Read Online Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle - Free Book Online Page A

find out how bad his track accident was?”
    “No, something about a strained or sprained calf or something, but the connection was bad.” And then—I don’t know why, who can ever tell with grown-ups?—Heidi bursts into tears. “Oh, God, Nathan, I’m sorry. I just—I didn’t ask for this.” She shouts above the ongoing hip-hop class. “I know I’m the worst aunt and that I disappeared, but your mom never wanted me around. I was never—I shouldn’t be saying this to a twelve-year-old.”
    “Don’t worry, Aunt Heidi. I’m nearly fourteen.”
    She laughs, her throaty cry intermingling in a weird duet with minor hyperventilation. “Oh, Nathan, you look so much like your dad. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown to look like him.”
    Great. The genes of a janitor.
    “Tell me—oh, Nathan, tell me you’re not actually here to audition yourself . Did you come all the way here to audition for this show, honestly now?”
    I take her in. She’s beautiful, actually. Maybe a little soft on the sides, but her almond eyes are matched by a lovely old-fashioned face, shaped like a guitar pick, all curves leading dramatically to a small chin with a big mouth. The only one in the family that’s just like mine. Her big expressive mouth, now spilling with something that sounds like a confession. We were raised partially Catholic, so I’d know.
    “Aunt Heidi, I—my whole life, all I’ve wanted was to come here.” Technically just the last three years, but who cares about anything other than Count Chocula when you’re under ten? “To experience it just once. And I need to get back down the hall and get in line, and have that chance. I just—I will regret it forever if I don’t.”
    “Nathan, I’m sorry—I really am. But I need to get you back on that bus before things get . . . even messier.”
    The hip-hop music cuts off abruptly, followed by quiet applause, and I say too loudly, “If Mom has already disowned you, what’s the worst thing that could happen here?”
    Whoops.
    “I need—I need to . . .” But Heidi edits herself, running into a girls’ bathroom just beyond.
    Superwhoops.
    Legs Diamond ! in fact. (1988, ran for sixty-four performances, which sounds like forever to me but is considered a flop, here. Starred an Australian with a legendary lisp. Flop. Big-ol’ flop.)
    And here’s my chance. Here’s my chance to escape into the rabbit warren of hallways, back to the lineup of kids, to secure my place as number ninety-one, now publicly endorsed by an adult (even if she’s in the bathroom crying).
    I’ll probably get looked up and down and laughed at by “the team” and released right after the type-out, unfit to audition for E.T . And then at least I can go back to Jankburg with the confirmation that I shouldn’t even be dreaming this dream, and just weave myself firmly back into the tapestry of local boredom. Of the greys of Jankburg.
    And when I stand to fill up my water bottle and pop a lozenge and check that my audition music hasn’t wrinkled, I break into tears too. The weight of it all—the realization that Anthony covered for me and Libby covered for me; that Aunt Heidi has to see her stupid nephew who looks like her stupid janitor brother-in-law; that she probably avoided me for years for this very reason, probably because I remind her too much of all the people in my family who are too closed-minded to accept that she had a New York dream too; that she wouldn’t work at Flora’s Floras and wanted, instead, something more for herself, something different and less grey? Well, it all makes me cry.
    I pass a strange wicker hallway mirror and see my face. My oily face that is indeed starting to trade freckles for zits.
    And you know what? Aunt Heidi was wrong. I don’t look like my dad. I look like her.
    “Nate.” She appears, getting my name right, getting me, and I turn around to her. She is looking atme like I’m poisoned, like I’m the famous cream dress she stole