The pills were doing their job. Her nose was tingling, and the space above her upper lip had started to itch. Her tongue felt a little thick, and so did the air. Things seemed so calm; it was as if the whole world had slowed.
She thought she could sense her parents, Hilda and Dada, nearby, as if they’d just gone into the house to get something.
After Micah died, Hilda wouldn’t come out of her bedroom. She started to stink, and her hair hung in greasy strips around her sagging face. She kept refreshing the news pages, trolling for articles about Micah. She would leave anonymous comments, sometimes trashing her own son, calling him evil, sometimes celebrating what he’d done. She used all kinds of usernames, played all kinds of roles, became other people, told Frida it helped somehow. Dada didn’t go into the room very often, and Frida had to take care of everything. Two years later, her father had called her the traitor, for planning to leave L.A., for planning to leave them. He wouldn’t forgive her for abandoning the family. He had already forgiven Micah.
August cleared his throat, and Frida shook herself back to the present. She realized she hadn’t said anything for some time.
“Sorry.”
“I read somewhere about Iran, back in the day,” August said. “They had these backpacks. For kids, you know? Decorated with pictures of suicide bombers like they were SpongeBob. Remember that old cartoon?”
Frida shook her head. “My brother was in the Group.”
August squinted, like he was trying to figure out what that meant. Then he said, “Was he one of those pissed-off students?”
So August hadn’t been gone so long; he knew what the Group was. According to Micah, the L.A. contingent had emerged a year after the earthquake, mostly college students who had been left with insurmountable debt and no way to pay it back. Nobody knew about them back then, or they did, but they didn’t care. In the beginning, the Group was concerned that the city was still in shambles: collapsed houses and condemned schools everywhere, and the 101 severed in two at the 110. The Group couldn’t believe the rich were complaining that their own neighborhoods weren’t getting fixed fast enough, especially when it seemed like the only areas of the city that functioned at all were the affluent ones. A few of the founders were interested in politically motivated performance art; it was a means to get attention, they argued, a more interesting way to express their dissatisfaction. That was the theory, at least. Half a year later, the first Community opened, and people still hadn’t heard of the Group. It had taken a long time for anyone to notice them.
A few months before Micah’s death, Frida had convinced him to come over. She told him Cal would be at work. They’d gotten drunk on the bathtub gin he’d brought in his jacket pocket. Micah had insisted they enjoy it in the alley below their unit, and Frida complied because she never got to see him and she didn’t want to scare him off. By then, her brother had become very particular about how he spent his time.
It was on that visit that Micah had told Frida the Group’s origin story. She hadn’t even asked; in her memory, he took a sip from his flask, leaned against the stucco wall of the neighboring apartment complex, and just started talking.
“A year after the quake,” he said, “some wealthy douche bags took their stupid Range Rovers or whatever and surrounded an ambulance. They wouldn’t let it south of Pico. Do you remember that?”
Frida didn’t. She wondered if this was more legend than history, but of course she didn’t say anything.
Micah went on: “Those assholes said whoever was dying hadn’t paid for those services.” He snorted and passed her the flask, which she took, grateful. “They didn’t want to share, didn’t care about anyone but themselves.” He smiled then, his eyes glistening. “The Group was born right after that, to fight that kind selfishness, to keep people empowered.” When Frida said nothing, he said, “Or at least amused.”
“‘Amused’?” Frida said. “But how?”
“A couple of the founders were into theater and performance theory, shit like that. Their early stunts were a little silly—I’ll be the first to cop to that. Sure, maybe skipping around in a Mexican wrestling mask gets more attention than a regular old protest, but it’s hard to be taken seriously when you act like that. But, then again, maybe that’s what’s kept us from being shut down.” He paused. “Nobody saw us as a threat.”