We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Ten

It didn't strike me until I was sitting in the producer's chair in the A/V studio that "extremely fine" was a weird thing for Noah to say.

I sat on the other side of the glass with my vice president Josiah, listening to Marina Fox read her script for this week's episode of West Van Confidential, her anonymous gossip show, but my mind was working itself into a secret frenzy over Noah and his words. He was like a knot that my fingers were determined to undo.

Extremely fine... was he making fun of me? He had a little twinkle in his eye as he said it, as if he wanted to drive me crazy.

He was succeeding.

Josiah elbowed me. Marina was waving madly.

"Um, sorry," she said, "I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to talk about you in this next bit, Riley."

Ugh. Well, it wasn't the first time.

"In perhaps the juiciest bit of goss so far this year," she said in the whispery, airy voice she used on-air to disguise herself, "Noah Lord, son of Edison Motor Company and Temptr CEO Decker Lord, is now a student at West Van Arts Academy." Marina paused. "In related news, Chloe Jensen and Riley Axford returned to WVAA today after a pretty crazy summer. In the recent controversy where Chloe exposed a couple who met on Temptr, Riley was conspicuously silent on social media, not liking or retweeting any of her tweets on the subject. Today, he was seen talking to Noah Lord... several times."

In post-production, we'd add a silly "ooooh" sound effect. Josiah and Marina were both sneaking glances at me but trying not to look like they were. I fought hard to keep my face neutral, but inwardly I was freaking out. If Marina knew, everyone knew. They would officially know tomorrow when the episode came out.

When she was finished, Marina came in from the recording booth and winced.

"Sorry, Riley," she said. "I got ten tips, though, so I had to report on it."

"It's okay," I said.

She wasn't going to ask me any more about it, but as she said goodbye, I could tell she was wondering what was going on. I didn't even know.

"You're a saint," Josiah said as we were packing up.

"I just record the shows," I said grimly. "I don't tell people what to say in them."

"Yeah, but it's one thing for Marina to cover you and Chloe getting caught making out in the instrument closet, and another for her to report about you fraternizing with the enemy."

"Is it really that bad?" I said, before thinking about it.

"Um... yeah, it is," Josiah said. "Sorry."

I drove home feeling like I was being torn in half. I wished I could argue myself to one side or the other, but if I chose a side, I would be betraying some part of me. I couldn't treat him the way Chloe had treated everyone on the Temptr side, but talking to Noah felt like tacit acceptance of what his dad had done to society—to my own family.

I was going to have to get used to feeling torn, because I couldn't stop thinking about him.

That night, when Mom and Dad were asleep in separate rooms, I snuck Vancouver Magazine into my room and really read the feature article about the Lord family. The Chloe-aligned side of me argued that I was doing reconnaissance, trying to learn as much about Decker Lord as I could so I would be an educated activist. I learned that Decker and his wife were concerned about their kids growing up in the spotlight—how they could say that in a magazine feature and not have their brains short-circuit from cognitive dissonance, I didn't know. I also learned that they didn't want their kids to use Temptr.

Vancouver Magazine: Will you let your kids use Temptr?

Decker Lord: No. They could sign up, of course, but they already know that I hope they won't use it.

VM: Why make something available to the public that you wouldn't want your own kids to use?

Decker Lord: I want them to focus on themselves first. I don't want them finding their soulmates while they're so young. It could influence who they become. I think people should become themselves before they find their other half. I know I benefitted immensely from being an individual before I was part of a pair.

That was interesting. It made me see Lord in a different light: he was a father. He cared about his kids growing up to be individuals before they used Temptr and found their soulmates. I looked at the photos of him with renewed sympathy. Now that he'd invented Temptr, his desire to keep his kids independent would be more difficult.

It also separated Noah from his father, for me. The interviewer asked Noah what he thought about Temptr, and his answer made him interesting.

Vancouver Magazine: Will you use Temptr someday?

Noah Lord: I think I'd rather do things the old-fashioned way.

That made me respect him. I carefully studied the photos of him in the story, wondering who the real Noah was. He was with his family in each photo, but the more I scrutinized his piercing eyes and the set of his jaw, I became convinced that he wasn't quite like them. He wasn't quite like anybody. He was apart, in some way. He looked... lonely.

I couldn't quite figure him out.

*

As if staying up late to reread that story brought it on, Chloe punished me the next day. At lunch, she surrounded herself with friends, leaving me to sit at the very end of the table next to Gemma. As soon as I sat down she whispered, "Sorry, Chloe says I can't talk to you."

I felt like shit.

Across the room, Josiah was sitting with his nerdy, D&D-loving friends. They were all talking about something that was so funny Josiah was pounding the table, tears in his eyes, his face crimson. I wished we were better friends; I'd be able to switch tables right now.

Noah walked past me with his tray and sat down at the Alone Zone—a long bar with stools that runs along the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the cafetiria, where people sit when they don't have a group. He ate his sandwich and looked at his phone. Sunlight streamed down through the evergreen trees outside and into the windows. Even from a distance, I could see how green it made his eyes look.

There was an open seat next to him. In a few seconds, my ass could be over there in that seat, apologizing for my behaviour yesterday and striking up a conversation. Maybe bring up the Vancouver Magazine feature about his family... but leave out the fact that I was up late last night rereading it, carefully studying each picture of him, wondering what the fuck I was doing even as I was doing it.

I couldn't, though. The episode of West Van Confidential that we had recorded yesterday had dropped an hour ago. By the end of the day, the entire school would have heard Marina's whispery voice detailing out the scandal of my talking to Noah. It had to end there. The seat next to Noah stayed empty.

No matter how much I wished I could be in it.