CONCRETE
By Walinase Mbekeani
A young girl wakes up to a new body part… just in time for the big high school dance.
AT FOURTEEN
Steph is a late bloomer. The rest of her class is stocked full of boobs and growth spurts. What’s worse, the dance is tomorrow night and she has no suitors. After another day of being overlooked by the cutest guy she knows – ahh Malcolm – she goes home and vents to her mom.
“Is there something wrong with me?” she asks, while praying for no answer at all.
“You and your body are just different”, her mom assures. “Your time will come, you’ll see.”
Steph goes to bed, wrestling with the thought. She turns back and forth all night before finally falling asleep.
THE NEXT MORNING
Steph slumps out of bed. But it’s taking her longer than it should. Things feel… heavy. She wobbles back and forth clutching her head as she moves towards the bathroom. Why is she so off balance? She catches herself on the sink and in the mirror she finally sees — “WHAT THE FUCK.”
Her neck. CONCRETE.
She touches it. It’s hard but smooth. HEAVY AS HELL. She tries twisting it, squeezing it, lifting up while lying on the floor — use your core, Steph! Now she’s freaking out. Is this what her mom meant? She’s about to scream for her but then… no this is too weird, even for Tamera. Maybe she’s dreaming. She pinches herself — wait that would hurt in a dream too.
Look at the time, Steph! 8:05am. Her mom calls for her, “You’re going to be late!” She scrambles. Now whipping through the closet. She grabs the thickest turtleneck she can find and crams it on — — it’s giving her a sort of box-like dimension. She races downstairs and out the door before her mom notices.
AT THE BUS STOP
Steph waits in the blaring heat. Wobbling about, she wonders if she should ditch, run away, join a cult. But then the bus approaches… the moment of truth. The doors open, she’s in full view, and the bus driver says —
“It’s kind of hot for a sweater.” Steph looks at him in shock. Well what can she do? Board the bus.
Weirdly enough — even weirder than her construction site of a neck — people look at her normally, not seeing anything different. Maybe… She looks back towards the bus driver’s rear-view mirror. THICK BRICK OF CONCRETE. Damn. What the HELL is happening? She asks a passenger nearby, “Does my neck look weird?”
“Uh, no?”
Ah shit. What are the odds that everyone is losing it? Slim.
AT SCHOOL
Steph (slowly) paces in the bathroom. “I mean it could be worse. We’ll just have to make it through the day.” Even her reflection isn’t convinced. The bell rings.
AT LUNCH PERIOD
Or as the popular people know it: center stage, Steph carefully squats down at a crowded table. Her neck… now more of a partition. People speak around her to their friends.
“Dude, grab me a napkin.” Steph spots the dispenser directly in front of her. “Oh, here.”
But she can’t. quite. turn. towards him. By the time she’s shifted her entire body to face him, he’s already grabbed one from the other side… Time to turn back, I guess.
“Ooooh, Samantha!”, moan a group of pre-pubescent voices. In the middle of that group is Malcolm, Steph’s wishful paramour. She looks at him with longing. Poor Steph… long-term she wants respect and common decency, but at fourteen she wants her chance to be publicly objectified at least once. Instead, she suddenly feels a TAP at the other side of her block. “Agh!”, she jolts. Turns out someone’s been sitting next to Steph this whole time.
It’s Dani. A bit of a loner. Soft features, cute face but not glaringly attractive to those at the school. Steph covers her neck with her hand.
“Sorry!”, Dani apologizes, lengthening each syllable.
“It’s okay.”
“Do you have a charger I can borrow?”
Steph digs in her bag and hands it over.
“Thanks, Steph.” Dani walks off slowly, hoping there’d be more conversation. But Steph’s got other things on her mind, like figuring out where the food’s going to go when she swallows. As she carefully goes bite for bite, she unknowingly knocks several things off her tray. An open Fanta bottle included, which pours off the side of table.
IT’S SIXTH PERIOD
Gym class. Steph has her thick turtleneck underneath her gym shirt. Still looks like she’s got a rectangle under her head. Very Frank Lloyd Wright.
She’s going serve for serve with “hot girl summer” Samantha, who’s moving pretty swiftly while she’s getting exhausted from the heat and carrying that concrete. No one seems to notice this.
Samantha tosses up the ball, takes the swing, and <WHAP!> it goes right off Steph’s throat. It ricochets off her neck and <SMACK!> off Samantha’s forehead.
Steph’s clutching her throat, coughing horrendously. “Can’t breathe, caaaan’t breathe.” She’s not even worried about Samantha who’s now passed out. But the class knows who they’re concerned for —
“Sam! Oh my god!”, they cry out. The teacher rushes over to her while Steph crawls off the court.
IN THE NURSE’S OFFICE
Steph looks into her lap, in shame. The nurse enters with a cold compress.
“I just came from treating your friend. That’s quite a bruise you gave her, Serena.” Steph looks up at her, hoping, praying that she notices the pain she’s been feeling. Any minute now, someone will see the hardship this girl has had to endure ALL DAY. Her whole life. The nurse looks her over and with all the sympathy in the world —
”You’ve got to be mindful. You know you’re more built than some of the other girls.”
CRACK.
Steph feels it from her neck, vibrating through her entire body. It hurts. But as usual, she forces it all in. But at what cost?
IN THE BATHROOM
Steph slowly pulls down the lip of her turtleneck. We see the reflection of her neck, now severely cracked. She touches it and CRINGES from the pain. Her eyes water as she’s fighting back tears.
SCHOOL IS OVER
Finally. But Steph’s neck still hurts like hell. She’s got to get a handle on this. She opens up her phone and searches “online concrete repair.” She finds — A HARDWARE STORE WITH A 4.9 RATING
At the store, Steph scans the shelves, kneeling before rows of concrete patchers as if praying for a fix. People move around her like they would a pillar, looking for appliances. Suddenly Dani, girl from lunch, approaches, hands firmly on her hips.
“Do you need any help?”
“Dani. I didn’t realize you worked here.”
“Oh, I don’t. I just know a lot about Spackle.”
“Really?”
“No. My family owns the place.” Steph tries to get some distance from her (and that joke) while she looks for a good patch.
“Are you going to the dance tonight? I’m gonna try and stop by after I clock out.” Steph finally spots the product she needs.
“Yeah, I think so. Have a good one.” She grabs a bucket and shuffles away… as quickly as one can while carrying a 10 lbs. bucket.
AT HOME
Steph starts spacklelin’ for the dance. Just an hour to go. She looks at her work…Not too bad. She follows “Twists For When Your Hair’s Short On Time”. It’s taking long… Outfits go on and off like a 90’s dress up montage… except those women aren’t working with this NECK. She’s getting a little frustrated now. DEEP BREATH, Steph. Spackle starts crumbling off her neck like dandruff. It’s messy. It stings. It’s increasingly frustrating. Cue scream — F*!!!!!!!
Rapid knocks come at the door. “What’s going on in there?!”
“It’s my neck, my big “f*ing” neck!” she says in sobs.
Steph’s mom slowly enters, and upon seeing Steph’s pained face, takes it in as if it were her own.
“Oh, honey.” She holds her daughter tight, compressing the open wound. “Your neck is beautiful.”
“You don’t get it. I’m the only girl at school who looks like this.
“Good! It makes you all the more special.”
“No, it makes me hideous…and ridiculous in tank tops.” Her mom puts a calming arm around her shoulder.
“What’s beautiful to you?”
“Samantha… and girls like Samantha. It’s not that I want to look like her, I just — don’t want to look different than everyone.” Steph sighs as her mom gently wipes the tears from her face.
“The beauty you’re looking for is right here. Right in these experiences and in the person they make you into.”
She angles Steph’s face towards her, “Which is a strong person, who now knows how to see others.”
Steph feels on her neck. She notices where there was once only pain, is now some relief.
Tamera gets up and heads to her dresser. “Maybe we add some accessories, just for support.”
In the reflection of Steph’s mirror, we finally see her mom’s torso. She has large hips of worn IRON and STEEL.
STEPH ARRIVES
At the dance, her neck no longer hidden. And on her neck: trinkets, a floating shelf of flowers, and a framed picture of New York Times best-selling author, Roxane Gay. People watch as she enters and she takes in their stares not exactly sure if they like it or hate it… And then they all look away. The same as always.
As Steph watches Samantha cross the room with the bruise the size of — well a tennis ball, Dani approaches. She’s got her hands on her hips. “You look really nice”, she squeaks out.
“Thanks.”
“I like the portrait of Roxane Gay.”
“Oh, thanks! I like your pants.” Dani’s rocking a pair of black, leather, high-waisted ones.
“Yeah, they’re the only thing that works on these thangs”, she says, motioning to her hips. Steph looks at her, completely clueless.
“Why do you think I walk around with my hands on my hips?” Steph shrugs. In a grand reveal, Dani lifts her arms and cringes, as, like a BOSE speaker, “YMCA” starts blaring from her obliques. Steph looks unmoved.
“You don’t hear that?” she asks.
“Hear what?”
“THAT”… it’s fun to stay at the YMCA”, she sings quietly.
“Oh, yeah — I mean, cause you just sang it.” Dani beckons Steph to come in closer. She leans in and…
“Hmmm, yeah not really.”
“Guess it’s more of a silent disco…” Steph looks at Dani as she withdraws into herself. An all too familiar feeling.
“But I get what you mean. I’m the same way about my neck.”
“Really?? But you’ve got peonies in full bloom!” Dani points to Steph’s top shelf where a vase of flowers sit wafting. Steph smiles, a genuine smile that we’ve never seen on her before.
As the two girls settle in to watch the other students dance, Steph glances over at Dani. She looks like she’s longing to be out there, as free and uninhibited as everyone else. Just one moment where she’s not different in her, “I think my hips play music” way. Now Steph sees her. All of her… She takes Roxane Gay’s portrait off her shelf, looks into her beautiful face of “I don’t give a fuck” and asks Dani,
“Wanna dance?”
Dani looks unsure but then, much like the anthem coming from her hips, rises to the occasion.
“One song?”
“Oh yeah, even half a song is fine. Or the intro. You know what, we’ll see how it goes.” They’re a work in progress and that’s okay.
Steph and Dani find their place in the crowd and after a minute or two the girls begin to loosen up. Steph sways with her decorated neck and YMCA blares from Dani’s hips. Their bodies move like it makes the most sense in the world. And it does.
THE END
***
WALINASE J. MBEKEANI is a first generation, Malawian American comedy writer. Raised in the suburbs of Chicago with early experiences living in Germany and traveling to East Africa, she developed an eye for cultural dissonance and an interest in storytelling. This passion led her to NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Screenwriting with a minor in Producing through the Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television. After graduating, she worked at MTV, Viacom in their unscripted series development department, before moving onto scripted development at the Tim Story company in Los Angeles. From there she was brought onto Craig Gerber’s animated Disney Junior series, Firebuds where she worked as a Script Coordinator for production before being promoted to Apprentice Writer. She is currently staffing on an unannounced Disney Junior Series.
For all inquiries, email info@hellomermade.com
