The Weird Kid

I could feel the familiar butterflies in my stomach as I crossed the stage. In front of me, the murmur of conversation was punctuated by laughs and shouts as the students settled into the auditorium.

I settled at center stage, taking in the chaotic energy of my audience of middle schoolers. Despite the nerves, this felt like home. Projecting my voice, speaking from my diaphragm, I called out for them to be silent. The din gradually died down and twenty faces looked up at me expectantly. One remained glued to his phone. I cleared my throat. The soft musical dings and bangs of a game quickly filled the silent auditorium. Some of the other kids rolled their eyes or snickered.

“Esteban”, I said firmly.

The 13-year-old boy finally looked up, tanned skin dotted with a smattering of acne, brown curls drooping over his eyes. He was lit from below by the cellphone. He looked around him, noticing his classmates for the first time, some staring at him, others making a point to ignore him. He switched the phone off and pocketed it. He looked up at me without a hint of remorse.

“Thank you,” I said, and switched on my cool-teacher smile. “Welcome to the first meeting of the drama club! Some of you may know me as Miss Flores from Spanish class, but here you can call me Alicia. I love the theater and I hope by the end of this year you’ll love it, too. This first semester we’ll be doing some acting exercises and preparing individual monologues. Who’s excited?”

The group offered some polite applause.

“I can’t hear you!”

A slightly livelier cheer erupted, some whooping.

“Never mind, I can see you’re not into it.” I pretended to leave the stage.

The students hollered in unison, clapping and stomping their feet, cheering as if their lives depended on it. I beamed at them. My eyes drifted to Esteban in the back, his face blank, mouth set in a straight line, arms defiantly at his sides. I turned my attention back to the rest of the group.

“That’s more like it,” I said. “So let’s start by getting to know each other. I want each of you to stand up, say your name, what grade you’re in, and why you decided to join the drama club.”

The first girl stood up, stated her name and grade, then gushed about how much she loved acting and singing and dancing and how she wanted to be an actress when she grew up. There were several more iterations of this from other students. Most of the boys admitted to joining because of their girlfriends. And a few kids said they just wanted something to do after school and drama club sounded fun. Esteban was the last to get up.

“My name is Esteban, but you already knew that,” he said with thinly veiled contempt. “I’m in 8^th grade. And I’m here because my mom said if I didn’t join, she’d take away my gaming privileges.”

He sat back down. A few of the diehard theater girls glared at him. “I give him two weeks, tops,” someone said. Laughs that sounded dangerously close to jeers began to rise from some of the boys.

“Well,” I said after a pause that was slightly too long, “I hope we can win you over.”

“I doubt it,” he replied, inciting more comments and laughs from his peers.

“Challenge accepted,” I said, grinning at him.

Esteban was unimpressed.

I kept the smile plastered across my face, but this kid shook me. Was I in over my head? What if the rest of them soon wore that same expression of bored disdain? Or reported me to the principal? Boycotted the club, my classes…

As a teaching assistant, I’d been part of school plays and musicals, helping out with productions, sitting in during drama classes and clubs. But this was my first official teaching gig and my first very own drama club. This school hadn’t had a theater program since the teacher in charge of it retired a couple of years ago. So not only were the kids counting on me to create a program for them from scratch, but the administration also had their eyes on me to see if I could pull it off.

So yeah, no pressure.

“OK!” I called out cheerfully. “Now everyone come up here, we’re going to do some vocal warm-ups.”

The kids rushed the stage. I let the unfiltered enthusiasm of this pack of preteens push all those negative thoughts out of my head. Esteban dragged his feet across the stage, a black hole amidst all this light and energy. Maybe he’ll be gone by next week, I thought hopefully. But I shook my head. He may be a sourpuss but he was still a kid. One of my kids. One of the drama kids.

We met once a week after school but I spent most of my free time looking up acting exercises, improv prompts, and age-appropriate scenes for them to do. I really wanted to get this right. I started each session with movement and voice exercises which most of the kids found fun, if not silly. Esteban flat-out refused to partake but my gut told me to let him be. He kept showing up, which was more than I had dared to hope for (despite my bravado at our first encounter). After the warm-up, I’d pair up the kids to do short scenes from plays and movies.

Esteban usually perked up a bit at these, despite himself. Initially, he put in as little effort as possible, reading the lines off the paper and not looking at his scene partner. I praised what I could and gave him directions just like I did all the other kids. I treated him as if he was, in fact, doing his best. He wouldn’t look at me as I explained the emotional tone or conflict of the scene, but I carried on as if he cared. As if he was listening even if he wanted me to think he wasn’t. And as the weeks passed, his veneer of indifference began to falter (although he still refused to do the movement and voice exercises). He started by engaging with the kid he was partnered with, some eye contact, a bit more of a nuanced exchange. He took direction well. After a month I watched in awe as his voice, face, and posture transformed to portray an old man, a child, a neurotic boss, a flirtatious woman. In those moments, he displayed a physicality and expressiveness I never saw in him during class or in the halls. But as soon as I called “Scene!” it was like a light switched off. His face went blank, he assumed his trademark slouch, and turned away from the kid in front of him, rushing back to his seat.

I wondered about Esteban. He was in my Advanced Spanish class and coasted on the fact that he was a native speaker. He never participated in class and easily lost patience with the other kids when they didn’t understand something. I could tell his classmates disliked him, although I never saw any outright bullying. Mostly they just kept their distance. And he seemed to prefer it that way.

“So what’s the story with Esteban,” I asked my colleague Diana, the math teacher, when we both happened to be on break at the teacher’s lounge.

Diana raised an eyebrow and made a face. “Is he giving you trouble already?”

“No!” I replied quickly. “He’s not a bad kid. He just seems different. He’s in the drama club…”

“Stop!” Diana cried, her mouth hanging open. “Gerald, did you hear that? Esteban is in drama club.”

The PE teacher had walked in while we were talking and was pouring himself some coffee. He chuckled. “I wonder what his mother threatened him with this time. She tried to get him on the baseball team when he was younger. I’ve never seen a meltdown like that in all my years of teaching.”

“Meltdown?”

“Oh yeah. Screaming, pulling out his hair, refusing to move. Eventually, his dad picked him up from the middle of the baseball diamond and took him away. Last time I ever saw him near a ball.”

“How old was he?”

Gerald exchanged a look with Diana. “This was maybe two years ago.”

“So he wasn’t that much younger.”

“No, but he’s always been like that,” said Diana dismissively. “If anything, he’s calmed down since he hit puberty. Not sure how that works but I’ll take quiet, surly Esteban to loud, angry Esteban any day.”

I thought about this for a moment. The Esteban I knew seemed more likely to shut down than to have an outburst. Maybe he’d learn to wear his indifference like a shield, a mask that kept him safe. “Does he have a diagnosis?”

Diana scoffed. “Sure. He has a bunch. His mom takes him to therapists and specialists. For a while, they said he had Asperger’s but apparently that’s not a thing anymore. Now they’re calling him neurodivergent, whatever that means.”

“He’s not a bad kid,” added Gerald. “And I get that he has his issues, but he can be a royal pain in the ass.”

I stayed silent while Diana and Gerald exchanged anecdotes about Esteban. It felt like a puzzle piece snapped into place. I left the teacher’s lounge and headed to the computer room. I wondered what I was supposed to do with this information. At first, I thought I should look up theater therapy exercises, but a quick Google search confirmed that was way above my pay grade. Plus, Esteban was smart and he’d see right through me. Suddenly this defiant, socially awkward kid felt like a different person to me. Someone I wanted to protect and help. But how?

After Halloween, the kids had to pick the monologues they would perform at the end of the semester. Most of the kids chose speeches from movies or TV shows they liked, others found monologues in plays they’d read in English class. A few went with Shakespeare, which I thought was brave if ill-advised. I wasn’t at all surprised when the last week of November came around and Esteban still hadn’t chosen a monologue.

I approached him after Spanish class. “Esteban, could you hang back for a moment?”

“Am I in trouble?” he asked, gripping his backpack defensively even as his face remained impassive, his gaze fixed just over my shoulder.

“No, of course not. Um, have you thought about what monologue you’re going to do?”

He didn’t answer.

I took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you’d consider this one.” I handed him a piece of paper.

He read it quickly, his eyes scanning the lines. My palms felt sweaty as I waited for him to finish.

“No,” he said and handed the paper back to me.

“Why not? It’s from the show Atypical, it’s about a boy on the spectrum…”

“I know that show,” he interrupted me. “I’m not doing that.”

“I think it might be good for you to explore…”

“No.” And he left.

I felt a pit open up in my stomach. Shit. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have assumed…

But to my enormous relief the next week he was back. We began practicing the monologues. Each time it was Esteban’s turn he’d say, “No thanks.” I didn’t dare press him until we were a week away from the day of the performance.

“Esteban,” I asked, “do you know what monologue you want to do?”

“Yes.”

“Can you show us?”

“I’d rather wait for the day of the show.”

“But then you won’t get feedback from us.”

He wouldn’t say anything else or get on stage. I sighed and left him alone.

On the day of the performances, I was backstage trying to herd 12 to 14-year-olds jittery with stage fright and anticipation into attention. I could hear the auditorium filling up. I’d allowed the kids to invite their friends and parents if they wanted to, trying to keep it as informal as possible. But when I peeked through the curtain there was almost a full house. Even some of the teachers and the principal had sneaked into the back row.

Diana was helping me with the lights and as they dimmed, signaling the beginning of the show, I felt my heart in my throat. Then the first girl got on stage and started her speech. I melted. Pride and joy and excitement flooded me. I couldn’t imagine how parents must feel. Then a round of applause and she ran off stage, grinning and shaking, and the next kid was up. I was constantly shushing the kids who had finished while getting the next kid lined up to go on stage. The monologues were short, no more than 2 to 5 minutes. Everything went by so fast I was caught by surprise when Esteban was the next and last to perform.

“Are you ready?” I asked him.

He nodded, not looking at me.

He stepped on stage. It didn’t occur to me to worry about what monologue he ultimately chose until he started speaking in a thick Cuban accent and pretending to smoke a cigar. “You wanna work eight, ten fucking hours? You own nothing, you got nothing! Do you want a chivato on every corner looking after you?”

“Oh my God.” I covered my face with my hands.

It was the monologue from Scarface. I’d been walking on eggshells around him, letting things slide, being overly lenient. I would never have let another kid get on stage before vetting his monologue. Now Esteban was tossing around the f-word and talking about Quaaludes and cocaine in front of an auditorium full of middle schoolers, their parents, my coworkers, and my boss. I began drafting my resignation letter in my head.

When he finished there was a shocked silence before some of the kids started clapping and whooping.

“That was frigging awesome!” one of the boys backstage said.

I turned and found twenty kids standing behind me at the edges of the stage. In my impending breakdown, I hadn’t noticed that they had been listening to Esteban in rapt silence.

“Miss, can we do monologues like that next year? I want to do Scarface! I want to say the f-word, too!”

“Absolutely not!” I hissed. “Get ready for curtain calls!”

Esteban came off the stage, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

“You and I need to talk after this,” I said.

His face switched back to its usual blank expression.

The kids went out as a group and bowed to their audience. Applause and cheers eventually gave way to animated conversation as the kids ran into the aisles to be lauded by their friends and family. Esteban tried to join them but I called him backstage. He trudged over to me, eyes on the floor.

“Esteban,” I began, “you did a great job.” He looked up at me in surprise. “But that wasn’t an appropriate monologue for school and you know why. I should’ve insisted you tell me what you were going to do and I didn’t, that’s on me. But next time you need to talk to me and let me approve whatever you’re going to do.” If I still have a job next time, I added in my head.

He looked up at me, making eye contact for the first time. “So you’re not kicking me out?”

“No. But consider this a warning.”

Esteban nodded. “I had fun acting like Scarface. Drama club is fun.” He paused before adding, “I don’t need it to be therapy or a way to express myself or whatever my mom wants it to be. I just want to have fun.”

I nodded. “OK. Thank you for telling me.”

A woman had gotten on the stage and she crossed over to us. For a second, I thought she was coming to complain or tell us off but she was smiling broadly.

“You must be Alicia,” she said. “I’m Esteban’s Mom, Josephine. It’s lovely to meet you. I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for him this semester. He’s like another person. And I loved his speech. It’s his favorite movie, I know it’s controversial but he’s been practicing for weeks. Mi amor,” she kissed Esteban on the side of the head and he let her, “te felicito.”

“Thank you,” I said, returning her smile. “It’s been a pleasure working with him.”

“He tells me you’re doing a play next semester. Can’t wait!” She draped her arm over Esteban and they turned to leave.

I followed them across the stage and into the audience where Diana, Gerald, another teacher, and the principal stood chatting. It felt like an ambush. A casual, friendly ambush. When Diana saw me, she bit her lip to stop from laughing. The teachers congratulated me effusively before leaving me alone with the boss.

He looked at me with a very serious expression. “Well, that was dramatic.”

I swallowed. “I know, I messed up. I didn’t know he was going to do that…”

He held up a hand. “Esteban is a handful. That last speech aside, it was a great show. The kids love the club and the teachers tell me Esteban is behaving much better this semester. Next time, let’s just try to keep it PG-13.”

He gave me a curt nod and walked away. In a moment I was surrounded by students and parents vying for my attention, telling me how much they enjoyed everything, asking what the play was next semester. I smiled through the haze of my thoughts. Esteban was right. This was fun. Drama club had always just been fun. And it didn’t need to be anything else. I felt myself relax for the first time in months.