We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Seven

The morning school started, Dad's chair at the breakfast table was empty. He had to "get an early start" at work—even though he was the manager at his construction company and there was no reason he had to be at his office to review building plans before seven a.m.

"I'm sick of this," I said, gesturing at his chair. "He's such a coward."

Mom just took another silent sip of her coffee.

"When is he moving out?" I asked.

"That's a question for him."

"Can't come soon enough, if you ask me."

"You sound like Chloe."

I set my mug of hot chocolate down way too hard, sloshing it over the side. My cheeks burned as I grabbed for a napkin to clean it up.

"At least I have a reason to be pissed off," I muttered, getting up to throw the hot chocolate-sodden napkin away. "I'm not just a self-righteous loudmouth ruining other peoples' lives."

"What happened last night?" she asked. "Everything all right?"

My insides turned to ice for a second before I realized she was just asking about the midnight drive we took. Not the balaclavas and graffiti, or the silhouetted figure with the blond hair whose image was seared into my brain. She didn't know about that, and hopefully she never would.

"I don't know," I said. "She's just so invested in hating Temptr. You'd think I would be, too, but..."

"It's complicated, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it really is."

Mom held up the magazine she was reading. "Like this. Just when you think Decker Lord is an irredeemable jerk, Vancouver Magazine profiles his family and they seem like such a sweet bunch you don't know what to think anymore."

On the cover, Decker Lord, his wife, and four children posed against a powder blue background, wearing clean, crisp clothes and looking hopelessly stylish. Lord sat in a black leather chair with his radiant wife perched on the arm beside him, their toddler son on his lap, twin daughters at his feet. Something about Decker Lord gave me the creeps. He looked like a supervillain—all of his features were slits. Kind of snake-like. The kids all looked like him, all lanky and blond, but they looked warm and human. The little boy on his lap was laughing, showing off gums that were just beginning to grow teeth. The little girls were laughing, too, and the older son, standing behind them all...

"Can I look at this?" I asked Mom.

"Sure." She passed it to me. "I've got to get going, anyway. Have a great day, sweetheart."

She kissed my forehead and left for work while I started at the magazine cover. Decker Lord's eldest son towered over them, his arm resting on the back of his dad's chair, leaning forward and smirking for the camera. It really was a smirk—only half his mouth participated, and his eyes looked like they were laughing at you, not with you. He looked like a model, but not a mainstream model. With his narrow face and sharp cheekbones, he looked like an avant-garde, heroin-chic kind of model.

His sandy blond hair swept upward in a way that looked far too familiar.

I flipped through the magazine's glossy pages to the story. There were more adorable pictures of them on the lawn in front of their new West Van mansion, the parents and the teenage son playing with the younger kids, and as I examined his lanky frame in full, I was sure it was him: the guy who had caught us outside Lord's house last night. I scanned the article for his name.

...Noah, 17, is an artist, but says he wants to follow in his father's footsteps in some way.

"I love how he makes a splash with everything he does," Noah says. "I take notes every day."