Misdirection (Borealis: Without a Compass, #2)

by Gregory Ashe

“Go put some fucking clothes on,” North said. “Do your fucking algebra homework. Pick up your fucking room. How’s that for a start?” “Yeah, we can play it like that. What if I don’t pick up my room, Daddy? What if I’m bad?” “You don’t even want to know,” Shaw said. “One time he told me I had to pick up my room even after I’d been really nice to him after he destroyed this model I was working on, and then I was about to beat the world record on Duck Hunt, the old NES one, and he ripped the cord out of the Nintendo and turned off the TV. Because I hadn’t picked up my room.” “I didn’t ruin a model you were working on,” North said. “I reached under the bed for my socks and accidentally put my hand into that fucking nightmare banana-cream-pie skyscraper—” To Louis, he interjected, “it’s exactly what it sounds like—that you’d left under there for two weeks. And I turned off the fucking game because you started sobbing every time you shot one of those damn ducks.” “But the dog was so cute! I had to!”