Chapter 1
I’m idling in my car even though I pulled into my driveway at least ten minutes ago, nervously tapping my hands on the steering wheel in time to the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying cast recording. My stomach is flipping like a full-blown Newsies routine, and my perfectly ordinary front door has never looked so intimidating.
To give myself an extra shot of courage, I pick up my phone and read the impossible email just one more time.
I close my eyes and focus on the visualization technique I use to calm my nerves every time I’m about to step onto a stage.
First, square breathing: in for two, hold for two, out for two, hold for two. Repeat four times.
Next, my three words of intention: how I want my audience—in this case, my parents—to feel once I’ve performed. The words are technically supposed to be verbs. So, okay, I want to charm, excite, and…uh, prouden? Is that a word?
Lastly, and arguably the easiest part for me: remind myself to speak calmly, slowly, and with passion. I also need to remember the most important truth bomb in my arsenal: that the NYU musical theater department only has a 15 percent acceptance rate. If there’s one thing my parents can get behind, it’s percentages.
This is it. I’m going to use all my performance acumen and all my courage and come clean: Maman and Baba, I applied to Tisch, the art school, not Stern, the business school. I got in! And I’m going to study theater and spend the rest of my life performing.
I’m going to tell them. Today, I think, just as my stomach does another Tony-worthy backflip and the arched glass in my front door seems to frown even wider. Or maybe…sometime this weekend. Because I think there’s an Iranian soccer match on tomorrow and then they’ll be feeling particularly relaxed.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that my parents aren’t supportive. Maman and Baba paid for and drove me to every voice lesson or dance class, attended every single one of my performances whether I was playing a background tulip or had the lead role, and cheered harder than anyone when I took my bows, from age four until now. They love that I love to perform…. They also really, really want me to go to business school.
I listen to Daniel Radcliffe belt out some more tips about how to walk into a conference room, soaking in my ironic choice of pump-up music, before I finally turn off the car. It’ll be okay; I have a whole weekend to tell them.
But when I step into the door, Maman and Baba are both lying in wait in the foyer. Their eyes are wild and bright, and when they land on me, my parents let out a joyous exclamation, as if they’ve been standing there all day. I glance back at my treacherous front door uneasily, wondering if they’ve been staring out at me sitting in my car.
“Nasrin, I’m sorry,” Maman says, and that’s when I notice that she’s clutching my iPad. “I promise I wasn’t prying. It’s just, the alert popped up on here this morning and I’ve been waiting for hours to have you read it….” She hands the tablet over to me.
“It’s from NYU!” Baba butts in. “We just saw it was from NYU.”
So much for that soccer match.
“Did you get in? Are you going to be a Sternie?” I look at my dad’s smiling face, how his dark mustache is bobbing up and down with anticipation. Then I turn to Maman, her brown eyes blinking madly behind her funky purple-and-pink glasses.
Maybe this would’ve been easier if I’d just let them overhear my Zoom audition. But I specifically asked my theater director to let me borrow the school auditorium for it. Probably because a large part of me never expected it would lead to this moment. I mean, come on. Fifteen percent.
I take a final deep breath and finish it off with my good-luck ritual—two taps on the silver necklace that’s hanging from my neck, the pen
dant a tiny rendering of stage curtains. Maman and Baba got it for me years ago, just a few months before that disastrous Chorus Line audition that almost made them make me quit….
But no, no. That is not what I need to be visualizing right now.
I put all the force of my vocal training behind my voice as I say, “I got into NYU—”
But before I get to finish my sentence, both my parents are hugging me and whooping loudly. I’m pretty sure that’s one of my mother’s tears I feel on my hair.
“We’re so proud!” Maman says.
“So proud, jigar talah!” Baba reiterates. “This makes everything worth it. All the sacrifices…”
Maman waves at him. “Let’s not get into that now, Nader. This is Nasrin’s moment! She did it!”
They both embrace me from either side again, a tight-knit Mahdavi circle that feels as warm as the sun.
They’re so happy.
And I’m so happy.
And we’re elated over the same thing, really. The same university. Just…a slightly different school within it.
Okay, this is good. This is how I’ll ease into the truth. “So, Maman. Baba…”
“We have to celebrate properly!” Baba says, and jumps away from the embrace, the slight chill in his wake scattering my train of thought like stage snow. “I’m making reservations!” He grabs for his phone.
I don’t have to ask where. He knows my favorite restaurant. He sorta knows everyone’s favorite restaurant, given that my parents are the proud creators of RatethePlate.com, currently the number two restaurant-rating site in the country.
“I’m opening up some champagne. Just a little for the special occasion,” Maman says, winking at me.
I smile at her, swallowing down my confession for the time being. Because a little alcohol will make it go down easier too, right? I mean, I’ve never really drank, but I’ve seen enough act 2s opening on party scenes to get the idea.
“I’m buying us matching sweatshirts!” I look over in alarm to see that Baba has somehow already managed to navigate over to the Stern merchandising page.
I give a small laugh. “Well, maybe let’s hold off on that for one—”
POP!
I physically jump, for one bizarre instant thinking that a cymbal has been hit, signaling the first note of my opening number. Traditionally, it would be something called an “I Want” song, the main character establishing to the audience what their goal is goin
to be for the next two hours and change. Think “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” or “Part of Your World.”
So I want…
…to get into Tisch. The program whose audition I agonized over for months. The program I applied to just to see if I had what it took to make it. I told myself that if I got in, it’d be a sign that theater is what I’m meant to be doing.
And I did. I got in. Fifteen percent.
Right, that’s it. Remember the percentages, Nasrin. Remember the percentages!
My mom stuffs a skinny glass into my hand, a small pool of pale liquid fizzing at its bottom.
“To our great mind!” she says.
“To our great mind!” Baba echoes, raising his glass and clinking it with mine.
My eyes involuntarily flick over to the wall of my parents’ office, where the giant sampler that hangs there is visible even from the foyer. It reads:
Great minds have purpose, others have wishes.
—Washington Irving
Ironically, I’m the one who stitched the words of my dad’s favorite quote onto an enormous piece of fabric a few years ago, when I learned how to sew so I could have a better grasp on how to alter my own costumes. The sampler was a Father’s Day present, replacing the small framed quote that had been there for as long as I’ve known how to read.
Everything my parents have ever done seems filled with purpose. For one thing, they left behind their entire country in pursuit of opportunity. And when they combined Maman’s coding skills and Baba’s penchant for sales, they somehow arrived at a magic formula for success. It seemed like one day they were updating their WordPress from the little alcove in their bedroom, and the next, they had a feature in Wired. But I know it was “overnight success” by way of ten years of toiling in obscurity.
And that’s all they’ve ever wanted for me too. Maybe not the abject struggling part, as they’ve made quite clear, but the part where I work hard and eventually get rewarded for it. The first and last time I ever saw Baba with tears in his eyes, through fresh ones streaming from my own, was the month after the Chorus Line audition, when he told me in no uncertain terms that theater is meant to be a fun hobby and not a source of devastation. But this acceptance email makes me feel like my wishes have purpose too; one of the premier drama schools in the country thinks I have what it takes to turn them into something concrete—into a career. What could be more purposeful than that?
I smile and follow Maman and Baba’s lead by taking a small sip from my glass. The liquid is cool and light, and nowhere near as bitter as I was expecting. I read it as a sign that my confession will be the same. My parents might be surprised by its novelty, but they’ll get used to it, accept it, and, maybe even eventually, enjoy it.
I put down my glass. “Maman, Baba. First of all, I want to thank you. It’s because of you that I was ever able to do this.” I get a little choke
d up because it’s so accurate. All those lessons, all that driving me to community theater auditions and rehearsals over the summers…
“Oh, don’t be silly, azizam,” Maman says. “What are we doing in this country at all if not helping you to accomplish your goals? You did all the hard work….”
“Nasrin, look,” Baba says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. He thrusts his iPad into my face, and I can see that, fortunately, he’s navigated away from the merchandise…though, unfortunately, it might be to an even more disconcerting page. “There are so many clubs you can join!”
The Stern clubs page is filled with words like “economics” and “finance” and “investment analysis” that stream through my eyes and get jammed up before they can absorb into my brain. But then there’s one that actually makes its way through my synapses: a Stern & Tisch Entertainment Business Association. Okay, maybe this is the opening I need.
I point to it. “This one looks interesting….”
Baba looks down, and his eyebrows knit together as he reads what I’m pointing at. “That one? Well…we wouldn’t want you to get tempted, Nasrin.”
“Tempted?” I ask, my shoulders slowly creeping up.
“You might see all those Tischies and decide to become a drama major! Remember when you started high school and that’s what you wanted to do? Your mom and I were so worried.” They look over my head at one another. The sense of relief flowing through them is palpable, like they dodged a literal bullet—naturally, from a gun that appeared in act 1 and, in a Chekhovian progression, went off by the end of the play.
They clink their glasses again, and it’s like a lighting cue has darkened the liquid inside to an ominous amber. Suddenly my stomach feels like giant bubbles are sloshing around in it, bouncing together, creating friction and waves upon waves of anxiety. My dad just voiced everything I was afraid of.
But I fall back on my training once again. My tone is entirely calm and relaxed when I say, “But there was never anything to worry about, was there?”
Chapter 2
“Listen, there’s room for only one Aladdin and Jasmine on Broadway. What do you say we team up and audition for it as a duo?”
I blink at the boy standing in front of me in our Broadway Dance Styles classroom: He’s got medium-brown skin and artfully coiffed black hair, and he’s looking at me with such sincerity that it’s only when he breaks character and cracks a giant smile that I realize he’s joking.
“I’m Beckett Banerjee,” he says, sticking out his hand.
“Nasrin Mahdavi,” I reply as I shake it.
“Let’s be best friends?” he says with that same wry expression, and I can’t help but laugh.
“Sure, why not? That is…if you’re okay being seen with me.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I, uh, only placed level two in dance.”
“Son of a gravity-defying witch, me too!”
“Really?” I ask. “Did you also have a decade’s worth of ballet, tap, and jazz under your belt?”
“Honey, yes,” he says as he laces up his dance shoes. “Plus featured roles in Matilda and Billy Elliott.”
“At your school?” I ask.
“On Broadway,” he says casually.
“Hold up, what?” I ask.
“It was a few years ago. My child star days.” He shrugs it off dismissively. “But enough about me. Tell me more about you. I feel like I know hardly anything about my best friend.”
I laugh again, but surprisingly, I feel the warmth behind his words too—like I really may have just made my first friend at Tisch.
Two weeks ago, I stepped onto the un-campus of NYU for the first time. The late-summer city air was hot and stifling, but I felt like the breeze in my heart was strong enough to make those purple school flags wave proudly above the concrete jungle. I looked to them for courage.
My parents were helping me move in, of course, and the plan was to tell them then, once the stage was set and I could show them that I clearly belonged at Tisch. I had a whole monologue prepared for how I was ready for the hard work and potential rejections of the professional theater world and that college freshman Nasrin was completely different from high school freshman Nasrin. I was even going to float them the idea that I could maybe double-major in business and drama, the perfect compromise for all of us. But, it turns out, moving in is a whirlwind of logistics and nerves and wholly new information being thrown at you at high speed. Plus, if your parents only have a couple of hours before their flight back home because freshman orientation coincides with a major site relaunch…well, it becomes sorta easy to decide against dropping a huge bombshell right before they leave for the airport.
A couple of weeks of grueling dance auditions and frenzied first classes later and I’m still working on figuring out when to tell them.
“Shall we dance?” Beckett asks me as he crooks his elbow in invitation.
I smile at the Rodgers and Hammerstein reference and give him a Lerner and Loewe one in return, hooking my arm through his. “I could do it all night.”
I end the routine with a turn into Beckett’s arms. He dips me, and we finish with identical extended hands and wide grins for our riveted audience—or rather, our imaginary riveted audience. Our classmates are too busy practicing their own routines in separate areas of the large studio classroom to pay us much mind, and Alan, our professor, is looking more critical than riveted. He frowns, his hand patting his wild, graying curly hair—a sign that he’s not pleased with our performance.
“You need a lot more definition in your taps,” he says to me. “I need elegant woodpecker, not malfunctioning jackhammer.” Then he turns to Beckett. “Your frame for the dip? Jellyfish arms.” He walks over and adjusts Beckett’s arms and then beckons for me to slip back into them. “See the difference?” he asks me. “You feel more supported, right?”
I nod.
“Okay, keep practicing. Next.” We move over to a corner of the room while two more of our classmates come up to get their critiques.
“Do you feel more supported, Nasrin?” Beckett asks me. “I can’t help feeling more eviscerated with every class.” He slides his eyes over to Alan’s grim face and hard mouth as he jots down whatever Elana and Shohei are doing wrong.
“Well, you know. Statistically, only eight percent of us will ever be on Broadway,” I say, echoing the chilling words Alan intoned at the start of our very first day of class.
“So I’ve heard,” Beckett replies.
“And, like, since you’ve already been on Broadway, does that mean the chances for the rest of us are down to seven point nine eight percent?” I ask.
“Nah,” he says. “You’re only as good as your next job.”
Though Beckett often downplays his experience, there’s no doubt that it’s impressive. But then again, everyone here is impressive. It didn’t take me long to realize that every single person at Tisch was the star of their high school theater departments, just like me, and that many, like Beckett, already had professional credits to their names. I watch the two dozen of them in this classroom, each concentrating so hard on whatever aspect of their body Alan has told them is lacking, and I send up a silent prayer to Ethel Merman in gratitude for Beckett. I’m not sure I could take the intensity of the first month of drama school without a good friend to lean on—quite literally, as we rehearse our turn into the dip over and over again.
The whiteboard is now propped up right by my bed. It reads:
Didn’t you say your Stats TA was going to murder you if you were late one more time? ~Bx
My eyes fly to my alarm clock: 8:30. Crap. Why didn’t it go off at 7:00 like it was supposed to? And why the hell would Beatrix not just wake me up like a normal human being?
Now I have half an hour to get dressed and book it over to the CAS building for my least favorite class in all of existence. I scurry over to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and throw my long, dark brown hair up into a messy bun. No time to put on any makeup, but my cat-eye liner from yesterday has turned into a smoky eye today, so that’ll have to do. I go back out into the room to quickly dress, and I’m out the door in ten minutes flat, which should give me plenty of time to make the twelve-minute walk over to Washington Square Park.
And it would’ve. If there wasn’t a massive traffic jam involving two trucks and half a dozen yellow taxis right where I have to cross on Fourth Avenue. I can’t even squeeze through in between the cars. I look longingly at the top of one of the cabs, wishing my life was in fact a musical and I could just Fame my way through this jam.
But no, in real life you can’t just jump on top of a car, expect a killer ’80s synth soundtrack to blare out of nowhere, and grand jeté onto the van in the next lane. Not without the cops showing up, anyway. (And I don’t mean ensemble cops who eventually join in on the number.)
So I’m late to class. Only by three minutes, but it’s enough to earn me the stink eye from one Max Fletcher.
I should probably give him an apologetic smile; after all, I know I’m the one in the wrong here.
But Max doesn’t deserve that from me. For one thing, he’s not even the professor, just a TA who’s only three years older than me. For another, when he handed me my abysmal test score for my first exam, he included his office hours in neat block letters. I naively assumed that meant he wanted me to go see him so he could help me bring my grades up.
So I went to his office, a big, stupid smile on my face. He was on the phone when I walked in, his head down, so all I could see was a neat mane of strawberry-blond hair and the slope of his freckled nose. “Do you have to call me to tell me this?” he was saying in a pinched voice. “Can’t you just email me your disdain?” He paused before saying a curt “Fine, bye” and pressing the button on his phone.
Clearly, I was intruding on something personal. I tried to quietly back out of his office, but Max, without looking up, intoned emotionlessly, “Can I help you, Ms. Mahdavi?”
“Um…” My smile faltered. “You put down your office hours on my exam….”
“Yes?”
“I thought…I don’t know. Maybe you wanted to help me?”
He looked up at last. Cold blue eyes, a mouth that was a straight slash across his face. “Help you how?”
I blinked. “Getting my grades up?”
“Sure, I can help you,” he said slowly, like he needed to enunciate in order for me to understand him. “It’s called studying. Do you want me to pull up the Wikipedia definition for you?”
I flushed, stammering, “N-never mind.” And I almost walked out the door. Except that within twenty seconds, my embarrassment turned into anger. What right did he have to make me feel like an idiot for asking him to do his job?
So I turned around and said, “You know, I never knew that TA stood for ‘top asshole.’ Go figure.” And then I walked out the door.
Did it feel amazing at the time? Sure. Have I felt ever since like I have a target on my back for the rest of the semester? Definitely.
Now, in the class I had the audacity to be late to, he’s making a big show of marking something down in his little notebook before he looks away, obviously planning to ignore me for the rest of class.
I slump in my seat as I listen to Professor Pham drone on about something called “fences for outliers.” I mean, if that doesn’t sound like the title of a Tennessee Williams play, I don’t know what does. I wish it were a play. I wish I were preparing a monologue instead of…this.
I hate this class, I think as I try to mentally bore a hole through the side of Max Fletcher’s ear with the strength of my death stare. I should’ve dropped it while I had the chance, within the first two weeks of school. I don’t need Statistics for my major. I could’ve used hundreds of other classes to fulfill my math/science requirement.
But it is a required course for the business major my parents think I’m pursuing. And I’ve been lying to them so much that I stupidly thought if I took one course that I could openly talk about with them, it would help mitigate the rest of the guilt.
Because, uh, yeah, sidebar: They still think I got into Stern.
I’m going to come clean soon, though, I swear. I even have a bullet-pointed Note on my phone with carefully crafted arguments and reasons why I need to be at Tisch. I open it now to quickly add a new one: I HATE STATS.
It’s at that exact moment, of course, that Max Fletcher deigns to look my way again. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.
Perfect.
I slump down farther in my seat and spend the rest of class pretending I’m auditioning to be Jean Valjean to Max’s Javert, death-staring en français.
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