by Alex Flinn
It was . . . a lot. But when I finally finished, he said, “That must be hard. But that shouldn’t be embarrassing.”
I said it was to me.
He said, “You’re looking at it wrong, then. You’re better than other people. It’s easy to make it when you’ve had a head start.”
He said, “You want to know something I found out? I thought no one knew about my thumb-sucking at the time. Like, I thought I hid it. But, just recently, my friend Chase—he’s been one of my best friends since kindergarten—started dragging me about how straight my teeth are, that my orthodontist was so gifted that you couldn’t even tell I’d been a thumb sucker. And that’s when I realized he’d known all along. Probably all my friends had. They were just nice about it. Because real friends don’t make fun of flaws you can’t help.”
I heard what he was saying, that my real friends would understand. Obviously, Jarvis has lived this charmed life where everyone’s nice to him. But I appreciated that he was saying that he’d understand if I told him the truth.
But he didn’t know what the truth was, so how could he be sure?
“You always make me feel good about myself,” I said.
“Same,” he said. He paused and then said, “Are you ever going to tell me why you left at Christmas?”
There was another pause, and I thought about filling it. I wanted to tell him everything. Everything about my mother, her creepy boyfriends, Oscar, my life.
“I’d understand, Jackie,” he said.
But if I tell him, I can’t take it back, so I said I was tired. I want to tell him the truth, but I don’t want to lose him.
Should I have told him?
Love, Jacaranda
To: [email protected]
Date: January 26, 10:47 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: Rehearsals
Dear Mr. Smith,
The past week has been a whirlwind of rehearsals, preparing for summer program auditions, plus my regular classes. Next week, I’m going to Detroit with 8 classmates (including—ugh—Brooke) to audition for the New England Conservatory. Phoebe already did one live audition for a dance program at the Boston Conservatory, but I’m not applying for that. My early ballet training is not what it could have been.
I sent recordings of myself doing 2 songs, a minute of dance, and a monologue to 10 university summer programs. Carnegie Mellon, NYU, and Michigan are the gold standard, but the reality is, I’ll go where I get a full scholarship.
We decorated our room in the tropical sunset theme. We painted one wall of each of our rooms and the entire bathroom a bright pumpkin color then added streaks of red, blue, and gold. Falcon helped us. She suggested adding a darker blue for texture. We hung the ceilings of both rooms with matching colored silks. It’s the most beautiful suite in the whole building!
“You’ll have to paint it back white in the spring,” Angie warned us when some helpful person complained about the paint fumes. We said we would . . . but we’re secretly hoping we can just be assigned the same rooms for next year. Phoebe, Daisy, and I all want to room together again.
I hope I’m still here next year.
At the end of play rehearsal each day, we get notes. The majority—good and bad—are for people with bigger parts. But yesterday, Harry said, “Jackie!”
I jumped at my name, expecting him to say I screwed up, but he said, “Outstanding portrayal. I’ve honestly never sympathized with the stepmother before.”
“Is that good?”
“It’s always good for characters not to be one-note. What were you thinking about?”
I told him that, in my elementary school, there were some moms who came in to volunteer in class. One kid named Trevor was a huge bully, who stole my stuff and tipped over my chair every day of his life. But, when his mom came in, she acted like the teacher was being mean by separating him from his friends. She saw him as her sweet li’l dumplin’. I figured that was how Cinderella’s stepmother saw her daughters too.
“She’s just trying to be a good mother,” I said. “A good mother takes her daughters’ side over anyone, even her husband.”
When I finished, Harry looked like maybe that was more than he wanted to know, but said it was “excellent character work.”
On the way to dinner, David said that was the nicest he’s ever seen Harry be to anyone!
Next week, I get to play the Witch in rehearsals, because Ava’s going to Chicago for something called Unified Aauditions, where you can audition for ten colleges at once. She said she knew I’d hold down the fort.
Love, Jacaranda
To: [email protected]
Date: January 29, 9:33 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: Mail
Dear Mr. Smith,
It was a mistake to walk back from dinner with Phoebe. If I’d walked back with Daisy or Nina or Lucky or anyone else, I probably wouldn’t have checked my mail. I seldom get anything, so I only go once a week. But Phoebe stopped to check, so I did too.
There was a letter. I stuffed it into my bag real quick, before Phoebe could notice the prison address. But she was too busy poring over Pointe magazine, a subscription makeup box, and some other package. Phoebe’s mail is definitely #goals for me.
She opened the package and unfurled a beach-themed shower curtain. “Found it online. What did you get?” Phoebe asked, probably just pretending to be interested in my life.
“Oh, nothing. Letter from my mom.”
She seemed surprised. “You never talk about your family. I was thinking maybe you were an orphan.” She laughed when she said it, but it kind of felt true.
When I got back to our room, I finally sat on the bed and opened the letter.
“I miss you, baby,” my mother wrote. And then she told me the appeals process is taking a long time. They’re trying to get her a new trial.
I wonder what it would be like to have a mom like Phoebe’s, coming to my performances and being all proud in the audience. My mother came to my spring concert once in elementary school. I didn’t even know I was lucky. I wonder, if she got out of prison, would she be there, rooting for me, wishing me well?
Do you know what I love most about being at MAA? You might think it’s the surroundings or the people or the opportunities. I love all those things. But the best thing is the predictability. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner at definite times every day, tuna on Fridays, lentil soup on Wednesdays. Curfew at 10:00. Angie always says, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” unless there’s a thunderstorm, in which case she says, “How about this weather?” The thermostat is always set at 65 degrees. If I put my shoes in the closet, they’ll be there the next time I look. No one’s late, no one’s drunk, the water’s never turned off, no one’s inexplicably in a bad mood, and other than over break, I never go to sleep in a different bed than I woke up in. I didn’t have that type of predictability in foster care, and I sure didn’t have it with my mother.
Children need predictability, and it took me a long time to realize I had it here, that it’s not all going to be taken away from me.
But human beings need love too, and while I still love my mother, she isn’t here. There’s only one person who loves me in real time, in real life, right now.
And I’m going to tell him I love him too. I’m going to tell him everything, and he’s going to be okay with it.
I hope.
Love, Jacaranda
To: [email protected]
Date: January 30, 11:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: I didn’t call him
Dear Mr. Smith,
I didn’t call Jarvis because when I started to, I heard a knock on the bathroom door. When I opened it, there was Phoebe, holding a bottle of champagne.
She had the cast recording of South Pacific on loud enough to muffle our conversation and whispered, “I brought it from home. You missed New Year’s, so I thought we could toast together.”
I looked at my calendar. “It’s almost February.”
&
nbsp; She whispered, “I know, but they’re suspicious right after breaks. Now, they have their guard down.” She unwrapped the little wires around the cork then opened it with a big POP!
I followed her into their room. Daisy was waiting with three plastic flute glasses. Phoebe poured champagne into them and handed them around.
“Won’t we get in trouble?” I said.
“Not if no one finds out.” Daisy raised her glass.
“What are we toasting to?” I asked.
“What else? Our new shower curtain!” Daisy said.
I was a little nervous about drinking at school. But Daisy was right. I took a sip.
The other two drank theirs down and looked at me. I drank mine. But one glass was enough for me. I’d let them have my share.
That was before Daisy suggested a drinking game.
“Good idea.” Phoebe refilled our glasses. “We can play Never Have I Ever.” When I didn’t know what that was, Phoebe (after looking at me like I was raised in a convent) explained that we have to begin a sentence with “Never have I ever” and then reveal something we’d never done before. Anyone who had done it had to drink.
I agreed. What else could I do?
Daisy started. “Never have I ever sung in front of an audience.”
Rip. Phoebe and I drank, grumbling that it wasn’t fair.
Phoebe went next and returned Daisy’s burn. “Never have I ever farted in the elevator.” She gave Daisy a look, and Daisy drank.
I went next, trying to think of something they’d done and I hadn’t.
“Never have I ever eaten raw sushi.”
After they both drank (I was sure they would), Daisy said, “Never have I ever stalked someone online.” She stared at Phoebe when she said that.
“I wouldn’t call it stalking,” Phoebe protested.
“Mmm-hmm,” Daisy said, and Phoebe drank. Daisy said, “Phoebe met this guy at an a cappella festival last year, and she was so obsessed with him she created a fake Instagram just so she could stalk him.”
“Turned out he had a boyfriend,” Phoebe said.
My turn. I said, “Never have I ever had to be dragged away from a party.”
Phoebe drank, but she gave me a look that said not to tell Daisy.
She also drank for Never have I ever smoked weed (Daisy did too), Never have I ever had my heart broken, and Never have I ever kissed someone of the same gender.
Daisy drank for Never have I ever crushed on a teacher and Never have I ever shoplifted (though it turned out she’d chickened out of the shoplifting and left the nail polish near the checkout).
I drank for Never have I ever gotten kicked out of someplace. I didn’t tell them I’d been eight at the time, and my mother, her boyfriend, and I got kicked out of the movies because we were too loud.
On her next turn, Phoebe said, “Never have I ever made out with my cousin, Jarvis.”
The look on her face was a question.
Daisy said, “Eww, of course you never made out with your cousin.” Then she saw Phoebe looking at me and said, “Oh.”
I said, “Define making out.”
Daisy said, “Omigod, what did you do?”
“Just . . . not that much.” But finally, I took a drink.
“I knew it,” Phoebe said. “Did he stay over my parents’ house that night? Did I hear you sneaking downstairs in the morning?”
I refused to answer, since it wasn’t in the rules of the game.
Daisy said, “Never have I ever kept secrets from my friends about who I was dating.”
I took a sip and countered with, “Never have I ever made out with a guy named Brent in a gondola.” Because I was sort of wondering about that.
“I so did,” Daisy said, drinking.
By this point, the bottle was mostly gone, and I was worried about what else Phoebe would ask about Jarvis. So I said, “Let’s play a different game.”
“Wait.” Phoebe refilled her glass. “I’ll drink, but I think we should each get to ask one more question.” To me, she said, “Are you guys, like, together?”
I said, “I think so?” wondering if that was true but also wondering if she’d get mad.
“Cool,” she said, and took another sip.
I said, “My question: What’s with you and the stage fright?”
She looked surprised since it wasn’t really a secret. Finally, she said, “I don’t know. I’m excited at first, and then I worry about people judging me and freak out.”
It would have been easy to say she shouldn’t, but I knew she knew that, so I didn’t. Instead, I said, “You seem to be getting better about it.”
“I am,” she said.
“I have a question,” Daisy said, and she tried very hard to pronounce her words carefully, probably so it wouldn’t come out “queshon.”
We looked at her. She said, “So you’ve been dating Phoebe’s hot, rich cousin all this time, and you didn’t tell me?”
I admitted we’d had dinner the day he’d come to town. Daisy said she understood now why I didn’t go to Vermont with her family.
Daisy and Phoebe started searching on their phones for a different drinking game. I pretended to search. I figured if I waited long enough, Phoebe and Daisy would simply drink the rest of the champagne. I don’t like drinking. I like feeling in control of my actions. I’ve spent too much time around people who weren’t. Instead, I got sucked in by social media.
And the very first thing I saw was a photo of Jarvis where someone had tagged him.
A photo of Jarvis with some blond girl.
She was hanging on his shoulder.
The caption said, “Jarvis Pendleton enters Lincoln Center with model Faun Montgomery.”
Faun? That had to be a typo, right?
But she was sooooo pretty. She looked older than him, but she’s probably one of those models who looks 25 when she’s 17. She was almost as tall as Jarvis, and she was leaning in toward him, laughing, like he’d said something fascinating. She had the best eyebrows I’ve ever seen. I’ve always thought my eyebrows were my biggest flaw. How could I even blame Jarvis for liking a girl with such a high arch???
Also, he took some other girl to a concert at Lincoln Center?
This was my fault. I was the one who’d left at Christmas. I was the one who hadn’t wanted to say I loved him, hadn’t let him say it to me. He thinks I wanted to keep it casual. We had no commitment to one another. He could go out with whoever he wanted.
I just didn’t think he wanted anyone else.
“What’s the matter?” Daisy said.
“Nothing.” I put down my phone.
It was dumb to expect Jarvis to be sitting at home alone on a weekend night just because I’m here in Michigan.
I just thought he would.
Phoebe, Daisy, and I divided up the remaining champagne, and then I went to bed.
I woke with a killer headache and a text from Jarvis. I didn’t reply.
I drank about a quart of water, and now I feel good (well, okay) enough to work on songs for next week’s auditions, anything to get my mind off him.
“Art never comes from happiness.”—Chuck Palahniuk
Well, Chuck really knew what he was talking about because I rocked.
Love, Jacaranda
P.S. I decided to answer Jarvis’s text. I sent him a smiley.
To: [email protected]
Date: February 3, 9:18 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: I wish . . .
Dear Mr. Smith,
“I wish . . . more than anything . . .” That’s from Into the Woods, but it’s also a game I used to play when I was a kid. I’d imagine I had 3 wishes, and I’d decide what to wish for. Sometimes, I’d wish to grow 3 inches or for my mother’s boyfriend to disappear. Sometimes, I’d wish for more ordinary things, like McDonald’s for dinner.
If I had three wishes right now, I’d wish:
1.To get into a summer program for musical theater
2.For my mo
m to get out of prison but be okay with me staying here
3.For Ava to miss just one performance due to an ingrown toenail
Or maybe I’d wish Jarvis was here and loved me.
No, the toenail is better. I don’t want him if he doesn’t want me.
I played the Witch in rehearsal the past few days, and I’ve done really well. Anger helps! We did the opening the first day, and I got a round of applause after the rap. I’ve been practicing “Stay with Me,” and I’ll get to sing it tomorrow. It’s about how the Witch has no one but Rapunzel, but Rapunzel wants to grow up and see the world. It’s so sad.
In a way, it’s kind of a metaphor for my mother and me, except in our case, it’s her who’s imprisoned and me . . . oh, idk. Maybe it’s not a metaphor.
Jarvis keeps texting me. He says we need to talk. Is he going to tell me he’s dating Faun? I don’t know what to say to him.
Love, Jacaranda
To: [email protected]
Date: February 6, 7:18 a.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: The bright lights of Detroit
Dear Mr. Smith,
You know what’s scarier than juries?
Summer program auditions.
With juries, I was singing in front of people who were rooting for me.
Here, they’ll be total strangers who are looking for people to cut.
No. Calm down. CALM DOWN! They’re looking for new talent.
I’m writing from a van to Detroit. We left at 6:00 a.m., 8 of us, packed in tighter than Publix the day before Thanksgiving, and one of those is Brooke, who’s in the seat behind me.
Oh! That was the van, screeching to a stop, almost sending my laptop flying. I caught it, but I jostled Phoebe awake.