Lunatic Fringe (4 page)

“
Now, using this definition
as your only basis here, not radio shock jocks, not faux news
correspondents, not your dads, your uncles, or even your
mothers--How many of you are feminists?”

Each hand in the class raised, some
eager, some tentative, but they all went up. Even
Lexie’s.

“
Yes you are,” Whitmeyer
concluded. “Just by being here in this room, seeking to expand your
understanding of the world and develop an open and critical mind
about social status-quo, you are performing a feminist act. And in
these next four months, we’re going to find out why that
matters.”

The sun was hot and the sky clear as
Lexie walked out of the Sociology building and headed for the
student union to check her email and grab a cup of coffee. Behind
her, she heard Duane’s familiar voice, now attempting to charm two
new girls from class, the polka-dot dress wearer and her
friend.

“
Well, it still is a
controversial term to many people,” he said, though he kept his
voice down, as if gauging the acceptance of the women who flanked
him.

“
That’s because many people
are idiots,” the brunette responded in a chipper
cadence.

“
Or ignorant,” the other
girl concluded with a shrug.

The brunette continued, “I blame the
media.”

“
No, it’s the politicians,”
her friend opined. “Men who are so threatened by equality they’ll
vilify the word rather than fight us with facts.”

“
I don’t think it’s just
men, though,” Duane interjected. “I mean look at all the women in
the class who were skeeved out by the word.”

“
But it
is
the men,” the brunette insisted.
“
They’re
the ones
who taught women to fear the word.
They’re
the ones who’ve removed the
word ‘equality’ from the definition and pretended it was something
else. The status quo hates feminism because it fights for the
rights all minority groups, not just women. None of us, including
you, would even be getting an education without the work of
feminists.”

Duane nodded. “Trust me, I get it.
Powerful women control my life,” he chuckled. It was the kind of
light joke that men usually groaned at and laughed along with. The
girls he walked with, however, just looked at him
blankly.

“
Listen, anyone who can’t
see the symbiosis between the civil rights movement and feminism is
blind, stupid, or Republican,” Duane said, struggling to salvage
the tenuous camaraderie. An awkward silence fell on the three
momentarily. Lexie considered it her chance to break ahead and
disappear into the quad.

“
That’s redundant,” Hazel
said, knocking him the shoulder. The three laughed and started once
again on their walk, closing in. Lexie quickened her pace, nearly
jogging, her books tucked tightly under her arm. It was too late,
though, as she heard Duane shout from behind her, “Hey,
Lexie!”

She bit her lip as the three caught up
with her. The spunky, darker one threw elevator eyes from behind
her huge plastic sunglasses, then draped her arm around her
companion’s waist. She looked like a miniature version of an
old-fashioned pinup girl. Her friend wore a beatific smile, angelic
curls bobbing against her cheeks.

“
You running late?” Duane
asked. Lexie looked into his eyes, then glanced away. She felt like
a trapped animal, desperate for a burrow, a shrub, or a stone
beneath which to crawl.

“
I didn’t know you were
going to be in this class,” Duane continued.

“
Yeah, well. Lots to
learn,” Lexie said.

“
No kidding,” the brunette
said, rocking back and forth on her heels.

“
Why are you in it?” she
asked Duane, trying to ignore the curious gazes of the women
standing next to him.

“
Like you, lots to learn.
Way better than learning about the world through a series of wars
and genocides. Plus, I’ve been considering gynecology as a backup,
so this’ll be a good education for me.”

“
Like a mechanic that
doesn’t own a car,” the one with the curls joked, enough under her
breath to indicate at least partial conviction.

“
No ma’am, more like a
piano virtuoso cursed with deafness,” he said with mocking
self-pity. The pin-up cracked her gum, ignoring Duane’s paltry
attempts at charm.

“
You’re Lexie?” the
sweet-faced one asked, her perfect white teeth glinting in the
sun.

Lexie froze like a startled
squirrel.

“
You know her?” Duane
asked.

She continued, ignoring Duane. “Blythe
told us she met you last week.”

“
How do you guys know each
other?” the pin-up asked Lexie.

“
We went to high school
together in Wolf Creek,” Duane answered.

Lexie smoothed her hand over her hair,
trying create some order out of the uncombed mess. Her migraine had
swelled to the edges of her eyes. She hated being compared to
Duane. Her averageness was only magnified by Duane’s perfection,
and she feared these two girls would make assumptions about her
based on Duane’s charisma. She shifted her weight as the girls gave
her the once-over.

“
I’m Jenna.” The angelic
girl placed an open palm on her chest, bare and freckled where it
peeked out of the scooped neckline of her cotton tunic. Her skin
was the color of birch, her eyes a yellow-tinged blue.

“
I’m Hazel,” the pin-up
said, before blowing a bubble with her gum. Lexie wondered if
Hazel’s eyes were, indeed, hazel, but couldn’t tell, as the giant
sunglasses swallowed up the whole of her small face except for her
berry-stained lips, and clear, pale forehead.

“
You’re coming to the
brunch, then?” Jenna asked, a brightness in her eyes that indicated
either genuine loveliness or high-grade pharmaceuticals.

After enough silence dangled from that
question to make everyone uncomfortable, Hazel chimed in
irreverently, “Oh my god, you’re so shy.”

Lexie spoke louder than necessary, “I’m
not shy.” Out of a need to disprove the accusation, she continued
the conversation. “Will you be there?”

“
Yeah, of course. We all
will. We’re a family,” Jenna nodded earnestly.
Bounce
,
bounce
went the curls.

Family?
Lexie thought. What an odd way to refer to
friends. Terrifying. Exciting.

“
Come to the brunch. You’ll
meet the rest,” Jenna said, nodding and bouncing.

“
The rest of what?” Lexie
asked.

“
The Pack,” Jenna said,
tilting her head. “You did meet Blythe, right?” Her forehead was
scrunched up with authentic concern.

Lexie stumbled to answer, “Yeah, sure.
She and her, uh, Mitch, helped me move in last week.”

“
She invited you over,
yeah?” Jenna said a bit too slow, as if struggling to communicate
with a non-English speaker.

“
Brunch. Saturday.” Lexie
tried to prove she wasn’t as stupid as she suddenly
felt.

Hazel chimed in, “We’re the Pack, and
we call our house the Den. I think it’s bullshit tribal jingoism,
but whatever.”

“
Hazel,” Jenna scolded, but
Hazel dismissed the reprimand with a puff of air and a flick of her
hand.

Duane laughed. “A pack of
hyenas?”

The girls bristled. Lexie noticed.
Duane didn’t.

“
Alright, enough of you,”
Hazel said.

Hazel zeroed-in on Lexie’s increasing
discomfort. “Don’t worry, you’ve already met half of us. There are
only three left, and they’re kittens.”

Lexie was surprised at her relief.
“Oh,” she said and then after a moment, “Sure.”

“
Excellent,” Jenna’s smile
widened. Hazel clapped twice and did a small jump. She threw her
slender arms around Lexie.

“
That sounds like fun,”
Duane said.

“
You’re not invited.” Hazel
released Lexie, and her demeanor chilled, like a waitress at the
end of a long shift.

“
What if I’m gender
non-conforming?” Duane asked.

“
Nice try, frat boy,” Jenna
said.

“
I’m sorry for my dumb
comment. Hyenas are matriarchal and--”

“
Whatever,” Hazel said.
“I’m over it.”

“
Come on, Lexie. We’ll walk
you to the cafe.” Jenna put her arm around Lexie’s shoulders as
they left Duane on his way.

So this is what it’s like
to be chosen
, Lexie thought as she walked
with the women away from Duane.
This is
what I asked for. This is what I hoped for
,
she repeated like a mantra. It felt more like a death knell
signaling her doom. If she could take it back, she would run back
to her father’s house, get a job at a diner, and call it a life.
But she’d been swept away in a river of expectations and ideals,
and she was faced with the classic evolutionary dilemma: adapt or
die.

Chapter 4

Blythe’s house was on the western edge
of campus, just beyond the library and dining halls. The
cornflower-blue sky bid Lexie to leave her truck at the dorm and
walk. After five days of unrelenting stimuli, she had finally
managed to catch up on sleep, despite the bedlam in the hallway
outside her room the night prior. The students had wasted no time
in taking full advantage of their newfound freedom, partying with
kegs and blaring music. Throughout the evening, revelry clanged
throughout the campus, a celebration of the freedom that would soon
become shackles, tying students to their books, schedules, and
reputations for the next nine months.

Lexie’s dormmates had made sculptures
with handfuls of the free condoms given out by the Safer Sex
Center, filling them with water, blowing them up like balloons and
tying them in strange configurations. In their packages they looked
fun and lively, like latex lollipops. Released from their
wrappings, they became pathetic creatures whose natural habitats
were, indeed, where one was often likely to find them, like parking
lots or littered gutters. In the lobby, students had spent the
whole night playing a spirited game of Truth or Dare, compelling
many of the dared to run naked across the lawn outside Lexie’s
window. Lexie had received invitations to these parties, as well as
a few tamer snack-and-chat nights, but in spite of the resolution
she’d made just days before, she only smiled a “maybe later” to
them all.

As she made her way through the patch
of carefully cultivated trees in the town square, a familiar chill
stirred her shirttails and wafted up the cuffs of her jeans. It was
around this time ten years ago that her mother started staying away
from the house for longer and longer periods of time. Though Summer
would often not come home at night and be gone for days at a
stretch, without a word to anyone, Lexie’s parents never fought
about it. Lexie recalled those disconcerting nights when she’d be
tucked into bed by her sweet-faced, raven-haired mother, only to
hear a series of doors squeak open and closed: bedrooms, cabinets,
the hall closet to retrieve a coat, and finally, the front door.
The sounds heralded her mother’s disappearance for yet another
night. Her father never protested; he had always been a man of few
words, even back when he was happy.

After the elusive Summer Pace had
finally left for good, Lexie spent months blaming her father for
not making her mother stay. She knew it wasn’t his fault even then,
but she couldn’t help but wish for him to unbridle himself from his
classical masculine restraint and become the kind of man who fought
for what was his. Though Summer never belonged to him, Lexie would
have liked to believe that her mother belonged to her, and that
Lexie was worth fighting for, or at least sticking around
for.

Turning the corner onto Umpqua Road,
Lexie spotted the massive Victorian house that belonged to the
Pack. Or rather, she heard it: laughter, conversation and music
stacked in layers on top of one another, like hastily shuffled
cards. As she approached the house, she saw that it edged up onto
the forest. Between the deck and the tree line, a couple dozen
women milled about on the grass, lounged in lawn chairs, and picked
over folding tables that held platters of food.

Sunshine filtered through towering
storm clouds, shaped and reshaped by an autumnal breeze. A fire pit
sat at the far edge of the lawn, the A-frame of fresh, dry logs
waiting for dusk and their chance to shine. Beyond the pit, a worn
path led into the woods. Lexie scanned the crowd for familiar faces
until she spotted Mitch manning--womaning?--the barbecue. Her
dimples flashed as she flipped burgers and spun spatulas like a
juggler in a gustatory vaudeville act.

A warm hand enveloped Lexie’s shoulder
from behind. Blythe smiled as she leaned forward, icicles of blond
hair falling softly against the frames of her glasses. The lenses
glinted in the storm-filtered sunlight.

“
Lexie, I’m glad you came.”
Blythe reached around her chest for a hug. Blythe’s beer, cold and
wet, skimmed Lexie’s arm as she pulled away.