the burn don't work and the buzz don't help; ryan sohmers

It took Javi a little over two weeks to run into Ryan Sohmers again, and while the summer had warmed up in preparation for a final pre-autumn heatwave, his own situation had cooled considerably. In the absence of any contact from Lanny, he had settled into the familiar routines of a new home and new school. There were six other kids at Joe’s place (which, it transpired, was officially called the Horizons Home for Children) of varying ages from seven to twelve, two girls and four boys. Joe was the only all-round staffer but two other adults came by in part-time shifts during the day. Javi was the oldest by two years and, he’d quickly pegged, the one with the most questionable background. He’d probed Katie, the nicest of the three adults, about it one afternoon.

“We used to have older kids here, the harder to place ones,” she had admitted after some light needling. “Joe changed up and started getting younger ones about five years ago.”

This wasn’t an unfamiliar story. A lot of foster carers took older kids on with good intentions and then changed directions when after years of seeing what the system did to children the longer they were left in it. Javi also hadn’t forgotten the way Joe had reacted to seeing Lanny’s car on his first night here.

“So how come he took me?” He’d wondered, watching Katie carefully.

“Oh, you know.” Katie shrugged, deliberately vague. “There was a lot of, um, discussion about it, and they promised us you were a good egg.”

Translation: Joe had said no until the Child Services promised him a lot of money.

None of the adults at Horizons seemed to have much appetite for discipline, so the too-small house was loud and chaotic most of the time. A lot like school.

School was… ugh, school. It had been a long time since Javi had attended school full-time, and it was exactly how he remembered it: full of bellowing teenagers and screaming teachers. He had done okay in the first week, but they’d obviously been giving him a newbie’s pass because he had already landed three detentions in his second week. For dumb stuff, too! Like, who cared if he set fire to his pencil with a Bunsen burner? He put it out right away, and it was his pencil. The chemistry teacher shouldn’t have been droning on while there was a Bunsen burner around.

In spite of this, Javi was trying. His teachers had loaded him up with homework to make up for starting the year late and he had spent several days just trying to find a quiet spot to have a crack at it. There was nowhere quiet at school or Horizons (and Javi wasn’t keen to develop a rep for being a nerd anyway) so he had branched out across Atroe. His quest to find a homework spot had also been a convenient excuse to spend his after-school hours roaming the city, keeping a sharp eye out for a particular police officer. All of this would be so much easier if he was Spiderman. He could listen in on police radios to find Sohmers and get his math done on top of a building or whatever.

On Thursday of week one, Javi had no luck with his cop side quest but had found a sweet spot for homework. Not too far out from school was a section of town with a straight road which ran downhill, where most of the stores were boarded up or had been replaced with pawn shops and casinos. At the bottom of the hill was the semi-deconstructed remains of an old restaurant, complete with a small parking lot riddled with cracks and potholes. At some point some developer had bought the dilapidated property and started tearing it down, but had had to stop for whatever reason. Now the restaurant was missing a wall, some windows and part of its roof, but was otherwise reasonably stable, especially since it still had scaffolding erected around it. A few tables and chairs remained along with other debris. Javi had found that the tables made ideal locations to crack on with school work, since it was reasonably quiet (aside from the usual city noises) and nobody bothered him there. There was also a shortcut through some alleyways that went almost directly from school to the back of the former restaurant.

It was Friday, week two. Out late from school having served his dumbass detention time, Javi was faced with a free weekend of side-questing if he could knock out some of his homework tonight. He hit his usual route through the back alleys and had clambered through the hole in the wall. He was about to swing his backpack under one of the tables when something caught his eye through the windowless eye socket of the building. Further up the road, with his back to Javi, a uniformed police officer was speaking with a guy outside a casino. Javi squinted. The officer had the right build, height and hair colour. Could it be?

Hitching his bag back in place over one shoulder, Javi climbed out through the hole where the window should be and started up the street. The closer he got, the brighter the flame of hope burned until it was billowing into a roaring fire. He stepped up from behind and to the side so that he was next to Sohmers, giving him a bit of berth. Javi knew well enough not to sneak up on a cop.

“Yo Ryan! What’s happenin’, man?” He held a fist up in an open invitation for a bump on the side. “You arrestin’ this guy? Yo,” he glanced around, realising properly for the first time that it was just the three of them there. “Where’s your cop girlfriend, bro?”