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Frankie, left mute and wheelchair-bound after a long coma, befriends the reckless newcomer Joe Speedboat in a sleepy Dutch village and trains to be an arm-wrestling champion.
What sets a rare person apart is less special ability than how little fear and convention stand between their ideas and their deeds. Thought passes straight into making things, so they seem less like a person than a released force that others tingle to be near.
Most people are ordinary, yet they are highly sensitive to anyone carrying a higher concentration of energy or talent. When they cannot reach what makes someone shine, they would rather that person not have it either.
When almost everything in a body is lost, a single working limb can still be trained into real strength. With someone else's drive behind it, a person written off as immobile can become a competitor.
As a close group of teenagers passes into adulthood, the bonds between them shift and their shared innocence wears away. They grow up as a group, and the group itself changes.
A newcomer who keeps doing startling things can jolt a whole lethargic community out of its stillness. Their constant motion makes the place's inertia visible by contrast.
For a disabled person, the deepest pain can come less from the daily grind of the condition than from being made to see how others look at them. The handicap is real, but the reflected image cuts sharper.
Someone who cannot walk or speak, and who comes out of a long coma able only to grunt, may still hear everything around them and think with vivid wit. Lack of speech hides a mind; it does not mean there is none.