by Lexi Freiman
Lance shakes his head chaotically, as if to rid himself of this inconvenient fact. When he stops, it seems to have worked. “No,” he says, pointing to the lone vehicle parked in the station’s far corner. “There it is.”
Lex shrugs, and returns to her screen.
“Is it his?” Ziggy asks Kate, watching as Lance rattles the back door handle and slinks inside. She can vaguely recall the car being a blue BMW.
“Looks like it,” says Kate, though she is not looking at Lance, but at her supine boyfriend. “And what about these little creeps?”
“They’re like Lance,” says Tim. “You have to forgive them, too.”
“But they tried to rape us,” says Cate.
Ziggy flusters. “Symbolically maybe.”
Lex looks up from her phone. “Just because you have a needy mother,” she says, “doesn’t mean you get to call other women sluts.”
“Exactly,” says Tessa. “Even if your mother actually is a slut.”
“But the idea is to have empathy for everyone,” Ziggy says weakly. “And acknowledge everybody’s pain.”
“That’s very poetic,” says Cate. “But they still tried to rape us.”
So the constellation was partially successful—the girls have love for each other, just not the opposite sex. The next step in Shuni’s process would be to make a joke of feminism so that the Cates stop identifying with it so much. But the feeling among their unlikely group is suddenly so intimate, Ziggy really doesn’t want them to splinter. She watches Cate pull an eyeliner pencil from her clutch purse as she straddles Toby’s prostrate body. Then Ziggy joins the communal cheer as a gigantic penis takes green, glittery shape across his forehead.
Next, Kate rushes to Matty, mounting him and sketching a daisy chain of dicks around his nose; while Fliss gets to work on a detailed bouquet of vaginas across Declan’s chest. Ziggy admires her vision, how Fliss unbuttons his shirt to fit the clump of tampon strings tied at the bottom in a bow. Lex stands off typing to the side, immortalizing them all as feminists, or just vengeful girlfriends.
Now Eamon and Tessa step forward and, in a moment of sweet, awkward fraternity, they are invited to join the proceedings. Ziggy sees Tessa smile at Cate and Cate arrange her face into something benevolently neutral. Kate even gives Ziggy a grim nod of thanks. The world feels improved, more matriarchal. New friendships seem possible.
And then the traumatizing recommences. Eamon starts yanking down each of the boys’ pants while Tim carefully musses their cravats. Ziggy can tell her friend is conflicted; his eyes dart around and he is clearly holding himself back from their frenzy. She squats down beside him.
“The boys won’t remember anything,” she says, squeezing his shoulder.
“Like a date rape . . .” Tim’s voice is small and haunted.
Ziggy knows she should have sympathy, but she doesn’t want to stop. The date rape’s traumatic reversal is exactly what Ziggy wanted to capture: the paradigm shift, the punch line. That sweet spot at the center of a joke where both things are true—the good and the uncomfortably amoral—and for one moment, all selves are transcended and all beings unite.
“Tim,” she says, “you can’t worry so much about other people’s feelings. We did a good thing for humanity! Date rapists getting date-raped!” She squeezes his shoulder harder.
“All right,” he mutters, returning to his tepid violations. Ziggy considers how she might offer further comfort but is abruptly relieved by Tessa’s summons.
“Hey, Ziggy!” Tessa balances Little Matty’s vast thigh on her palms. “Help me with this?”
Ziggy dashes over, then shuffles in beside her, and together they haul the gargantuan limb over Toby’s slim hips. Then they cup Matty’s palms to his friend’s exposed bum cheeks. And now everyone starts whipping off belts and ties and cummerbunds, repurposing them as torture instruments. Soon the boy-cluster resembles a homophobic conga line from a classical hellscape. Ziggy rises over it for a sweeping aerial.
She doesn’t hear the elevator ding, but Ziggy does feel the air change as someone steps out into the parking station. She cranes her neck and spots him—small, suited, in a hurry. Fliss also glances up, seeing the man and then squinting fiercely at his profile.
“Hey!” she screams. “It’s him!”
Everyone looks up at the tiny man now jogging toward the black BMW.
“Lance!” Kate squeals, more as entertainment than as warning to her brother.
They all scramble to their feet, subdued by wicked, shrieking laughter. Eamon lunges toward the man as he shoots past.
“Wait!” he calls after the action hero. “Stop!”
But he doesn’t stop. And he is unsurprisingly fast. The man has sprinted from crashing planes and falling skyscrapers without moving a single muscle in his face. He ducks into the car just as his pursuers begin hobbling forward in their frocks.
“It’s like that scene in the last movie!” Tessa cries. “Lance is the sexy Serbian journalist!”
But the seasoned escape artist doesn’t pause to check the rear seat of his vehicle. The BMW spins back, corrects, and flies away up the ramp. Once more, their little group dissolves into delicious, loopy cackling.
Ziggy turns back to the boy-centerfold, and feels terribly excited to share her footage with the internet. Then she remembers Tim. As the others begin to speculate on the unfolding car ride, Ziggy drags her friend away behind the pillar.
“Don’t get mad,” she says, “but the camera recorded everything.”
Tim’s face falls. “I thought it was just part of your outfit?”
Ziggy grins impishly. Tim’s yo-yo flies out of his pocket, the red panic of his conscience always jumping between them.
“But if you show people,” he says, “the boys will know who drugged them.”
“I’ve done this before,” says Ziggy. “I can easily disguise all of our identities.”
“But the GoPro films things from inside a fishbowl! Everyone will know it was you!”
“I can do a lens adjustment in postproduction!”
The yo-yo hits the floor and licks sickly across it. “And what if the boys recognize themselves? Won’t they feel dehumanized?”
“That was the whole point!”
“Oh dear.” Tim stares ahead, squirming with anguish, as if only now realizing what they have done. “I guess I figured they would wake up thinking they’d had a spontaneous gay moment.”
A small space in Ziggy’s heart cracks open for overture. “I can cover up their faces if you really want me to?”
Tim crosses his arms. “I thought the purpose of the GoPro was just to be an objective witness?”
“That’s what making a movie is . . .” Ziggy’s voice whittles with insincerity.
“Movies aren’t objective,” he says bluntly. “And anyway, this is more like a snuff film.”
He gives her one final chastising look, and then walks back around the pillar. Ziggy follows glumly behind. Lex is now standing at the ticket machines, mumbling to herself. Ziggy hears snippets. Something about fake white girls and their molly humanity, and rich white boys with their heirloom Rolexes, keeping patriarchal time. She hears her own name, and Tessa’s too. Ziggy wonders if Lex is always laughing at her friends. If this is how she tolerates them, and why. Ziggy is suddenly self-conscious; a strange sense of feeling naked in her clothes, both seen and unseen. An outline. She feels a mix of awe and anger toward the aspiring rapper. For having her own mysterious life-world. For dehumanizing all of them, and making Ziggy feel like maybe she really should delete her footage.
Hovering over the boys, the rest of their group now seems restless.
“Should we go back upstairs?” suggests Tessa.
“Totally,” says Cate. “It’s our year-ten formal; we should be dancing our fucking faces off.”
WHEN THEY GET THERE, Ziggy is surprised to see that the dance floor is still packed. Every type of Kandara girl is represented. Goths dance next to rugby jerseys; bar
e thighs grind beside someone who thought it would be funny to wear a panda suit. It isn’t exactly queer, but it is diverse in its details. A charm bracelet jangles in the air, strung with elements from the periodic table; a chubby girl in a tight white onesie body-rolls with abandon like an endless stream of pouring milk. When Ziggy looks over, Eamon is teaching Tim to moonwalk. It seems they are going to be friends, which might mean the same for her and Tessa. Disappointingly, the male date rape doesn’t appear to have brought Lex any closer; her wounds must be more profound. Still, something is stopping Ziggy from saying sorry. Some combination of shame, hurt, and a sense of futility. That the sorry will be ongoing, a mantra that defines her forever in Lex’s mind. She knows it’s a small-hearted response, but that’s all the space Ziggy feels she has been given.
As the dancing gets wilder, her peers no longer seem so tribal and exclusive. Their bold body rolls and vivid gyrations make them look both distinct and unified in their chaos. It reminds Ziggy of something the guru once said about teenagers. That they were hyper-present: always on the brink of transformation. Like old people, her mother might say. Teenagers fill themselves up, and old people let themselves go. Like Tessa said: all stories try to solve this inner emptiness. Like Shuni said. Only in the flux, in stupid dance moves and other rare moments beyond self, does Ziggy feel she belongs to the world. In those flashes of presence. That pure, eternal place where Ziggy will one day meet her grandmother in Bondi Junction.
As she dances, Ziggy notices the vast sky through the cube’s tall windows. Its deep indigo glows like a notion. An unknown entity beckoning, as if the future itself was there just beyond the glass. Ziggy does a little spin and the GoPro wonks on her head, silly as a loose tooth. She slips it off.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my agent, Susan Golomb; my editor, Megan Lynch; and her assistant, Emma Dries. Thank you also to my “aunt,” Ziva Freiman, whose generosity, support, and friendship made so much of this work possible. Thank you to my New York family, Jonathan and Hannah Katz, and my Australian one. Especially my brother, Paul, and my parents, John and Jutka, for all they have given me; most importantly their love, support, and a sense of humor.
About the Author
LEXI FREIMAN is a fiction editor and a recent Columbia University MFA grad. She was a Center for Fiction Writing Fellow in 2013 and has published in The Literary Review. Before moving to New York, she was an actress with Australia’s national Shakespeare company, where she performed roles such as Celia from As You Like It, Lady Capulet from Romeo and Juliet, and Thaisa from Pericles, all at the Sydney Opera House.
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Copyright
INAPPROPRIATION. Copyright © 2018 by Lexi Freiman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Emojis in text by Carboxylase/Shutterstock, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freiman, Lexi, author.
Title: Inappropriation : a novel / Lexi Freiman.
Description: First edition. | New York : Ecco, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017042690 (print) | LCCN 2017057307 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062699756 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062699732 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Self-realization in women--Fiction. | Identity (Psychology)--Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Coming of Age. | FICTION / Satire. | GSAFD: Humorous fiction. | Satire.
Classification: LCC PR9619.4.F785 (ebook) | LCC PR9619.4.F785 I53 2018 (print) | DDC 823/.92--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042690
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Digital Edition JULY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-269975-6
Version 06142018
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-269973-2
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