My Life: The Musical (11 page)

She looked around her lovely two-bedroom apartment on Riverside Drive, with its view of the Hudson River. Marlena had been shaking her booty in low-budget music videos when she’d gotten plucked out of an open call to star in this show. Now she had an agent, a manager, a lawyer, a stylist, and a life coach who’d been meditating with her once a week to “gain clarity” on her next career move.

Unless I already blew it,
she thought anxiously. Her manager already had clarity; he’d been killing himself getting the big record companies interested in her, but six months ago her theatre agent had urged her to renew her contract with
Aurora
and she had. Now she was stuck for a year, and even after all that meditating she still wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice.

“Beyoncé!”
her manager had yelled, furious, when he found out what she’d done. “
J Lo!
They make a lot more money than you do, little Miss Broadway Star!” It was true, but how did you walk away from a dream? Marlena had wanted to be on Broadway since she was a little girl taking tap in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, and now she was going to quit?

She thought of her boy band costar. Nice kid, pretty hair, not much voice but that’s what microphones were for. He was doing
Aurora
on the advice of his agents, to shake up his image so he could make the transition to feature films.

“He’s a
bankable star,
” Marlena’s manager had said sternly, when she’d first complained about having to work with Mr. Pretty Hair, who didn’t know stage right from stage left. “That’s what
you
need to become, Marlena Ortiz!”

She looked at her smiling face on the screen, an airbrushed memento of her former naïveté. The public always thought the actors were the big deal, but Marlena knew better. The real power in the theatre was not onstage but in windowed offices and wood-paneled conference rooms, with the producers and directors, the ad agencies and critics and investors.

And the writers,
she thought. But Marlena didn’t know who’d written
Aurora
. She’d been given a phone number on the first day of rehearsals. “In case you have any questions about the role, and the director is unavailable, call and leave a message here and someone will call you back.” That’s what the stage manager had told her.

She’d only called the number once, after the opening-night party when she was a little tipsy and feeling fine. She’d left a message saying congratulations and asking whoever it was out on a date, just for fun. After that she was told not to call except in an emergency.

But now something was up, and she’d be damned if Marlena Ortiz was going to be the last person to know what it was. If
Aurora
was closing, she needed to get her manager back on the phone with RCA, today. It wasn’t too late to plan a fall concert tour, but first she needed to get in the studio and lay down the album they’d been talking about before she renewed her contract with
Aurora
.

Emergency? I’ll make it an emergency,
she thought, and picked up the phone.

“It’s only five paragraphs, you can do it!” Philip was trying to be encouraging, but Emily’s writer’s block had reached crisis proportions and he was nearly out of patience. It was study hall for both of them, and they sat at adjacent computers in the school library. Philip had found a helpful Web site that gave sample outlines and topics for persuasive essays, and Emily was staring at a blank screen, freaking out.

“Henderson’s class starts in thirty minutes,” she said anxiously. “That’s six minutes a paragraph.”

“Too bad it’s not a math class,” Philip joked, but she didn’t seem to get it. He turned back to the screen. “How about one of these topics? School uniforms, yes or no? Capital punishment, yes or no? Violence in the media, harmless or the end of civilization? Hey, here’s an easy one: which make better pets: cats or dogs?”

“You know I’m allergic to fur,” Emily said. “Look! Oh my God, twenty-nine minutes.”

“Pick anything!” he urged. “Better to turn in a bad paper than blow off the assignment and get a zero averaged into your grade.”

“My topic: Why RuneScape is dumb!” Emily snarled pointedly. A bunch of goth gamer kids were hovering around waiting for the computers, but since Emily and Philip were attempting to do actual schoolwork, the massively multiplayer crowd had to wait.

“Eat me,” one of them snarled, but they backed off.

Philip looked at the retreating mob and let their wardrobe choices inspire him. “School uniforms, then,” he suggested to Emily. “You can’t be allergic to them.”

“If they’re wool I am,” Emily said. “Twenty-eight minutes! What am I gonna do what am I gonna do—”

“Just write something. Anything!”

“Okay! I’m just gonna write anything.”

“Good.”

“Shhh!” Her eyes were closed and her fingers hammered at the keys. “Don’t talk to me. I’m writing.”

Good,
he almost said, but stopped himself. Highly practiced at making it look like he was doing something educational when he was, in fact, surfing the theatre chat rooms, Philip quickly logged on to
planetbroadway.com
. Somebody IM’d him almost immediately.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Hey, isn’t it a school day?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Aren’t you supposed to be coloring inside the lines right about now?

BwayPhil
: Well, hello there.

BwayPhil
: We’re in the school library, it’s study hall.

BwayPhil
: Aurorarox is sitting next to me.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Hi ’rox.

BwayPhil
: She would say hi but she’s trying to finish a paper.

“Oh God,” Emily moaned, typing away. “Twenty minutes! That’s four minutes a paragraph. . . .”

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Are you following all the rumors? The Internuts are having a field day.

BwayPhil
: Somewhat, yes.

BwayPhil
: I guess people who like to gossip will always find something to gossip about.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: You don’t sound too interested. I’ll keep my scoop to myself then. . . .

“Pompous jerk,” Philip said under his breath.

“Who’s that?” Emily asked.

“Just write, okay?”

“Rrrrr.” But she went back to work.

BwayPhil
: Why, what have you heard?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Just what everybody’s heard. That something’s closing.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: ’cept I know what, tee hee.

BwayPhil
: Do you really?

BwayPhil
: Because it would be really mean and f***ed up for you to play with our heads.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Wouldn’t it, though? Lucky for you I’m actually a nice person, in my fashion.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: And yes, I do know. Really.

“Hey, Em.” Philip spoke in a calm voice, suitable for libraries but totally unsuited to the import of what was happening on the screen. “You better come here.”

“Not now!” She looked at the clock. “I have fifteen minutes to write a five-paragraph essay. That’s three minutes a paragraph.”

“It’s SAVEME. He says he knows what’s closing.”

Emily spun around in her chair and all her notebooks fell to the ground.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Still there, Bway?

BwayPhil
: Yes, sorry. Are you going to tell us which show?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: It’s one of ’em.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Ask me too many questions and I’ll say no more.

Philip looked up at Emily, who was digging her fingers into his shoulder so hard it hurt.

“Don’t ask him anything,” she whispered.

Philip let his hands hover over the keyboard for a long minute before entering his reply.

BwayPhil
: Notice how we are asking no questions at all.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: The silence was deafening, good boy. Now listen closely, only saying this once:

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: If I were you I’d go see your favorite show again soon.

BwayPhil
: Why?

Emily punched Philip in the shoulder. “He said not to ask him any more questions!” she hissed.

“Wait, he’s typing,” Philip said.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: That’s not for me to discuss. Just go. Buy the tickets today if you can.

BwayPhil
: Today? What are you saying, SAVEME?—

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Saying nothing, just a hunch is all—

“I would really love to sock this guy in the face,” muttered Philip as he typed.

BwayPhil
: This IS NOT a question, but does the magic 8 ball have an ***opinion*** about which perf we should buy tix for?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Saturday night, two weeks from now would be ideal.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Or anytime before.

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: This is just a hunch, remember. Don’t go spreading it around like cream cheese.

BwayPhil
: So why are you telling us?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Truthfully?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Let’s just say I had to tell somebody,

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: and I don’t have many friends.

BwayPhil
: Aurorarox losing mind now and insisting I let her—

BwayPhil
: rox typing now as BPhil—hey, saveme?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: yezzz, ’rox?

BwayPhil
: i thought you were a jerk

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: But you were wrong.

BwayPhil
: right

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: ’pology accepted, Roxie—hang on, phone’s a-ringing—

BwayPhil
: can you at least tell us how you know—?

SAVEMEFROMAURORA
: Gotta take this call, bye sports fans.

BwayPhil
: ok

BwayPhil
: thanx for the hunch, saveme

“Oh my God, Phil.” Emily never called him Phil but it just came out. “Oh my God oh my God.”

“What do you think?” asked Philip. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”

“Close your eyes,” she said, taking both his hands in hers, just the way Aurora did to Enrique in the second act of
Aurora
. “Look into your heart. True or not true?”

They looked into their hearts. Then they looked at each other. They’d both gotten the same answer.

“True,” Emily whispered. “What are we going to do?”

Her question was rhetorical, but Philip chose to answer it as a practical matter. “Here’s exactly what we’re going to do,” he said. “We are going into the city
today
to buy tickets. We are going to have to pay full price to buy in advance, so we’ll need quite a bit of money.”

Emily was nodding, but her head was swirling with numbers. “Two weeks. Sixteen shows. Sixteen pairs of tickets, a hundred dollars each.”

“Em,” he said, alarmed. “That’s thirty-two hundred dollars.”

“I want to see them all,” she said, her voice cracking. “Every show that’s left. I have to.
I have to
. I’ll ask Grandma Rose for it, she’ll understand.”

“It’s an awful lot of money—”

“You have to see your show while it’s running! Isn’t that what she always says?” Emily felt the hysteria climbing up from her gut.

“It is, but still—”

“So that’s what we’ll do.” Her mind was made up. “And we will see the show as many times as we can between now and—and—”

Emily couldn’t say it.

Two weeks from Saturday.
It sounded so incredibly soon. Tears started to roll down Emily’s cheeks, and Philip reacted in the only way he could think of.

He sang to her, softly, so as not to anger the librarian.

“Forever will have to be enough,
Not one day less will do,
But forever could never be enough,
To celebrate all my love—”

For you
were the lyrics that ended the song, but Philip didn’t go quite that far. He looked at his watch instead. “The box office opens at three—that means we have to make the one-forty-eight train.”

“First we have to stop at my house and get the money,” Emily said. “Let’s go.”

“Emily, what about your persuasive essay?” Philip said. “You should turn it in, at least.”

Honestly,
Emily thought,
did Sweeney Todd pause to turn in his homework before slitting someone’s throat with a razor?
How sadly unlike a musical her life too often was. Perhaps she should do something about that.

“Prepare,” said Emily, “for my greatest performance to date.”

13

“AND I AM TELLING YOU”