SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

HEART 2 HEART

At breakfast, Lin watches me eat for a solid two minutes before I ask him what the hell he's looking at. He stares at me for a moment more before telling me he's taking me out this evening. Just he and I. I don't fight it. Lin is relentless. He's like a dog that jumps on your lap and barks in your face until you're forced to appease him. Vanessa makes a work call in the kitchen. Sebastian ladles his porridge with a spork. I chuck my dish in the sink and slam the door on my way out. 

That evening. Seven o' clock. On the dot. Lin barges in. To my room. Rips off my headphones. Takes the mehndi cone from my hand. Smudges the newly drawn mehndi on my fingers. Tells me to grab my basketball. Grabs my hand and drags me out the door. 

Are all Precious Baby parents like this? If so, I feel sorry for those little twinks. Lin is a special breed of Precious Baby. He doesn't act rich. He wants to play in the basketball court by the Tobillo field, even though there are six inches of snow on the ground and the temperature is approaching sub-zero. He brings his beats along, hooks them around his neck, and blasts BIG POPPA for the whole world to hear. I rap along to the first few lines. He looks at me like I'm good at it. I am not. Another thing about the Precious Babies: they are fakeity-fake-fake.

We're the only ones at the basketball court, because every other human has a little thing in their heads called common sense. We engage in a game of U-S-N-A-V-I. It's like H-O-R-S-E, but with more ego. I hate to admit it, but Lin isn't terrible at basketball. He makes the first shot, and the next, and the next, and finally misses when I make a three pointer and force him to attempt the same shot. The rules are the rules, even if they're the rules of U-S-N-A-V-I. 

Lin pouts and reaches his hands out for the ball. I hide it behind my back. "Oh, boo-hoo," I tell him.

He wipes his forehead with his sleeve and grins. "I never knew you were such a good baller."

"Do not ever say baller again," I say. 

Lin sits by the fence for a break and sips coffee from a thermos. He offers the thermos to me, and I wrap my hands around it. I don't drink; just take in the warmth. I don't know what possessed him to drag me out of the house on a fifteen-degree weeknight to play basketball. And then it hits me. 

"How did you know I'm into basketball?"

He scratches his goatee. "Your school called and told me everything."

"Everything?"

"Everything about the basketball situation." He narrows his eyes and leans forward to look into my face. "Is there another 'everything' I should know about?"

I take a sip from his coffee and look past him into the Tobillo field. I'll bet Ms. Rishanki is the one behind this. "Nope." 

Lin glances my way when I reach into my boot to scrape some snow from the soles. "You sure?" He asks.

"My english teacher got me a tutor." I untie my bootlaces. "I hate her. The english teacher, I mean. I'll probably hate the tutor, too."

He holds the thermos to his lips. "Are you doing that poorly?"

I remove my boot and shake it until the snow falls to the blacktop. "I'm not failing." 

He slurps a sip of coffee from the thermos. "You must be pretty close if your teacher got you a tutor."

"You don't understand how much I hate it there." I shove my foot back into my boot. I don't know why I'm talking to him about this. Maybe the hypothermia is messing with my head. "Those kids are clones of the same future doctor, lawyer, surgeon, whatever. There is no one like me."

He watches me for a moment and takes that in, then passes the thermos to me. I tilt my head back for a swig, but the coffee burns the roof of my mouth and I spit it out onto the blacktop. Lin pats my back like he's burping a baby. I wipe my mouth with my sleeve and he grabs his thermos from my other hand. "So you really hate it at Wilmington."

"Duh." I wipe my mouth with my sleeve again and watch Lin drink his coffee. "The place is nothing but a bunch of Precious Babies."

He snort-laughs. Some of the coffee in his mouth dribbles onto his chin. "Precious Babies?"

"Precious Babies."

"Is that what you call everyone who isn't as tough as you?"

"No." I pull my legs to my chest and rest my chin on my gloves. "The Precious Babies of the world fit into a very narrow criteria." I rub my finger against a half-formed icicle on the fence. "Precious Babies know where their next meal is coming from, but they argue about what they want to eat. Precious Babies get gifts on Christmas, but whine when they don't get the exact gift they wanted. Precious Babies have jobs, but complain about working." 

"Sounds like most people I know," Lin says. 

"I'm talking about the whole world, not your little Precious-Baby bubble." I snap the icicle from the fence and watch it melt into my glove. "Think about how many children in Africa are eating from dumpsters. Think about how many parents in India don't have the rupees to buy their children gifts. Think about all the people who don't have jobs, at all." I suffer through a brief period of eye contact with Lin, then roll the icicle around in my mitten. "I hate Precious Babies with every molecule in me, but if the world were perfect, everyone would be a Precious Baby."

Lin stares into the Tobillo field for a moment before scooting closer to me. "You have no idea how smart you are."

"I have a vague idea, which is why I do not need a tutor." 

"I think your head is full of loads of amazing thoughts like that one." He gives a closed mouth smile into the lip of the thermos. "I'd like to hear them." 

I chuck the icicle onto the ground. It shatters like glass. I just spoke more words then I knew I could get out at one time. Would I ever tell him? How would I find the words? How would I claw them out from beneath all those layers of blood and scar tissue and everything I've felt for the past thirteen years and ten months of my life? 

How would he respond?

...Which is why I never will. I pull off my mitten and rub my bare hand on the shards of broken icicle. Feels like beads. "You'll never hear anything but the cha-ching of the ticket booth for your next big musical."

He leans his head back against the barbed wire. "You know that money isn't the only reason I write musicals, don't you?"

I give him a look like, yeah, right. "Right." 

He lurches forward and pulls my hand out from the shards of ice. Wilmington safety hazard. He picks up my gloves from the blacktop and gently tugs them back over my hands. I hate when people do that: treat me like I can't do shit myself. 

Lin sits back and stares into the field. "Remember what I said about me being here for you?"

I pretend to think about it so I don't look like some sentimental sissy. Truthfully, I don't have to think about it. The memory is clear as day. The scarf, the coat, the kindergarten in my nose. "Vaguely." 

"I meant it. When I said I'm here for you. You know." He takes a long sip of coffee. "I don't know much about your life before you came here, but I know it was rough, and--"

I turn to face him. The skin beneath his eyes is purple. Is he sleep deprived or freezing to death? He leans against the fence and smiles. But he isn't really smiling. "I just want to know if you're doing alright. You know. Here."

A gust of wind pulls me back into the fence. Or pulls the fence against me. There is no alright. There will never be an alright. There is only the barbed wire penetrating against my coat, the thermometer dipping lower and lower, the melted snow in my boot, and the hypothermia growing inside me. 

I tuck the basketball beneath my arm and slam the gate shut when I walk out. I don't wait for Lin to gather his things. I just go.