She shot. Nothing but net.
She said, “You’re like Budd, following from in front. So, do you people take a vote every time to see who has to come talk me down?”
“Eh, somebody usually volunteers.”
“Last time it was Echo. When I got mad about the air conditioner?”
“That’s because you specifically said that if any of us came after you, that you’d stab us. Had a kitchen knife in your hand. She was the only one who thought you wouldn’t follow through.”
Ah, the infamous Air Conditioner Tantrum. Growing up, air-conditioning was an expensive luxury reserved for days when it was so hot that a normal life was not possible. Summer nights were about fans, an open window, and partial nudity, the sticky clamminess acting as your alarm clock. When she’d moved in with Caleb for those couple of years, his rental house in Lafayette had central air and Zoey freaked out anytime it was turned on before July or after August. She always imagined money flying out of the window. The Casa de Zoey, on the other hand, ran off of a geothermal system and solar panels. She had no power bill, according to Will. So, she got to where she was okay with leaving the air on, but it made a weird noise, an almost imperceptible whine that gave her a headache. She mentioned it one day and somebody guessed it was some squeaky bearings, or some other tiny flaw deep in the system. Crews were there the next day, and the day after. When they left, the noise was gone.
Then, by sheer chance, Zoey happened to see the invoice for the HVAC repair: $26,423.
Enough to feed a family for months. Enough to get a homeless person off the streets for a year. Money she’d burned to solve a minor annoyance.
She had thrown a fit, made a fool of herself, demanded they undo the repairs (which of course was dumb, they’d just charge that much again to put the broken parts back on), demanded she be consulted on every expense in the future (also dumb, unless she wanted to start scheduling panic attacks every hour). Then she had stormed out of the room and Echo eventually came after her and brought her a cupcake, which was incredibly demeaning and also worked.
Zoey shot. Again, nothing but net.
She said, “Want to play a game of horse?”
“Nah, don’t think your back could support my weight.”
She gathered the ball, and just held it this time. “They know we didn’t kill Tilley. Or do any of the other stuff. They have to know, deep down. The whole thing about us being cannibals, or whatever. They don’t even believe it, they’re not even trying all that hard to make the story consistent.”
“There are things people actually believe,” said Andre, “and things they only pretend to believe because it’s convenient. But over time it don’t matter which is which, it all just blurs together. People are like that.”
“Okay, so why would they choose to believe this particular awful thing?”
“Because they hate you, Zoey. And because they hate you, they need to come up with a reason to hate you. See, because otherwise, they’re just bad people.”
“What? That doesn’t even—why do they hate me in the first place?”
“When you played ball, were you best buddies with all the other girls on the team? Did you all hang out together in the off-season?”
“No.”
“But when you were together on the court, when you won, you felt something. Maybe any other time you couldn’t carry on a conversation with any one of them without wanting to blow your brains out, but on the court, you suddenly had a bond. All of them differences fell away. That’s why we have sports, the game is just a pretext to let you go out there and feel that.”
“So it’s just a game to them? Is that it?”
“Well, that feeling, you get that in a war zone, too, only a hundred times stronger. So call it a game or a war or whatever, ultimately it’s just about that bond. So, yeah, the thing they hate isn’t even you, it’s a fictional version of you they’ve crafted to be as hateable as possible. The more they hate you, the more they love each other.”
“So they turn me into a cow monster.”
“You understand the origin of the cow thing, right? They’re not calling you fat. Well, they’re not just calling you fat. Among these groups, ‘cow’ is slang for a harassment target. Your reactions are entertainment to them, they milk you for tears, for pain. But they’re humans, so at some point they’ll feel guilt over it. That’s when they need to manufacture some new reason to justify it, a shared fiction that lets the game continue.”
“Okay, so how long can that go on? At some point that hate has to dry up. I mean, it’s been months.”
There was no answer, and she could tell Andre was straining not to say something.
She threw out her hands. “What?”
“I want you to replay what you just said, and think about who you just said it to.”
“Okay. I get it. Racism has been going on for millions of years. I got a whole speech about that this morning, from the heart-eating guy.”
“Yeah, sounds like Alonzo.”
“I’m sick of being lectured to. I’ve done nothing but try to go legit since I got here. I’m surrounded by corporate sharks, people who got their power specifically so they could abuse it. And because I’m out here not doing that, because I’m actually trying to be a good person, they all see it as weakness.”
Andre again suppressed a response.
“You obviously want to say something.”
He hesitated. “Zoey … you don’t deserve the hate you’re getting. Not you, not anybody.”
“But?”
“But … you’ve never abused your power? Never ever?”
“No. Not on purpose.”
“You never pressured a subordinate into having sex with you?”
“What? Are you talking about Armando? That was … he was into it. All I did was suggest we go swimming, because we were hot, and we didn’t have bathing suits. He initiated almost everything after that! As fast as he could! Nobody put a gun to his head.”
“He was a subordinate, somebody you employed, who took orders from you. Same as with that personal trainer.”
“Now the personal trainer, that was absolutely his idea. I don’t even think he was a real trainer. Will found him, and I swear to god he knew what he was doing. I think that was Will trying to relieve my anxiety.”
It actually wasn’t the worst thing she’d tried, but this conversation was not the place to mention that. She bounced the ball. Shot. Missed.
“There’s power in how other people see you,” said Andre, “and I don’t think you get how scary you are to people now. In those parties you go to with all them captains of industry, you can think of it like a spiderweb, all these crisscrossing vectors of power. This one is afraid of that one, who answers to this other guy over here. Sure, nobody’s putting an actual gun to anybody’s head, but it’s because they don’t have to. It’s just understood. If you don’t want to become a monster, if you don’t want to become like Chobb or even your daddy, you’ve got to start paying attention to that stuff. Otherwise, you’ll become one of them and you won’t even notice the change.”
“If all that’s true, if I’m sooo powerful, why do I feel like nothing I do matters? I march right into Alonzo’s lair, I march right into Chobb’s stupid Blimp of Evil, I march right up to a brainwashed hate mob with a gun in my face, and for what? My mom was right, behind every monster there’s just another monster, forever. If I’m so scary to everyone, then why can’t I actually change anything?”