moments later, we’re weaving through the crowd toward Brandie. She turns around right as we reach her, almost like she sensed us. She’s beaming.

  My heart leaps into my throat.

  “Good news?” Andy asks.

  Brandie clamps her mouth shut and nods. It’s hard to know what to make of that. Good news, for sure. But good news for who? Brandie obviously wants to be the jester, since there’s that dance scene, but maybe her excitement is Anderson-related. Or Raina-related.

  Or me-related.

  I flush and look away quickly, homing in on the back of some freshman girl’s head. We’re dangerously close to the door now. Already, I can glimpse white paper against wood. Anderson pushes through, all the way to the front, and my breath hitches. For a moment, the typed list dances blurrily before my eyes.

  Then it clicks into focus.

  First character name on the list: Princess Winnifred.

  The name beside it: Vivian Yang.

  “Oh, Katy.” Andy drops my hand, hooking his arm around my waist instead.

  I nod numbly. “It’s fine.”

  Princess Winnifred: Vivian Yang.

  Wow. So Vivian gets the dream role. First time auditioning ever, and boom. She gets the final bow, the swamp dress, the showstoppers, the kiss with—

  Prince Dauntless: Anderson Walker.

  Wait.

  Prince Dauntless.

  Anderson Walker.

  “Andy, you did it!” I hug him. “I told you. Holy shit. Mazel tov.”

  He laughs. “Mazel tov yourself.”

  “Me?”

  My eyes flick back to the list.

  Queen Aggravain: Raina Medlock.

  King Sextimus: Noah Kaplan.

  I grin. “Oh, Noah.”

  King Sextimus spends most of the play mute from a curse. Would that it could carry over to real life. Would that the curse could extend to all f-boys.

  Anderson nudges me. “Keep reading.”

  Lady Larken: Kate Garfield.

  “Wait . . . what?”

  I turn slowly to Anderson, covering my mouth with both hands.

  He hugs me sideways. “Not so bad, right?”

  I mean, I’m pretty sure my throat’s caving in. No big deal. Just a little touch of choking to death.

  It honestly doesn’t compute. Me. A leading role. Lines to learn. Center stage. Rows of eyes. Lights in my face.

  Lady Larken. An actual named character who talks and sings and does stuff. My voice, but underlined. Me, but bolded.

  “It doesn’t seem real,” I say finally.

  I’ve always thought theater was the unrequited love of my life. All those roles I wanted that didn’t want me back. All those auditions leading nowhere. It was starting to feel like shouting I love you into a black hole.

  Turns out, getting a lead role feels a lot like I love you, too.

  Anderson studies my face. “Are you happy?”

  “Yeah.” I nod. Then I peer up at him, smiling. “I mean, I’m bummed that I don’t get to marry you.”

  “Uh, look at your Harry.”

  “Oh, right!” My eyes dart back to the list, scanning past my own name. And there it is, right beneath it.

  Sir Harry: Matthew Olsson.

  Holy shit.

  Sir Harry: Matthew Olsson.

  Sir Harry: my love interest. Matt Olsson is my love interest. And not even a casual love interest. It’s not even subtle. Our characters literally have a love child together.

  Forget learning my lines. I need to relearn how to breathe.

  Scene 22

  The closer we get to Sean Sanders’s house, the faster my heart beats. “Remind me why we’re about to walk into an f-boy party?”

  “Because we were invited by the father of your unborn child.”

  All evening, Andy’s been calling him that. My impregnator. My baby’s dad. And yeah, Andy’s just being a wiseass, but I swear, there’s this edge to his voice. Like maybe if he jokes about it enough, no one will know it bothers him.

  Anderson hooks his arm through mine. “Shall we do this?”

  I nod firmly. “Let’s do this.”

  So, wow. A real, bona fide house party. Music thumps through the front door, and my heart tracks to its bassline. Through the window, I catch a glimpse of people swaying into each other, tipping back red plastic cups. I glance sideways at Andy, who’s paused on the stoop, staring ahead with giant brown eyes. He looks so utterly lost.

  “Psst. You’re a badass,” I whisper.

  “I know.”

  “A cute badass.”

  He looks me up and down, and grins. “You too.”

  And okay, yeah, that makes me blush. Because even though admitting it makes me cringe, cute badass was definitely the goal aesthetic. My hair’s fairly well tamed and clipped back at the sides with bobby pins. Anderson talked me into a skirt—short and pleated—with ankle boots and an oversized cardigan. And I’m wearing blush, mascara, and ChapStick, which is about the only makeup I can ha
ndle without looking like I let a bunch of toddlers and/or f-boys scribble on my face.

  He unhooks his arm, opens the door, and grabs my hand to tug me inside.

  And—oof.

  The party slams into every single one of my senses. Wall of sound. Smell of beer. Multicolored Christmas lights, proving Sean Sanders to be a festive hero among f-boys. My whole body drapes onto Anderson, almost without me realizing. “Do you think Matt’s here yet?” I ask.

  “I dunno. Let’s do a lap.”

  Do a lap. Anderson, wow. Just whipping out that party language.

  I try hard not to look too terrified at the prospect of weaving through this thicket of fuckboys. Funny how only hours ago, Anderson elbowed us through a crowd of theater kids. Same maneuver—but now, instead of dyed hair and Hamilton shirts, it’s gray sweatpants and jerseys and tiny skirts and crop tops. I spot my brother in the corner with a group of baseball guys, laughing. I’ve never been to a party with Ryan, but I’ve seen pictures on Instagram where he’s smiley and pink-cheeked. I guess a part of me figured Ryan probably drinks, but I wasn’t entirely sure. After all, he’s never holding a cup in any pictures.

  But there we go. Mystery solved: my brother is definitely drinking. And something about it being confirmed makes me feel weird and small and a million miles away from him.

  A bulky blond guy hulks his way in front of us, flexing his muscles, and yelling, “LES GOOO.”

  “Oh dear God.” Anderson clutches his throat.

  Something crashes down in the next room, followed by laughter and howling and lots of drawn-out cuss words. It’s all a little louder than it needs to be. Even the couch squatters are startled out of their makeouts.

  Maybe we’ve stepped into an alternate universe. Everything’s slightly off its axis. Take the baseball caps, for example. It’s like the minute an f-boy walks into a party, he forgets how hats work. Maybe f-boys don’t want to commit to fully wearing them, so they just flip them around backward and perch them halfway on their heads. It’s the only possible explanation.

  “We should turn a fan on,” Andy says, reading my mind, as always. “Just like, whoosh, oh no! Did your hat just fly off? Maybe you should have, I don’t know, actually pulled it down onto your fucking head.”