Robin Talley - Pulp

Undoubtedly, the authors of this report had thought themselves brilliant to have made this point. Also they were apparently using “sex perversion” as a synonym for not being straight, so that was...interesting.

Abby glanced up as she crossed the alley in front of the Whole Foods, then turned back to her phone.

Sex perverts, like all other persons who by their overt acts violate moral codes and laws and the accepted standards of conduct, must be treated as transgressors and dealt with accordingly.

Well, that sucked.

Abby scrolled, looking for something more relevant to what Ms. Sloane wanted from her, but this document read like a parody of an old textbook. There was no way people in the fifties, or any other time for that matter, seriously sat around worrying this much about each other’s “moral codes.”

One homosexual can pollute a Government office. This subcommittee is convinced that it is in the public interest to get sex perverts out of Government and keep them out.

Abby sighed and closed out of the PDF while she waited for the light to change. She was almost back on campus, and this document had nothing to do with lesbian pulp novels. The characters in Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t exactly sit around reading government reports.

Besides, Abby had spent her entire life in DC. She knew how much the people in Congress loved to hear themselves talk. Some guy was running for Senate who’d said homosexuality was evil and should be against the law, but him saying that didn’t change the fact that gay marriage had been legal for years. That guy might believe Abby was going to hell for being in love with Linh, but that didn’t make it true. Abby didn’t even believe in hell.

She crossed the parking lot and reached the bottom of the short hill that separated Fawcett Middle School from Fawcett High. Abby had barely been inside the middle school building since she’d finished eighth grade. Walking down the green-tiled front hall felt like going back in time.

She was startled out of her nostalgia when she pushed open the office door and saw her eleven-year-old brother, Ethan. He was sitting alone in the waiting area in his dance class uniform—a white T-shirt and embarrassingly tight black leggings. His arms were folded across his chest, and when he saw Abby, he groaned.

“What are you doing here?” Abby’s mouth fell open. “Why did they call me ?”

“Abby. Good, you’re here.” Ms. Jackson, the office assistant, gestured to her from behind a desk. “We’ve been trying to reach your parents. Do you have another number for either of them?”

She’d come all the way here for this? Abby tried not to let her frustration show. “Probably. Which numbers have you tried?”

They compared phone lists, and Abby read out the numbers for Mom’s work cell and Dad’s assistant. Ms. Jackson thanked her, then vanished into an inner office and shut the door. Abby carefully laid her protest sign by the desk, but she kept her backpack strapped to her shoulders so she could get out of here fast when this was over.

Meanwhile, her brother was staring at the ceiling as though Abby wasn’t even there. Ethan was in that weird stage halfway between looking like a little kid and an almost-teenager. All he cared about was dancing—he took regular classes with the rest of the sixth graders during the school day, plus extra advanced classes in the afternoons—and he didn’t bother to change clothes afterward, which didn’t do much to offset his overall awkwardness. It was as if puberty was being intentionally mean to him, and he hadn’t noticed yet.

Abby and Ethan had been pretty close when they were younger. They used to have a running joke about how they were a two-person superhero team. Their parents were the villains, especially when Dad was trying to limit their screen time or Mom was making them eat vegetables.

Once, when Abby was in fifth grade and Ethan was in kindergarten, he’d fallen from the climbing gym on the temple playground and his nose turned into a bloody mess. Abby had wiped off his face and hugged him until he stopped crying. When their mom got there, Abby didn’t really want to let him go. It had been kind of nice, feeling needed.

Lately, though, she’d been avoiding her parents and Ethan altogether. Mom and Dad were just insufferable—on the rare occasions when one of them tried to relate to her, they only made it that much more obvious that they had no idea what it was like being a teenager, much less a queer one, in 2017—and as for Ethan, he’d basically turned into a different person than the kid she remembered.

“Okay, so.” Abby put her hands on her hips, the stiff fabric of her vintage dress rustling. “What’s going on?”

Ethan shrugged and tilted his head back, avoiding her gaze.

“Don’t be a dick, Ethan.” At that, his head shot up. She’d never called her brother a dick before, but if he was going to act like a dick... “Did you get in trouble?”

“I didn’t do anything.” His eyes trailed down to his sneakers. “Mr. Salem started it.”

“Mr. Salem?” Abby didn’t hide her surprise. “What did he do?”

Ethan loved his dance teacher. When they used to have family dinners he’d always go on and on about what Mr. Salem had said in class that day, or what funny twist he’d added to the choreography, or how he’d told Ethan he was the most promising student he’d had in years.

Abby had seen Ethan dance. He wasn’t bad or anything, but she was still dubious about the authenticity of that last comment.

“He was being a jerk.” Ethan shrugged. “He kicked me out of class for being, like, two minutes late.”

“Well, yeah.” Abby remembered that from her own dance-class years. “You know you aren’t allowed to be late to the studio. Besides, I thought you always tried to be there five minutes early, since you’re a dance dork and everything.”

“I’m not a dance dork.” Ethan leaned forward and pinched the bridge of his nose. His face was red and blotchy. Shit—had her goofy kid brother been crying ? “Anyway, it was only two minutes.”

“Okay, but what’s the big deal? School’s over. Why didn’t you just go home?”

Ethan looked away.

“So you are in trouble.” Abby tried to sound stern. “What did you do?”

“It isn’t some huge deal.” Ethan rolled his eyes. “I only told him it was a dumb rule. Then I kind of, um—” Ethan’s voice fell. “Threw my water bottle at his head.”

“What?” Abby’s jaw dropped. This was so unlike Ethan she might as well have fallen into an alternate universe. “Did you hit him?”

“Um. Kinda.” Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose again. “He moved, and it kind of—bounced off his shoulder.”

“That’s horrible!” Abby kept expecting him to say he was joking. Ethan was always thirsty, and he carried one of those huge metal water bottles everywhere he went. Getting hit with it would be incredibly painful. “You could’ve really hurt him!”

“Yeah. I know.”

“What the hell?” She couldn’t believe he was just sitting there, impassive. “Did you want to hurt him?”

“I only...” Ethan bent down so far all Abby could see was the back of his head. His thick brown hair pointed into a tiny V at the base of his neck. “I only wanted him to leave me alone.”

Abby didn’t understand. The Ethan she’d grown up with would’ve at least been sorry for doing something like this.

“Do you think Mom and Dad will both come?” Ethan didn’t look up. “They did that time I got sick in gym.”

“Yeah, well, your appendix ruptured. You had to be hospitalized. Water-bottle throwing probably isn’t on the same level.”