Vanity Teens

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight:

"Maxence is missing."

The words stung to hear, they felt like a thousand bee stings prodding my flawless flesh. "What do you mean, he's missing?"

Florence and Clarence stood in the door-frame of their home, with eyes that would kill. Eyes that had probably killed, and would do so again. "I meant what I said, Ari, he's gone, vanished, pouf."

"Pouf?"

"Pouf."

"Well... I mean, aren't you going to do anything, he's your son?" I stared at them blatantly, my face showing entirely how I thought of these two cold-hearted, sad-sacked, no life bastards. I'd known for years how they treated Max, but he always seemed so cool about it that he made it seem like it wasn't even a problem. Max was very good at brushing things under the rug like that.

They stared back, stunned, and for a moment a cloud of silence persisted. The couple looked at each other wonderingly, their hideous faces admiring the filth of the other, and both turned to eye me with disgust. "No."

"Why the fuck not?"

"We heard about you and our son," Florence announced. "We know all about it."

"You know nothing about us, and more importantly, you now nothing about Max. You're heartless parents that tortured him for years, and as soon as I am done with him, I'm sending my mother straight to this foul festering slab you call a front door."

I had thought I sounded rather threatening, I used to be fairly good at threats. And I was getting better. But, alas, their faces seemed entirely displeased and completely unconvinced.

What they saw before them was a whiny teenage boy too skinny and too helpless to defend himself, never mind a kid that would ever actually have the nerve to attack two fully grown, and albeit disgustingly hideous, adults. Their faces were completely repulsive, I had no clue where Max came from.

He was gorgeously blond with eyes like some great sea of summer leaves, whereas his parents' shared equal amounts of grease rubbed into their oily black hair, their eyes were so brown it made me feel sick, and their hygiene was bordering on hobo. Their eyes weren't a chocolate brown like Sam's, either, they were dark and ruthless and reminded me of shit. These two were so similar one would even think they were siblings, but as it turns out, this unfortunate married couple were cousins.

They laughed in my face. "You do that, son." And the door slammed in my face.

"Well who the fuck names their children Florence, Clarence and Maxence anyway you unoriginal, lame-named, foul-mouthed runts of the litter!" As you can tell, I had become very imaginative with my insults recently. I mean, I had a lot to be angry about, and I had to vent it somewhere.

I turned and left their vile home immediately, I didn't want to be there a moment longer.

Not at his home, he at V.'s? The message was sent straight to Sam. The street leaving Max's neighbourhood loomed ahead, and I was gone.

Nope. No one's seen him. What do we do?

For once in my life, I can honestly say I was baffled. I had no clue what to do, and the idea of not knowing where he was killed me slowly inside. I didn't know what to reply, I felt my arm twitch out and signal a taxi. Before I knew it, my phone was away in my pocket and Sam became suddenly irrelevant. I whispered a name to the taxi driver, a name that came straight from my gut. I knew this kid, I knew where he was.

We'd been searching all day for him, searching everywhere. I ditched school for the day to search, and after we realised that he wasn't in the school, we began scouring territories. Somehow, I knew he wasn't there. Somehow, I knew that I knew. But I couldn't explain how I knew that I knew that I knew. Wow, confusing sentences are so in right now.