Sister Mischief Read Online Free

who, by the way, benches a cool 250. Marcy defies the term
brazen.
Marcy’s solid bronze.
     
    “I have a question,” Tess says.
     
    “Imagine that,” Marcy replies, wiggling her tongue in between two fingers at the pickup truck.
     
    “I mean, I have lots of them,” Tess says.
     
    “Ask!” Rowie says.
     
    “I guess I want to know if we really have any right to be doing this,” Tess says.
     
    “What do you mean?” I say, intrigued.
     
    “I mean, don’t you ever wonder if hip-hop really belongs to us?” Tess asks. “It had to travel from black urban areas to the radio and MTV to the suburbs. It’s, like, it goes from being this spontaneous kind of performance at block parties and clubs to being this huge moneymaker, and all of a sudden what used to be a black-owned industry moves to bigger labels owned by old white men, and this is how a movement born out of poverty and oppression arrives in our tender suburban hands.” She reaches the end of her lung capacity and takes a long breath. “You don’t ever feel conflicted about that?”
     
    We take a collective pause.
     
    “Your white guilt is overpowering,” Marcy mutters.
     
    “I know,” Tess snaps. “Why isn’t yours?”
     
    “But the progression isn’t really that simple,” Rowie says. “All that commercialization also sent hip-hop out into the rest of the world, where it became a whole new global uprising. I mean, if you frame this only in black and white, where do I fit in?”
     
    “Dude,” says Marcy, “what we should really be asking is how your people win so many spelling bees.”
     
    “It can’t be genetics. Spelling bee kids all die virgins,” Rowie sighs.
     
    “Naw, spelling bee kids all become horny debate kids,” I say. “I heard debate camp is basically a big nerd sex party.”
     
    “What about band camp, Marcy?” Rowie says, shoving her. Marcy raises one eyebrow and keeps driving. “Everyone knows the trombones were sweating you hard this summer.”
     
    “What happens at nerd camp stays at nerd camp,” Marcy says, shutting down the topic. “But as for the rest, with hip-hop and everything, the question isn’t whether or not it’s, like, kind morally and racially messed up. Of course it is. The problem is that if you stop listening to music that makes you uncomfortable because it was stolen from black people, you’re basically starting with Elvis and working your way backward. There’s really no way to listen to just white music or just black music anymore.”
     
    “Seriously,” I say. “And look, I love a good white guilt pity party as much as the next mope, but isn’t the whole tradition of hip-hop based on artists taking samples from each other out of respect and composing new musical collages? Rhythm and poetry. So if you think about it, by taking in hip-hop and spitting out our own rearrangement of what we’ve heard, we’re really just doing what everybody else in hip-hop has been doing for thirty years. I mean, that’s gotta be more respectful than just stealing samples for our ringtones, right?”
     
    “Even my church friends listen to it,” Tess says. “I mean, only what’s on the radio, but still.”
     
    “Your church friends listen to the Jonas Brothers,” Marcy says. “And dry-hump.”
     
    “You don’t have to crap all over them for being different from you,” Tess shoots back defensively. “They’re mostly good people.”
     
    “Mostly posers,” I mutter.
     
    Tess goes to this big Lutheran church that sort of unofficially, like,
governs
Holyhill, and her parents are sort of Those Holyhill Parents. There’s Darlene, Holyhill’s 1976 homecoming queen, a lawyer elected to the school board last year, and Dr. Gary, of
Minneapolis/St. Paul
magazine’s “Best Physicians in the Twin Cities.” Tess’s older sister, Ada, was wilder than Tess, notably causing a minor scandal when she turned down Princeton to study musical theater at NYU. Anthony, the youngest, was adopted