“You’re welcome to stay, Javi,” says Beth, gesturing at the room, which truly does look like a Playbill threw up on it.
He gives her an apologetic smile. “I’ve gotta jet and feed Seymour. But I’ll see you at the picnic tomorrow?” he says, leaning in.
She stands on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek, the gesture automatic but not without affection. “I’m bringing mac and cheese.”
“Good. I’ve gotten no less than five texts from my sisters asking about it.” He leans down to kiss Chloe on the top of her head. “See you tomorrow, kiddo. Don’t forget to bring the Frisbee.”
“Bye, Dad,” she murmurs, her cheeks visibly red.
Javi playfully salutes us all on his way out. Chloe can’t stop staring at me, which is deeply inconvenient, because I’m trying to stare at her.
“Oh, shoot,” says Beth, interrupting our stare-off. “I just realized I left the lasagna and the pizza rolls warming in the oven. Chloe, could you…”
“We’ll help grab them,” I volunteer.
Beth turns to me. “That’d be lovely.”
She gives me a look then that seems to be half apology for Chloe’s shyness and half a clear signal to go ahead and try to push past it. I know I’ve done nothing to earn this quiet responsibility, but it still feels kind of nice.
“Millie’s a big musical theater fan,” Beth calls to Chloe on our way over to the elevators. “You should show her your room!”
Chloe looks like she’d rather die. But Chloe’s dignity is a small price I’m going to have to pay to check off the next part of my agenda: figuring out if this girl just pulled Beth out of the Millie Mia by existing or might have thrown an even bigger wrench in it by … being my half sister.
The thought is momentarily paralyzing. Teddy has to shove his shoulder into mine to get me in the elevator. What follows then is thirty seconds of bone-crushing silence that almost make me miss the elevator ride with Oliver yesterday, in which Chloe is staring at me so openly that I’m starting to feel like a science experiment.
The elevator pings to let us know we’ve reached the fourteenth floor, and just as the doors open Chloe bursts, “You’re Little Jo!”
I freeze. So does Teddy. The words Little Jo have been banned from our apartment building for nearly five years now. If I were one of those sleeper assassins, they’d be the trigger words for me to black out and go full Black Widow.
“From that viral video,” says Chloe. “It was you, wasn’t it?”
At first I think she’s making fun of me, but then I get a good look at her beaming face under the newsboy cap, and it’s worse—she’s praising me.
“Oh my god. I’m, like—obsessed with that video,” Chloe gushes, leading us down the hall to her apartment. “You were so freaking good. What happened after that? Why didn’t you upload anything else? I love that musical so much, I’ve always wanted to see it but there haven’t been any off-Broadway productions close enough, I can’t believe Sutton Foster has seen you sing.”
And I can’t believe this scrawny punk recognized me. What have all my carefully curated, painfully executed Millie phases been for if not to stop this exact scenario from happening? I’ve spent so long outrunning that stupid video that it didn’t even occur to me that someone might have the wherewithal to keep up.
But even though Teddy is all too aware of the horror playing out on my face, Chloe barrels on like a leaky faucet. “I’ve tried to sing that song a bajillion times, but I can never hit that one note at the end, you know? It’s like, wow, so freaking high for a belt, I can’t even sing it in my mix sometimes, and believe me, I’ve tried.”
She unlocks the door to apartment 14G, which seems innocuous enough when we first walk into it. There’s a homey little kitchen with mismatching pastel appliances that peeks out to a living room with cozy furniture all draped in giant blankets and soft, worn-out pillows. There’s a song playing from a speaker somewhere that I vaguely recognize and can tell from the way Teddy’s eyebrows lift that he knows it, too.
“My mom and dad keep saying I can do voice lessons if I want, but like, even then—how?” Chloe talks over it. “You have to be born with it to be able to do that kinda singing, you know? Your lungs must be enormous. Can you hold your breath for a super long time?”
I get the impression from the rate of the words spilling out of Chloe’s mouth that she sure can.
“What other roles have you played? Do you have any more videos on your phone? Are you auditioning in the—”
“Is this your room?”
Thank god Teddy’s sense for personal boundaries is as loose as his standards for the free food he inhales, because he stops Chloe from putting me on an extremely undeserved pedestal by snooping down the hall. She sucks in an embarrassed breath, but it’s too late. We’ve both followed Teddy into the veritable Broadway abyss.
Heather may tease me for going in too deep re: my musical theater room decor, but if my room is a tribute, Chloe’s is a full-on shrine. There’s a whole wall of signed Playbills all in a row above Chloe’s bed. Her bedsheets and pillowcases are covered in musical notes, and the covers are a collage of Broadway musicals. The closet door is littered with stickers referencing shows—THINK ABOUT THE SUN and I GOT TEARS COMING OUT OF MY NOSE! and FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED MINUTES. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Gmorning, Gnight! pep talk book is lying open on the bedside table, and—
“Oh shit,” Teddy exclaims, stumbling back.
My heart leaps into my throat, too, but it’s not an actual person who has snuck up on us. It is, in fact, a life-size cutout of all three Schuyler sisters from Hamilton, mid-snap.
“I got it for my birthday,” Chloe tells us gleefully.
I clear my throat, prying my hand off my chest. A near heart attack isn’t enough to derail me, though. “Which is…?” I prompt her.
“April,” she tells us, rubbing a smudge on Peggy Schuyler’s dress.
“And you’re gonna be a freshman?” Teddy guesses, clearly catching on to me.
Chloe shakes her head. Now that she’s actually talking to us, I can see the resemblance between her and Beth: her little button nose, her full cheeks, her strange kind of magnetism. I can’t help getting sucked into whatever she’s saying, even if the whole “Little Jo” bit makes me want to lie down on her carpet and die.
“A sophomore,” says Chloe. “You too?”
“Junior,” says Teddy, thankfully taking the reins on the conversation as I do some quick math against my will.
April and a rising sophomore. I’m July and a rising senior. So it would still work out that Beth could have had me, hit pause on procreation for a year, and then popped out this small, very excitable bean with someone else. In fact, didn’t my dad mention in that post there was another guy in the picture?
The timeline makes sense, but I’m almost disappointed that it does. It was already grim enough wondering why my mom ditched me. It’s even grimmer to think she might have ditched me, but not a different kid.
“What school?” Chloe is asking Teddy.
“Stone Hall.”