Better Nate Than Ever (3 page)

The lady continues to eat potato chips. “Okay,” she says, not asking for Anthony’s ID or anything, selling me one ticket.

One ticket to my dreams.

Which costs fifty-five dollars not including tax, these days.

And now I’m staring out the window at a familiar world zooming past, colors bleeding from grey (Pittsburgh) to bright red and blue (a car accident) to brown (somewhere thirty minutes outside of town). Libby shared a really good technique that is thus far working beautifully: Crumple up a bunch of Kleenex and put them on the seat next to yours, and nobody will sit next to you on long bus trips. Try it sometime, guys.

At our first rest stop, only forty miles into the voyage, a man follows me off the bus and into the bathroom, standing right next to me at a urinal. For a moment I wonder what the best way will be to make myself throw up on him when he tries to kill me.

My stomach is empty, after all.

I finish up and turn around, not looking at him, race to the sink, then decide it will be better to have slightly dirty hands than to kill time until he kills
me
, and as I’m running to the exit he says, “You dropped this outside.” I turn around and he’s waving Libby’s manila envelope, which must’ve slipped from my bag.

This man must be a New Yorker, returning home. Nobody ever helps me with anything in Jankburg, PA.

I practice my smile next.

From the time we leave the rest stop and make it to Harrisburg, capital of Pennsylvania and crawling with criminals, I practice smiling in the face of
fear.
Anything
could happen at this audition. I could forget my words; I could stutter my own name. But if my smile is firmly intact, if I can show that I’d be an ideal employee, someone who’d never cause a problem, maybe they’ll hire me just for the team spirit I’d bring. Twelve minutes into the smiling exercise, my jaw cramps. Underbites are not designed to be overworked or tested.

I have two donuts, for comfort.

A woman in front of me is listening to something loud on her headphones, trendy music that Anthony probably knows, and that would
normally
irritate me—but tonight, the distraction is pulling me out of my own terrified, self-doubting mind. Her head bops to the downbeat, hair cascading up and over her seat into my lap, and I wonder if New Yorkers have such big hair. Probably not. They probably all shave their heads or have discovered some other trend that is going to be totally intimidating and exciting.

What if I have to get a temporary tattoo at the border, as we’re pulling in to New York Manhattan City Island? What if they stamp my hand like at the underage club Anthony goes to on weekends, and what if the ink is so dark on my pale, lifeless, grey-Jankburg hands that my mom immediately recognizes it: the stamp of a border crosser. Of a bad kid who snuck away.

She’d kill me.

No, she actually would. “Don’t try to run away from home or anything stupid. I’ll kill you if you get yourself killed.”

Actual recent quote.

Okay, I didn’t want to do this, but take a two-minute detour with me. You need to meet my mother. It’s time.

I
had both dogs on their leashes (Feather, of course, and Mom’s awful lap warmer, Tippy). We were breaking the front door when Mom appeared next to me, in her big blue parka. Uh-oh.

“Lemme just walk you to the corner,” she said, “and you can take them the rest of the way down past the Kruehlers.’”

Often when I’m walking Feather (alone), I pretend I am Don Quixote and he is my faithful manservant, and we go down to the creek behind the Kruehlers’ house and I sing “The Impossible Dream” at the top of my little lungs. You’re not going to believe me, but I’ve had newts stop and stare.

Before Mom and I’d even gotten out of the front yard last week, she blurted, “So, Daddy is taking me away for the weekend.”

“You’re kidding!” I said, stepping on Tippy (which
is somehow short for Tiffany), who yelped like a sticky faucet.

“Yes, first time in seventeen years,” Mom said, with not a whole lot of enthusiasm. Feather spotted something in a bush and got low, his tail parallel to the grass.

“So where are you guys going?”

“The Greenbrier. The Greenbrier in West Virginia. It’s very fancy and expensive.”

Silence. Who knew birds could even chirp so loudly,
that
was the type of silence they cut through.

“Dad can afford ‘expensive’?” I said, and she glared at me.

“You only celebrate your seventeen-year anniversary once, so, I dunno. I’m not going to question your father.”

“Well. I’m glad for you two.”

“Thanks,” she said, probably happy that someone was endorsing it. Probably worried—as worried as I was—that they couldn’t afford such an extravagance.

She broke away to take Tippy home, to let me walk Feather the rest of the way around the block, and turned back to say, “Don’t get into any trouble around the neighborhood, Nate.”

“Sure thing, Ma.”

“The Kruehlers called last week, to say they heard something wild howling in the woods.”

Oh no.

“They thought a rabid beaver or something was in their yard, Nate, stuck in a bear trap. And it turns out Mr. Kruehler went to the lookout in their attic and saw
you
in their woods, wailing like an animal, with no regard for nature. And just prancing around like—you know.”

(Like a fairy, right, Mom?)

“It’s just you have to be careful, Nathan.”

I remember it now. I was acting out a scene from
Hairspray
, with Feather turning in a surprisingly believable performance as Tracy Turnblad.

“People hunt back there, Nate. I don’t . . . it’ll be your fault alone if there’s an accident.”

“Don’t worry about an accident, Mom. Anybody shooting Nate Foster would know exactly what they were aiming at,” I wanted to say, but I just went, “Okay.”

“Same thing at school. You could at least
try
to take a page from Anthony’s book. To fit in.”

Mom gets a lot of calls from school, where my only good subjects are Creative Writing and Getting Taunted. Take infamous bullies James Madison and his Bills of Rights (that’s two boys named Bill, around whom James Madison specifically created a gang, because of the admittedly clever constitutional tie-in thing). They can’t let a day go by without putting me through the wringer. Most recently, they cornered me
after school in the gym and told me I couldn’t leave the basketball court until I made “three three-pointers in a row.” I asked if I could just make “one nine-pointer and be done with it,” and little Bill laughed and said, “He’s not unfunny for a faggot.”

(My sexuality, by the way, is off-topic and unrelated. I am undecided. I am a freshman at the College of Sexuality and I have undecided my major, and frankly don’t want to declare anything other than “Hey,
jerks
, I’m thirteen, leave me alone. Macaroni and cheese is still my favorite food—how would I know who I want to hook up with?”)

“Are those boys still calling you Natey the Lady at school?” Mom said, her face tired and long.

“No way, Ma.” (They’re actually calling me Fagster, now, a play on Foster. And which I don’t totally disrespect from a humor angle.)

“Well, that’s all, then,” Mom said, scooping Tippy up and letting her lick Mom’s mouth, which gives me the heebs. “Oh, and Nate. Try to keep it down around Anthony, too. He gets very religious-like about his meets, and there’s a big one coming up,” and she was off, back up the hill. “And he’s in charge while we’re away,” she yelled, not even turning to face me. “Don’t try to run away from home or anything stupid! I’ll kill you if you get yourself killed.”

See, I told you it was a direct quote.

That’s all you need to know about that.

“I
hear you’re taking Mom away for an anniversary weekend?”

“Your brother’s in charge while we’re away.” Dad was doing something with WD-40 and a fishing pole. “It’s important to treat a girl proper every now and then, son.” This from a man who reportedly ran around with an exotic dancer in McKeesport throughout all of last winter, according to Mom’s diary. The parts I could read. The parts not smeared with rain or maybe tears, I guess.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You meeting any nice girls at school, son?”

“Dad, I’m thirteen.”

“Can’t start too young.”

That’s all you need to know about that.

“Met your mother when I was your age.”

I
said
that’s all you need to know about that.

“I’m prayin’ for you, boy.”

B
ut forget my parents.

(Do it
for
me. Since I can’t seem to.)

With the Greyhound wheels thumping a trance, I close my eyes and nod off, imagining what it’ll be like in New York when I arrive. In my mind, Kristin Chenoweth will be waiting for us on a staircase at this Port Authority place, probably singing the theme to “New York, New York.” And then someone’ll hand out handguns and cans of Mace and tell us, “Good luck, and have the time of your life if you can keep it.”

Somewhere in the middle of New Jersey, a collection of drool has pooled so impressively onto my shirt that a child in another row wakes me with his phone’s camera flash. It doesn’t bother me, though; people are already taking my photo and I haven’t even arrived at my dream destination.

And when the blur in my eyes finally vanishes, I
see it, sticking up like a hitchhiker’s thumb. Or better yet, like a big middle finger at Jankburg.

The Empire State Building.

Where I bet you need a shot of oxygen by about the thirtieth floor.

By the time we’re spinning through the Lincoln Tunnel, a woman across the aisle has caught sight of my face, of my open jaw and flitting eyebrows, and calls over, “You’ll never forget it. You’ll never forget the first time,” and I turn away and whisper to the window, “You don’t have to say that twice.”

And we arrive at Port Authority.

And I am lifted into the terminal.

(It’s annoying to say it like that, but I’m reporting in with hard facts and was raised a partial-Christian and thus can’t lie about things like hard facts.)

I and my belongings are lifted into Port Authority Bus Terminal.

I’m actually holding my bookbag so tight, it probably looks like an extension of my shirt. Or like I have a horribly distended belly, like an abscess, and have ventured to New York for surgery at one of their world-famous belly abscess hospitals.

There is such a rush into Port Authority, exiting the bus and then mazing through a series of escalators, that all I have to do is lean just slightly back and the crowd literally surges me along. This must be what
it feels like when you’re my brother and you score a goal and the team carries you across the field.

And, okay, if you don’t follow sports references (Hi, friend!), it’s like this: You know when Dorothy finally makes it to Oz? It’s all just like that but less emerald tinted, and I don’t see any horses changing colors yet. But hey, I’m still indoors. And besides, it’s Manhattan City and I think anything’s possible at this point.

I peek down, just in case I’m in ruby slippers. Nope. Nikes.

But still.

A giant lobby clock hangs above the scattered people, the crowds scramming either
to
something or away from it—I can’t tell. Whatever
it
is, it’s either really awesome or freaking monstrous, that’s how these folks are running. 9:09 a.m. Okay. I’ve got almost an hour before the audition sign-up starts. I should figure out where it is, and change my shirt, and get an orange juice or something.

(No Kristin Chenoweth here, by the way, or free cans of Mace. Bummer times two.)

To exit onto the street, I point my Nikes toward the sunniest doorway and lean back, lifted by the locals. I spill out the doors like surf at the edge of an ocean (I’ve never been to one, but a lot of movies have ocean shots). And I feel like that, like water
disappearing into the sand. It would be so easy to disappear here. Maybe it would even be wonderful.

I glance at the Greyhound bus schedule I grabbed in Pittsburgh. I need to be back on the bus by 1:00 p.m. if I hope to make it home tonight without having to tell too huge a lie. So far, I’m good: no hand stamp at the border, and nobody’s tried to kill me.

The horizon, you’re wondering? The look of the horizon? The horizon
isn’t
. The horizon is a mile of blinking buildings. The horizon is a million adults zooming past me, is a line of yellow taxis, is more than you could possibly imagine. Just across the street is the New York Times building, a towering sheet of metal, and—my God, it’s like nirvana—to my left, an Applebee’s.

The biggest of its kind.

Like a super Applebee’s, the Cadillac of Applebee’s, an Americana food emporium made automatically bigger and better by being here. This can be my home base today. If I get lost: “Point me to the Applebee’s,” I’ll say, real cool. “Point me to the biggest Applebee’s in the world, where I bet they serve two fajitas when you order one; where I bet the shrimp fajita isn’t any more expensive than the chicken.”

Because I can already tell: Things are more fair here, just because everything’s so fast that who’d have the time to stop and gouge a customer?

Libby said the audition would be nearby. I pull out the Google map we printed, a confusing grid of numbers and lanes, and just look left and right, left and right, as if perhaps God himself has circled the audition building with a black Magic Marker.

“Are you lost?” somebody asks, and when I look up from the map, he seems just like my dad but thinner, and probably with a better job.

“I don’t know if I’m lost or not,” I say, and realize it’s the first time I’ve spoken since the Greyhound Station in Pittsburgh. My voice pulls on itself. “I’m looking for the Ripley-Grier Audition Studios.”

“What’s that?” the guy says, craning his neck to look at my sheet of paper. “Have you been to New York before?”