0_hotgirlAmy_0: Oh.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I just wish… he hadn’t done that. I mean I really wanted to talk to you this week and u weren’t online…
Dominxxika_N39: What happen this week?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Whatever, it’s no big deal.
Dominxxika_N39: Big deal to me, please tell.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I mean…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s just. I’ve been thinking about Archangel Michael.
Dominxxika_N39: He whisper again to you?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Maybe…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I dunno.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It really doesn’t matter. I just thought you didn’t like me anymore.
Dominxxika_N39: I do like you anymore! Please believe me.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I guess when you stopped talking to me. Then the thing at school, so…
Dominxxika_N39: What thing at school? I am very interested to hear.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: It’s kinda hard… to talk about.
Dominxxika_N39: O my so-cute Amy, I here and listen so much for you. Please share the hard thing at school with me.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Just. Other stuff. With the girls.
Dominxxika_N39: Yes?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: I was wearing these sweatpants for gym class. We had to play softball. And it was my turn to bat. And they were taking extra long, between them, the girls I mean. One of them was pitcher and the other, behind me, the catcher. They were looking at each other and I could feel something was up. And our gym teacher, Mr Brooks (who’s also the football coach), he was like, come on girls, let’s not take all day here. So she wound up her pitch and threw the ball and I swung and I hit it, and – the girl behind me, the catcher, she just, um…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: …she…
0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down my sweatpants.
Dominxxika_N39: This is strange gesture in circumstances.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: She pulled down everything – like everything, like my underwear too. And everyone saw.
Dominxxika_N39: This is clear violation! What Mr Brooks do as responsible leader?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: He just acted like nothing happened! I mean I dunno, maybe he didn’t see it, it was kinda quick. I pulled them back up right away, so…
Dominxxika_N39: He is surely pretending blindness as strategy to maintain prescribed hierarchy.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: That’s what I was thinking too! He had to have seen it! But I dunno, he just started yelling at me to run to first base, and everyone was yelling at me too, and I dunno, in the moment, I just totally zonked out, I just… ran to first base. Then I could hear this hooting, “Let’s get Amy all the way!” And Mr Brooks was yelling out “Keep running, Amy!” – so I dunno I just started up running again. Then everyone was shouting “First base! Second base! Third base!” “Mmmmyeah go all the way for me, Amy!”
Dominxxika_N39: I know this pressure system.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: …You said Archangel Michael comes in the hour of your death?
Dominxxika_N39: This is true.
0_hotgirlAmy_0: Well, as I was running, and everyone was yelling, and sticking their tongues between their fingers, well, he was whispering to me… I felt like I was blind maybe. Everything was quiet. And white.
Dominxxika_N39: What Archangel Michael whisper?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: …He was whispering:
0_hotgirlAmy_0: “Go online, Amy, go online…”
0_hotgirlAmy_0: When I came home, my mom was bitching at me for skipping school again. Cause I’m getting a D in gym class now cause I skip classes or I just stand in the corner and don’t participate. She’s like, Amy who gets a D in gym! It’s gym! I don’t even talk back anymore. I just wait for her to be done, then I say I gotta do my homework, cause in my head, he’s still whispering to me, and cleaning up the noise all around me, so it’s quiet and white. He keeps saying, “Amy, go online…”
Get ur freak on
The school bus picked Zorka up on the corner of Dexter Avenue and 24th Street. She waited there with another girl who was a sophomore, long blonde hair, thick fringe. Sometimes the girl wore jean-shorts and a sweatshirt that said Abercrombie & Fitch across the chest, which to Zorka looked like the name of two scientists who had conceived an anti-virus. Then she wore a baby-blue T-shirt with the word “GAP” written on it, which Zorka deduced to be an acronym for some sort of government service. On warmer days, she wore a melon-green tank-top, with pink bra straps crossed beneath the tank’s straps, and faded blue jeans with a flower patch at the knee. Zorka wasn’t sure what to make of her then.
Soon enough though she got the hint. True capitalism was all about names on stuff, on clothes, on notebooks, on cars, on backpacks, on shoes. Tammie bought Zorka a powder rose zip-up top that said “Hollister” on it, and a pair of flared L.E.I. jeans. When Zorka tried the outfit on, the jeans bagged oddly right below her buttocks, and the zip-up drew everyone’s eyes to the patched letters that puffed out in awkward angles around Zorka’s flat chest.
Zorka said thank you, went back to the garage, undressed and put her own clothes back on.
It was a big high school with a web of groups and subgroups, and yet Zorka could not quite be placed into its network. Her figure beneath the layers of men’s shirts had promise – long legs and a straight neck. Her face too was clear, dark brows arching up, strong pupils, no pimples, high cheekbones. But her oddly cropped hair, with a nuanced duck-tail that she let grow until some called it a mullet, made it impossible to call the girl “hot”. A couple of the punk kids tested out the potential of this girl to belong to their group, but when she said, “Get lost, hedgehog,” they gave her space.
Zorka was not a geek, and she was not a punk, she was not a goth, she was not smart or stupid, she was not hot or ugly, she wasn’t a prude or a ho, she was a fully fledged loner, and by the spring of her junior year the Columbine shooting had happened, and some kids started whispering at her when she passed, “Don’t shoot us!”
Meghan told Kaylee that she heard the girl hated Americans and America, and that she was military trained because in those countries they start the army when they are children. Kaylee agreed and was grateful we now had metal detectors. But then at lunch, the whole table was taking turns guessing how deformed Zorka’s breasts might be if she always wore such baggy shirts. Meghan said that one boob was most likely a totally different shape from the other. Then Kaylee said that one of them was definitely like a little flappy pancake. The discussion continued until it was decided that they were closest to goat-teats, just then Jared said, “Hey, what if they’re not real. I mean what if they’re like bombs?”
Gejza had installed a TV in the garage and Zorka stayed in for hours after school watching the cable channels, MTV and VH1, every now and then getting off her bed, dancing to the music with her fists and elbows, then lying back down.
Tammie was making popcorn for their movie night. Her regular movie-night schedule was primarily “French films”, her favourite genre. She was eager to watch the last Truffaut she had not yet seen, she had been eyeing the VHS at Blockbuster, the jacket cover of Fanny Ardant leaning over a young Gerard Depardieu, both troubled and aroused, but Tammie decided it was important for Zorka and her mother to improve their English and gain an understanding of the American culture, so she put off renting The Woman Next Door and opted for Sleepless in Seattle, It Could Happen to You, Jerry Maguire… She selected films she thought represented America for its character of hope and strong values, films where children set up adults, where adults meet on planes and show up at each other’s doorsteps wet from the rain, where women say “I love you” and men say “I love you” back.