In Broken Places

21




THE ACTORS WERE strangely calm as they went through their final preparations—makeup touch-ups, costuming, line reviews, and all the other minor details that grow to enormous proportions in those minutes preceding the opening scene. Some actors lightened the mood with quiet banter, talking about the teachers and friends who would be in the audience that night and trying to predict what their reactions would be. Seth and Kate had found two chairs in a corner of the room and were talking through Joy’s dying scene despite the chaos all around. Their eyes were closed as they very slowly, very emotionally, went through their lines. After a couple of minutes, Kate reached out and, eyes still closed, found Seth’s hand. It was one of the most moving sights I’d witnessed—two high school students sitting in a crowded changing room, tears in their voices, feeling the pain of another man’s loss.

I tended to the actors between walkie-talkie calls from the soundmen, the props crew, and the ticket-sales ladies. Aside from a few small glitches, things were going smoothly. My stomach was knotted and my mind was in overdrive, but I felt an energy and excitement I’d seldom known before. This moment had been months in the making, and despite my deepest qualms, I had a feeling it was all about to pay off.

Meagan came rushing back to let us know the auditorium was full and the ushers were closing the doors. I gathered the actors in a huddle for a final moment together. Their eyes were bright and eager. We prayed for the performers, asking that they would enjoy each moment on the stage regardless of anything that might occur, and I added a special prayer that the wardrobe doors would open on cue. Just in case. Not that I didn’t trust the builder. Then we walked backstage in a flurry of silent anticipation and waited for the lights to rise.



Seth was finishing the play with a monologue that was at once his story and his faith. “God loves us, so he makes us the gift of suffering. Through suffering, we release our hold on the toys of this world, and know our true good lies in another world.” He scanned the audience with weary, hopeful eyes, unfathomably confident despite his age and fragility. “We’re like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. The suffering in the world is not the failure of God’s love for us; it is that love in action. For believe me, this world that seems to us so substantial is no more than the shadowlands. Real life has not begun yet.”

Seth didn’t wipe away his tears. He didn’t flinch away from the audience’s eyes. He stood his ground. Tall. Proud. Certain of the truth he spoke and emboldened by his own healed wounds. He finished his last line and let the words settle; then he turned and exited the stage in slow, unhurried steps. I met him in the wings and ordered him to bend down so I could hug him properly. I felt his tears against my cheek and wondered at the depth of this young man whose quest for truth had somehow redeemed the fury of his pain. He seemed a healed person, and C. S. Lewis, whose faith had reached beyond the grave, had contributed to making him whole.

Once the lights came down, the actors erupted. They jumped on each other and punched the air and slapped high fives until I yelled to them to line up for the curtain call. Of course, we didn’t have a curtain—only lights that came up with the brilliance of victory. I watched as the actors marched to the front of the stage one by one, beaming smiles on their faces, and took a bow. They were the newest conquerors of the theatrical world, and their happiness was contagious. The audience urged them on to three more bows, then I used my walkie-talkie to order the room lights up and the doors open.

I’d never been on the receiving end of performance praise before, so it was all a bit overwhelming. Scott gave me an enormous bouquet of roses and gerbera daisies arranged tightly in a wide green paper cone as the Germans often did. Trey told me he’d spent the afternoon making his first German cheesecake, with ingredient help from Bev, and it was waiting for me at home. I gave him a hug that made something in his neck pop. There were flowers and chocolates and notes of congratulations and so many pats on the back that I lost track of who was giving them. It took half an hour for me to coax the actors back into the changing room, where Nancy would collect their costumes and wash them for our next performance. They carried on a nonstop commentary about the evening while they undressed behind the sheets we’d hung for privacy. It was all high-spirited and adrenaline-fueled and thoroughly entertaining.

Nearly two hours later, I sat at my dining room table with Scott and Trey across from me, but my entire, undivided attention was on the first piece of cheesecake I’d eaten in six months. Actually, I was on my third piece, but no one seemed to be counting.

“Trey, my friend, you’re my hero,” I said as I shoveled another bite into my mouth.

“You know, Shell, I just realized there’s one thing I haven’t missed about you.”

“Her zingers?” Scott asked.

“Her eating habits,” Trey said.

I swallowed and gulped down half a glass of milk. “It’s the nerves,” I explained. “Imagine what this scene would have looked like if the performance hadn’t gone well!”

They both smirked, and I was struck again by their similarities. Though there were major differences, too. One of the greatest of those was their energy level—Trey was Tigger, and Scott was . . . Scott was everything I wanted. I choked a little and had to gulp more milk.

“I’ve got to hit the sack,” Trey said, pushing back from the table. “This jet lag’s a killer.”

“What he means,” I translated for Scott, “is that we’re sitting in his bedroom, since the couch is longer than Shayla’s bed, and he’d really like for you to leave and for me to go to bed so he can get some sleep.”

“Nice that one of you got the diplomatic gene.” Scott was feeling comfortable enough around Trey to be sarcastic. I thought that was a good sign.

“Hey, don’t hurry on my account,” Trey said. He grabbed his toothbrush and went off toward the bathroom.

Scott came around the table and pulled me into his arms for a long hug. “You were wonderful,” he said right next to my ear.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Coming again tomorrow?”

He pulled away and took his time tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “You bet.”

“You make me happy—have I mentioned that?” I squashed an impulse to look around for the person who’d said the words. I had a sneaking feeling it had been me. My mouth was developing a mind of its own these days, and it made me a bit skittish.

Scott smiled a little dangerously and kissed a spot beneath my ear.

“Not that kind of happy,” I said, trying to sound bored.

He stopped kissing me, and I immediately gave myself a mental kick in the butt. “Really?” he asked.

“Actually, that kind of happy too.” I was blushing like a twelve-year-old, so I did a quick check to make sure I hadn’t developed braces along with teenage hormones.

“So how’s the battle coming?” Scott asked.

I gave it some thought. “I’m contemplating it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yup.”

“From the cellar or the armory?”

I had a vision of a narrow shaft of light piercing the darkness of a dim and musty space.

“The cellar. But I think the door might be cracked open.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Just a teensy bit,” I added, not wanting to raise his hopes.

He smiled in a warm, dimpled assault on my few remaining shreds of sanity and wished me a good night.



I hurried through the door and threw my book bag into the nearest chair.

“Trey?” There was a worried edge to my voice as I looked around the living room, then headed down the hall. “Where are you?”

Trey had called the school during the morning and left a message for me to come home as soon as possible. The receptionist had found me holed up in the staff room, feverishly checking items off my endless to-do list. Mop the stage floor? Check. Write cards to the actors? Check. Sedate Meagan? Check. The moment she said “emergency,” I was out the door and headed for my car. There was nothing dramatic about Trey, and if he used that word . . .

I was halfway down the hall to the bedroom when a smell from the kitchen halted me midstride. It was a familiar odor, the type that made an otherwise-bright day feel bruised.

“Trey?” I said again, unwilling to take a single step toward the kitchen.

He came out into the hallway, all casual and calm, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Shell! You’re home!”

I squinted my suspicion. “Where’s the emergency, Trey?”

He shrugged.

Two steps brought me close enough to smack him in the shoulder with my purse, suddenly sure that I’d been duped. “Do you have any idea how crazy my day is?”

“I’m sorry.” He was almost contrite. “But would you have left school if I hadn’t made it sound important?”

“You are such a . . . What’s this about?” I demanded, hands on hips. My teacher voice didn’t seem to faze him at all.

“You.”

The aroma coming from the kitchen was getting stronger. And making me more leery. I pasted on a casual smile. “Tell me that smell isn’t what I think it is.”

“Come here.” He grabbed my hand and led me into the dining room.

I stopped short when I saw what he’d done. The table had been moved aside, and in its place were two chairs, a coatrack, and a floor lamp, all of which were draped with one of Shayla’s fairy sheets.

“Couldn’t find four matching chairs?” I asked, as if the fact that the construction was there at all were the most normal thing in the world.

“I figured we needed a couple of higher corners now that we’ve grown up and all.”

“You realize I have a play performance tonight, right?”

“Yup.”

“And you realize I have, oh, about forty-three thousand things to do before that happens, right?”

“Yup.”

“And yet you called me away from school under false pretenses to stage a Huddle Hut revival?”

My voice had risen to an incredulous pitch, and Trey held up his hands in self-defense. “You wouldn’t have come if I’d told you the truth!”

“Correct!”

“Except that this is more important than the list you spent half the night writing,” my brother said. The certainty in his eyes scared me a little.

“Trey . . .”

“Be quiet and crawl under,” he said, turning on his heels to head toward the kitchen.

“There’s an expiration date on childhood traditions, you know!” I called after him, eyeing the lopsided Huddle Hut with a mixture of nostalgia and frustration.

“How ’bout your attitude?” came Trey’s voice from the kitchen. “Is there an expiration date on that?”

“I’m going back to school.”

“Stay put! I’ll be right there.”

“I’m not staying put and I’m not eating whatever that is I’m smelling.”

“Get in the hut and we’ll discuss it.”

It felt stupid to be having a conversation in two rooms, but the kitchen smelled like pain and the Huddle Hut looked counterfeit and Trey’s scheme—whatever it was—felt morbidly intriguing, so I really couldn’t figure out what I should do next. I stood there and yelled, “This is making me nervous!” toward the kitchen.

“Get in the hut!” He was in drill-sergeant mode.

“Not until you tell me what’s going on!”

I looked at him like he’d lost his mind when he came sauntering out of the kitchen with two steaming dishes in his hands. “We’re reliving a brotherhood milestone.”

“If it’s what I’m thinking of, you’re going to be reliving it alone.”

“Don’t be such a crybaby.”

I stared at him long and hard. “You’re acting crazy, Trey.”

“Just following orders.” He saw my confused glare. “Geronimo.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not him again.”

“And I like Scott,” Trey said. My brother, Master of the Segue.

“Come again?”

“We need to do this.” He smiled pleasantly and installed himself under the sloping Huddle Hut roof, his bush of blond hair turned pink by the sun slanting through the rosy sheet.

“What does this have to do with Scott?”

He patted a pillow and waved me in.

“No,” I said.

He sighed and raised an eyebrow. It was his are-you-going-to-be-a-sissy? look, and I didn’t like it one bit.

“No,” I said again.

“Shell.”

“You can’t make me.”

“What—are you three? I’m not ‘making’ you anything. I’m inviting you.”

I wrinkled my nose at his attempt at manipulation and struck a rebellious pose. “He’s dead. We’ve grown up. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

It had been a long time since Trey had looked at me that way—with equal parts compassion, strength, and resolve. He came out of the Huddle Hut and wrapped me in a hug that brought tears to my eyes. “He’s dead. We’ve grown up. And it matters more today than it ever has,” he whispered against my ear, so urgently that I shivered. “We need to do this,” he said, pulling back. “We need to remember who we are.”

I closed my eyes, expelled a breath, and let the past wash over me.



“You think maybe we’re mutants?”

Trey stopped drumming his fingers against the Huddle Hut floor and turned his head to look at me. The motion dislodged the earphone I had so carefully arranged to fit against my ear. I reached between our heads to find my half of the earphones and press it back into place, resticking the masking tape that held it there.

“Stop turning your head when I talk to you,” I said. “It unsticks the tape.”

“This wasn’t your most brilliant idea, you know.”

“I didn’t hear you coming up with anything better.”

“Maybe we should get two Walkmans with two sets of earphones. Ever think of that?”

“But then we couldn’t listen to the same tape at the same time.” It seemed obvious to me.

“You’re right,” he sighed in halfhearted frustration. “It’s much better to lie here with a Walkman between our heads, listening to Toto with two disconnected halves of earphones masking-taped to our ears.” His sarcasm made my mind feel brighter. Toto did too. It was our courage music, and we’d be needing it soon.

“So . . . about the mutant thing.”

“We’re not mutants.”

“This is what I’ve been thinking . . .” I had to pause because I didn’t really have my arguments all organized in my head yet.

“You making outlines in your mind again?” We’d been doing persuasive speeches in Miss Reeser’s seventh-grade English class for a couple of weeks, and Trey didn’t like it. He got frustrated when I stopped midsentence to plot out the best way to say things, and he especially got antsy when I tried to convince him of the nutritional value of, say, butter, instead of just asking him to pass it. So I didn’t take too long organizing my thoughts before plowing ahead this time.

“Mom’s a decent person,” I said. “I mean, she’s nice, right?”

“Too nice.”

“So let’s say she comes from Planet Nice.” Trey started humming the theme from Star Trek, and that kind of impressed me as he still had Toto playing in his left ear, but I wasn’t deterred. “And Dad is . . . well . . . not such a nice guy.”

“So he comes from Planet Bast—”

“You can’t swear if you’re trying to be persuasive, Trey.” I felt him smile. “Dad comes from Planet If-I-Knew-You-Were-Using-My-Masking-Tape-I’d-Blast-You-to-Jupiter.”

“Betcha they have trouble fitting that on their license plates.”

“And we’re kinda half and half, right?”

“Nice to see you’ve been paying attention in biology class.”

“So we’re mutants.”

“More like hybrids.”

I had no idea what the word meant, but it sounded right.

“So as hybrids, how do we decide which planet we belong on?”

Trey turned his head again, which unstuck the tape—again. “Huh?”

“If I had to choose, I’d want to live on Planet Nice. Not that Planet Nice would be a party. Actually, I think I might die of terminal boredom. But it still would beat the smell on Planet Masking Tape.”

“Dad’s planet smells?”

I nodded. “Like burned coffee and garlic breath.”

Trey seemed to mull that one over for a minute. I let him do that because Miss Reeser had told us that it was important to give the audience enough time to figure out what we were talking about.

“It’s no fun being a hybrid,” I said when the silence got a little too long. I was really hoping we’d be able to keep the topic going and avoid the horrendous exercise Trey had planned for our Huddle Hut session.

“You ready?” he said.

My diversion hadn’t worked. I gave his question some thought and decided I might as well bite the fungal bullet. I needed the milestone like Madonna needed a stylist. Trey must have read my mind, because he grunted up to a sitting position at the same time I did. We pulled the remaining masking tape off the sides of our faces, cringing as little hairs came off with it, and took simultaneous deep breaths.

“You still sure about this?” I asked, kinda hoping he’d changed his mind.

He nodded with absolute conviction. “Too many signs,” he said. It made me uncomfortable when Trey talked about signs. I was the one who was supposed to see invisible things, and he was the one who was supposed to fix real-life things. “Mom hasn’t made mushrooms or zucchini in months,” Trey continued, certainty lending weight to his words, “and today, right after I had that dream about going to boot camp for zucchini delinquents, both vegetables turn up in the fridge. On the same day as my dream, Shell. The same day. I’m telling you, this is Geronimo’s way of getting us to prepare for next time. We can’t ignore the signs.”

Trey had started calling God Geronimo. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because the Big Guy felt more like a warrior that way, the type of God who would unleash a swarm of arrows on anyone who tried to hurt us.

“You dream weird things,” I said.

He wasn’t finished making his point. “And then Dad went to that seminar and Mom went to get her hair done, and we’re both alone in the house with the fridge. That’s a sign too.”

I stifled the urge to tell him that me being alone with a fridge was nothing unusual. “What are we going to say when she asks us where the mushrooms and zucchini went? She’s not going to believe the ‘Geronimo’s boot camp’ thing.”

“I don’t know,” he said, but I could tell he wasn’t really giving it much thought. He had the same look on his face he’d had earlier, when he’d stood by the stove stirring one pan of zucchini and one pan of mushrooms. He was hard-eyed and square-jawed, obviously taking this boot camp thing seriously.

“Geronimo has no idea how much I hate mushrooms,” I said.

“Yes, he does.”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

He reached for the bowl of fried mushrooms and handed it to me; then he took the bowl of fried zucchini wedges and held it up to his face.

“What does it smell like?” I asked.

“Zucchini. You?”

I sniffed at the mushrooms without bringing them too close to my face, just in case my gag reflexes were smell-sensitive. “Mushrooms. Cold mushrooms. And a little bit like the boxes of bait we used to buy at the cabin. You think they’d taste any better if we warmed them up?”

He shook his head and used his fingers to take two pieces of zucchini from his bowl. That Toto music had really made him brave. “You take some out too,” he instructed, his eyes riveted to the green triangles he held.

I gagged when my fingers touched the slimy mushroom slices. “I can’t.”

“You can.”

“Trey . . .”

“Come on, Shelby.” There was something desperate in his voice. Like my failure would make him look weak too.

I picked up a couple pieces of mushroom and watched them flop against my fingers like slices of slug. “I can’t eat them, Trey. There’s no way.” It was all I could do to quell the impulse to fling them off my fingers into a far corner of the attic.

“Just do one of your persuasive speeches on yourself,” Trey said with growing tenseness. I could hear him swallowing loudly from time to time. “Tell yourself it’s not going to kill you. . . .”

“I might throw up.”

“But you won’t die. And then next time Mom fixes them and Dad’s all Godzilla, you’ll be able to eat them.” He was trying so hard to be persuasive, but I could tell he hadn’t made an outline in his mind.

“I can’t.”

“You have to.”

“I can’t, Trey!”

I felt him gathering himself next to me. When he spoke again, it was in a quiet, certain voice I’d seldom heard from him before. He sounded deeper somehow. And farther away too. “If you can eat those mushrooms, he won’t be able to scare you with them anymore. He won’t be able to make you cry . . . or feel like dirt . . . or less than dirt . . . or . . . or anything. Not with the mushrooms. Not anymore.”

“There’ll still be all the rest.”

“Yeah, but there won’t be this. It’s one less thing, and we’re deciding he can’t have it.”

I watched him drop the zucchini into his mouth and chew methodically, a red flush growing out of the collar of his Bulls T-shirt and moving up toward his jaw. He swallowed hard, froze for a moment, then swallowed again. “See?” he said, looking at me. There was sweat on his upper lip.

I closed my eyes and brought the mushrooms to my mouth. I gagged when they touched my tongue, then again when I tried to chew. I felt tears eking out between my eyelids as I gagged over and over, finally forcing the mushrooms to the back of my mouth to swallow them.

Trey was handing me a glass of water when I opened my eyes. He had more zucchini in his other hand. “You need to chew them this time,” he said.

“You’re eating more?” I asked incredulously, awed and humbled by my brother’s outrageous courage.

“Geronimo wants us to practice,” he said.

And emboldened by my brother’s fierce conviction that Geronimo had orchestrated the challenge to defeat my father’s next assault, I took another deep breath and reached for more mushrooms.

“The second time’s easier,” I heard Trey say. And all I could do was gag and believe him.