by Ariel Kaplan
“That’s why I’m leaving UVA. I need more time to expand my brand. The way I figure it, if I can maximize my exposure for two, three years, I can live off the profits for ten.”
“That is great!” I said. “Maximizing your brand exposure sounds way more important than sitting in class all day.” Someone kicked me under the table. Based on the size of the foot, it was either Delia or my mother.
My father set down his drink. “So…um…not to pick a fight, but how is this not a copyright violation?”
“It’s all under fair use,” he said. “I cover my ass.”
“Look at you! Covering your ass, wow. That’s. That’s super impressive,” I said. I pulled out my phone. “I’ve really got to look at this, like, right now. What’s your YouTube handle?”
“Um. FilmHaxLolz.”
“No way. I…ha, ha…I see what you did there. That is so…cool….” I pulled it up and clicked on the top video, which was a scene from Gladiator. I turned the volume up. Possibly higher than was strictly necessary. Russell Crowe died in the mud to the sound of emotive pop crooning. To be fair, it was actually pretty funny and it had like 35,000 likes. Mostly I was mad that I hadn’t thought of it first, even though I still wasn’t sure how the clicks turned into actual dollars.
Across the table, Delia was shoveling spicy beef into her mouth as rapidly as possible. Mom’s chopsticks had slid off her plate and into her lap, and Kit was laughing at the video with his mouth full of chicken. To the waiter, Dad said, “Can I get another beer?”
* * *
—
Back at home, Kit went up for a bath, Delia and Sebastian went downstairs—I don’t like to think why—while Mom and Dad puttered around the kitchen loading the dishes from earlier in the day.
“Academia’s dead,” Dad said after he finished rinsing the griddle he’d used to make Kit’s Saturday grilled cheese sandwich. “I’m so glad someone’s around to blow the dust off our moldering corpses and tell us these things.”
“I spent eight years in college,” Mom said. “All I needed was a YouTube channel.”
“And the foresight to knock off George Michael,” I added.
“You,” she said, “were not helping.”
“You told me to be nice!”
“We may need to discuss what that actually means. Sheesh. I remember before that song was a joke.”
“It’s not a joke,” Dad protested. “Is it a joke?”
I made a so-so motion with my hand. “It’s okay. Nobody expects you to know this stuff when you’re as out of touch with modern life as you are.”
Mom put a box of crackers in the pantry, put her hands over her face, and let out a strangled noise. “This is fine,” she said. “This is totally fine.”
“Do you want me to get you a pillow to scream into?” I asked.
“No, no. I’m good. My daughter’s boyfriend is making bank. That’s good, right? I mean, you want your kids to have more than you.”
I got up and brought her a throw pillow from the couch.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “Just let it out.”
“I don’t need to scream into a pillow,” she said.
“Do it.”
“I’m good.”
“Do it. You know you want to.”
“I do want to,” she said. “Should I?”
“You totally should.” She took the pillow from me, pressed it to her face, and screamed. Dad said, “Feel better?”
Lifting her face, she said, “No.”
“It could be worse,” I said. “I mean, he could be in jail. As it is, he’s only a vacuous douchenozzle.”
“I’m not sure that’s worse. What’s he in jail for? Is it drugs? I think I’d be okay with drugs.”
“Mom.”
“It’s okay,” Dad said. “I’m sure she’ll dump him as soon as he gets sued by George Michael.”
“It’s fair use, old man. Plus, I think maybe he died?”
Just then, we were disturbed to hear the distinctive sounds of Delia’s bed thumping against the wall.
Perhaps, I thought, it was not too late to insist that Man Bun sleep in a tent out in the yard. Or at the local campground. Or in Greenland.
“Oh my God,” Mom said, perhaps regretting her choice to be a Cool Parent. I thought about pointing this out before realizing it was not in my best interest to do so.
“Is that…is that for real?” I wheezed.
“I’m going out,” Dad said, making a beeline for the front door. “I need. Something. I need something.”
“I need something, too,” Mom said. “Badly. I don’t know what it is, but I need it right now.” As I started to put on my own shoes, she said, “Stay here with your brother.”
“What?”
“He’s in the tub.”
“But I don’t want to—”
“Thanks,” she said, following my dad out the door. From the basement, there was an especially loud thunk. I was glad Kit was upstairs, at least. What were they thinking? “For offering to babysit while we get our, uh, our things. I appreciate that.”
“Mom!”
“You’re so nice,” she said. “Don’t you think she’s nice, Gordon?”
“The nicest,” Dad said.
“I hate you both.”
They closed the door, and I went upstairs, both to get out of earshot of my sister’s sexytimes and to keep my baby brother from coming down in the middle of said sexytimes. My phone buzzed with a text from Bethany. It said, Can I come over?
I texted back, You really, really don’t want to. And then I turned off my phone and went to make sure Kit hadn’t drowned.
The next day, unsurprisingly, my parents came up with excuses to be on campus.
“I have to finish grading my finals,” Mom said. “There’s no way I can do that with six people in the house.”
I knew Dad had already finished grading his finals, but he just said, “Those tax records won’t decipher themselves,” and then they both vanished, leaving me alone with my brother, my sister, and the shining star of FilmHaxLolz.
Delia, at least, had the good grace to sleep in. Kit, on the other hand, flung open the door to my bedroom, to which I’d retreated after my seven o’clock oatmeal. He was carrying a stack of paper and a box of crayons.
“Draw me a mooshroom,” he said.
I was typing—working on a history essay—and went back to it. “Are we doing a reenactment of The Little Prince?”
“Please,” he said flatly.
I pushed away from my desk. “Fine, but I need cookies for this,” I said, and we went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, me with the box of crayons, Kit with a box of Chips Ahoy! for encouragement. “Why am I drawing a mooshroom?” I asked. At least his rash looked a little better today, which was kind of a relief. “Why aren’t you drawing a mooshroom?”
For the Minecraft-uninitiated, a mooshroom is some kind of unholy union between a cow and a mushroom. Instead of milk, it makes mushroom stew. Or mooshroom stew. Or something like that; I’m not really sure. It’s either very clever or downright horrifying, depending on how you look at it. Kit said, “I told Kyle P. about mooshrooms on the bus, but his mom won’t let him play Minecraft ’cause she says it’s too violent, and he said I was making it up, and you draw better than me, so if I show him a really good drawing of a mooshroom, he’ll know they’re real. Well, real in the game.”
“Minecraft’s too violent?” I asked.
“Because of the mobs.”
“Ah.” I nodded thoughtfully. “Right.” I sketched out a Guernsey cow with red and white mushrooms on its back. Her back, actually, since all mooshrooms appear to be female. There are no bullshrooms. Which is something, actually. Minecraft has no male animals at all. Yet any two of them can reproduce. I wonder sometimes what the d
eveloper was trying to say with that.
“Here you are,” I said, handing over the drawing. “One mooshroom.”
“Thanks,” he said, admiring it. It was, I have to admit, pretty good. “Is he really staying three weeks?” he asked, flopping down on the floor. Walnut had wandered over, and Kit mashed his face into his upturned belly.
“Get your face out of the cat. Yeah, that’s what Dad said.”
“My friends aren’t allowed to sleep over for three weeks,” he said, sitting up a little.
“No, they sure aren’t.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, not especially.”
“Is it ’cause Delia doesn’t live here anymore?”
“Yeah, probably. And he lives far away.”
“Where’s Denver?”
“Jeez, really?”
“You don’t have to be mean about it.”
I pulled up a map of the United States on my phone and stuck a finger toward the middle. “Denver,” I said. “Capital of…”
“Uh. Canada?”
I leaned back in my chair just as Delia and Sebastian came up from the basement.
“Who’s going to Canada?” Sebastian asked.
“Apparently you are,” I said.
“Do they have YouTube in Canada?” Kit asked.
“That’s a good question,” Sebastian said. “As a matter of fact, fair-use laws aren’t consistent internationally, so some of my videos aren’t available overseas.”
“Is Canada overseas, though?” Delia asked. “I mean, there’s no sea. It’s more like…”
“Over-glacier,” I said.
“Is there really a glacier?” Kit asked.
“Yes, but it’s farther north. Do you have an atlas?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you have one?” I asked Delia.
“I have an old one of Dad’s, but it still has the USSR and East Germany in it.”
“What’s the USSR?” Kit asked.
“Long story,” I said. “Communism. Empire. Babushkas. It’s mostly Russia now.” My phone buzzed with a text from my mother: I left my Eng203 finals on my desk.
I said, Isn’t that the whole reason you went to campus?
Well, I have the others, just not those. Any chance you could run them over?
Fine, I said. It’s not like I have any homework to do.
Can you ask Delia to do it, then?
I could have, but then I would have been stuck at home with Sebastian. I said, It’s fine, I’ll do it.
“I have to take Mom some exams,” I said. “Can you hang with Kit?”
“Of course we can,” Delia said.
“You want to watch some of my videos, man?” Sebastian asked.
Kit said, “Do you like Minecraft?”
* * *
—
I dropped off the file of exams with my mother half an hour later. It was weird being on campus on a Sunday right after finals; there were still kids around, but they were kind of wandering aimlessly, like gravity had pulled them there even though there really wasn’t anything to do. I guess they were there to meet with advisors or drop off overdue term papers, looking, depending on the person, either exhausted or overly buzzed.
I’d practically grown up on the GMU campus; Mom and Dad had taken the jobs there when I was three. Before that they’d been at the University of Delaware, which I didn’t remember. I’d spent plenty of school vacations watching videos in my mom’s office, or when I was too little to be left alone, Dad would sometimes stick me in the front of the lecture hall with a stack of picture books. I never read them, though. Listening to Dad was always more fun, even if I didn’t know what he was talking about half the time. Once, when I was home with a cold and he was unable to get a babysitter, he took me with him to teach some class on medieval Britain, and I fell asleep during his lecture on the Battle of Hastings. When I woke up and found out that Harold lost, I bawled in front of the entire class. I was kind of famous in the department after that, which was pretty embarrassing, although it’s better than Kit, who once peed on the head of the English department.
After I dropped off the exams, my phone rang while I was in the ladies’ room washing my hands. It was Bethany, and she was trying to do a video chat, which was weird because Bethany never uses video chat. Like, she despises it. But I opened it and said, “Hey, there’s your face.”
She looked like she’d just woken up. “Aphra,” she said. “The date.”
“The date?”
“I have my date with Greg! It’s today!”
“Okay?”
“We’re going to the movies!”
“Yeah, I’m the one who helped you set it up. Why are you freaking out?”
“I don’t know what to wear, or what to put on my face, or what to freaking say to him!”
“Well, talk about crew. I don’t know.”
“What am I going to say about crew? Hey, man, how about rowing that boat, did you manage not to eat your oar half a dozen times this week? There’s no conversation there.”
“Then talk about chemistry? Aren’t you in class together?”
“I can’t talk to him about chemistry!”
“Ugh, Bethany, I don’t know. Tell him his eyes are pretty.”
“I can’t tell him that! Do guys even like hearing that?”
The truth was, I had no idea, but I suspected Greg would be happy with any kind of compliment from Bethany. I said, “He’ll love it. Tell him his eyes are pretty and you want to kiss his neck.”
“His neck?”
“Well, you do, right?”
“Can you come over and help me get ready?” She pointed to some spot on her cheek. “Look. I have a zit, it’s horrible, can you see it? You can probably see it from space. Can you see it from space?”
It was barely visible. “You’re right! I heard about it on the radio this morning. The guys on the International Space Station wanted to bomb it from orbit.”
“Aphra.”
“Just don’t pop it,” I said. “Your head might collapse.”
“You suck. Are you coming over later?”
“All right,” I said. “I’m on campus, but I’ll call you in a little bit.” I hung up.
You know that second where your phone goes black, and you’re left looking at your reflection in it? That’s what happened then. The phone went black, just for a second, before my lock screen came back up, and I was caught off guard by the version of my face that looked back at me. Maybe it was because I’d just been looking at Bethany’s face, which was perfect from every angle. I don’t know. But at that moment, I looked like some kind of ghoul: pale, with big bags under my eyes, too much nose, and too little mouth. Was that really what I looked like, or was it some trick of technology?
There was no trick. It was a reflection, that was all. Even if the angle was bad and the lighting was not the best, that was a real representation of me. When Greg looked at me, that was what he saw.
I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, then stood staring at myself in the mirror until my face stopped making sense. Faces are weird in general. Was mine empirically any weirder than anyone else’s?
Yes, it was.
A few sinks down from me, two girls were fixing their eyeliner and having an animated conversation about some party and some boys they were so sure would be there, and whose room would be better for the pre-party. I guess the point of the pre-party is to get drunk before the actual party so if it sucks you are unaware of it. Or something.
“Are you going?” one of them asked me, because I was so obviously eavesdropping. “There’s going to be a lot of English majors there.”
I blinked at her a few times. She looked a little familiar, and for as often as I was in this building visitin
g Mom, she probably figured I was another student. I was there, I was about the right age, it made sense. I didn’t really want to out myself as a faculty kid (ew), so I said, “I don’t know.”
“You should,” she said. “You know Tim Curran?”
I did not. But I nodded anyway.
“He just made high honors on his senior thesis, and he’s buying all the top-drawer stuff for the rest of the department. The password at the bar is Zora Neale Hurston.”
“Password at the bar?” I said, imagining a world in which incanting the name of ZNH got you good-quality booze at a frat party.
“He’s not buying for everyone,” she explained.
“Where did you say this was?”
She held her hand out palm up, and I gave her my phone. She put an address in on Maps. It looked like it was about three blocks from campus. “Thanks,” I said, though I wasn’t really sure why I’d asked. What did I want to go to a party with a bunch of strangers for? A bunch of strange English majors.
“See you later,” she said, and then she and her friend left.
I really couldn’t go. Anyway, I’d promised Bethany I’d help her get ready, whatever that meant. Probably she’d need help picking out an outfit, and then at the last minute she’d wear something else anyway. Maybe she’d need help doing her eyes. She was really bad at that.
Just then, my phone began playing the theme for Star Trek.
Nobody had used the app in days, not even Greg, so I’d kind of forgotten it was still running. I looked at the incoming message. It said, Hey, counselor, I can’t wait to see you.
I screwed my eyes shut. Why was he even using the damn app? All he had to do was text Bethany directly. I knew he had her number. Was he just trying to be cute?
My thumb hovered over the screen. Finally, I typed, What’s your favorite color?
I don’t know. I like red, I guess.
To Bethany, I typed, Pick out something red.
What was I doing?
I checked the time; it was still only twelve o’clock. Bethany texted back, When are you coming?
He’s not picking you up for seven hours!
…
So when are you coming?
