The Girl Behind The Mask | Chaelisa

Chapter 29

10 Months Later…

“Jesus, kid, you need to start laying off them cupcakes,” Lisa panted out in a staggered breath, swaying slightly off balance as she stepped closer to the eight-foot pine tree. For such a scrawny boy, Axel was surprisingly heavy. “Hurry up before Roseanne catches us.”

Axel huffed, shifting uncomfortably on her shoulders as he stretched out his arms, straining to reach his target. “A little more to the left, Lisa…” he groaned, leaning forward until his stomach pressed against the back of her head. “That’s it. Now… a little to the right.”

“Axel! Just plop that thing up there!” Lisa was now nose-to-nose with a rather prickly branch, one careless step away from piercing an eyeball.

“No, it has to be perfect!” Axel explained, twisting to get a better angle. “This is the most crucial Christmas decoration. It requires patience and precision… and you moving a little more to the right.”

“Well, you’re precisely five seconds away from getting your ass tossed to the floor. Hurry!”

It took a few more unsuccessful attempts, and a rather intimate moment with a frisky branch rubbing against her crotch, for Axel to finally position the star ornament atop the tree.

“Got it!” he said eventually. In her relief, she took a step backwards far too quickly, a rash movement Axel was not prepared for. “Whoa, Lisa! Shi-“

And then he was gone. A blur of blonde hair streaked past her line of vision before it was consumed by the tree in front of them. The clash was obscenely loud. Consisting of clattering ornaments – a mixture of plastic, wooden, and glass – as they smashed against hardwood floor mingled with the pained cries of a boy being jabbed and poked by branches and Christmas lights.

“Uh, Axel?”

Axel thrashed relentlessly, attempting to free himself from the tree’s unyielding grasp. “Help me! Ah! It’s poking me in the butt! Get me out!”

Perhaps Lisa should have felt guilty.

Perhaps she should have felt worried.

Yet the only rational reaction that occurred to her at that precise moment was to very slowly slip her phone out of her back pocket.

And while withholding a serious giggle, she began to not-so-secretly Snapchat the entire. damn. thing.

“What’s going on in there!” Roseanne shouted from the kitchen. Lisa immediately heard the unmistakable sound of rushed footsteps nearing the living room, where they had been decorating the tree.

“Fuck. Axel, be quiet.” She reached forward and after grasping a handful of Axel’s shirt, she tugged the kid free and set him down beside her just as Roseanne appeared in the entryway.

The blonde scanned the disarray that spanned out across the living room floor in disbelief. Leave it to Lisa and her brother to uncover a way to transform a task as simple as ornamenting a Christmas tree into a death-defying ordeal.

“What happened here?” Roseanne’s eyes roamed over Axel’s ruffled appearance – hair disheveled slightly more than usual, with pine tree needles protruding from every square inch of his clothes. Lisa was grinning forcefully, throwing Roseanne that ‘huh? whatchu mean?’ look that entirely gave her away.

“Nothin’.” The guilt-ridden pair responded instantaneously, shrugging the question off in a casual dismissal.

“Uh-huh…” Roseanne narrowed her eyes suspiciously, but decided to let them off the hook this time. She had dedicated the better part of her morning working on an obscenely sophisticated, highly anticipated portrait for a loyal client and she was too enveloped in her work to be distracted by Lisa’s and Axel’s shenanigans. “Axel, you need to start getting ready for practice. Lisa’s taking you since I have to finish this painting. But clean this mess up first, both of you.”