Page 9 of The Getaway List
I have no idea how a person would figure that out when the message announcing one of the trains was going express sounded roughly like “akdfjgkljga” to my untrained ear, but I latch onto the thrill of it just the same. The idea that a few bucks could open up infinite new worlds like this one, which upon first glance seems to be filled with clusters of very sleepy-looking hipsters walking their dogs and hungover NYU students blinking themselves back to their dorms. Like the subway system is its own time stone and every day you could just close your eyes and pick a new place to go.
Tom unfolds a map he printed out this morning showing the route for the interactive writing class, which starts and ends at Tompkins Square Park. I make a show of stepping to the edge of the sidewalk.
“I have to give you a wide berth,” I explain off his curious look. “That map is ruining our street cred.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you not want anyone knowing you’re a TOURIST?” Tom says loudly, tilting his face toward a group of coeds. “That’s right, folks, she’s sightseeing! The bacon-egg-and-cheese in her hand is a prop!”
I shove at him, an act of absolute futility because it does not so much as interrupt his stride. Instead he hooks an arm around me, merrily waving at the group giving us curious looks.
I wriggle out from under him and say, “So what the hell? You’ve had access to free writing classes for four years and this is the first time you’ve ever taken one?”
Tom folds the map back up. “I thought about it. But with my mom, it’s kind of—well.” He purses his lips. “‘Whitz’ is a very distinctive last name.”
“Ah, I get it. Performance pressure.”
Tom shakes his head. “More that I never get to just be like, Hey, I’m Tom the person. It’s always an immediate, Hey, I’m the son of the woman who wrote that movie you want to do your dissertation/write your fanfiction/make your latest Halloween costume for. And then that’s all they want to talk about.”
I keep forgetting that by all accounts Vanessa is famous now, at least in Hollywood and writerly circles. She’s only had two major hits so far, but her style is incredibly distinct, and her method even more so. She writes loose outlines of scripts based on an initial plot, but most of the writing happens literally in the moment during filming—she’ll know the point A and point B of a scene, but refuses to try and shape it until she’s with the actors on set, at which point it’ll just pour out of her. It’s all very visceral and raw and emotional and a bunch of other buzzwords I’ve seen in reviews, heralding her as everything from a genius to a flop to the next great movement in cinema. For better or worse, her name is more tied to her work than most.
Hence why she’s in Hawaii right now, and constantly on location for filming for upcoming projects, often taking Tom along for the ride. As sympathetic as I want to feel about the whole secondhand-fame situation right now, that sympathy is chafing a bit against the wild jealousy that Tom’s now eaten Parisian cheese and walked the Great Wall and seen Chris Evans with his own human eyes and I’ve never even been on a plane.
“Do people really write fanfiction for your mom’s movies? I thought most of her characters bit it.”
“Hence the fanfiction,” says Tom sagely. “The ‘fix-it’ tag on Archive of Our Own for her stuff is like a hundred pages deep.”
“Well, if that’s not incentive to kill all our characters off today, I don’t know what is.”
We arrive at the park then, where there’s a cluster of people by a bench with a sign that says IMMERSIVE WRITERS WORKSHOP on it. I fall back a step only because I’m used to the natural rhythm of us—Tom goes, and I follow—except Tom falters. I glance back at him, expecting to see him sliding into that ease with strangers he’s had since we were kids, but he’s got this look on his face I don’t know if I’ve ever seen before. He seems almost nervous.
I tilt my head at him. The ease I was expecting slides back onto his face, and he says, “Last one to murder their character off today buys the other lunch.”
“Your mom would be proud.”
We get absorbed into the group, Tom still half a step behind me. We’re the youngest ones there by far, or at least I think we are until the boy who’s crossing his name off the sign-in sheet turns and says, “Oh, where are you on the list? I’ll check yours off.”
“We’re the ones under Whitz,” I say without thinking.
The boy goes so still that I’m a little worried his bones stopped working. “Wait a minute. Whitz? Are you … I mean, you’re not…” He lowers his voice, or at least tries to. The question ends up coming out in a squeak. “Like related to Vanessa Whitz?”
I don’t have to turn around to feel Tom stiffen behind me. I offer my hand to the boy, who is all big, earnest eyes and unruly auburn hair, and say easily, “That’s right. I’m Tom Whitz. Vanessa’s my mom.”
The boy takes my hand so enthusiastically I might have just introduced myself as one of the Beatles, a smile splitting across his freckly face. “Vanessa Whitz is your mom?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I’m just Tom the person.”
Tom lets out an amused breath behind me.
“I’m gonna pass out,” the boy says, and then blinks hard, only just remembering to let go of my hand, which he’s been shaking hard enough to rattle it off my wrist. “What I meant to say is I’m Luca. Luca Bales. And the passing-out thing was an exaggeration. I think. Oh my god. Your mom is Vanessa Whitz.”
This causes several curious heads to turn around. A few of the gazes linger just long enough that it’s clear Tom wasn’t exaggerating about his mom’s fan base. Before any of them can approach I turn my back and gesture to Tom, saying, “And this is my friend Riley.”
The instructor, who seems to actually know Tom, quirks an eyebrow at us but doesn’t correct me. Neither does Tom, who is biting down a smile and shaking his head.
“I can’t believe it,” says Luca in a rush. “I’ve been saving up to take this class for ages because I want to be her so bad—well, not be her, I just mean I want to have my own style like hers—and you’re here! Holy crap! Okay, okay, I’ll be cool, I swear. But also you have to tell me everything.”
Mercifully, the instructor calls us to order then, explaining the concept of the class. It’s still the same as it was four years ago when we desperately wanted to take it the summer after freshman year: a hybrid writing and walking tour, where you come up with story ideas based on prompts from your surroundings as you go. Each of us will randomly choose from a hat to get a character’s age, one of their hobbies, and a weakness, and that’s all we get to go off to imagine them in any of the places we’ll see—all of them landmarks that have been in New York for at least a few decades, so we’re free to imagine our characters in any era they might have been there.
The time-and-space concept for the class was initially inspired by Tides of Time, since that was when the television-series adaptation made the already brimming fandom erupt like a dweeby volcano. But the spur-of-the-moment writing was also so reminiscent of Vanessa’s style that she taught a few specialized rounds of the workshop for a young writers outreach program when the initial instructors moved on, which would explain why Luca looks one light breeze away from passing out at the idea of her progeny being here.
