Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman

Author:Lexi Freiman [Freiman, Lexi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Part Two

Chapter 8

In the morning Jeff stands at the counter, furiously shoveling in his raisin bran. He points to the GoPro.

“That’s Jacob’s.”

“I’m just borrowing it.”

“Did you ask him?”

“I’ll text him.”

“He’s at Model UN.”

“So I’ll text him,” Ziggy says snidely. “It’s only Model UN.”

Ruth wanders out into the living room, nodding sleepily at Jeff’s cereal bowl.

“His raisin d’être,” she says in a dopey voice, touched with dejection. Ziggy watches her father devour his breakfast cereal with disturbing animus. He brings the bowl up to his face and power-scoops the remaining flakes. Ruth clears away last night’s empty beer bottles. The breakfast scene conjures up the murky pathos of watching a dictatorship resign its power to the military. Ziggy’s sympathy is reserved for the children.

From her bedroom, she watches Jeff jog across the driveway to his Audi. The wind is icy, but her father lowers the roof and places a green baseball cap on his head. Lime green. With an unfamiliar triangle logo like some arcane insignia. Ziggy pictures a long chandeliered dining hall with robed men and underage boys. Which is homophobic and way too Hollywood. She checks herself; Jeff is only an accountant.

Ziggy sneaks out the front door without saying good-bye to her mother. At the front gates, she sees two primary-school boys approaching along the pavement. Ziggy waits for them to pass, watching as she pretends to aim the camera at a kookaburra sitting fat and lordly on the fence post. When the boys are safely at the corner, she hears the words “Google Glass,” then, “head injury.” Knowing she has disturbed them, Ziggy steps confidently onto the street. The GoPro makes her feel tall and brainy and in a rush to get somewhere. On the bus, she ducks (unnecessarily) into a side-facing seat, and stares brazenly at the other passengers. Her head seems to swell, like Ziggy’s whole body has jumped inside her skull, the organs pumping courage at her temples. She smiles at a gawking year-seven girl, and for the first time, Ziggy doesn’t worry if she seems male or female or gay.

At the school gates, Ziggy connects her phone and watches the GoPro footage in real time. The fish-eye effect gives Kandara’s grounds the neat, picture-book smallness of binocular-view from the wrong end. It makes her giddy, regaining that sense of omnipotence, like a little kid.

By the lockers, girls eye her suspiciously. Cate gives Ziggy a soft diagnosis of “attention seeker,” while Kate’s is more pointed: “pervert psychopath.” Both girls seem on edge. Ziggy studies Kate’s nostrils, magnified on her own phone. There, on the left: a cruddy pinch of cover-up, which means Kate has a zit. Girls are so vulnerable it’s pathetic.

“Scared I’ll film your third nostril?” Ziggy says, a little light-headed. Like she has just pulled her pants down in a dream. Like she has suddenly started masturbating but knows it’s a dream so will probably just keep going. Then make herself fly. Or punch someone. An avataristic freedom.

Kate’s face shocks white, with blue tinges of umbrage.

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