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town away in my shirt.
    “Oh, the Ripley-Grier Studios floor, sir.”
    “Sixteenth Floor. Smile for the camera,” and he takes my
     photo. Wait: Is he taking my . . . headshot?
    “Can I have that photo?” I say to him. “I’ve got a
     few dollars left, and I could—”
    “This is just for our terrorist database, kid,” he says,
     tipping his head in the direction of an elevator bank.
    And this is the moment I realize the surrounding lobby is awash with a
     million other boys, all of whom look just like me but in clothes that fit them and aredefined by primary colors and stripes. Things regular kids
     actually wear, and not anything like the tarp I’ve got on. “Anyone want to
     go camping,” I think to call out. “You provide the kerosene and I’ve
     got the sleeping arrangements all worked out.”
    I board the elevator and press 16 , crushed
     into the corner by a group of kids and their moms getting on behind me.
    “Let me see your teeth,” one of the moms barks to her son, a
     boy whose hair is parted so aggressively, I could probably see his thoughts if I stared
     into it hard enough. He bares his gums, revealing perfect, peppermint-Orbit-white teeth,
     and his mom licks both her thumbs and smooths back his eyebrows.
    “What do you say if they ask how old you are?” she says to
     him, a little softer.
    He smiles those peppermint-Orbit-white nightmares and says, “However
     old you need the character Elliott to be.”
    And I realize this audition is going to be a harder game than I’d
     anticipated.

Black and White to Color
    T he doors part, and suddenly the relative quiet of a small enclosed box is broken by what sounds like a circus, an actual three-ring circus with popcorn sellers and scar-faced boys and women who ride elephants without seat belts, such is the tremendous noise.
    It’s like no place I’ve ever been in Pittsburgh.
    It’s the kind of place I’d actually pay money to come and just people watch, back home. If some future Noah decides to include every stripe of person on his ark, and not just zebras and whatnot, he’d do a good job popping by this elevator exit ramp and loading up a few of these weirdos.
    A blazing TV monitor announces what’s happening in which studios: Gypsy in Studio F; Phantom in Studio C; Carousel auditions in Studio J. It’s . . . incredible.
    Wait: Phantom ’s still running? Whoa.
    Not that I need a room number to know where I’m heading; it’s clear all us kids are here for the same reason, and just like at Port Authority, I lean back and get swept along to the E.T. studio.
    And I see him.
    Jordan Rylance.
    Libby’s Facebook friend. From when she went to the Performing Arts School with him, in downtown Pittsburgh, before her mom got sick and they had to move back to Jankburg. Before Libby helped me learn everything I know about life and love and lozenges.
    Here he is.
    As I round the corner, past a Vitamin Water dispenser and a series of small practice rooms, Jordan Rylance is sitting in a chair, a perfect binder of music placed perfectly on his perfect lap. At first I think he’s severely underdressed, that I wasn’t the only idiot who showed up looking like one today. But then I recognize his genius move, something I’d never’ve thought of.
    He’s in a red hoodie.
    Just like Elliott in the movie. And jeans more normal than mine, and sneakers that look like Hollywood sneakers playing the part of sneakers: perfect bow-laces and perfect white edges and perfect uncreased tongues. And he doesn’t look wet at all, like he avoided the last hour’s rain entirely. Jordan probablyhas parents who paid for a hotel next door, a hotel with a connecting walkway that led him directly to the audition.
    “Mommy,” I watch him whisper, waving a thermos in the air, “my water isn’t hot anymore.”
    His Mommy jumps up, dropping a weird leopard-print coat behind (presumably to mark the territory as her own), racing away with Jordan’s water canister. I