Inappropriation Page 13

  Everywhere she goes, Ziggy is terrorized by boobs. Or by her own misogyny. It is impossible to wrench the two things apart. She dreads school and going to the mall. And at home, on her queer PoC subreddit, Ziggy now feels like an imposter. No one else talks about their own uncontrollable leering. The subreddit no longer seems like a viable support group; if Ziggy actually bared her soul, she would trigger someone else’s anxiety; if she asked for emotional help, she might have to pay a tariff. Reading a post about transgender incarceration, Ziggy is reminded of Tessa’s grand theory, but she is too nervous to share it. The atmosphere tonight is unusually anarchic. Then someone posts a political manifesto, which at first seems vaguely cyborgian.

  abolish all prisons + ban the police!

  open up the borders + confiscate all guns!

  But the focus quickly narrows.

  free palestine + fuck israeli pinkwashing!

  stop US intervention that makes it unsafe for trans PoC 2 live anywhere but these transphobic united states!!

  This last one seems contradictory. Ziggy Googles it, and learns that in Gaza, homosexuality is punishable by death. Does this mean you can’t fly a rainbow flag beside a Palestinian one? And wouldn’t US intervention be welcome in gay Gaza, to free these Palestinians from their own murderous rule of law? But these are not questions Ziggy feels she can ask the queer subreddit. She considers messaging Tim, but imagining his response makes her feel more alienated. It was bad enough that the Israelis stole the honey cake. Ziggy wouldn’t call him a beta, but she finds Tim’s moral relativism annoying—always apologizing and rewriting and editing himself out of any actual point of view. Ziggy logs back in to Reddit, but this time to the Red Pill. Just for a little calming irreverence. Just for the lols.

  AFTER WINTER BREAK, Tessa is cast in the Randalls-Kandara coproduction of Down with Demon Drink!, a musical adaptation of the nineteenth-century temperance melodrama. She plays the lead, Edward Middleton, who leaves his family destitute to become a drunken vagrant. Apparently, Tessa is mixing well with the other thespians and singing her aphoristic ditties in an off-key but lively falsetto. These are the reports from rehearsals, as Tessa is no longer speaking to Ziggy or Lex. Patricia Katsatouris, who plays “the maniac,” says their erstwhile friend is in her element: performing a male part is very Shakespearean.

  Ziggy remembers fondly the one play she did at her old school. Yoni Kessler, their sixteen-year-old theater prodigy, had convinced the drama teacher to let him direct a 1970s Woody Allen play called Death. Ziggy was Mob Member Four, one of twelve tasked with hunting down the psychopath. She spent many hours of rehearsal in trust exercises—falling back into the outstretched arms of her fellow vigilantes—and got very good at saying “Unique New York” backward and forward in rapid succession. Ziggy knows there will be first-rate entertainment in the rehearsal room of Down with Demon Drink! She would love to scale the walls of Randalls’s drama department—angling a camera down against the grimy basement windows to film their warm-up games and what is sure to be a sexless and ungainly dance choreography. But Lex would rather stay home on Google Earth. The virtual stalking of the rapper’s Hidden Hills estate seems to be the last extracurricular activity left to their compromised friendship. Lex zooms in on the network of swimming pool caves and the outdoor screening room with its faux-stone fireplace. They try to tilt in behind the blurred sheets of waterfalls for a glimpse of the man himself, or his women, or even his pool cleaners, but the technology doesn’t allow it. Still, Lex would rather be virtually in America than physically anywhere else.

  Then surprisingly, when Down with Demon Drink! opens, Lex suggests she and Ziggy attend a performance. Hate-watching Tessa’s play could be fun. Returning to school after dark, Ziggy waits on the oval for Lex to arrive. The school buildings glow a deep, milky blue that softens their imperious facades. The cool air makes her whole being feel washed and new. Ziggy imagines the oval is a dark dune on planet Mars. She wanders in aimless circles, enjoying how the crisp air tickles her hairy little legs.

  Ziggy and Lex sit at the back of the auditorium bleachers, snorting each time Tessa exclaims in her atonal singing voice. But as the play goes on, Ziggy starts to warm toward Edward Middleton, the tipsy, wayward landowner. When Tessa appears in the spotlight for her solo, Ziggy is unexpectedly moved. Their friend has tapped into some ancient, Gaelic suffering.

  “Poor little Potato Famine survivor,” Lex whispers. Ziggy chuckles, and the thin line of feeling between her and Tessa snaps.

  Afterward Lex has venomous commentary. She says the play is dated; casting a girl in a male role doesn’t change the fact that they are telling some dead white man’s story and putting all the Asian kids in whiteface. As they pour out of the auditorium, Lex eyes the joyful hordes with enmity. “It’s like the amateur theater society of Narrandera.”

  Ziggy tries to sympathize with Lex’s hatred of rural communities, and mimics her friend’s contemptuous march all the way out to the foyer. Lex wants to wait here, hoping to catch a glimpse of Tessa’s alleged boyfriend. It takes only a brief scan of the room to spot him. As reported, Eamon Gameau is a pasty waif with the rosy, bee-stung lips of a Classical pervert.

  “That boy is gay,” Lex pronounces.

  Ziggy feels herself recoil. “Then why would he want to date Tessa?”

  “I don’t know, Ziggy. Why would Tim want to date you? Because everybody’s ‘fluid’ or whatever.”

  Ziggy doesn’t like the way Lex has said “fluid,” but she is too embarrassed to admit that Tim almost definitely does not want to date her. She watches Eamon. He wears a purple T-shirt with the words EVERY DAY IS CONSENT DAY printed in huge white Helvetica across the front. As Tessa leans across him to accept somebody’s roses, Eamon taps her bum. Lex grabs Ziggy’s wrist.

  “Did you see that?”

  Ziggy shrugs. “The slap?”

  “Gay men are always slapping girls’ bums! They think they’re exempt from sexual harassment in the workplace.”

  “But it’s the theater. . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  “And she’s his girlfriend.”

  Lex juts her chin out testily. “So you’re on Eamon’s side?”

  Ziggy shakes her head, defeated.

  “The theater is so confused,” Lex says. “The men are all gay and the gays are all misogynists and the women let everyone publicly molest them.”

  Ziggy’s friend is becoming a reactionary. But at least she is squeezing Ziggy’s arm.

  Now someone in the courtyard calls out to Tessa and she blows an air kiss then starts bounding toward them down the stairs. Ziggy can see that Tessa is headed in their direction and she panics, suddenly ashamed to be there.

  “Let’s go,” she whispers to Lex.

  But before they can move, Tessa trips and tumbles onto the carpet. The moment goes slow because Tessa makes an opera of falling, bunching the air in around her like an epic load of laundry. Eamon dashes over, dropping theatrically to his knees; a second later Tessa’s face pops up over his shoulder, a smug pleasure blinking through the shock. Ziggy knows she should feel sorry for Tessa (the prosthetic arm compromises her balance), but the fall is infuriating. Tessa seemed to relish the chance to crash to that dramatic burgundy carpet, reaching heteronormatively for her boyfriend’s strong, sinewy neck. Now Lex laughs loudly, drawing attention to the two of them. As Tessa sees her, Ziggy loses control of her face. The muscles twitch between real and faked animosity, forming a clownish smirk that trembles with bad acting. Tessa returns the insult, looking melodramatically away.

  Dragging along on Lex’s forearm as they exit up the drive, Ziggy has a strange yearning for the crowd back at the auditorium. When they reach the gates, she glances back at the warm lights across the deep field, and for the first time since starting at Kandara, Ziggy feels pulled in the wrong direction.

  THE TWO FRIENDS RETREAT TO ZIGGY’S house and Google Earth. Like an old couple, they get comfortable in house socks and oversized
T-shirts and lay some snacks out in a line on Ziggy’s bed. Minutes later Jacob is hovering in Ziggy’s doorway. He crosses one foot over the other, leaning into the doorframe with gentlemanly poise.

  “Pardon me,” Jacob says. “But is this a Google Earth surveillance session?”

  Lex addresses Ziggy. “Was your brother adopted from the nineteenth century?”

  “Jacob, leave.”

  “Please, ladies, allow me to show you some of the more current technologies.”

  “Stop talking like that.”

  But Ziggy and Lex are stuck outside the rapper’s arbored patio. They follow Jacob into his room, where he brings up a series of web pages. First, there is the Lily—a drone that can track your slalom down a mountain. Next, the Phantom 3—to be air-sticked into active volcanoes. These seem a little extreme, and also, they cost thousands of dollars. Jacob plays the girls Keynotes. Lex drifts back to her phone. On Jacob’s desk, Ziggy sees a small square camera with a plastic strap.

  “What’s that one?”

  “A GoPro,” says Jacob. “It’s no good for stalking celebrities.”

  It seems her brother can only fathom these devices as tools for spying on famous people or else conquering untouched natural wonders. Which, she supposes, is kind of the same thing.

  “Let me try it,” Lex says, poking Ziggy’s brother in the back.

  Jacob swiftly hands it over, blushing as their fingers touch. Then he passes Lex an iPhone strapped to an extendible rod. “You can see what you’re seeing on this.”

  Which sounds strange to Ziggy—can’t Lex see what she’s seeing with her eyes? But watching the footage live on the little screen, Ziggy learns that the camera sees things differently. The focus narrows back to a fixed, still point—that being Lex’s head. Moving outward from here, objects shrink and flatten out, forming a more compact, manageable panorama.

  Lex hops up on Jacob’s bed and does a few jumps. She gets good air. Ziggy spends a long, envious minute watching Lex enjoy her own athletic body. She tenses her thighs as she bounces, her mouth curling into an indulgent grin. Ziggy has never experienced the thrill of athletic aptitude but imagines it is a sense of physical power close to godliness. She can see how the camera might enhance this effect.

  But quickly, Lex is bored. “Yeah, this kind of sucks.” She yanks the GoPro off her head. “How far does the Phantom Three fly?”

  “Five hundred meters high and two miles across.”

  “That isn’t going to get us into the pool caves.” Lex’s voice is accusing. “What about the Lily?”

  “You’ll need military-style drones to get to America.”

  The doorbell rings and Jacob snatches back his camera then makes a decorous little bow.

  “Ladies, I’m afraid I must now attend to my own war plans.”

  His friends have arrived for a Wii tournament.

  BY MIDNIGHT, LEX’S BOREDOM IS nearing dangerous new levels. She checks her phone incessantly for Snapchats, Instagram-stalks all the rapper’s ex-girlfriends, Google image-searches herself, then someone with the same name, then someone with slightly different spelling. Ziggy knows they can do better than this, but she must avoid old pastimes like Method acting and the straddling of spa jets. They can’t watch music videos together, even ironically. Ziggy is too scared to get stoned with Lex. Hitler Youth might make her say the word queef. The last thing Ziggy can think to offer her friend is the boys downstairs.

  Leading Lex out to the third-floor landing, Ziggy begins to paint a picture of her brother’s new private school friends. How last time the boys stayed over, she watched them make chocolate sundaes while discussing the pitfalls of masturbation. Lucien, the pretty blond one, had relayed the tragic fate of his older brother—a Randalls alum who’d squandered his law school dreams to take a girl behind the tennis courts and squeeze her perfect C-cup breasts. The other boys had chimed in with a brief history of great white men who believed ejaculation would bring them to ruin. Lucien’s brother had warned him that morning sex could turn even the most ambitious boy into a useless junkie. The other three agreed that you should never spill your seed the day of a very big test.

  Listening to Ziggy’s story, Lex’s legs get noodly; she rocks against the bannister, heaving her bosom over the railing, eyeing the little boys below. The three seventh graders are perched on cushion stacks, consoles poised, cross-legged and coolly glaring like child princes. Ziggy had expected Lex would want to fling boogers onto their heads or maybe let a mysterious drip slowly drive their evening insane. But Lex wants to know more about them. The blond one, she thinks, looks at least fourteen. Ziggy can feel their evening turn, the air needle, the atoms get screwy. She concedes the blond one has a certain charisma. Even from their bird’s-eye view. His patrician features are finessing and his sheer cheekbones are starting to fuzz. The sounds of warfare rise up in loud complicated blasts. Lex is getting giggly. Ziggy feels herself leaning boyward too.

  The girls have no plan. They don’t even have mutual honesty, only a tacit agreement to wander downstairs and mope seductively around. At the top of the steps, Ziggy has a sudden urge to go back for the GoPro. She slips into Jacob’s room and swipes the camera off his desk. She isn’t sure why. But strapping it on feels good in front of Lex. Something rebalances between them. Lex lets Ziggy walk ahead.

  Downstairs, Ziggy sees that Jacob has dozed off, which only increases the heady feeling of inconsequence. The girls slink around the kitchen, and the boys pretend not to notice them. Ziggy pulls two beers from the fridge and passes one to Lex. The gesture feels mimicked but fluent; Ziggy’s body is somehow not her own.

  Lucien turns to face her, smiling sweetly. “Can I have one?”

  Ziggy cracks the beer like she has watched her father and his menfolk do many times before. She raises the bottle and takes a gulp. Almost instantly a calm, white space floods her mind. She grins at Lucien, swipes another longneck from the fridge door, and tosses it to him. He catches it and takes a moment to study the label.

  “This was a good year,” he says, nodding at the bottle.

  “A good year for beer?” Lex giggles.

  Lucien looks up, his face feral with hurt. But Lex smiles back, warm and encouraging.

  “2015,” he says shyly. “I heard that somewhere.”

  Lex doesn’t tease him, which must mean she’s flirting. Now Ziggy notices the taste of her beer. It is stewy and metallic, like licking a Brillo pad, like some kind of punishment. The pasty redhead and lanky brace-face are murmuring for beverages. Ziggy removes two more bottles and holds them out. Then as the boys inch forward, she yanks the beers back. They eye her helplessly.

  “You can only have one,” she says, “if you play our drinking game.”

  Lex grins her approval, and the two beerless boys slump back into their cushions. But Lucien is more tactical.

  “Of course we’ll play,” he says, rousing the other two to resentful obedience. “What are the rules?”

  Ziggy thinks fast. “We ask the questions. If we don’t like your answer, you have to take a sip.”

  “Easy,” says Lucien. “Can Rupert and Oliver please have their drinks now?”

  Ziggy hands over the beers. Lex scoots in beside Lucien and he puffs up, almost manly, as he sips from his bottle. Annoyed, Ziggy begins her interrogation with him.

  “First question,” she says. “What do you prefer—blondes or brunettes?”

  “Brunettes . . .” Lucien says carefully. “But it also depends on their personality.”

  His friends giggle and Lucien grins unctuously. Lex seems impressed.

  “Wrong,” says Ziggy. “That’s like saying you only like small dogs if they don’t bark too much.”

  Lucien shrugs and takes a big swig. It seems he doesn’t mind being wrong or intoxicated while his knees are touching Lex.

  “The next one is also for Lucien,” Ziggy announces. “What’s better—short skirts or short shorts?”

  “Is this another trick question?”<
br />
  “Answer.”

  “Culottes,” says Lucien, already sipping. Lex watches him and laughs, enjoying his hijinks. Ziggy resents the dynamic emerging within their group. Perhaps it is the camera on her head. Or the fact she isn’t pretty. But the boys have not warmed to her. Still, Ziggy remains in charge. She knows a drinking game should involve sex and humiliation, and that Lucien is top of her brother’s Latin class.

  “Or do you prefer togas?” she suggests.

  “Togas?”

  “Boys in togas.”

  Lucien laughs, his face tight with contempt.

  “I had to ask due to your love of Romans.”

  But Lex defends her admirer. “Just because you like classical antiquity doesn’t mean you’re gay.”

  Ziggy pretends this doesn’t hurt her. She nods, conceding. “Even if, statistically, it probably does.”

  “Exactly,” says Lucien, confused.

  Now Ziggy opens the game up to the other boys, but their answers are less damning than adorable. When orthodontically challenged Oliver admits to a crush on Audrey Hepburn, he receives affectionate coddling from Lex. “That’s so cute,” she says, poking him.

  “My sister is an Audrey Hepburn historian,” he says proudly.

  “What’s that?” Ziggy sneers. “Someone who studies neckerchiefs?”

  Nobody laughs, so Ziggy’s questions get overtly embarrassing. But now it is too late—the boys are having fun. For Lex they unfurl, pink and willing like well-walked dog tongues, giddily confessing that yes, they all picture their female teachers naked, and yes, they all jerk off every day, even mornings when their newsfeeds are crammed with murder and climate change. Ziggy sneaks looks at Lex, who is eyeing Lucien in her low-lidded, burning way. Ziggy feels herself shrinking, dissolving back into the room’s gorging red. The boys are charming her friend. Ziggy had not expected the thirteen-year-olds to be so responsive. Or emotionally mature. Though there is one way in which Ziggy knows they are as kiddish as she is. For all their bluster, these little boys are incapable of anatomical follow-through. Ziggy turns the camera on her friend.