Free Stop That Girl by Elizabeth Mckenzie

so the next fall we printed a little blurb about it. We offered a prize to anyone who could tell us why we didn’t like the sight of many television sets lined up in a store. Then we printed all the replies, proclaiming the last to be the winner:
    ●
It’s not depressing. It’s a sign of a healthy economy, you
pinkos.
    ●
Since your eyes don’t know which one to choose, you
feel inadequate and confused.
    ●
Decadent consumerism.
    ●
It makes you feel like a lot of people except you are
going to be getting a new TV.
    ●
The normal has become significantly grotesque.
    ●
It’s a visit to the future when the powers that be
mock and control us from a screen.
    ●
What a bogus contest, use the space for sports.
    Meanwhile, I was still mulling the question of warm spots on seats, particularly horrible on toilets.
    “So, I wrote a new poem,” Raoul said then, from our perch on the curb in front of Sav-On.
    “Oh?” I said, and felt the corners of my mouth curling into a nervous smile.
    “I guess I feel a little weird, just a little, about having you read it. I mean, I say some shit that sounds weird, sort of out of context. And it’s sort of in the straight-up thought-stream tradition, because I was trying to let as much slip out as possible. You know, actually, writing this bullshit really helps relieve my frustrations about being stuck in this present reality. I guess I’m ready to show it—sorry for doing so much prefacing—I’m basically a little insecure about my stuff sometimes, but with you I should feel safe.”
    He pulled a wadded-up piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
    “So, it’s called ‘Sad Viviana,’ ” he said.
    “ ‘Sad
Viviana
?’ ”
    Viviana sat in the front of our French class, blond hair reaching for her hips.
    After a few seconds, he said, “By the way, I totally want to say I dug that article you wrote about your mother finding a thumb in a soda bottle.”
    I sniffed.
    “Was it true?”
    “Who knows? She said it was,” I said.
    He started to laugh. “Did she sue?”
    “Thumbs are probably everywhere,” I said. I’d finished my ice cream; my hands were sticky; it was time to take off. “I made a mistake in the tone of that article.”
    “How?”
    “It was just wrong. I glorified my mother instead of questioning her.”
    “That would have been distracting,” Raoul said.
    “Well, see you later,” I said.
    “That’s it?”
    “Gotta go,” I said.
    “Hey, are you going to write or what?”
    “I’ll write.”
    “You’d better,” he said. “Let me know what you think of that poem.”
    I pedaled away, crossing the cement-bedded, litter-stained, rat-run LA River at Tampa, taking the dark bumpy way down Topham into my neighborhood, the poem festering in my pocket like a dead thing. Maybe I had it wrong, maybe it would say something negative about Viviana. Like that she was a leech upon society. But I doubted it. The poem would surely imply there was something deep about her, something complex and doomed. What about me, though, wasn’t I complex and doomed?
    I arrived home right as Mom was pulling up in her car from work. She didn’t see me in the dark, coasting up to her car. She was curled over, looking intently at something, and upon hearing my voice, she jumped a little.
    “Mom.”
    “Hello, dear,” she said. Her hands disposed of whatever she was holding as if she’d performed a magic trick, but I thought I saw a small white box disappear from sight. “Help me carry these bags in. I bought some supplies tonight for our trip, with my discount.”
    “What were you looking at?”
    “Nothing, nothing,” Mom said.
    “I saw a little box, like for jewelry.”
    “Oh, that?” She shrugged, pulled the box from her pocket, and opened it for me. On a square of green velvet lay a silver pendant shaped like a woman’s head.
    “Who is it?”
    “It’s Truganini. You remember the story,” Mom said, snapping shut the lid.
    “Is that,