I didn’t deserve those enemies, and I don’t deserve this one. So I said, “Please sit with us. We’re going to be suite mates.”
She sat, mumbling something about guessing she had to sit somewhere.
They didn’t have a sorting ceremony, but the headmistress, Miss Pike, made a speech welcoming everyone back and talking about the “exciting, diverse” campus and all the usual things principals everywhere talk about. Then there were performances. First was a string ensemble, well, one of the string ensembles, since they have three. They were incredible, and next, a vocal group performed. Phoebe got up for that, which I guessed was why she said she had to be there. It was a small group, an a cappella jazz ensemble of twelve guys and girls. They were amazing. It sounded like instruments, even though there weren’t any. They were all really professional. Phoebe didn’t have any solo lines until the last part of the medley, which was “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. She sang the verse that ends, “I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch / And love is not a victory march / It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.” Mr. Smith, her voice was clear as a sunny day in June, and she put in all the anguish the lines needed and still sounded good enough to give me literal chills. I was sitting on my hard, wooden bench, slack-jawed, my throat closing from the beauty. It was that glorious.
She must have known she killed it too, because afterward, she actually had a pleasant expression on her face.
And I was thinking about what David had said, about the rich kids and the prodigies. I assumed Phoebe was the first type and I was the second. But if Phoebe was an example of the people without talent, what must the prodigies be like?
Whoa, it got real, real fast.
Phoebe is way better than I am. They probably all are, and when the school realizes it, they’ll send me home.
I can justify that to myself by saying she’s had more training than I have or more time to practice because she wasn’t working at Publix or hiding from her mother’s scrub boyfriends or moving from one sketchy apartment to another. That’s all true. For sure, she’s had more advantages. All of them have. But I still have to compete with them, and it’s going to be hard. In my old school, I was special. In this school, everyone is special, and I’m just one of them—one with a lot less schooling too.
Can I even do this? Do I even belong here?
And, on that note, I’m going to sleep. In my own bed in my own room, all by myself for the first time in pretty much ever.
I hope they let me stay.
Love, Jacaranda
P.S. Are you Will Smith? I figure probably not, but I’ve been dying to ask. After all, you are rich enough to send a total stranger to school, so maybe . . .
Date: September 8, 8:37 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: It just keeps getting realer
Dear Mr. Smith,
I’d like to tell you about my first day of classes. But, unfortunately, I have to write a 500-word essay about George Gershwin because I didn’t know that he wrote the song I was singing. Because people apparently know that stuff here?
More tomorrow or whenever I come up for air.
Love, Jacaranda
Date: September 10, 9:28 p.m. Eastern Standard Time
Subject: Update
Dear Mr. Smith,
Almost a week since I arrived at Midwestern Arts Academy. Every day, I take my regular classes (language arts, history, algebra, and French) in the morning. In the afternoons, I take:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday
Period 5: Musical Theater Workshop
Period 6: Dance (ballet on Monday, Broadway jazz on Wednesday and Friday)
Tuesday/Thursday
Period 5: Drama
Period 6: Music theory/class piano
I thought music theory or dance would be hardest, since I’ve never taken either. But they put me in beginning music theory with mostly ninth graders. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’m learning. And I’m not even in the lowest dance class, because some people are just plain uncoordinated.
No, it’s musical theater where I struggle.
Why?
Apparently, there are all these Broadway musicals everyone has seen and are actually bored with that I’ve barely heard of. Even if they are from Des Moines, Iowa, they all seem to have grown up taking weekend trips to New York to see plays like Hamilton, going to the national tour that came to their town, or at least having Tony Award–watching parties and downloading all the albums from the nominated shows.
Can I tell you a terrible secret? I’ve never seen Wicked. Or Phantom of the Opera either. Or Les Mis. But especially Wicked. Some people here have seen it seven or eight times. They saw it in utero. I’m dying to see it, but I’m pretending I already have.
Once, in Miami, we went on a field trip to see West Side Story at a local theater. I could barely concentrate because Christian Miranda was kicking my seat the whole time, and it was so loud with all those school groups there, but I still sang, “I like to be in America, okay by me in America” for a week until my mother’s scrub-of-the-week boyfriend yelled at me to stop . . . or else.
On the first day of class, the teacher, who told us to call him Harry, an older black guy with a voice that makes everything sound like Shakespeare, told us the titles of the musicals we’ll be doing scenes from. The only one I’ve heard of is My Fair Lady. He said we all had to sing for him, and that we should have an audition piece ready at a moment’s notice, in case we had an opportunity. Then he went around the room and asked for the titles. Most people had something ready. I hadn’t done any Broadway stuff, but last year I sang “Someone to Watch Over Me” in a school concert, so when Harry got to me, I told him I’d sing that.
“From . . . ?” he asked, his voice booming like he was onstage.
It took me a second to realize he meant what show the song was from. No clue. I tried to visualize the sheet music my teacher had copied for me. Nothing.
“Do you at least know the composer’s name?” Harry said, his voice rising on “least.”
Behind me, I heard David whisper something that sounded like “gherkin.” Which made no sense because a gherkin is a kind of pickle (this is Publix knowledge here). But maybe the pickle was named after the person who discovered it. So I said, “Gherkin?”
Harry scoffed. “What Mr. Sanders whispered was ‘Gershwin,’ one of the most widely known American composers, of whom you’ve apparently never heard.” Then he told me I must never sing a song in this class or anywhere else without knowing the name of the show, the composer, and the lyricist.
People giggled and this girl named Brooke, a brunette with big eyes who sits behind me, whispered she couldn’t believe I didn’t know that. I said, “Yes, sir,” trying not to cry.
He made me write a 500-word report on George Gershwin, no copying out of Wikipedia, because now he thinks I don’t know better. I’m attaching the report in case you’re interested in knowing more about Mr. Gershwin.
After class, David came up to me with this other guy, Owen, and a girl named Nina, who had sung that day in class. She sang a song called “Show Off,” and she also tap-danced! David said, “Don’t worry about it. That guy’s a jerk* to everyone. I wanted to go home my first week.”