ARM IN ARM
Characters Vera- A fifteen-year-old girl who is confused and struggles internally . Toni- A middle-aged woman . She feels a need to help those younger than her .
A park during summer .
Setting
At rise : VERA and TONI are sitting on a park bench .
VERA I stay awake at night . For hours , I just sit there , and I wonder what all this means . Some nights I can ' t tell if I mean anything at all . We have these assemblies at school where this middle-aged man comes on stage and tells us about how great we are and how we shouldn ’ t kill ourselves , but he gets paid to do that . It ’ s his job to be good at telling people not to do things like that , so he probably doesn ' t think twice about giving that speech because he ’ s given it more times than anyone could count . I ’ m sure that somewhere , deep down in that speaker ’ s heart , he genuinely cares about teen suicide rates , but I think it ’ s more of a routine- a performance .
TONI They did that too when I was in school . They ’ d have some teacher or coach hop up on stage and give that speech . You could tell they weren ’ t keen on the idea of doing it , but a paycheck is a paycheck , and no teacher wants to have a student die .
( A pause .)
VERA When was the first time you- you felt like someone actually cared ?
TONI The first time I felt like someone genuinely cared was in a Sally Beauty store . I was sixteen years old . I was wearing a tank top and you could see the scars going down my arms . They were like the rungs on a ladder , pretty hard to miss . People would see them wherever I went , even if it was just to the grocery store . Some would stare and some would quickly look away , but it never mattered because I was convinced that everyone was just going to ignore them . I mean , that ' s what they did for years , until this day , of course . This lady approached me while my friend and I were browsing the hair dye . She had to be about fifty to sixty years old , and she was wearing a yellow sweater . That ’ s one of the first things I recognized about her- this yellow sweater . She comes up to me and just asks if she can give me a hug . I didn ' t really know what to say , so I just said yes . This lady , this stranger , just held me for a whole minute . I counted- sixty whole seconds . When she let go , she held my hands and she looked into my eyes like no one had before . She looked into my eyes and saw the years of hurt and denial and death , and she