Spring has sprung. After a brief period of rain, flowers have popped up in front of Washington Point. Short sleeved shirts have crept out of bottom drawers. I wake up at 6:00 in the morning and eat my breakfast on the balcony. I have to let my body learn to breathe again. It has been a week since Lin found out. Leaves and petals are not the only things that have resurfaced.
Today is Sebastian's first rehearsal for the talent show. It's Saturday. Instead of hauling ass to Precious Baby Junior High, I'm tagging along with Lin and Sebastian to the auditorium of KIPP Washington Heights Elementary School. When Sebastian wakes, I'm still outside. He pushes open the door and sits across from me at the wicker table Lin set up last weekend. For awhile he doesn't say anything, just watches me. The sky above us is cloudy, but over the skyline, the horizon is so blue, it's gray. I stare back at Sebastian. I'm sorry. I can feel that coming from him, even though he doesn't say it. Strange, isn't it? It's marvelous, too, how easy it is to understand someone so vulnerable.
And of course, after a few moments of peace, he opens his mouth and begins some winding story about the dream he had last night. Around 8:00, Lin comes outside and sits with us. His hair is a mess, his shirt is backwards. At one point while Sebastian describes the talking tiger he encountered in dreamland, Lin reaches out and ruffles my hair. The clouds eventually part, the sky turns blue. Sebastian concludes his story, I clear my plate. Lin realizes his shirt is on backwards and heads to the bathroom to turn it back around and gel his hair into oblivion.
We head to the elementary school around 12:00. The auditorium reminds me of a smaller, lower-budget version of the Richard Rogers. The seats are fake velvet and the stage has red curtains. Upon entering, we have to line up on the stage to register our acts. Sebastian drags Lin up the stairs and I find a seat in the front. There are thirty-something other kids and parents, and a few lone teenagers with tap shoes and karaoke machines. I take a "one man's trash is another man's treasure" sort of approach when it comes to talent. To Harry Houdini, Sebastian's plastic wand and stuffed rabbit would be complete and utter bullshit. To the entire population of suburban parents, a store-bought magic kit is beyond science. But you know what? Sebastian is happy. I guess he's always been happy— he's four and hasn't yet been exposed to the atrocities of the human existence— but his plastic wand and little stuffed rabbit prod him to the edge of ecstasy. When he and Lin make it to the table at the front of the stage, he bounces on his heels and grips his wand so tightly, I see his hand shake from the audience.
The man behind the table reads of Sebastian's application. "So you're doing magic?" He pauses to read the description. "You're sawing your stuffed rabbit in half?"
Sebastian nods. Lin narrows his eyes and bends down to match Sebastian's height and whispers to him. Sebastian squints, then gasps, then scrambles to the edge of the stage. "Viddie!"
I look up from the ground.
"Viddie!" He jumps up and down, dangerously close to the edge. "Viddie, be my assistant!"
Lin mouths to me from behind him. "please."
I stare at Sebastian, then Lin, then Sebastian. I know what Lin is thinking. Sebastian doesn't understand that once he saws his rabbit in half, he can't glue it back together. Also, the mutilation of a human body is far more first-prize worthy than the mutilation of a stuffed toy.
The Vidyagirl in my conscience doesn't have to move my legs for me. I stand on my own. "Sure."
After changing the description of the act to the sawing in half of a human girl, Lin and Sebastian take a seat with me in the front. The rehearsal plays out exactly like the show will: each act takes the stage, performs within a time limit of five minutes, then sits back down in the audience. The first act is a ten year old singer packing at least twenty grand worth of orthodontia. Halfway through her horrifically mispronounced performance of Plastic Love, Lin taps me on the shoulder.
"We need three boxes for the act," he tells me. "We don't have the props we need. I don't know what to do."
I peer past him at Sebastian, who's bouncing his feet against the bottom of he seat. "I do." I turn to Lin. "I know a place."
By a place, I mean the dumpster behind Fort Washington Library where the harmonica man sat on his pile of cardboard. I tell Lin to stay with Sebastian at the auditorium, then exit the school through the back and take off.
The library is four blocks from the elementary school. I jog. The afternoon is a warm, lazy Saturday. The sidewalks are crowded, as usual, but I weave around each person as I run. A group of street musicians perform around the Tobillo Field, but I don't stop to watch. I jog around the block past Villarinos, past the subway station. I pick up speed once I hit the path beside the Harlem River: a fast, easy coast. I dare myself to lift my arms, outstretch them against the air. As long as I'm jogging fast enough, I should be back in time for Sebastian's act. I run like I have wings. If I gain enough momentum, I'll fly right up with the wind.
I slow down when I arrive at the library. The back of the building opens into an alley shared with a brownstone next door. I peer around the corner of the bricks to make sure there are no gang fights going down, no drugs changing hands— then jog to the dumpster and hoist myself onto the lid. I spot a rectangle of crushed cardboard in the corner, and another beside the lid against the wall. I stack them against the side of the dumpster and rifle through the trash. I hop down from the lid with four more separate pieces of cardboard in clutch. It's mediocre, but it will work. I think.
I arrive back to the elementary school in a solid fifteen minutes. I stop at the library on the way to the auditorium, find a tape dispenser, and tape the four pieces of cardboard together. When I push open the auditorium doors, there are three hoola-hooping girls occupying the stage. I see the tangled mess of Lin's hair over the humps of the chairs, and the vague outline of Sebastian's plastic wand tapping against the arm of his seat.
Lin turns to me and whispers when I sit. "where were you? We—"
He stops when he sees the makeshift boxes in my arms. I place the boxes beside the seat and whisper to Lin. "How long till Sebastian goes on?"
"Two more acts," he tells me.
"Good." I pat one of the boxes. "Those won't hold out for much longer."
They don't. Three acts later when Sebastian hauls the boxes up on stage and forces me to cram myself inside one of them, the cardboard falls apart the moment he touches its surface with his wand. The audience is silent, but I know what they're thinking. My kid's act is better. Although they probably are, I have to give Sebastian credit. He pushes me to the floor and mimes sawing me in half with his fist clenched like he's holding a knife. No one applauds when he stands and bows and I'm still in one piece, but he smiles. He smiles and picks up the mutilated cardboard boxes and gives Lin a big gooey hug when we return to our seats.
The talent show is on May 25. That gives us a month and a half to get our act together. Disqualification is prohibited by the guys from the Salvation Army who are running this thing, so The Great Sebastian is going to have his moment, no matter how flimsy our boxes are or how benign his imaginary saw may seem. We walk the long way home, along the path of the Harlem River. Sebastian crouches as he walks and skims his wand along the water. Lin holds his free hand and whistles The Ballad Of Billy The Kid. And me? I walk beside them and watch with this weird image in my head: Sebastian center stage with a tophat and a magic wand, and Lin behind him in his Hamilton costume. In my imagination they look exactly alike, although in reality Sebastian looks more like Vanessa. I have my father's face and my mother's body, but I don't think of myself as a mutant of my parents. I don't think of myself as looking like anybody.
That evening, I slip on a T-shirt tell Lin and Vanessa I'm going for a walk. My plan is to retrace my steps from earlier when I snuck out to the library. I run. I race past the deli, the subway station, Villarinos, the Tobillo Field, and the silhouette of the bridge when I reach the hill across from the Harlem River. I will myself to forget about Operation Pakistan and focus only on the thwack thwack thwack of my sneakers pounding against the concrete. Running towards something is different than running away. There's no barbed wire screeching against my bones, no Vidyagirl in my conscience telling my legs to stop. The city carries my body, lifting my feet from the ground at an incredible velocity and daring my wings to spread.
I don't stop when I approach library. I go through the alleyway and take the long way back to Washington Point, and I run like I can fly.
YOU ARE READING
SHOUT - Adopted by Lin Manuel Miranda
Fanfiction"Sometimes I think the universe sets certain people out into the world like gifts meant for others, people whose purpose is to save someone else. That's how I think of families. And if the universe couldn't do me that favor, couldn't put someone on...
