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Samantha
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SHE RAN INTO her room, shut the door and threw herself onto the bed. As she dialed her best friend Jamie’s cellphone, she kicked off Mom’s borrowed high heels and one landed high on the bookshelf.
“You gotta watch the news tonight.”
“Um, hello,” Jamie said in her soft, sleepy voice. “And why?”
Samantha pulled the hairclip from her straight, dark locks and they fell around her shoulders. “You will never in a gazillion years believe what happened at the rally,” she spat rapid fire into the phone.
“I thought you were going to the soup kitchen?”
Samantha switched to speaker and rolled the cornflower blue dress up her torso. “We were, but Grandma launched a sneak attack on Civil Diss instead. She guilted Dad into taking us and, boy, is Mom piiissed.” She yanked the dress over her shoulders and tossed it onto her desk chair.
“You’re shitting me.”
“Yeah, I had no choice. I swear, Jame.”
“Dude, I believe you.”
“Okay, but that’s not all. Apes happened.”
“W-w-what?”
Samantha crawled across her bed and located last night’s pajama bottoms in a heap on the floor. “Grandma got attacked by apes in the middle of her speech.” She pulled them on.
“What the heck?” Jamie tittered. It was contagious. “Like, real apes?”
Samantha burst out with a laugh. This was a long-overdue release. Going from outright terror to shame, to everyone screaming at each other in the car, hilarity seemed the next logical step. “Hold on.” She tugged on her favorite old sweatshirt with a curlicue treble clef that read: Here Comes Treble. “There were a ton of protesters at the rally, way more than Mark’s Civil Diss contingent. A bunch of people in gorilla suits piling out of vans.”
“That’s the Simian Avengers, Sam. Yes-yes-yes!”
“I know, right?”
“Oh, man, what channel should I check?”
“Try Nine at Nine first.”
This was a dream come true for the two of them. Last spring, Jamie had written a social studies paper about the Simian Avengers and Samantha had contributed research notes. The SA were a rag-tag troupe of protesters taking on all the marriage amendments, which had sprouted up in red states across the country. Inspired by British protestors in monkey suits that had once invaded Parliament to demand equal rights, the SA formed in San Francisco during the mayor’s marriage battle with the courts. Their motto? EQUALITY THROUGH GORILLA WARFARE! They challenged religion’s “against nature” argument on their website by quoting evolutionary psychologists and displaying photos of same-sex bonobos getting it on.
Perfectly dorky. Just the girls’ style. Apes were Samantha’s “spirit animal” after all. She hoped to study them someday and minor in astronomy. Or major in astronomy and minor in anthropology? Or major in music theory and minor in—
“Ugh. It’s not on yet,” Jamie said. “So what else? Did they get to speak?”
“No, no, no. It was a mess,” Samantha said reaching for a glass of water on the bedside table. “This one ape tried to hump Grandma—”
Jamie’s guffaws overloaded the phone speaker.
Water lurched up Samantha’s nose and she coughed.
“—S-so she started quoting scripture. Something about man’s dominion over the beasts of the kingdom. That really got them all hooting.”
“Wow. Just wow. Can’t believe I missed it. So unfair.”
Samantha recounted how one of the apes had run up to her at the protest and she fought hard not to retreat behind her brother. The eyes inside the mask blinked at her, all dark and piercing. The ape had reached out, ruffled Samantha’s hair, and did a little boogie. Samantha couldn’t help but chuckle nervously. Who wouldn’t? Brace even high-fived it. That was enough for Mom. She dragged her children away as the police, their number unprepared for a jungle ambush, moved in.
As they pushed through the police scrum, Samantha had glanced over her shoulder to watch her grandma, a Senator from this great state of Minnesota, take a few steps back from the podium with that look on her face, the toothy smile that always stays afloat, even though at that moment she was drowning in a wave of ratty gorilla costumes. Grandpa had batted at some of them, fumbling to pull them away from Grandma without throwing a punch. With his white hair and red face, he himself resembled a very angry Japanese snow monkey.
Samantha hadn’t been entirely sure just how this protest was going to help the Simian Avengers. It seemed more to prove Grandma’s point. Maybe she was missing something. “That is not something you want to see though, Jame. Yunno? Apes sexing on your gram? Dad grabbed the ape that was still trying to get at her and the mask came off.” It had been some blonde lady with cropped hair and an angry sneer. “Then everything just went—”
“Apeshit? Bananas?”
“Um, yeah,” Samantha said, fully realizing the gravity of the situation. “But Dad and Grampa got her out safe. It was mostly apes vs. cops after that.”
“Gah, I’m so jealous.”
“Seriously, though? I am so not looking forward to the holidays now. It’s going to be all stabby around the Christmas tree. Mom and Dad are in their room right now. It ain’t pretty.”
Jamie sighed. “Sure wish I’d been there. Coulda got a selfie.”
“Just a few more months, Jame, then we can drive ourselves to this stuff and you can write a follow-up paper.”
“Woot!”