A plan takes seed somewhere between a sleepless night and desperation for something to do. The thing about Vivian is she has an upper-hand. Not only is she smarter than me, anyone in Murphy can tell her about me. Murphy is too small. Everyone knows everything, especially when everything was broadcast across TV and Facebook.

The thing about Vivian is I don't know anything about her. But that can change.

I knock on Chaos' door and I've barely put my knuckles to the fading paint job when Hank Osmond swings it wide open. I don't want to say Chaos' father intimidates me, but he towers over me like some kind of underground street fighter. He scratches the blonde stubble on his dark, tanned cheeks.

"Ken!" Hank calls before I even say anything.

Okay, Hank Osmond intimidates me a little. I think you'd need to be if Chaos was your kid. I imagine Chaos back in BC proposing a spirited made-up game involving balls far too close to glass. If the silhouette of his father didn't put the fear of God in his earlier friends, there would be too many broken windows and dented cars to count.

It takes half a second for the steam engine that is Chaos to barrel down the hall, a response to his name that only his father could inspire. Ken was what Hank chose for his son and no stubbornness or distaste would convince him to use anything but K's real name.

"What's up, man?" Chaos pulls me in by my hoodie, giving the front door a good shove closed. "What brings you to el Casa Osmond?"

El Casa Osmond is quaint. They aren't big believers in family pictures, the only exception the picture of a young Chaos and his mother, clearly where he got all his genetics. The living room turned into the dining room with fold-out TV tables in front of the arm chairs in a very accurate picture of a home shared by a man and his half-crazed son.

"Come into my office." Chaos ushers, strutting to his bedroom. I mean, I assume it's still his bedroom, assuming there is still a bed beneath the pile of laundry accumulating on the end of it. That's the clean stuff he's neglected to fold. The dirty pile attempts to take up only the far corner to one side of his closet but fails wretchedly.

"I'm leaning towards some stuff I doubt Billy will approve of," I tell him. Immediately, a grin breaks out across his face as he sits on the edge of the bed, leaning forward intently.

"I'm in. Love the guy, but far too concerned about stuff like right and wrong and laws. Like, if something I do in high school affects my chances of getting a job later in life, is that a job I really want?" In Chaos' case, this statement probably rings very true, but Billy is hardly as likely to turn down an opportunity based on their categorization of him. Carelessness is a thing Chaos and I can connect on at different levels. Where he does whatever he wants without thinking about the consequences or remembering the feelings of all parties involved, I say things without any thought of repercussion or personal feelings. This is a level Billy will never bond on. I think it's impossible for him to take a single step without calculating all possible outcomes first.

"I want to know everything about Vivian Olbrish," I reply. I may have granted Chaos an early Christmas judging by his reaction. He practically jumps up to boot up the ancient desktop bowing his IKEA desk. The thing is so old I'm in awe every single time I witness it bring up his desktop.

"Hello, Facebook, what can you tell me?" Chaos chicken pecks at his keyboard while I lean over him like he's the hacker in an '80s movie breaking into the mainframe.

"She has about eighteen million photos in her album. Hometown is listed as Calgary, Alberta. Dad: Steve Olbrish. Mom: Lily Winstead. Divorce, maybe?"

"I don't know, but I know that she went to Murphy seventeen years ago. I've seen her grad photo," I say. She graduated the year before my mother. I've seen her name and face plenty of times in the pages of old yearbooks.

"Uh huh. Only child, that explains a lot," Chaos goes and I want to point out that neither of us has siblings so what does that say about us, but I keep my mouth shut. "Likes watching Gilmore Girls, Say Yes To The Dress, volleyball, gymnastics, board games, and a bunch of shitty DJs. Oh look, she just turned seventeen. Makes her a Pisces or something. You compatible?"

"Don't think that's right," I answer. "What does her dad do?"

"Dunno. Google will tell me," Chaos says. He mouths out her father's name as he types it into the search engine. Instantly, a bunch of links pops up.

"LinkedIn says he managed a hardware store in Calgary," Chaos says.

Something clicks in my mind. The address penned into the envelope my mother left in her desk. Westview Road.

"Lee's Hardware," I mumble. Lee's Hardware shut down when Mr. Lee finally gave it up to move back to Korea to take care of his ill mother. It took about six months for the 'for sale' sign to go away. It sits squarely in the middle of Westview Road.

He spins around in his chair, eyeing me. "You think he took the place over?"

He must've. All the pieces settle into place, pointing in that direction.

"Do you think you could borrow the truck?" I ask him.

"I have no idea what you're planning, but I like it." Chaos face might just fall off if he keeps smiling like a lunatic.

Chaos takes the corner like a NASCAR driver, sending me slamming into the passenger door. I forgot why I never drive around with Chaos. The last time I did, he nearly drove us into the lake, braking so hard at the end of a dock chunks of the wood broke off, falling into the water with anticlimactic plops.

"Pull over here," I say, still clutching the door as we come down the block to what used to be Lee's Hardware. It's good to see the place potentially bought by someone also in the hardware business. It would be a shame to see Lee's crossed hammer and saw go.

Above the shop is a living space which I gather was originally a workspace for tailors back when the building was a place that sold suits. The 'for sale' sign was taken out while I wasn't paying attention. The open sign glows next to the door.

Chaos pulls up across the street, right in front of the best tourist attraction Murphy has: the legal office Murphy's Law: because anything that can happen, will.

"Do we go in?" Chaos asks.

"I don't know. This is as far as I planned the plan," I reply, "let's just try sitting here for a bit and we'll see what happens."

"So, wait. I thought Vivian lived in that posh neighborhood where you got your head beaten in," Chaos whispers even though we're in his dad's truck where logically no one could overhear us without spy gadgets.

I shrug, "I thought so too, but I guess it must belong to someone else. Sasha, maybe." Regardless of logic, I whisper, too. Perhaps the sign polisher will hear us and tell Vivian we're onto her.

"Like, she just failed to mention that the party was at someone else's house. Was she worried we'd think she's totally uncool for potentially living above the most awesome hardware store in Southern Alberta?

We just kind of... study Lee's Hardware. A giant saw and giant hammer are fixed to the front of the building, and above them, the dark row of windows for the space above the store.

A yellow car zips past, a red one, and then a silver one.

I've ever been on a stake-out before, but I'm sure of several things: firstly, they probably happen more at night than in the middle of the day, and secondly, there's much less talking. That serves to reason that this isn't a stake-out at all, but possibly bordering on full-on stalking.
I pretend stalking is not what it is. After all, we didn't follow Vivian here, we just did a Google search and used a little deductive reasoning to find out where she might live.

The silver car passes by again, a Honda Something.

"What does Vivian drive? Do you know?" I ask Chaos, going back to whispering.

"Who knows? Does she even have a car?" Chaos replies. The two of us slide low into our seats simultaneously.

The silver car comes around again, this time pulling into the alleyway next to the hardware store. We are subtle as a trainwreck. I resist the urge to crane to see if it's really her in the driver's seat.

"Gogogo," I stage whisper, nudging Chaos into suitable driving upright position.

Chaos guns it, spewing a cloud of exhaust behind the truck and cutting off a car behind us. They honk and Chaos just waves it off while I grip the door. I'm really not sure how K passed his driver's test.

"Billy and Sari never know about this," I tell him.

"When did you get so secretive?" Chaos replies.

"You don't want to know the answer to that," I say. It didn't start now.