Better Nate Than Ever (15 page)

I smack into a lot of things pretty regularly, actually.

Luckily, the jacket is about thirty sizes too big for me, shielding me from trauma. God, if I get sent back to General Thomas Junior High, I should just wear this all day long: a padded bruise protector.

I bruise easily.

I’ve got to eat something.

And when I pull my furry yellow hood back (ha ha: “furry yellow hood” sounds like something Anthony would like about a girl or something), a blazingly huge Chevys, the biggest and most wholesome Mexican restaurant in America and likely the world, is draped across the sky like a billboard tailored to my heart.

And I’ve got a plan.

“T
able for two, please,” I say. “My mom is
just
about to show up. And preferably we’d like something by the door.”

The nice-enough lady walks me clear to the other side of Chevys (not by the door at all) and seats me beneath a hanging potted plant, confirming my theory: Everything green in New York is potted. An island of asphalt is simply not fit for growing things. I find that so inspiring.

“Oh!” I say, just as she’s clearing a table for me. “Do you have something with a plug? I don’t even need a view of Times Square or anything, but an outlet is crucial.”

She kind of puffs her cheeks out, like she’s dealing with another stupid out-of-towner (which, to be honest), and seats me all the way upstairs, right by the bathroom. Not ideal for a number of reasons (the
combo of bathroom smells and salsa, chiefly)
and
it’ll make my eventual escape tougher, but by golly there’s a plug right beneath the booth.

In thirty seconds, my Nokia is back in business.

I won’t bore you with the texts that have filed in; there are roughly a trillion, most from Libby, a few from Anthony, and one from . . . oh, God. Mom.

“WE ARE WORRIED SICK WHERE R U NATHAN.”

Whenever Mom texts, it’s serious. She’s as averse to technology as I am to pencils.

Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

And to make things worse, I can’t even counterbalance the narrative by providing an encouraging message from Rex Rollins the casting director, because the only
voice mails
are from Mom, too (same all-caps message as above, with more shrieks, and my dad stomping around in the background), and one from Libby: “Call me ASAP, Jack.”

“Can I get you anything to drink?” a new voice says.

My head jerks up, poking out from its furry yellow hood, my elbows barely reaching the table. This berserk-looking Ewok is starving. “A water with a lemon and a lime both, please, and the largest free basket of chips that you’re allowed to bring me.”

The waiter smiles and kind of glides away. The
good news is, I have my protein/dessert already taken care of (shout-out to Mr. Reese: love your Pieces, sir), and the dual serving of fruit slices in the water checks
that
box off the list. Plus, the chips and salsa are like a free, cold pizza, which happens to be my favorite way to eat piz—

What am I doing? I have to call Libby.

Two rings and she picks up.

“Libby!”

“Hi—uh—
Mom
,” she says in her “acting” voice.

Uh-oh. Trouble.

“Stay with me,” she mutters into her phone, and I make out a series of slams and yells and the general hubbubery of angry adults in the background.

And too many men’s voices.

There are no men’s voices in Libby’s house, unless she’s listening to the cast album of
Damn Yankees
. And even then it would sound more like a gentle baseball game and less like . . . this.

The waiter brings my water and basket of chips, placing a glorious salsa bowl in front of me, and I put my hand to the receiver and whisper to him: “Allow me to mull over the menu until my mom gets here, please,” and I’m back to my bestie. “What’s going
on
, Libby?”

“You tell
me
,” she says.

“Well, the stats: I’m at a Chevys in Times Square.”

“You’re still in
New York
?” she says in a stage whisper.

“Where are
you
?”

“At
your
house, along with half the neighborhood, and your parents. Your mom is, like, threatening to call the police.”

“The
police
?” I say, or yelp. The people at the table next to me, a bunch of tourists (in coats that fit them), stop eating and stare at me.

“I know. It’s dramatic. But you
are
the very definition of a missing minor at this point.”

I would stand and pace but don’t want to unplug the phone from its socket. God these chips are good, at least. Chips just work on every level, you know?

“So what—God, what am I going to do?” I say.

“Uh—get on the next
bus
?”

I’d meant that question rhetorically. I don’t like Libby taking this tone with me. It’s very Mama Rose/Gypsy, and I’d never be comfortable playing a stripper.

“The audition actually went very
well
, Libby.
By
the
way
. Like: I didn’t get cut, or I did at first but then got called back.”

“You got a
call
back?” she shrieks, and then I hear her turn from the phone and say, “It’s nothing, Mrs. Foster. My mom is just checking on me.”

Feather barks and this just about breaks my heart, so in tribute I break a chip in half and eat it without my hands, just like he would.

“Yup. I mean, I sang for the team today and everything.”

“The
team
,” Libby says, chuckling. “You are so boss, Nate. You are boss.”

I’m boss! This is Libby’s greatest compliment! Usually
she’s
boss and I’m not even vice boss.

“So what now?” she says, and I swear I hear our grass crunching beneath her feet, Libby walking out her worries so that I don’t have to.

“Well, I’m doing a salsa crawl, starting with Chevys. Because I’m broke. Like, I have no idea where I’m going to sleep tonight.”

“I can Google ‘youth hostels.’ I didn’t think it would come to this, but I can do some work on that. Also, my mom has that step-brother who lives in Queens.”

“Interesting,” I say. “But how do you get to Queens? Do I have to charter a bus or something?”

“Prob’ly,” Libby says. “The only thing I really know about New York is what’s playing on Broadway, y’know? Did you read they’re doing a revival of
Into the Woods
where all the actors play their own instruments?”

“Coolio.” The waiter returns. “Could you tell me what you have on, like, special, sir?” I say, crooking my head against the phone, which is still partially concealed by my hood, and pretending to listen to
him. Libby and I just have so much to catch up on. “Keep talking,” I ventriloquize to her.

“Okay,” she says, launching. “So here’s the thing: There’s a Nate Foster neighborhood watch and everything. The Kruehler family is patrolling the front of the cul-de-sac, with BB guns, and your dad is on the roof with a big flashlight. And somebody went to school, suggesting—this was actually hilarious—that you might have gone in to the library, on a
Sunday
, to study.”

That
is
hilarious, hilarious and sad. God, if anybody gets hurt trying to find me, I’ll kill myself.

“ . . . and we’ve got a chimichanga that people are really responding to,” the waiter says, finishing up a pitch that he
really
oversold. His teeth are so white that he must be an actor.

“Thank you,” I say to him, waving the empty basket of chips in the hopes he catches my drift for a refill. “Let me pray on those dinner specials over another basket of chips. Carl.”

(I caught his name tag. Always good to address people by their names.)

“Nate, I’m really proud of you,” Libby says. “You not only made it to New York, you seem to be taking advantage of every loophole I ever taught you.”

“And a few new ones! I just stole a coat from a homeless bin.”

“Whoa.”

Carl returns with the basket of chips and another water (with only one lemon and
no
lime, which’ll make me feel better when I don’t order anything, or tip him) and I say, “My mom should be here any moment, Carl, just bear with me,” and he does a theatrical double-eyebrow bop and glides away to another table.

“The thing I can’t figure out, Libby, is why Anthony hasn’t sold me out.”

“Well, that’s the thing. In your absence, without the distraction of scene-studies and showtunes, I’ve gotten more self-reliant. One could say ‘resourceful.’” She sounds dangerous right now, but the fun kind.

“What
kind
of resourceful?” I say, swallowing seven chips at a time and licking a finger.

“There was an incident in your brother’s room,” Libby says, or huffs actually. She’s climbing up our favorite tree out back, I’m just sure.

“Yes—was this the thing where you were in Anthony’s underwear drawer?”

“You
know
about that?” she says, squealing, probably almost losing her grip on the tricky third branch from the top.

“Yes, my Aunt Heidi informed me. Anthony called her and spilled the beans, and she found me at the audition—which
you
must have told him about—and
now I’m here. Though she doesn’t know it. You and me and my waiter Carl are the only people who even know I’m in New York, Libby.” He’s back. “Carl!”

“Mister Kid, is your mom ever arriving?”

“I’m hoping so. Yeah, she’s just down the block at Applebee’s, comparing appetizer pricing”—I can hear Libby sigh, probably marveling at how much sharper my improv skills have gotten since moving to New York—“but should be here any minute.”

Carl glides away again. Gosh his sideburns are manicured; it’s really something.

“Okay. So, Nate, I have to run in a second or it’s going to look suspicious to your parents. But I never approved an overnight.” The wind is picking up in Jankburg, and I can barely hear her. “This trip was to be a bus ride there and a bus ride back, with one hour popping your head into an audition and an important stop at a T-shirt stand, for me.”

“I know, I really trie—”

“We don’t have time for explanations.”

“You mean like
what you were doing in my brother’s underwear drawer
?”

“Okay, let’s talk about that. Okay, I was curious what the great star Anthony Foster wears underneath his jerseys.”

“And pole vault uniform and soccer shorts and—”

“Yes, exactly. But you don’t know the good part,
because I’m sure he didn’t tell your Aunt Heidi
this
.” She pauses. Plays the opposite, just like I taught her. “I found
beer
in your brother’s sock drawer.”

“What?!” If I were on the tree next to Libby, I’d have fallen into the yard below.

“Yeah, a full-on six-pack of Iron City. And he had nothing to say.
You
know what your parents would do if they knew he was drinking.”

I
do
know. Dad lost a cousin in a drunk-driving accident in the fifties or seventies or whatever, and there is a zero-tolerance rule in our house. And Mom—well, Mom has her own sordid history with the bottle; we’re not even allowed to have
root
beer around the lady. This is unreal. Anthony the Fallen Angel.

“So you’re
darkmailing
my brother?” I say, now licking chip crumbs from the wax basket liner. They really are delicious.

“I mean, I told him I’d tell your parents he was an alcoholic if he didn’t cover for you until you got home from New York.”

“Yes, that’s darkmail,” I say.

“
Black
mail, Nate. Besides, we came to an agreement. He screamed bloody murder and said he’d kill me if I outed him as a beer drinker, and I . . . made him take his shirt off and flex.”

“Libby.”

“What! I was curious about the male form. He rolled his eyes throughout, anyway. And all he’s saying to your parents, and the police, is that you went to my house for a sleepover and he hasn’t heard from you since. It doesn’t help, Nate, that you took the lucky rabbit foot.”

I’m rubbing it now, actually. Have been rubbing it since that audition, one hand stealing winter coats and eating chips, and the other, it turns out, not letting go of that frickin’ rabbit foot.

“Because,” she says, “everyone knows you don’t go anywhere important without that rabbit foot, and that you wouldn’t have taken it with you for a regular old overnight at your girl Libby’s.”

Usually it hangs on a hook by my bed, my version of a dream-catcher. Libby’s right; it is totally suspicious that the rabbit foot is missing from my room.

“So your parents showed up at
my
house tonight, and luckily my mom was asleep”—she’s always asleep, Mrs. Jones, because she’s always coming down from a chemo treatment—“and there I was, on my bed, doing a jigsaw puzzle of the Mona Lisa, and Facebook status-stalking, and
in
barge your mom and dad.” The Joneses never lock their doors.

“My God, even my dad showed up?” I say. For me?

“Yes. Like, evidently one second after Anthony
lied and said that you were at my house, they arrived here. So you know it was your
mom
who drove them over.”

Carl the waiter is finishing up with a table across the way; I don’t have any more stall time. I’m up, unplugging the charger, and stuffing it into one of my wondercoat’s many pockets.

I bolt into the men’s room, whispering: “So what did you say to my parents?”

“That we’re playing an elaborate new-generation version of hide-and-seek where you get twelve hours to find a hiding space, anywhere in the neighborhood. And that it was your turn to hide.”

“Goodness God,” I say, ducking into a Chevys bathroom stall. “And they bought it?”

“Yeah,” Libby says, yawning, “I did the crying thing.”

“Of course.”

“So you have until tomorrow morning to get back home, Nate, before, like, the FBI is involved. The whole thing is actually
like
E.T.
, all these guys running around looking for you in the woods.”