Smarty Pants

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2Hailee Quinn sighed as she hovered her mouse over the refresh button.

“Come on,” she murmured. She waited until the social media page for the Blue and Pink Book Awards reloaded for the sixth time in the past hour. When nothing had changed, she let out another aggravated breath.

“I could have been writing,” she huffed. When her dog, Tootsie, under her desk seemed to snort at her comment, she laughed along with him. She peered down at him on the bed she’d bought for him when the local shelter said that her foster animal was going to come home with her. “I know, I know,” she said as she scratched his head with a wide smile on her face. “I could be doing lots of things, like curing cancer, but I’m not. Instead, I’m wasting my time wondering if these fools will ever get their act together.”

Tootsie nudged closer to her scratches but didn’t offer much else by way of relief. Hailee sighed. She knew she shouldn’t have been a judge for the Blue and Pink Book Awards, but when the email had come into her school account—and didn’t seem to be spam about teaching English as a second language or buying your own publication for your CV—she’d been secretly thrilled. The book awards were devoted to finding the best bisexual titles published in the last year. There were several categories to choose from, most of which appealed to Hailee. She wanted to read everything, and since she had just finished the first draft of her dissertation, she actually could have had reading time.

Still, she brought the email to her supervisor, Olive Forrester. She’d done her typical sceptical glare at the email, and of course, warned Hailee about the downsides of free labour, especially in academia. If you’re not paid for your talent now, it’s hard to negotiate for real money later on. Since Olive was an academic superstar, she could say something like this. But Hailee was still a grad student, in her late twenties, and still sometimes thought to be one of her students, rather than the prof teaching them English 101 or Business Writing, or something more advanced like Socio-Linguistics. She was working her way up in her field, but she still had a long way to go.

“I think I want to do this,” Hailee had told her supervisor in early March, when the email had come in. “They won’t announce the winners until the end of the summer, and until then it’s just reading and debating online. Not even in academia, either. I think the committee is made up of authors, editors, and teachers.”

“Hmm. Maybe it will be better than academic reviews, then. Getting anyone in academia to agree on the merits of a book, and then show up for a ceremony, is akin to herding cats.”

Hailee had walked away from that meeting with the exact wrong impression. Since this book judging thing wasn’t an academic committee, it would be easier and better. And she’d have time, and she’d get free books about bi men and women, and well, that pretty much sounded like heaven. While her best friend, Indie, told her that she should be dating those bi men and women now that she had time, rather than reading about them, she’d still insisted that she’d have time. With no dissertation hanging over her, what could go wrong?

“A lot, apparently,” Hailee said now with a sigh. She’d signed up for two categories of books to judge: sci-fi and romance, since those two were the farthest away from her dissertation topic. Right away, she’d noticed several categorization errors. One of the sci-fi books was technically a romance, too, and so had been put into both categories. So its chance of winning had doubled, and since the book was shoddily written, she couldn’t believe it had more statistical likelihood of winning. Also, one of the sci-fi books had no bisexual characters, but a trans woman who identified as a lesbian. She’d gotten into a heated debate with one of the other judges about this, and nearly quit right then. Instead, the organizer of the Blue and Pink awards messaged her privately and the book had been yanked.

We deeply appreciate your expertise on this panel, Debbie said. I simply don’t have time to read them all, and so I miss errors in erasure like this.

Hailee had been motivated, yet again, to do the good work. Debbie had even given her another category to judge, this time nonfiction, since there were so few people in that, along with so few books. When her friend’s book had shown up in that category, too, she’d mentioned her own conflict of interest. I know Rebecca Frye; she’s a friend and lives in the same town as me. Is this a problem? Hailee had also wanted to mention the oh-so present fact that she and Rebecca had been an item. For a hot minute, maybe even two weeks of casual, flirty texts with a make out session after a movie, but she held off. Two weeks in the lesbian world may have been a promise ring territory, but that had been over four years ago now. Just when Hailee had moved to Waterloo to start her research, and she had few friends in and outside of her English Department. Rebecca had been part of her project, and then, they’d shared more than just their common traits of a stutter brought on by trauma.

I see no conflict here, Debbie had written her back about Rebecca’s book being in her category. I know you’ll most likely vote for her, but that’s why we have the semi-finals before the final show. If her book lasts, then it does so on its own merit. But thank you for telling me, I deeply appreciate it.

Hailee had been assigned another category to judge then—biography—but soon felt like she truly was being taken advantage of. Still, she completed the reading, cast her vote for the semi-finals in all her four categories in May, and hoped for the best. Her work was done. Her reading, at least, was done—though Debbie had shared with her online the remaining galleys of all the other books. If she truly wanted, she could finish everything for the Blue and Pink awards before the ceremony on Labour Day.

“If there is a ceremony,” Hailee said aloud. She refreshed the page. Still nothing. Maybe this was a time zone thing? It was well past midnight in Canada, making it June 1st and the exact right time for the semi-finals to be announced, but maybe Debbie was in another time zone? Maybe it was a morning thing? Hailee went back over the emails between herself and Debbie, but instead of finding a time zone, she clicked on the Drop box for all the books. The bright colours of their covers and the blurbs and press kits associated with them sent chills down her spine. So many books. All for her. And in theory, all of them were about her—at least in terms of bisexuality.

For the next fifteen minutes, Hailee half-heartedly read the first few chapters of a lesbian erotica story that was promised to end with a threesome with a trans man. The cover made her think of others she’d read in that genre and how she’d imagined some version of Ruby Rose as all the characters, which only got her going that much faster. She had just unbuttoned the top of her jeans when her power flickered. The laptop beeped and then shifted to power-saver mode. Tootsie head under her desk popped up right away. He barked.

“I know, I know,” Hailee said. She placed her hand under the desk, allowing for Tootsie to lick her fingers in a furious fashion. “It’s just the power. It’ll come back on.”

Her laptop still remained in the hazy focus of the power-saving mode. The internet was out, too, and after a minute had passed like this, Hailee realized she was most likely wrong. The power had gone out, but it wasn’t a flicker of a brown out. It was a blackout in her building.

“Shit.” Hailee stood from her desk. She peered out her one-bedroom apartment’s window into the next building over. Her building mostly had single units, mostly filled with retirees and some couples. The next one had families, at least from what she could tell during her walks back and forth across the parking lot. The other building’s lights were on now, but a persistent beeping sound was coming from their building. Hailee wondered why, since the buildings shared a power source, her power remained off. “And why no alarm here?”

Just as the words left her mouth, the beeping started. Her alarm was right outside her office, and the shrill tone caused her to grab her ear. She ground her teeth to get the shrieking to stop. She kept a hand on her ear as Tootsie also began to bark.

“S-s-top.” Hailee bit her lip. Damn it. She was not going to stutter. No, not now. She steadied herself by reciting the phrase a speech pathologist gave her a child before she grabbed the leash for Tootsie. She was still dressed in her casual jeans and a T-shirt, so she only needed to slip on her sandals and grab a jacket before leaving with Tootsie. Maybe the two of them could turn this into a fun walk. And maybe, Hailee thought, I will figure out who the semi-finals are. She hoped her choices all made it—but again, with the conversations she’d had with many of the other judges, she was truly worried about everyone’s sense of good taste, along with their political leanings in terms of bi identity.

Hailee was still overthinking one of the numerous email conversations she’d had with another judge, a woman named Julie, about the nature of bi identity when she stepped outside. Most of her building’s occupants were pooling at the front, near the visitors parking. Everyone seemed to be dressed in PJs, rubbing sleep out of their face. Hailee was the only one that seemed fresh faced and practically bright eyed. She skipped passed a couple arguing about their electric bill and headed towards the back of the other building, where a hole in the fence had been cut and allowed for easy access to the stunning park pave ways around the buildings. In spite of living in a university town, Hailee had deliberately selected an area that did not have students. She needed those retires and young couples in order to get her work done. She had no time for parties—or at least, aimless parties where drinking was the only thing on the menu.

So when Hailee turned the corner to take one of the pathways that led through a supermarket and a coffee place, she was surprised to see a young woman stepping out of the adjacent building. She came out the back door with another woman holding a child over her waist. The two chatted amiably between them, but Hailee knew it wasn’t romantic. The women shared the same features in their slightly crooked noses and their dark, almost tanned skin. While the woman with the child had short hair, almost a pixie cut, the other woman had dark hair that flowed over her shoulders. The ends were soft, as if they’d not been cut in a while. When the woman with the child laughed, the woman beside her only smiled.

But it was a hell of a smile.

“Look!” the girl on the other woman’s hip said. She pointed directly at Hailee, causing her to pause in the area of the fence that had, technically, been defaced. “A doggie!”

Tootsie barked. Hailee let out a sigh. The mother seemed to say something into the girl’s ear—no doubt something about being polite—but Hailee was shocked when the woman set the girl down. She still held onto her hand quite tightly, but the three of them were now all moving towards her.

Hailee wasn’t sure what to do, so, she did nothing.

“Hello,” the mother said. “Are you stuck in hell with us?”

“Shh,” the little girl said. “That’s a bad word.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry Anissa. I meant H E double hockey sticks.” The mother smiled. “Your building also get the old heave ho?”

“Yes,” Hailee said, smiling wryly. “But it shouldn’t be too long.”

“Eh, with the super the way she is, I’m not so sure about that. I’m Rae, by the way.” She seemed to smile at the musicality of her statement. “Can my daughter pet your dog? I think it might be the only saving grace of this night.”