A Heart Divided Read online

  MIA

  (too cool)

  Oh. Hi. Having fun?

  KIM

  Not really. This club is so played. There are like, twelve-year-olds here with fake ID.

  MIA

  Kevin and I are so into each other, we didn’t notice. So, we should hang sometime. I’ll call you.

  KIM

  I’ll hold my breath.

  Mia scrutinizes Kim.

  MIA

  (snarky) Cute outfit. My mother has it.

  Triumphant, she exits. Kim is humiliated. A long, awkward beat as she tries to deal.

  DAWN

  Okay, she totally rides a broom.

  KIM

  At least her ass fits on one.

  DAWN

  Kimmy. The boy was never in your league.

  KIM

  Really?

  DAWN

  Really.

  They methodically throw all their cosmetics back into their purses, cross to the door, and stop.

  KIM

  Dawnie. Thanks.

  DAWN

  For what?

  KIM

  The courtesy clueless. It’s like she’s so… and I’m so—

  DAWN

  Not. She’s not.

  KIM

  Hot, you mean.

  DAWN

  She’s not.

  KIM

  Really?

  DAWN

  Really.

  Really, they both know this is a lie. And they both know they know. They share a final best-friend fist bump, take a deep breath, and laugh ostentatiously to ensure that anyone who sees them will think they’re having a fabulous time. As they exit into the club, the lights fade.

  There was huge applause as the houselights went up, and I grinned. My labmates had laughed so hard during the play that a few times the actors had to hold until the yuk-fest died down. That almost never happened, because everyone in Lab was so competitive. So I was psyched. But the opinion that mattered the most was that of Marcus Alvarez. He ran Lab. Still in his twenties, Marcus had already had two plays produced at the Public and been profiled in Time. I was sorta kinda crushing on him, as was pretty much everyone else in Lab, including BB. And BB was straight … most of the time.

  Marcus bounded onto the stage, all kinetic energy in jeans, a white T-shirt, and tennis shoes. “Let’s start with the text of Kate’s play. Shout it out.”

  I frowned. Wasn’t he going to say what he thought? Marcus wasn’t known for being effusive with praise. But the piece had been such an obvious hit. He could have thrown me a word crumb. “Nice.” Or even “Decent.” But he didn’t.

  In the front row, Leigh Wong spoke up. “This girl runs into her ex with his new squeeze. Her best friend tries to make her feel better by putting down the new girlfriend and building up her friend. I found it rather trite.”

  Bitch. I slunk down a little in my seat.

  “Come on, it was hilarious,” BB called out.

  “As a comedy sketch,” Leigh said. “In real life, no one is like those girls.”

  “Only about half the kids I know,” BB shot back. “Get a sense of humor.”

  “Chill, BB,” Marcus said. “Everyone’s opinion is valid. How about subtext? Someone else?”

  “De girls talk like dey are all dat, but really dey both feel insecure,” volunteered another of my friends, Nia Vernon, in her singsongy Jamaican accent.

  Marcus nodded. “So essentially they’re giving a performance for each other, right?” He drifted up the center aisle toward where BB and I were sitting. “Think about it. In real life, anytime we’re with another person, we’re giving a performance. I’m giving one right now. So are you … and you… and you.” He pointed randomly at people. “But what’s behind that mask? You can’t write what you don’t know.” His eyes flicked over the group and landed on me. “Kate Pride, what’s behind your mask?”

  Heat crept up my neck as Marcus pinned me with his gaze. I had no idea what he wanted me to say. Fortunately, he turned and addressed the group again. “I put that question to all of you. You want to be playwrights? Do the hard, scary work. Anything less, no matter how amusing, is just sound and fury and doesn’t signify jack.” He checked his watch. “Okay, we’re done for tonight. Those of you in Showcase, I need a page each on your one-acts by next week.” He gave us a quick wave and was out the door.

  Kids gathered up their stuff, chattering about Marcus’s latest flash of genius, but I just sat there. What’s behind your mask, Kate? What had Marcus meant by that? And what did it have to do with his nonreaction to my scene?

  “Up and at ′em, chica.” BB pulled me to my feet.

  “What’s behind dat mask, girl?” Nia teased, joining us.

  I looped my backpack over one shoulder as we headed for the exit. “Interpret what just happened,” I demanded.

  BB waved it off. “Marcus plays mind games. You know how he is.” We pushed outside into the torpid July twilight, heat from the asphalt radiating under our feet. We stopped at Lafayette and Eighth to wait for a break in the traffic so we could cross.

  “Was he saying that my scene lacked depth, or that I lack depth, or what?”

  “Nah. He put you in Showcase,” BB pointed out. “I’d kill to be in Showcase.”

  Showcase—Young Playwrights Showcase—was a special program at the Public Theater. Four high school playwrights were selected to work on one-acts with an elite group of actors for six months. Then, over a weekend in March, the plays would be produced at the Public. It was the biggest of big deals. Every Lab member, plus a couple hundred other people, had applied. Much to my joy—and shock—Marcus had selected me. So why was he all over my case?

  When the traffic thinned, we crossed against the light and cut a speedy slalom through the river of pedestrians to the uptown subway. Tosca—I’d mentally named him years ago—was at his usual spot just outside the station. He was old, maybe seventy-five, with matted gray tufts of hair, leathery skin, and dirt ingrained in the wrinkles in his neck. His sad-eyed, scruffy mutt was tied to a fire hydrant with rope.

  Most of the time, Tosca was just another street crazy who talked to himself. But when he tucked his violin under his chin to play, he was a god. Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Paganini. His body snaked this way and that, as if the music was alive someplace deep inside of him.

  Tosca was such a local fixture that most people didn’t even see him anymore. If they did bother to toss some change into his violin case, they didn’t stop to listen to his music. I don’t know why that bothered me so much, but it did. It really did.

  My friends disappeared down the station steps, but as usual, I waited until Tosca finished the piece he was playing. Then I reached into my backpack for the dog food and candy bar I’d stashed there, placed both in his open violin case, and hurried to rejoin my friends.

  2

  out at Port Authority and sprinted to the platform for the Englecliff bus. I found Lillith waiting for me, leaning against a wall, her skinny torso lost in a vintage Blondie T-shirt.

  Lillith and I came into the city together pretty much every Saturday. I’d go to Lab, and she’d practice with her band in a SoHo loft. Then, she’d slink around downtown— Washington Square Park, Union Square—picking up and rejecting boys like candies in a giant Valentine box. Bite into one and it’s too sticky-sweet; try another and it’s too nutty. Like that.

  The bus pulled up with a diesel roar; we paid our fares and slid into seats near the back. “So, today sucked,” Lillith said cheerfully. “I met this guy in Tompkins Square who plays guitar in a reggae band. We made out for a while.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  She shrugged. “White chocolate. Blond dreads and a trust fund. I swear, no one is authentic anymore.”

  “Excuse me, do you know what time it is?” This from the cute guy one row back, who was clearly addressing me. I told him I wasn’t wearing a watch and turned back to Lillith, who gave me her patented evil eye.

  “He was just tryin
g to find an excuse to talk to you,” she informed me in a whisper, curling a stick of gum into her mouth. “That totally never happens to me.”

  Was that true? It was weird, because until the summer before ninth grade, skinny Lillith—with her hip-before-its-time choppy blond hair and waifish looks—had been much cuter than I was. Then, suddenly, I morphed. My dark hair got thicker, my bust bigger, my legs longer. Cheekbones appeared practically overnight. I’d catch sight of myself in a mirror and wonder: Who is that girl?

  Guys started asking me out. I had a new boyfriend on a weekly basis. My friends would say we made such a cute couple—until the inevitable breakup. It turned out that being a cute couple is highly overrated, unless you have more in common than raging hormones and the backseat of a car.

  “So, what do you think of success?” Lillith asked, popping her gum. The bus belched from the Lincoln Tunnel and hung that sweeping left-hand turn where there’s nothing in the world but Manhattan skyline.

  “What? Like, existentially?”

  “Suck-Sex,” she overenunciated. “As a new name for the band. Whores of Babylon takes up too much space on a marquee.”

  I clutched her arm in excitement. “You got a gig?”

  She gave me her best blank stare.

  “Oh, a theoretical marquee.”

  “Hey, it’s not like you’ve had a play produced yet,” she pointed out. “Besides, in the great karmic equalizer of life, I should get famous before you do.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Sometimes it was hard to follow Lillith’s logic.

  “Only one of us turned into brunette Barbie,” she explained, eyeing my chest. “And it sure as hell wasn’t me.”

  I knew the minute I walked in the door that something weird was going on.

  WEIRD THING #1: From our family room came the chipmunk sound of some faux-sexy pop singer. Which had to mean MTV. Which had to mean Portia. But it was almost ten o’clock, and Porsche wasn’t allowed up past nine-thirty

  “Kate? Is that you?” my mom called. “We’re in the family room.”

  WEIRD THING #2: My mom was watching MTV.

  “Come here, Kit-Kat!” This from my dad. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  WEIRD THING #3: Dad was with them. But he never watched television, except for the Mets, Jets, Knicks, and Rangers.

  “What’s up?” I asked as I swung into the room. Since they were together on the couch, I plopped down in the Barcalounger, which was…

  WEIRD THING #4: Dad’s Barca was his throne. And he wasn’t in it.

  Portia turned down the TV. My parents held hands and exchanged a meaningful look, which caused the worst line ever written in the history of bad plays and B movies to flash through my head:

  I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

  My sister was literally bouncing with anticipation. “Can I tell her, Dad?”

  “I think I should, sweetie.” My father turned to me and launched into a monologue that boiled down to this: He’d accepted an amazing job offer as a design consultant for Saturn automobiles in some town near Nashville.

  “Nashville… Tennessee?” I ventured, hoping there was another Nashville I hadn’t heard about, say between the George Washington and Tappan Zee bridges.

  My father nodded.

  Okay. This wasn’t so bad. BB’s father commuted between Manhattan and Sweden. There was a kid at my school whose father worked for Warner Brothers in Los Angeles and flew to New York on weekends. Nashville was a lot closer than either Stockholm or L.A. “Wow, you’re going to rack up the frequent flier miles,” I joked.

  “Nuh-uh, we’re all moving!” Portia blurted out.

  No. This could not be happening. Only it was happening.

  To be fair, it’s not like this possibility had never been mentioned. I knew corporate headhunters contacted my father from time to time, offering new career opportunities. And my parents had mentioned that accepting such an offer could entail our relocating. But that had all just been theoretical. Now it was real.

  My father elaborated on The Plan. We’d be moving to Tennessee for a year. After twelve months, we’d “reassess.” Whatever the hell that meant.

  My gut instinct was to leap from the Barca and make them realize, by any means necessary, what they were asking of me. But experience had taught me that my parents didn’t react well to tantrums. So I was careful to keep my tone steady: “This is impossible for me.”

  “It’s Tennessee, Kit-Kat,” my dad said. “Not Timbuktu.”

  “Dad, I made Showcase. Do you have any idea what that means? I’ve worked toward this for five years.”

  “You’ve worked toward becoming a playwright,” my mom corrected me. “And if you look at the bigger picture—”

  “You look at the bigger picture.” My voice jumped half an octave despite my quest for self-control. “How can you do this to me?”

  My mother sighed. “Lose the melodrama, Kate, please.”

  “No! You wanted me to find a purpose for my life? Well, I found one. You can’t just rip it away from me.”

  My mother pinched the bridge of her nose, something she often did when she was tense. “Kate, we’ve been completely supportive of your interest in theater, haven’t we?”

  I nodded warily.

  “Are you under the impression that you’re the only one in this family with a dream?”

  This was not going well. “No.”

  “Good. Because this is a dream job for your dad.”

  I looked at him. He sat there, eyes hopeful, while Mom fought his fight. It made my heart hurt.

  “I understand your disappointment,” my mom went on. “And I know that your life—all of our lives—will be somewhat different. But Vanderbilt University is in Nashville, and we can look into playwriting classes for you there. I’m still going to freelance—”

  “And I’m going to get my braces off and lose ten pounds before I start at my new school,” Portia put in.

  “The braces stay, Porsche,” my mother said. “And you’re not dieting.”

  I persevered, suggesting every option I could think of that would result in my staying in Englecliff. No, Gramma and Grampa could not sublet their Florida condo and move in with me. No, I could not live with Lillith’s family. Nor Nia’s. Out of options and defeated, I sank back in my father’s throne. My parents dictated what they considered to be generous terms of surrender. If we stayed in Tennessee for more than a year, and if Lillith’s family would have me, maybe I could live with them for senior year. Which meant I’d have one last shot at Showcase.

  As I trudged upstairs to my room, I thought how easy this was for them. When you’re forty, a year probably seems like no time at all. But at that moment, for me, it was forever.

  3

  approximately one hour and fifty minutes. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight.”

  “This is so cool.” Portia had her forehead pressed against the window, watching our plane cut through clouds and light. She leaned over me toward my parents, who were sitting across the aisle. “Are you looking out?”

  “It’s beautiful, Porsche,” my mom agreed.

  Portia tapped my arm. “Wanna switch seats?”

  I was reading American Theater magazine. Or trying to. “No thanks.”

  Her eyebrows knit. “Are you mad that you’re miserable and I’m happy? Because it’s awful when someone else is all happy for the same reason you’re miserable. I could pretend to be miserable if you want. But frankly, you’d see right through it.”

  I allowed that it was okay for her to be happy, and that I was happy she was happy. Then I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But my mind kept replaying scenes from the night before, when BB and Nia had thrown me a going-away bash. All my Lab friends had come dressed in God-awful country-western wear.

  Lillith had come, too. “I’ll call you every day,” she vowed, hugging me so hard that the rivets on her black denim jacket—actually, my black denim jacket, which she’d borrowed and never returned—made impres
sions in my arm. “I’ll get T-shirts made that say FREE KATE: THE SOUTH SUCKS. I’ll wear black until you come home.”

  To my surprise, Marcus had showed. I’d screwed up my courage the week before and asked him to coffee after Lab. Somewhere between pouring the cream and stirring the sugar, I told him my terrible news. “I’ll be back next year, though,” I assured him. “And then NYU, I hope.”

  He sipped his black brew. “Ever think about USC?”

  He meant the University of Southern California, a school I had zero interest in attending. New York University was for playwrights; USC was for television writers. It was that simple.

  “Why would I go there?”

  “Industry contacts. You’re cute. You write hip, funny, facile, glib, all that. You could be running your own sitcom before you’re thirty.”

  This was like telling a girl who aspired to be Rembrandt that she was a talented little cartoonist. And he knew it. I folded my arms. “In other words, you think my work lacks depth.”

  “You write fast food, Kate. Your characters have the weight of cotton candy. Fun going down. But ten minutes later, you’re hungry for something real.”

  A flush crept up my neck. “Why the hell did you put me in Showcase, then?”

  “Because you have talent. Possibly a lot of talent. And for some reason, I suspect you’re deep. Not that anyone would know it from your writing.”

  “A play can be funny and still be deep,” I said defensively. “I’ve tried to write serious. It comes out like bad Eugene O’Neill.”

  “That just means you’re imitating him instead of being you.”

  “Because I’m funny.”

  “But not superficial. Take that as a compliment.”

  “Gee, thanks. I feel so much better.”

  He dug a few dollars out of his pocket. “Like I said in class, Kate, you can’t write—”

  “What you don’t know,” I finished for him. “Yoda has spoken.”

  He almost smiled. “Exactly. So let me ask you.” He leaned toward me, eyes probing mine. “What hurts so much that the pain cuts to the bone? What makes you feel so passionate you can’t even breathe?”