Lucky Caller(13)

The secret was: She wasn’t entirely sure she understood it either.

I was the only one who knew it, but Rose had been struggling in her classes in the fall. She had almost failed a couple of them but just managed to squeak by with grades high enough to keep her scholarship. She played it off to Mom and said it was because she had been doing too much—working and all that. Mom tried to get her to cut back on her hours, and she had a bit, but I knew that wasn’t the real reason.

We never talked about it, though. It was kind of our thing, Rose and me. We could pretend with each other, and that was okay.

At least most of the time. “So how did the show go?” she said, not quite as accepting of my subject change as I would have hoped.

Unconsciously, my eyes flicked up to the mirror. I could see Jamie looking out of the window in the back.

“It was … something,” I replied.

Rose snorted. “Enthusiastic.”

Alexis had texted me partway through the show: Listening right now and I need to know if you’re holding your host at gunpoint or like what the situation is in-studio that’s making him sound like that No offense lolol

But seriously though

“Nah, we just need a little … practice,” Jamie said. “Just gotta iron out a couple wrinkles.”

That was being generous, but that was Jamie in general. I flashed suddenly on him in second grade, when we were in the same class at Garfield Elementary. We were growing seeds once as a class project—everyone got a little Styrofoam cup full of dirt, got to press their fingers in to create divots and plant the seeds. We left them along the window ledge, everyone’s cups printed with their names. It’s wild looking back how something that sounds so boring now can be so exciting to you as a little kid, but it was. I guess when you haven’t experienced very many things, lots of mundane stuff becomes exciting simply because you’ve never done it before.

One boy in our class, Ethan Lowe, was really sad because everyone’s seeds had sprouted but his. One day, when the teacher was occupied on the other side of the classroom with Ethan and some other kids, I caught Jamie hunched over two of the Styrofoam cups, quickly but carefully digging several of the thin green shoots out of the one labeled JAMIE and transferring them to the one labeled ETHAN.

“You’re gonna get in trouble,” I hissed.

Jamie didn’t reply, just continued his covert transplant. Ethan was ecstatic when he later noticed that his plants had finally grown.

That was something I liked about Jamie—he was an optimist, but the kind who knew that optimism alone wasn’t enough to make Ethan Lowe’s radish seeds sprout. He was willing to take matters into his own hands.

“No, the show’ll be great,” Jamie continued now as we waited at a traffic light. “We’ll get there,” he said in a way that, despite all evidence to the contrary, made you think we just might.





6.


JAMIE PARTED WAYS WITH US in the elevator at the Eastman, thanking Rose for the ride and ducking off when the doors opened at the seventh floor.

Rose turned to me when the doors had shut once more.

“You never said Jamie was part of your radio group.”

“Didn’t seem relevant.” I fixed my eyes on the floor numbers, watching the light switch from seven to eight.

Rose looked unimpressed. “Really?”

I gave her a look that said I wanted to pretend right now, and she didn’t press further.

We reached the ninth floor and trekked to our apartment. Sidney jumped up from the couch when we got in.

“Guess what?” She was bouncing up and down.

Rose looked her over. “Haircut?”

“New shoes,” I said, even though she wasn’t wearing shoes.

“You’ve mastered the power of flight,” Rose said.

“Your organs have been swapped out with someone else’s organs. It was the first-ever total organ transplant, and they did it in less than eight hours. It was truly a feat of modern medicine.”

Sidney looked exasperated, nearly vibrating with the power of her news. “No! Stop it!”

“You said guess what, though,” Rose pointed out. “We’re guessing what.”

I gasped. “You were adopted! Actually we’re all adopted! We’re all in the royal family! We’re all in different royal families!”

“I GOT IN THE MUSICAL!” Sidney burst out.

Sidney loved theater the way other people loved sports or boy bands or video games. She followed the careers of Broadway actors like they were Hollywood celebrities. She memorized both parts of elaborate duets. Her friends got together to dream cast their favorite shows.

She had practiced her audition relentlessly over Christmas break—although not required, she had memorized the monologue and the brief song, and then rehearsed them to the point that they would probably be fixed in all of our memories for the rest of our lives. If any of us ever had grandchildren, they would likely remember Sidney’s audition pieces too, such was the extent that they were seared into our collective consciousness.

But now, apparently, all of her hard work had paid off.

“I’m Miranda!” she said, jumping up and down, and we jumped up and down too.

“Is this good? Is Miranda good?”

“She’s in like at least half the scenes! And she gets her own ballad! I get a ballad!”