To: Henri Haupenstaat
Subject: Paperwork in the mail
Hi Dad,
I know we didn’t get much of a chance to talk yesterday when we called, but there’s nothing much going on here except for Chelsea’s big news. School’s fine, and since my internship fell through I’ve actually had some time to myself. I even have the time to hang out regularly with a special guy. We’re not dating—we’re more of an It’s Complicated—but that’s fine for now.
Ack! This email is supposed to be about Chelsea, not me.
This morning Mom called the NSC Discovery Hotline, and by 2:00 a couple women had shown up at the school to interview Chelsea and her friend and get a general sense of how dangerous they are to the people around them. (Conclusion: not very.)
These guys work fast, and one of them came home with Chels to talk to me and Mom (fine, mostly Mom) about what they’re going to do now. They want to take Chelsea to their center for a month-long orientation thing, and they think they’ll have that set up and be ready to take her before Thanksgiving. In the meantime, they need to do a really thorough background check on Chelsea and also less thorough ones on you, me, mom.
I asked if they could email you the stuff you need to fill out and they said that would be fine for some of it, but there are a couple of official forms that have to be on special watermarked paper and signed in the presence of an NSC notary (not only fast, but also unbelievably thorough). They need a real address to send the stuff to, obviously. I don’t know how to reach you by snail mail down there in Brazil, or even if I can. Let me know an address so I can pass it on to them (or let me know if they should just mail it to Granddad in Manhattan).
Everything all right so far? Bring me coffee back!
Love you,
Brook
(Continue with Deena's story.)
