SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda

DARK ART

I go to the theatre with Lin and Sebastian to sleep. The couch in Lin's dressing room is somehow more comfortable than my own bed. Lin sits with me for awhile. He gives me a roll of paper towels and a sharpie he uses for autographs, then tells me to draw. He doesn't care what. He just wants me to create, "Like Picasso," he says. "Can I call you that? Picasso? No, you're Viddie. Picasso can be your alter ego, or something."

He's noticed I haven't been drawing mehndi. His headset crackles and the guy from the sound booth orders him to the stage for soundcheck. Soon as he leaves the room, I chuck the paper towels in the corner and put his sharpie back in the drawer. The last time I drew Mehndi was on my birthday, but the paste looked horrendous. Sebastian watches me from the corner and taps his magic wand against the floor. He is determined to win the talent show at all costs, and practices constantly. He brings his magic kit wherever he goes, and each time he performs a trick, he recites a bizarre vocabulary of indecipherable spells. Perhaps the lost soul from our Halloween séance has possessed him to speak in tongues.

He shuffles over to me on his knees and bops my nose with his wand. "I'm bored."

I roll over on the couch. "Do a spell."

"I'm bored of this room."

"Go to the bathroom," I tell him.

He tugs on my arm. "Let's go to the audience." 

"Go by yourself."

"Viddie." He tugs at my arm so hard, his body leans at an acute angle to the floor. "Please, please, please, please, PLEEEEEEAAAAAAASE!"

Sebastian pulls me out of the dressing room and up the three flights of stairs to the green room, then out the door, and out another door, and into the main doors to the theatre. The actors stand in a line on stage for mic checks. I see Lin in the center, adjusting Jonathan's mic. We crouch in the corner of the isle behind the last row of seats. From this altitude, miles of velvet seats extend in every direction. Each time someone speaks for their mic check, the sound bounces off the walls and boomerangs into our ears. 

Sebastian leans in and whispers. "See Dad up there?" 

"I do," I tell him.

The guy from the sound booth calls Lin's name for mic check. Lin pauses from adjusting Jonathan's mic, then steps forward and clears his throat. He raps a few lines from In The Heights before the guy from the sound booth says good.

"Dad is the smartest man in the world," Sebastian tells me.

I rim the tip of his wand with my index finger. "What about Einstein?"

"He's even smarter than Einstein. You know why?"

"Why?" I ask. 

He shifts from sitting to laying down. "Everything Einstein discovered was there before he discovered it. All his math problems and science stuff existed before the dinosaurs." He turns to look me in the face. "All Einstein did was puzzle-piece them."

I sit criss-cross-applesauce and lean against the wall. "So?"

"In The Heights didn't exist before Dad wrote it. He made the story up in his head with no calculators or nothing." 

"Is that so?"

"Yep. Momma told me, so it's true." Sebastian sets down his wand and flicks it back and forth in front of his feet. "It was his own Masterpart."

"You mean, masterpiece?"

He thinks for a moment. "Maybe. I don't remember. It was on last week's vocab list."