In the Unlikely Event... Read Free Page B

gay.”
    “But what if she turns out gay because of us?” Chase was back at her BlackBerry. Surely, there was something with statistics about gay kids with gay parents versus having straight parents.
    “Will you put that thing down and look at me?”
    There was something more—what was it? She enlarged the image size. How had she ever lived without a BlackBerry? Life must have been archaic.
    “Chase!”
    “Huh?”
    “Put that thing down before I confiscate it.”
    “You wouldn’t.” Chase clutched it to her chest.
    “Then put it down and listen to me.”
    Chase quickly bookmarked the website and slipped the BlackBerry into her pocket. Nobody was takin’ nothing. Her psyche did a mental head swivel.
    “We have agreed on the philosophy that gay people are not made as in the inculcated sense, right?”
    Chase nodded and then sprang to her feet. “She has a fifty-fifty chance or maybe more. What if Bud’s freaky-rocket-scientist-genius sperm donor is gay?”
    Gitana raised her eyebrows. “And what if he’s not and what if Bud didn’t get it from me? What would that make her?”
    “Straight. It’s going to be really hard for me to let her date boys.”
    “I know. It’s going to be hard for you to let her date anyone.”
    Chase let out a heavy sigh and studied her thumb. She wanted to bite the cuticle bad, but she controlled herself, pulling out her now constant companion—a cuticle cutter. She trimmed it so the excess skin would be surgically removed and wouldn’t tear and bleed.
    “You know, that is a rather disconcerting habit,” Gitana said, pointing at the cuticle cutter.
    “I only do it in front of people I know and love.” Chase sat back down.
    “Why are you so concerned that she might turn out gay?”
    “Because people will think we brainwashed her.”
    “What people?”
    Chase thought for a moment. She scrambled. “The Religious Right…Dr. Laura and Pat Robertson and the PTA.”
    “Do we know any of those people?”
    “Well, not directly, exactly. But they could know us.”
    “And if the United States ever got taken over by the right wing and a totalitarian regime ensued and they were going to round up the PLUs and put us in camps, what would we do?”
    “We would take Bud and all our friends and family and the fur kids, of course, and make a run for the Canadian border and head for Saltzspring Island where all the hippie draft dodgers went to avoid the Vietnam War. We would bring medical supplies, bottled water, duct tape, Vaseline…”
    Gitana put her hand up. “In other words, we have a plan.”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay, now what’s wrong with the school? Remember how you tortured the poor postal worker by sending for all those school catalogs so you could research every aspect school?
    “I gave her a big tip,” Chase said.
    “That’s not the point. The point is you did an astonishing amount of research and the academy is the best place on the planet for Bud right now. Why do you think the school is Communist?”
    “I swear Bud was spouting stuff straight out of the Communist Manifesto —that to-each-according-to-their-needs stuff.”
    Gitana did look concerned. “Has she read the Manifesto ?”
    Chase gave her the what-do-you-think look.
    “Never mind.” Gitana rubbed her temples. “Explain to me the context of the conversation and then I’ll tell you if it’s Commie or not.”
    Chase searched her verbatim file. It was sketchy. She’d discovered that the minute a conversation went Code Red chunks of conversation evaporated. She needed to train herself to freak after the fact so as not to impair her fact gathering. Facts were ammo—shit, she used the word “fact” three times in one inner diatribe. Good thing she didn’t have an inner editor complete with red pencil. “Can I paraphrase?”
    Gitana looked skeptical. “If you have to. I would prefer the straight version—not the amped-up this-is-the-end-of-the-world version.”
    “I’ll give it my best