Act 2 (Jack & Louisa) (2 page)

“All right, who let these
kids
in here?”

I turned to see Madeleine Zimmer, the star of the show, her eyes twinkling mischievously under her false eyelashes and her Crest-commercial-white teeth lined up in a perfect smile. She wore a long pink-and-red silk kimono, and when Jack jumped into her arms, he disappeared behind its floor-length sleeves.

“Maddie!” His exclamation was muffled by the fabric. “You were
incredible
!”

“Well, once I knew that
Jack Goodrich
was going to be in the audience, I upped my game,” she said, releasing him. “Oh my goodness, let me look at you. You got so big!”

Jack looked down at his feet like he’d failed to notice his recent growth spurt.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a chuckle.

“And who’s this great beauty?” Madeleine asked, gesturing toward me.

Great beauty
?
She’s got to be kidding
, I thought.
This woman looks like a supermodel, and I look like . . . well, like a starstruck twelve-year-old theater nerd with hat hair holding a huge parka.

“This is my best friend from Ohio—Louisa Benning,” answered Jack. Normally I would have offered up my nickname; here I was too shy. Jack, however, was not: “But everyone calls her Lou.”

“Then Lou is what I will call you, too!” declared Madeleine, and the next thing I knew I was enveloped by those silk kimono sleeves. I almost fainted.

“Come on, I’ll show you my dressing room,” said Madeleine, and as she turned to lead us up a flight of stairs I started to feel like Alice in Wonderland. Except unlike Alice I felt big and small
at the same time
: big because the stairs kept getting narrower and narrower as we went up, and small because I was still just some nobody kid from Shaker Heights, Ohio. But I wasn’t just some nobody, was I?
I was Jack Goodrich’s best friend. He had just said it out loud to a real Broadway star, and that alone made me feel one step closer to belonging to this magical world. I felt light-headed. As we reached the top of the stairs, I grabbed the hem of Jack’s coat and whispered in his ear, “I know this kind of thing is normal for you, but I am sort of freaking out right now.”

“Are you okay?” he whispered back.

“Oh, yeah, it’s a good kind of freak-out,” I said, peering into Madeleine’s dressing room. It was filled with framed photographs, colorful throw pillows, and little potted plants. I smiled, imagining what my own Broadway dressing room would look like someday.

“This might be the coolest night of my
life.”

-JACK-

“Come in, make yourselves comfortable,” Maddie said, gesturing to a pink velvet couch wedged between a costume rack and giant humidifier. “You don’t mind if I take off my wig prep, do you?”

“Nope,” I said, hopping onto the embroidered cushions. Lou’s eyes widened as she crept past the rack of sparkling costumes that just minutes before had twirled across the stage.

“You can touch ’em if you want, hon,” Maddie said, taking a seat. She dug her painted nails into the panty-hose cap on her head, removing bobby pins like garden weeds. I watched as Lou
delicately ran her fingers across the intricate beading on one of the dresses.

“Can you believe how many costume changes I have?” Maddie asked us.

“Seriously! There was one that seemed to take less than fifteen seconds,” I said. “How did you do that?”

“Oh yeah, the purple into the burgundy?” Maddie asked. “You can see, everything’s rigged.”

I watched as Lou gently pushed aside the dresses on the rack until she came to the purple one. Up close, the glass buttons were revealed to be snaps, the lace corset hiding a zipper.

“There are two dressers waiting offstage who literally rip the purple one off me,” Maddie explained, “then there’s a third dresser who has the burgundy dress open on the floor. I step into it and she pulls it up around me, I stick my arms through the sleeves, she zips up the back, then practically pushes me back onstage. We call it the grape to raisin change, because of the colors.”

Maddie began undoing her pin curls, spirals of tightly wound hair held in place with bobby pins.

“So what brings you back into town?” Maddie
asked, letting a blond ringlet bounce in front of her face. “Here for an audition?”

“No,” I said. “Just for the holidays. Although we did
Into the Woods
last month in Shaker Heights, and when we get back we’re auditioning for
Guys and Dolls
.”

“No kidding?” Maddie smiled. “At what theater? The Cleveland Playhouse?”

“Oh . . . no.” I laughed kind of awkwardly. “It’s just at our school.”

“Right, of course.” Maddie smiled. “So you’re an actress, too?” she said, nodding to Lou.

“Erm, yes,” Lou croaked, stepping from the costume rack and into the golden light of Maddie’s dressing station. “But nothing professional like you guys.”

“Well, no need to hurry,” Maddie said, running her fingers through her curly blond hair. “Enjoy being a kid while you still can.”

“Lou’s such a good actress,” I said proudly. “She was awesome as Little Red. Her comic timing was ridiculous.”

Lou blushed as Maddie turned to her. “Well, sheesh! Stay in Shaker Heights as long as you’d like, honey! I don’t need to start running into you at
auditions, stealing my roles!” she said with a wink.

This trip to New York felt entirely different, seeing everything through Lou’s eyes. After four months of feeling like an exchange student in Ohio, I finally got to be the tour guide. Even the most ordinary tasks, like riding the subway or walking through midtown, became adventures. Places like TKTS (a giant red booth selling discount theater tickets) or Shubert Alley (a walkway displaying Broadway show posters) became photo ops. Our favorite game was trying to re-create iconic show logos next to their life-size counterparts. For
Book of Mormon
I jumped in the air holding a stack of Playbills.
Wicked
had Lou whispering a secret in my ear a la Glinda and Elphaba.
Kinky Boots
was a stretch, but when viewed through squinted eyes, our contorted bodies
did
sort of look like a pair of sparkly red heels. Lou would shriek and squeeze my arm as she identified Broadway chorus girls walking down Ninth Avenue (the fake eyelashes and baseball hats hiding their wig caps were always the giveaway). As her tour guide, I made sure to point out not only landmarks but character
traits that separated tourists from the real New Yorkers
. Lesson number one: Tourists always look up at the buildings, while real New Yorkers keep their eyes on the sidewalk, making sure they don’t step in dog poop.

I took her to some of my favorite places—Chelsea Market, the Tenement Museum, and the Drama Book Shop, which was packed with every play- and theater-related publication you could dream of. My parents and I helped prevent rookie mistakes, like shopping in Times Square or those pop-up Christmas villages (they sold the same stuff back in Shaker Heights and for cheaper). We steered her away from overly crowded attractions, like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Although, Mom and Dad finally caved when Lou suggested we go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center (I’d lived here for twelve years and had never actually been). Of course once we saw how long the line was, we settled for just taking selfies in front of the giant Christmas tree.

The one event on our itinerary that made me anxious was a lunch date I’d set up with two of my
Broadway friends. This meeting felt important. After a semester playing the new kid in Lou’s social circle, it was my turn to make the introductions. I prayed my city friends liked my new Ohio sidekick as much as I did.

Connor Gage and Imani Marie Johnson were two of my favorite people in the business. Imani was a Young Nala in
The Lion King
and a Lavender in
Matilda.
We had the same agent, Davina Saltzberg, who introduced us back when we first started working. Her hair was a cloud of beautiful ringlets, making it impossible to take your eyes off of her when she was onstage. Connor was the kid I took over for as Michael Banks in
Mary Poppins (
he had left to go be in
Newsies
just one block away). At age fourteen he already had four Broadway shows under his belt, and whenever he walked into an audition room, all the parents would sigh, knowing their kid was probably out of a job. He was something of a legend to me.

“Kodama?” Lou squeaked when I announced the spot I’d chosen for lunch. “What about Sardi’s or Ellen’s Stardust Diner? Isn’t that where you
Broadway people like to hang out?”

“Lesson number thirteen,” I said, rolling my eyes comically, “if you’re looking for actors, check the sushi and Thai places first.”

We pulled open the door to the warm midtown restaurant, which smelled like cucumber and green tea. My parents had allowed us to meet my friends on our own, which gave them a chance to catch up with some old friends from the neighborhood. I immediately spotted Imani and Connor wedged in a table in the back underneath an autographed
West Side Story
poster. Their trendy outfits told the world they were definitely not tourists. I locked eyes with them, waving as we squeezed through a labyrinth of shopping bags and puffy coats hanging off the backs of chairs. Just as we arrived at their table, Connor and Imani threw open their menus, whipping them up to shield their faces.

“Gosh, you can’t go anywhere in midtown anymore,” Connor muttered from behind his food-splattered menu.

“And I thought the stage door was bad,” Imani added.

Lou looked over to me nervously, but a split second later a burst of laughter erupted from behind the menus.

“Jacky, long time, no see,” Connor said as he tossed his menu and leaped from the table to throw a bear hug around me.

“We missed you so much,” Imani said, leaning in, giving a quick kiss to my right check and then my left.

“This is my friend that I told you about,” I said, placing a gloved hand on Lou’s shoulder. “Her name is Louisa . . .” I waited for her nickname qualification, but when I looked over, she stood frozen, hugging the straps of her backpack.

“But everyone calls her Lou,” I finished.

“Yes,” Lou piped in quickly. “Everyone calls me Lou, and nice to meet you guys.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Imani said, moving over to her and repeating her double-kiss routine.

We sat down and placed our orders. Lou: the chicken tempura. Me: the deluxe sashimi combo. Our conversation drifted from upcoming jobs (Connor, in a play downtown; Imani, in a music video), to school, to New Year’s plans. It didn’t take long to notice how different it was talking with
my New York friends versus my friends back in Shaker Heights. In the four months I’d been gone, my city friends had started acting like adults—ordering seaweed salads and actually using words they’d learned from spelling tests. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t study every gesture and phrase they used.