Leah must have made an exception to her never-exceed-the-speed-limit rule, because she is at my house in less than twenty minutes. I hear her pull into the driveway, and I fly down to let her in, rushing her past my parents and the cops and up to my room.
She pulls me in for a hug and we just stand there, my head on her shoulder, breathing in the clean, sweet scent of her shampoo mingled with the smell of horses clinging to her jacket. “Poor Franny,” she says.
I lift my head and look at her. “Sorry,” I say, looking around for a tissue. My nose is running, and my eyes are probably all puffy and gross-looking. “Sorry I’m such a mess.”
“It’s okay. Don’t apologize. I mean, no kidding you’re upset. Who wouldn’t be?”
“You feel okay about being here?” I ask. “I mean, not scared or unsafe or…”
She laughs. “Given that the police are right in your living room, I’m not too worried.”
“What did you tell your mom?”
Leah pulls away, studying my face. “About why I was coming over? Nothing. I just said you’d had a hard day and wanted company.”
“Right.” I flop onto my bed, and she lies down beside me, both of us staring up at the ceiling. There’s a long silence, and I wonder what she’s thinking. It’s weird that you can be so close to someone and not know what they’re thinking. I have to bite my tongue to not ask her that all the time.
“You think I should tell her, don’t you?” she says at last.
I roll onto my side and prop myself up on one elbow so I can look at her. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” She sighs. “I hate keeping secrets from her. Hannah and Esther always did that, and it really upset her. She says she wants to be the kind of mom whose kids can tell her anything.”
Hannah and Esther are Leah’s twin sisters. They’re twenty—three years younger than Jake and three years older than Leah—and they’re away at college. In the Gibson family, Jake and Leah are “the good kids.” They tell the truth and go to church and help out with the horses and don’t keep secrets from their mom. Hannah and Esther are the rebels. The bad girls. Although I think all they really did was get drunk at a few parties and talk back to their mom. They’re in their third year of degrees in commerce and tourism or something, so it’s not like they’re crack addicts.
“You thought your mom would have a hard time when you came out, right?” I say, treading carefully. “And that went okay.”
“Yeah. I mean, it wasn’t easy. She cried when I told her. She asked if I was sure, and if it was her fault or because of what happened to Dad.” She makes a face. “Which was a weird thing to say, really. Have you ever heard of someone deciding she was a lesbian because her father died? It doesn’t even make sense.”
Leah’s dad died of a brain tumor when she was thirteen. Her mom, Diane, was left to raise four teenagers and run the farm while somehow holding on to a full-time teaching job. Which had to be tough. What got her through it all, she says, was her faith. There are framed Bible quotes all over the Gibson house.
“Still,” I say. “You only came out a year ago. So she accepted it pretty fast.” Leah’s mom joined PFLAG—Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. She’s even spoken at her church about how their community can be more inclusive of everyone.
Leah nods. “Yeah. She got her head around it. She says there is no way that God’s plan doesn’t include every single one of his children. She says if this is what I am, then it’s because God intended it to be that way.”
I’ve heard this story before, but it gives me goose bumps every time. Because although I’m not religious at all, I can see that what Diane did was seriously huge. To take something you’ve always believed was wrong—and then, because you love your kid, turn that belief upside down? “It’s impressive,” I say. “You know? To support you like that, given where she started.”
Leah shrugs. “Well, your parents supported you too. And you were way younger when you came out. If I’d come out at twelve, I don’t think my mom would’ve even believed me.” She blushes. “At twelve, I didn’t have a clue. I was really young, you know? Still playing with dolls.”
“I’ve always known,” I say. “Always. But it wasn’t a big deal for my parents. They have lots of queer friends. And it wasn’t like it came as a big shock or anything.” I shrugged. “I’ve wanted to marry my best girl friends since preschool. And I wasn’t ever a very girly kind of girl.” I run my fingers through my short hair and grin at her.
“I was,” Leah says. “Pink clothes, princess obsession and all.”
“You still are,” I say. “I mean, maybe not the princess obsession, but yeah. Total girly-girl.”
She laughs. Then the smile slips from her face, and her forehead creases. “My mom being so accepting about the lesbian thing…are you thinking that means she’ll accept this too? What your parents do?”
“I think it shows she can be open-minded,” I say. “It shows she can rethink her beliefs.”
Leah shakes her head. “It’s totally different. Because—”
“Why? Both have to do with thinking a certain way and then—”
She puts her fingers on my lips, shushing me. “Let me finish, okay? It’s totally different, because when I came out, she had to question what she’d learned.”
I nod. “Uh, yeah. I get that.” Religion was a subject we mostly avoided.
“But this abortion thing,” Leah said. “My mom is definitely against that. And there’s no reason for her to change.”
“But there is,” I say, pulling away from her and up to sit cross-legged on the bed. “She likes me, right? And she knows that you…well, that you like me.”
“But she hates what your parents do. Or she would if she knew.” Leah shakes her head. “Seriously, Franny. It’s not worth it.”
“I’m not worth it, you mean.”
I’m feeling argumentative. Maybe I’m just full of fight-or-flight chemicals after all the stress of the evening, I don’t know, but I feel like I need to know that Leah’s on my side. “What do you think?” I blurt out. I’ve never asked her this before, and as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I wish I could snatch them back.
If she sees my parents as evil baby killers, I’m not sure I want to know.