Monologues for Teens

ALLEGRA: I know you’re probably mad at me for leaving before the funeral, but I just can’t do it. My whole body itches and it won’t stop until I get in a car and can’t see this house or this town or this state from the rearview window.

This way is better. This way I’ll come back from my trip and go straight to school and you won’t have to look at me or think about me. You can tell people you have a daughter but you won’t have to talk to me on the phone or see me on the couch. I’ll be a no-maintenance daughter just like you always wanted.

I’m going to go now. I know someday you’ll want to talk to me again. Maybe after I graduate and get a job and get married and buy a house and have my own daughter. Then you can talk to her and be her favorite and then we can pretend you were a really great mother. She won’t know and I don’t have to tell her.

But now I’m going to get on the road and push you out of my mind and I probably won’t think of you until I get to the grand canyon or some other fairly good canyon and maybe I’ll cry in front of the mammoth orange hole in the ground or maybe I’ll smile because it’s so beautiful and I’m free and windswept.

But first I’m going to get into Suzy’s mom’s car and we’ll drive till there’s just drops left in the tank and as we cross the border into Massachusetts, we’ll roll into the first gas station where I’ll get some Ding Dongs and some orange soda and I’ll bite into the first one sitting on the hood, watching the car slurp up gas. Then I’ll get in the driver’s seat and put my foot on the accelerator until I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. So I pull over and we both close our eyes and sleep until we’re awoken at three am by separate but equally terrible nightmares.

Dogface: This is how it happens: One minute, you’re just another awkward second-grader. And then your mom takes you and your brother to her friend’s house, out in the country. You get out of the car, and there’s a big yellow dog wagging his tail at you. And your mom and your brother go to ring the doorbell, and you get down on your knees in front of this friendly dog, and you’re petting him… And then, suddenly, the dog snaps his jaws. And your life as you know it… ends. It happens so fast… You’re not even sure what happened. It feels like a very sharp pinch, and then it’s spreading, fast through your whole face. There’s blood. There’s a lot of blood. You yell for your mom, you run towards her. She turns, and when she sees you, she gasps in horror and she covers your brother’s eyes, and she screams to him, “Don’t look!” That’s how these things happen, I guess. Anyway, that’s how it happened to me. The dog never barked, never growled. He followed after me, still friendly and playful. Blood pouring from the holes in my face… and he’s looking at me, wagging his tail. My mother grabbed my jacket from the car, and told me to hold it tight against my face. I was crying. I was so panicked I felt like I was choking. At the hospital, nurses were coming in, mopping up blood and asking questions and trying to establish how much of my face was still there, whether the nerve endings were alive. My face felt puffy and I was light-headed. The nurses were friendly, they wanted me to trust them. And I did. I believed them when they said that doctors would be able to fix me. My father didn’t – he couldn’t – look directly at me. He kept staring at a space on the wall above me. He kept saying, “You’re being very brave.” I didn’t feel brave. I was still crying, but quietly. I was pressing cotton against my face, just wanting it to be over. I just wanted to go home. And then, I was lying on a table, squinting into a bright light above me. I can’t feel the stitches, but if I look out of the corner of my right eye, I can see it, the silver needle, moving up and down. So I don’t look. They keep talking to me. Half the time I don’t know what they’re saying, the other half of the time, they’re telling me how brave I am, but that’s only because they don’t know how afraid I feel. You’re not allowed to cry or they might mess up your stitches. You can’t move at all. They keep saying, “It will all be over soon.” They lied. I was conscious the entire time. I was awake while they sewed my face back together. What I remember most is the bright light, and the strangely disembodied voices of my parents and the doctors, trying to keep the patient calm. When they finally let me see myself, when they gave me a mirror, I had prepared myself for a Halloween mask, for a horror movie, for a nightmare. But the blood had been cleaned away. It was just neat rows of stitches. I was actually relieved. But then I went back to school. And then the real trauma began.

Donna (eighteen): All my life I’ve been a coward. There’s reason, I guess . . . plenty reason to be scared. What’s bad is that it makes you cruel.

You turn cruel when somebody probes that little nest of fear you hide inside. You lash out with your claws, and you wound and you hurt whoever sees inside you.

You can’t bear that anyone should see that you’re not cocky, you’re afraid. But you are — of so many things. Of being hated . . . or loved.

Of failure . . . and maybe of success. Of growing old. We’re afraid of the dark before the lights come on. Then we’re afraid of the light, what it might show.

Afraid to die. Maybe more afraid of living. But of all the stuff there is to fear, I guess the worst is loneliness. (A pause.) . . . Sure as hell, company doesn’t help.

If you want to find real Grade-A blue ribbon loneliness, try a crowd. Even a crowd of one. I have . . . oh, God, so many times.

I’d be alone for a while, until the ache was right up in my throat and I’d be hollering without a sound, saying, “Know me. Discover me.

I’m here, inside — somebody, please.” But they couldn’t hear my silent voice, so after a while I’d be saying, “Make love to me.”

They didn’t ask much. They didn’t get much. (She giggles.) You wouldn’t know about that. The big bad sex-express. “Love me, love me — well, if you can’t love me, OK, f*** me.”

It’s like a dance . . . all the moves have been rehearsed, you just follow the music. (Singing, raucously.) “Circle round and dosey do, All change partners, off we go!” (Quietly again.)

And that’s how it goes. Time after time after time. Reach out for love and find you’ve been stuck with sex. Booby-trapped by your own hormones!

SARAH: Which do you want? Gin or Vodka? (Looking at bottles) Well, there’s more gin, so it’s less chance they’ll notice. But the reason there’s more gin is that I put water in it last week. Tell you what. We’ll mix in a little of both. Whenever they’re home, my father insists that we all eat in the dining room at seven o’clock. (Hands Helen her drink) Here. Gin and vodka and Fresca. The boys are bringing the pot.

We have to lug things out, and lug things back, and nobody can begin till everything’s cold, and we’re supposed to carry on a decent conversation, and everyone has to finish before anyone can get up, and it sucks, if you want to know. It sucks out loud.  My parents said they tried eating in the kitchen when I went to boarding school. But when I got kicked out, they moved back in here. It’s supposed to give me some sense of stability. It just makes me nervous. They take the telephone off the hook so no one can call, and my brother gets itchy about his homework, and when my sister had anorexia, she still had to sit here and watch, for God’s sake, and my parents spend most of the meal bitching, and the whole thing bites, Helen. It really bites. It bites the big one. Want another?