We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Three

"Real love rules! Real love rules!"

Chloe, most of her face hidden behind her Ray-Ban sunglasses, shouted slogans into the bullhorn as she held one corner of a massive banner that read #ResistTemptation. I snapped photo after photo, walking backwalks in front of her. I was picturing how gorgeous she'd look in black and white. No, not gorgeous—serious. Revolutionary. Powerful.

That was how she wanted to be seen, so that was how I was going to portray her.

"Hey hey, ho ho," she chanted, "Decker Lord has got to go!"

The crowd went wild. I jogged backwards ahead of the marchers, trying to get as many steps ahead as I could so I could fit the entire crowd in my footage. That wasn't possible—there were several hundred protestors following Chloe and the other organizers up the boulevard toward the sprawling headquarters that housed the Edison Motor Company and Temptr. Signs stuck up above the heads, bearing every type of slogan—"CHOOSE Love," "You should be faithful to your wife, just as you take water from your own well (Proverbs 5:15)," and "More Than Just One!"

My chest swelled in pride. What other movement had free-will feminists, Christians, and polyamorous people all on one side? This surging crowd, with all its colors and flags and signs and joy, gave me hope for the future. We could unite on something, after all.

All it took was one shady billionaire to bring us together.

We reached the front gate of the headquarters. It was Saturday, so we knew it was most likely empty, but the visual of us marching up the fence and shaking our fists at the sinister-looking corporate cubes was the main thing. The marchers gathered around, and Chloe stepped to the front with her bullhorn. She took a copy of her speech out of her pocket and cleared her throat before speaking into the bullhorn.

I focused the camera on her. This footage was going to go viral; I had to make her look as good as possible.

"We're here today to stand up for love," Chloe said. The crowd cheered. "Real love, not the kind Temptr peddles. Real love isn't as easy as a name popping up in an app. Real love is difficult. Real love is messy. Real love isn't a happily-ever-after fairy tale—it's something you have to work at every day. You have to choose it. That's what makes it special! It isn't meant to be: you have to make it real."

Everyone whooped and hollered. I swept the camera over them. It was important to capture their reaction, maybe even more important than capturing Chloe's speech. People who watched our YouTube channel and listened to our podcast knew what she thought. What they needed to hear was that a lot of other people agreed with her, and were willing to stand outside the house of the enemy and shout.

Chloe was a couple minutes into her speech when, behind her, a car—a shiny black Edison—rolled up to the security gate. It opened. The car didn't move, but the crowd still nervously shuffled out of the way. There was no way someone was going to ram an Edison into us right in front of their headquarters, but I kept my camera trained on the car, anyway. Chloe saw the car and tilted her head to the side.

"Chloe, out of the way," I called.

The gate rolled aside. Chloe was the only person standing between the Edison and the road, and she wasn't moving. In fact, she widened her stance and lifted her bullhorn.

Shit.

"Come out and face us," she said. "Let's have a chat, you and I."

It was a woman. Her dark bob swish back and forth as she shook her head. Chloe planted her fist on her hip.

"I swear I don't bite," she said. "Come on, let us just ask you a few questions. I'm not moving until you do."

The woman shook her head again. Her ghost-white hands gripped the steering wheel at ten and two. Chloe looked back at the crowd and gave a mischievous smile before sitting down on the hood of the woman's car. She made a big show of crossing her legs. The crowd laughed and whooped.