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Effigy

Kaye Branch

    “No one would guess,” Pearl said, in front of red light, holding down the brake while poised to wreck havoc on society at large. “That we’re just a group of suburban teenagers.”
    Except that they weren’t. Or they weren’t anymore. Three of them were college graduates and the one who was yet to start college was eliciting sighs all over their shared hometown. People were sure they’d misjudged Viola’s potential when she was a high school honors students.
    Viola still had the same amount of potential, Nerissa was sure, she just refused to put it to use under any name besides “V_Slayer”. “V_Slayer” was listed prominently on the Top Ten list of every arcade game in every movie theater within a reasonable distance. Nerissa was sometimes jealous of Viola, whose parents just let her be and never saw her wasted potential. Nerissa always reminded herself that she shouldn’t be. While she was poised to set the world on fire, Viola had nothing besides the two-dimensional women she studied on her television screen.
    “This will help her,” Pearl said to Rose and Viola after she announced her plan. “Help her a lot.”
    Nerissa wasn’t sure if she agreed. Their plan involved crime, new territory for Nerissa. Nerissa preferred complex plans and theirs was simple: break into a suburban home belonging to strangers and stay as long as they could, living off the things they found in the house. They’d leave only when they were forced to leave. Pearl predicted the family would give up on their house and leave them. And then they’d show them- the world- by creating an insular, self-sustained community within a prestigious seemingly sterile suburb.
    Pearl had selected the house because the owners left their key on the doorstep in a gaudy plastic contraption that was supposed to look like a rock but obviously wasn’t. To Pearl, the fake rock was permission to squat. Nerissa wasn’t sure from the get-go if she agreed.
    Pearl didn’t show them the house beforehand. She just picked them up, like they were headed to the movies as they had done so many times before. Nerissa felt safe in the familiar backseat of Pearl’s car even when the scenery was completely unfamiliar. The gravity of the situation started to sink in when Pearl pulled into the driveway of a seemingly random house. Driveways were private. Anyone could walk up to a doorstep, as Pearl had done already, but you had to have permission to park in even a vacant driveway.
    Nerissa didn’t say anything. She couldn’t. She’d already agreed and wanted to be the type of woman who kept her word. She followed her three friends into the house and watched as Pearl pulled the key out of the fake rock and opened the door. Once inside, Viola left the three other girls to watch television. The remaining three discussed the neighborhood in the living room and then split up to survey the house.
    Nerissa was the first to find Viola. She’d found a television in the master bedroom and fell into her default position on the bed: on her stomach with her hands cupped in her chin, eyes fixed obediently on the television screen.
    “We’re trying to get away from this shit,” Nerissa said. “You’re just going back to it.”
    Then Pearl walked in.
    “She’s just watching television,” Nerissa said. “Just like those yuppies we’re trying to punish.”
    “It’s different,” Pearl said. “The yuppies spend lots of time working then come home to watch television to see what they’ve gotta buy to keep up. Viola’s watching more television than they ever do and she can’t buy anything advertised because she refuses to leave. It’s a powerful statement.”
    “We should set ground rules for while we’re here.”
    “We shouldn’t. We all know how we want to live on some level but we’ve never had this type of freedom. We should all stay silent so we can each figure it out on our own.”
    “Then why are we together?”
    “So that we have support.”
    “How?”
    Viola’s two friends walked out of the master bedroom together, discussing their plan and ignoring Viola. Viola was hoping for a break from their lack of acknowledgement. For the past three summers, they had left Viola. They never seemed to notice that she never contributed a word to their discussions. They also assumed she knew nothing about college and therefore nothing she had to say was of any real consequence.
    Viola did know things. Outside of television shows and video games.
    She knew the layouts of the websites of each of her friend’s colleges. She spent the most time on each site reading the list of majors and minors. Some looked dry but others intrigued her. She sometimes wanted to ask them questions about their respective colleges, but she never did. If she asked, they might think she actually wanted to go. She didn’t.
    Viola knew, of course, that a college degree was vital in the process of making something out of herself. Her anxiety was what held her back. Her parents couldn’t pay for all of it. She’d have to take out a loan and after graduation, she’d have to get a job to pay them back. A job she’d probably hate.
    So Viola hid behind screens, hoping that things would sort themselves out.

**

    Rose, Pearl and Nerissa barricaded all the doors and windows, using a set of chairs they found in the basement.
    “I bet they call the police,” Rose said. “The instant they get back.”
    “Saturday’s shopping day,” Nerissa said. “They’ll come home mid-afternoon with more bags than they can carry full of shit they don’t need. They’ll call the police frantically because they need somewhere to unload.”
    “That’s law enforcement at work,” Pearl said. “I bet there’s a woman nearby getting beaten and their priority is helping a family unload after a day at the mall.”
    “They’ll think that men broke in,” Rose said. “Only men break in.”
    “We’re women who think like men. No fixed gender. We’re getting so much power.”
    Nerissa silently disagreed. Women broke in. They were female squatters and nothing more. They had no power.

**

    Pearl lit a cigarette in the living room.
    “You shouldn’t do that period,” Rose said. “But it’s worse because
    this is a stranger’s house.”
    “We’re not here to impress.”
    Pearl went on smoking.
    Nerissa tried to remember when she’d realized that Pearl smoked.
    Sometime in high school, after Pearl learned she could experiment, provided she was under Rose’s supervision. After she graduated, Pearl got timid proving that she needed them, all three of them, for the slightest change. No one else seemed to pick up on that.
    “Really,” Rose said. “It’s seven minutes off your life.”
    “Not necessarily. My mom’s been smoking for thirty years. She’s fine.”
    Nerissa rolled her eyes. Their arguments never went anywhere.
    Neither girl noticed her discomfort.
    “So, Rose,” Nerissa said. “You agreed to this so she’d stop smoking?”
    Rose looked annoyed. And Rose almost never looked annoyed.
    “I’m doing this to create a better world,” Rose said softly.
    “A better world where people smoke,” Rose said.
    “Shut up both of you,” Pearl commanded.
    Nerissa felt her lips seal tight. Nerissa promised herself she’d break free of Pearl’s power when she got accepted to graduate school. Education implied superiority and Pearl had no money for or inclination towards grad school. But they were back to their old games.
    “Sooner or later,” Pearl said. “My cigarettes will run out. Until then, I’ll satisfy the cravings.”
    “Maybe these people smoke,” Rose suggested.
    “They don’t. I checked. Everywhere.”
    Nerissa rolled her eyes again and hoped they’d fail soon.

**

    The police came around four. The first officer simply knocked at the door.
    They ignored him.
    For a brief time, there was silence.
    Nerissa was disappointed.

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