Taking Chances by John Goode Page B

completely happy. There was a contentedness in my heart I hadn’t felt in… well, ever.
    Which was, of course, the very instant I started to panic.

Matt
     
     
    “I’ LL move? Who the fuck says that?” I whined into my cell phone.
    Sophia’s laugh was half Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz and half Maleficent, voiced by the flawless Eleanor Audley in Sleeping Beauty . “Apparently you do, cupcake!” Her cackle was pure evil and chilled me to the bone even though she was thousands of miles away.
    I normally hated her more than the Republican Party, Fox News, and those stretch pants that look like jeans combined, but never more so than when she was right. And once again, she was fucking right.
    I had been in lust with the boy who lived down the street since I was old enough to know what lust meant but had never done anything about it as a teen. I had built this entire fantasy around who this boy was and what he would be like if I met him, so much so that it had ended up screwing up any actual relationships I’d tried to have. Now we’d ended up spending Christmas and the next few days after together, acting as if we’d been a couple forever and everything was perfect.
    Except the ghost of my words, “I’ll move.”
    “What am I going to do?” I moaned into the phone, hoping my voice didn’t carry outside my room and wake my parents. It was already midnight in Foster. People who were awake at midnight in Foster were treading into something akin to no-man’s land as far as the general populace was concerned. Since only bad could come from no-man’s land, being awake and doing strange things like making phone calls was considered a mortal sin, even if your body was still on California time.
    “You think Obama has a witness relocation program for hopeless gay people?” she asked, far too much satisfaction in her voice.
    “I hate you,” I snapped, using the word since it had the distinct honor of simultaneously being both honest and succinct. “Do you think he knows I was joking?” I asked in exactly the tone a blonde bimbo in a B-grade horror flick uses when she calls “Is anyone out there” to a darkened room right after she’s had slutty sex with her rebel boyfriend on a dare. It wasn’t so much a question as it was a declaration of my own mortality, because I knew the truth was out there in the darkness, just waiting to pounce on me.
    “I am sure he’s out registering at Bath, Barn and Beyond or whatever hick-ass stores you guys have out there.” Sophia’s mutant ability allowed her to make even the most insulting of comments without enraging her target. “So have you screwed yet?” she asked. I pictured her leaning forward, one of her Lee press-on nails in her teeth as she waited breathlessly for my answer.
    “You do know someday a fresh-faced teenager is going to throw a bucket of water on you, right?” I replied somewhat weakly after a few seconds.
    “That’s a no!” she howled. I felt what was left of my patience dwindle to zero.
    “This is serious!” I exclaimed over her hysterics. Her lack of empathy was seriously frustrating me.
    Before she could answer, the wall to my right tried to cave in under the force of my father’s fist. His muffled, but unmistakably angry, voice called out, “Matthew! Do you have any idea what time it is?”
    Suddenly I was twelve years old again. “Sorry, Dad!” I called out to the wall.
    “This is serious!” I hissed into the phone, while images of my dad bursting into the room to tell me that tomorrow was a school day danced in front of my eyes. “What am I going to do?” I stood by my door and listened for my father’s footsteps.
    “Have you, I don’t know, tried talking to him about it?”
    “Talking is what got me into this trouble in the first place!” I whispered harshly into the phone, my paranoia making phantom sounds come from under my door.
    “Honey, you have to talk to him.” Sophia’s voice lowered into unfamiliar