Unbroken: 13 Stories Starring Disabled Teens Read online

  It’s … not the same walk that gets me across a room of stares, but it is close. Perhaps a distant cousin.

  “So which is it?” someone asks, as we cool off. “Scared or arrogant or…?”

  “That, my dear, is for the company to figure out. Who’s your Faustus? What are his motivations? All part of the challenge.”

  “He does it, though. He summons them and signs the contract, and he won’t repent. He can’t be that scared,” Emily quips.

  “You’ve never kept going when you’re too afraid to quit?” asks Mrs. B with … what? Is that sadness? Disbelief?

  “No!”

  “Well, I’m glad.”

  “This whole thing’s a bit weird, though, isn’t it? That he would sell his soul.” A long-haired, Zelda-shirted boy frowns.

  “Ah, but mortals have their limits. And in Marlowe’s day we didn’t have those Brendan Fraser movies about dealings with the devil. This was new.”

  “Yeah, but … Mephistopheles is supposed to be scary, right? Isn’t that a clue? Like … run, mister, you’re asking for trouble.”

  Mrs. B nods. “And yet his desires to improve and learn, and put good into the world, were so great that that somehow mattered more.”

  He wrinkles up his nose in disbelief.

  I think I get it, though.

  “So!” Mrs. B continues. “We have a few more sessions like today for getting down and dirty with the details, but now that we sort of know the play, while we work, I’d like you all to think about your version. How you understand it, how you want to stage it, and the roles you’d like to play.”

  Excitement zings around the room.

  “I suggest you divvy up the tasks. Play to your strengths. But I should warn you, first, that this show is a democracy, and, second, I expect all jobs to be attended to; if you see something lacking, it is company responsibility to fix it.

  “I’ve got sign-up sheets for areas you might want to consider: acting parts and staging, costumes, lighting and tech, and writer-directorial. Have a look. Volunteer for everything you have some skill or interest in, and then pick one more to offer your hands as a runner and a lackey.” And her face lights up. “Let’s see what this company is made of.”

  * * *

  Nearly everyone puts down their name for everything, with an occasional I can’t sew to save my life, but and Clearly you need somebody with confidence to take the stage.

  Mostly, though, this company wants to make art, at every level. And it isn’t often that you’re trusted with the workings of it instead of mere lines.

  I am the first name under WRITER, closely followed by Edwin, in his pretty cursive.

  And I hesitate at more, replaying my dad’s imposition, and the worry lines around his eyes. Replaying, honestly, the weeks and months of pain and sleep and pain again that got us there.

  But we are company, and this is theater, and magic does not make itself.

  In the end, I also put my name down under acting and in tech. I promise I’ll let someone else run things, but if they’re short, I know my way around a switchboard.

  That’s it.

  Three things.

  It’s perfectly reasonable.

  ACT I, SCENE 4

  (A supermarket, post rehearsal. E walks slowly. They look tired.)

  I see them in the supermarket, on the way home, holding hands. And she looks different. Mrs. B. Softer. Sadder. An actor with her makeup off.

  I hang back by the oranges and listen while they browse the leafy greens.

  “What time is it?” he asks.

  “Seven,” she says. “Nearly. Let’s get dinner, and we’ll go home for the news.”

  He nods, and, having selected a bag of something deep dark green and healthy, she pulls gently on his arm and they walk on.

  (E follows.)

  “What time is it?” he asks, in the next aisle.

  “Seven. Nearly. Let’s get dinner, and we’ll go home for the news.”

  That’s odd.

  Again, by the biscuits. “What time is it?” This time, she leans in, squeezes his hand, and whispers, almost playful. “Seven. Nearly.” And he almost smiles.

  I break away and head toward the pizza—Friday’s post-rehearsal meal of choice. But I can’t stop hearing their two voices, seeing Mrs. B so bare, and it feels wrong all of a sudden. Knowing what I know and not confessing.

  I find them by the checkout.

  “Hi!” I say too brightly as I join them in the queue. “Mrs. B!”

  She startles for the briefest moment and then breaks into that teacher voice, full of interest and pride. “E! Fancy seeing you!” She turns to her … whoever he is. “E’s a Marlowe on our Faustus project.”

  Oh gosh. I feel seen.

  “And this”—she leans in again—“is my husband, the great Desmond—”

  “Marlowe?” he interrupts, staring at me, wide eyed. “Kit? I knew him once.” And his grip on Mrs. B tightens a notch.

  I freeze, just for a second and not really knowing why, and I instantly feel bad for it. But Mrs. B is cool; she has it all under control. “Really, truly great.” She steers. “He puts up with all our late rehearsals and my faffiness.”

  Common ground. “That’s … yeah. Dad’s always telling me that theater will be the death of me and everybody else with all the late meals and the fees and taxiing me to and fro.”

  “‘Love is merely a madness,’” she says.

  “I guess so.”

  “I do love you,” Desmond says, a little loudly.

  “Indubitably.”

  They lean into each other like those penguins on the telly, keeping out the cold and nosy teenagers alike. It’s nice. And kind of gross. And nice again.

  I pull out my phone and frown at it, the only I’m-not-watching-you I have to offer. “Anyway.” I talk down at the screen. “I just … I saw you and—” And what?

  “I’m glad you said hello.”

  “Me too. See you on Wednesday?”

  “Indubitably!” Mrs. B winks, and they turn back to the front of the line.

  And when they’ve packed their healthy food into a bag and start to leave, I hear him ask, “What time is it?”

  ACT II, SCENE 1

  After dinner I sit back against my pillows, and I slowly, consciously release my muscles each in turn and breathe. My whole body hums with the held-in effort of the day, every movement stored up, waiting until I have time to feel it.

  I mean, obviously I feel it at the time, but something of it is delayed.

  I’m tired.

  Some of it is good tired. The tired that you get with honest work and revelations.

  Some of it …

  For all I stride across a hall, my body has to work to keep itself upright.

  Dad would call it my Sisyphus toll. Push a boulder up a hill, pretending it’s okay, and come nightfall it—and I—come crashing down.

  But he forgets the view each time I make it to the top.

  We have contracts: I, the undersigned, commit to six weeks of rehearsals and all sundry for the Company production of Faustus (play may be retitled as the writing team see fit). I will not miss sessions without fair reason and notice, and I will behave and perform to a professional standard at all times, pertaining to a decent work ethic and mutual respect for other members of the company.

  It’s fair, but somehow a contract makes it all grown-up and binding, Sisyphus or no.

  My doctor would be furious. She’d bid me lay this script aside, lest it tempt my soul and rack my body with this pain more and forever.

  Actually, she wouldn’t waste the drama. She would tell me to try nothing. Literally. Building up from nothing to five minutes of something, maybe, over the next weeks or months, if my body can handle it.

  If …

  Pacing, she would call it. I call it stagnation, and I am not ready not to see the view.

  Like I said, I understand why Faustus won’t repent.

  And while I only have this gnarly,
chewed-up pen, I feel his resolve in the drag of wrist and arm as thoroughly as though I sign with blood.

  Consummatum est; this bill is ended,

  And E hath bequeath’d their soul to Company.

  ACT II, SCENE 2

  CHORUS

  (Dressed as Faustuses Past.)

  What’ve you got there? A book? You can barely read a word of it.

  “It’s like … gross, isn’t it? Grotesque. That’s the point of the whole thing. The gluttony and pride and everything,” argues coffee-cup girl number one as we all sit, reading through and trying to find our own style.

  “Not really.” I sigh. “Not in a turns-your-stomach sense, at least. It’s meant to be enticing so that we might see how we could fall.”

  “I don’t think that’s right. Because firstly, Faustus has already fallen, right? So what he values lies somewhere between extra and wrong. And second, it’s a warning: If I saw those worst-of-the-worst demons ruckusing, I’d run.”

  “They’re not—”

  “They’re freaks, E.”

  I bristle. “You do know where that comes from, right?”

  “Yeah, like … freaks and stuff. All two-heads and transvestites and men like elephants. Like—”

  “Creatures from hell?” I lean forward in my chair, cane in my hands.

  Waiting for the penny drop.

  She doesn’t get it. Doesn’t move.

  I push it. “We’re not. Staging. A freak show.”

  “Did you know that the word freak—” Edwin starts.

  “I’m not done.” And I stand, leaning on my cane more than I need, because she will see it, even if I have to walk over and crush her toes. “We’re not staging a freak show because we’re not perpetuating the idea—in any way—that sin and disability go hand in hand. That we’re depraved or lesser or broken. I won’t. And we’re not having people pay for tickets to see me as entertainment.”

  The whole company is staring.

  “Except in the theater sense. That’s fine.”

  (Beat.)

  “I’m going for some air.”

  * * *

  “The word freak”—Edwin sidles up to me at break—“or freke, freca, frech, variously, once meant ‘brave, bold warrior.’” He grins shyly. “The only meaning I’ll ever condone.”

  I think I’m actually blushing. Then he adds, so quiet I can barely hear it, “Freak,” and I definitely am.

  ACT II, SCENE 3

  I’m exhausted.

  Every time I think I’ve reached the depths of it, I seem to sink again. And it’s ridiculous. It’s not as though I’ve actually climbed Sisyphus’s mountain.

  Anyway. There’s homework. Mrs. B came in after my outburst and observed us tiptoeing around the script. There’s so much to consider in the staging of a play, every choice rolling against another. It’s kind of like an avalanche, and none of us have shovels.

  “My dears, this company is lost. But lost is good! It lets you stumble across countries. Tonight, I want you to go home and research works that Faustus has inspired, on the stage and off it. Lose yourselves to possibility.

  “Become cartographers, and when I see you Friday, bring a map.”

  I get lost in Berlioz’s opera, just a concert hall performance, first, with a full company of singers and orchestra. We could never do that, but the connection between the conductor and his players reminds me of Edwin and his words, and I can’t stop watching his expression.

  I think I just became an opera fan.

  And there’s more. I find nineteen different operatic adaptations. Lavishly staged, full of overzealous acting and dramatic staging and costumes to match.

  Glass-wall prisons, scaffold cages.

  Rich, sumptuous dresses.

  Romantic.

  Horrifying.

  Every version of Faustus that you could picture, here it is.

  I consciously switch to something we could do: pure acting. Scroll through high school productions and interviews with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

  And then, is that—?

  It can’t be.

  Desmond Battle, 1991, the Globe’s answer to the modern age.

  This Desmond looks directly at the camera, all smirk and crisp white beard and solemn eyes, but if you turn your head a little and you squint, or you imagine this guy haunted by a thousand Lucifers, it might be him.

  It might. And I might die of curiosity.

  CHORUS MEMBER 1

  (Steps forward.)

  They did this really cool thing, where two players rehearsed Meph and Faustus. And they learned together, you know, so they sort of mimicked each other and formed the two between them, but then … on the night, they don’t know who is who. It’s literally down to fate

  (CHORUS MEMBER 2 joins them. Both have giant matches, which they strike.)

  and it’s like E said: Either one of them could fall.

  (Whosoever’s match burns out first bows; the other steps back into the chorus line.)

  CHORUS MEMBER 3

  What if we gender swapped? I’m Faust material as much as anyone.

  (Pause.)

  Or cast the black guy in the lead?

  CHORUS MEMBER 4

  There was this show where everything was black and white, one spotlight.

  And a series of a hundred paintings inspired by the tale.

  CHORUS: COFFEE-CUP GIRLS

  We want beaten silks and feathered caps and grandeur.

  CHORUS: TECH GUYS

  Picture this: a bunch of high school kids like us, in an amphitheater. Their set is just a scaffold tower on wheels, but somehow you could see the depths of hell inside it.

  And the best part?

  While they were performing …

  (Push big, obvious button. Thunder crashes; lightning forks down to the stage.)

  CHORUS

  Marlowe himself even wrote it twice.

  And you know the weird thing? All these versions: They’re ALL Faustus. Recognizably, for all their differences.

  ACT III, SCENE 1

  Time moves, and with it, the players.

  The wardrobe team takes patient measurements from neck to toe, sketches out ideas, and debates fabrics with all the passion of nations at war. And they have questions: When’s it set? How are we playing this?

  The tech trio—young and keen and recognizable by cargo pants and gaming tees—learns how to raise and dim the lights, change filters, and manipulate the way sound bounces round the room. But we need a vision to mark up with cues, or else it’s speculation.

  I lean back against the wall and close my eyes, will myself away, into my pajamas.

  “It’s not that bad.” Edwin’s voice hovers by my shoulder.

  “It’s not that,” I say, although it really is. “I’m just…” Tired. And my spine is going to explode with all the shock factor of Mephistopheles’s first entrance. “Headache.”

  “Ah, yeah. Got some ibuprofen if you want ’em.”

  I turn to meet his gaze and grimace, thinking of the medication rattling around inside me. “No thanks.”

  What I want is to go back on my word, go home and crawl into bed.

  Or not. What I want is to skip right to the end, to get that curtain call without having to do this part.

  I’d sell my body and my soul for that.

  ACT III, SCENE 2

  We try Faustus as interpretive mime, but it’s ridiculous, and every player falls about the stage, confused.

  We try Brecht, all cleverness and slapstick and breaking the fourth wall.

  We wonder whether we could reverse the whole thing, have Faustus a lowly demon, aspiring to greater things but never good enough unless the angel-company continually bolster and remind him. And it sounds cool, but it misses all the nuance, and we only have three days before our script is out of time.

  Three days.

  Two.

  We consider something familiar, set in the halls of high school, as nerdy Faustus longs for better grades and
fewer bullies. And it works. It shows we understand the bargains being made.

  And in the background hovers Mrs. B. And at night she goes home to her Faustus, with all his forgetting, and I wonder whether he’ll be there on the first night, and whether it will be his last.

  I want to ask her what he would prefer. What he was like onstage. But I saw the startle in her eyes the night we met, the sadness in his, and I cannot bring that to the room.

  But it’s not good enough, this rough approximation.

  The Globe’s answer deserves worthy conjurations.

  And, honestly, if this is to be my last play before I stop pushing up the hill, I feel like I deserve them, too.

  ACT III, SCENE 3

  I can’t stop thinking about it, and I have to ask. “Mrs. B?” I step in line beside her in the carpark and relieve her of a box of scrolls and hats and goblets.

  “Oh, my very own Marlowe! Good evening, sir.”

  Pride—just for a second—blossoms alongside my nerves.

  This is right to ask, isn’t it?

  Worth it?

  “There’s … a thing I found online. A newspaper review.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “With … a Desmond Battle in the lead.”

  She sighs. A tiny sigh.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” And she looks so small and so lost that—maybe I should have left it alone.

  “I’m sorry.” But I’m in it now, so: “Does he miss it?”

  She nods. “On his good days, all he talks about is marking up a script and pulling in reviews, how he’ll do it all again with the next run.”

  And I see it: what she’d give for him to have that one last run.

  Faustus.

  Our Faustus.

  Mine, and his and hers.

  And hers. It’s been right in front of us, all the way along.

  ACT IV, SCENE 1

  “It’s a lot of work, I know, but look—I think I found it.”

  The company stares blankly over their scripts.

  “Faustus!” I exclaim.

  More stares.

  “Look, do you relate to Marlowe’s play?”

  Someone shrugs.

  “Because I do. And I kept shoving that down, but we should use it.”

  Edwin frowns. “Look, E, it’s been a long couple of weeks, and you look tired.”