Ryan
"Knight!Comelookatwhat this little lunatic's doing," Paige calls to me from where she's half hanging over the roof, her long body spread out across the concrete ledge.
Motivated by the urgency in Paige's voice, I put aside the guitar I'd been lazily strumming on and get up from the battered old sofa we found last week abandoned in a rubbish tip and decided to re-home. It's an ugly thing, bright yellow and full of holes where a dozen mice ripped into it. But since it was otherwise undamaged, leaving the poor piece of furniture there, turned upside down in the bin surrounded by legitimate rubbish, felt too cruel for a Wednesday morning.
Across the roof, Bo and Amira look up from where they're playing one of their numerous made-up card games, alerted by my sudden movement. I wave a hand at them, snuffing out their alarm before they can get up as well. They stare at me for a couple of seconds, Bo's dark eyes searching and Amira already tying her long black hair up in case she needs it out of her face, before accepting there's no cause for them to abandon their game and turning away again.
We've all been on the streets for years now, some of us off and on our whole lives, and that means we've learnt to act fast and react to any sign of trouble without hesitation. On good days we're jumpy and paranoid, on bad ones we're survivors.
Walking over to Paige, I heft myself up onto the ledge and squat down beside her. She wordlessly hands me the pair of green binoculars she stole from a camping shop. I hold the binoculars up to my eyes and Paige points to where she wants me to look.
Parked on the other side of the street is an obnoxiously expensive car. I know fuck all about posh cars, but it looks like a Porsche. A bright orange Porsche just sitting there in downtown Danger City like whoever owns it reckons, what? That people around here will think it's too bloody ugly to steal? Maybe some thieves have the luxury of taste, but in this city, anyone with a crowbar and the ability to hotwire a car will liberate that cry for help made of metal and mid-life desperation from its wank-stain of an owner and sell it to one of the half a dozen chop shops within a couple miles drive.
Alternatively, if no one who can hotwire a car comes by in time, something like this will happen. Kneeling beside the Porsche is a small kid dressed all in black with a ratchet in their hands, quickly going about trying to remove the tyres. On a car like that, those wheels would be worth stealing. You could hock them for a decent payout.
"So, he's nicking tyres." I frown at Paige. "Why's that a problem? Ain't like there's any police gonna arrest him for it around here."
Police only ever come trolling through this particular patchwork of crumbled buildings and desiccated streets if they're looking for somebody specific, or more often when they're looking to cause trouble. Kick up a fuss for the sake of it and dole out their version of justice on whatever unlucky bastards they happen to cross paths with that night.
Paige points her finger down at the car again, more aggressively this time. "Check out the licence plate."
I take another look through the binoculars, just about able to make out the licence plate in the dimness due to a lack of streetlights. It reads W1NT3RS. My eyes widen behind the binoculars. "Shit!" I breathe out in a rush, fear catching me in the chest like a foul football. "Mad tosser's stealing wheels off a Winters family car."
Anyone who's spent more than a few weeks on the streets of Danger knows who the Winters family are. If you're born here, you get it shivved into your carotid from day one that they're the ones running this city. No serious crime gets done around here without their say-so, ontheirorders. Nicking some random rich twat's wheels wouldn't show up on their radar, too small time, but stealing from them direct would be the last mistake a person could put their name to. You snatch a pack of gum from that family and you'll wind up with a snowflake carved into the largest patch of skin you own.
Either the kid down there just rocked into town, like, this morning, or he's on a suicide mission for another gang who thinks they can front up to the Winters. It happens every now and again. Some upstart gang boss takes it on himself to lead a merry band of idiots off a cliff by trying to take on the resident behemoth crime family. I've watched countless gangs rise and die on these streets, each one just as overconfident and brash as the last, each one buried beneath a lump of sand before the timer even runs out.
This is how most gangs test the waters for a takeover. They get some street kid who's too stupid or too desperate to tell them where to go, to poke the Winters family with a pointy stick. Most of the time a Winters loyalist will cut through the shadows from whence they came and reach out to drag that stupid kid back with them into the dark. It'll claim them like a nest of snakes, fangs plunging into skin, drawing blood and leaving behind marks that won't have the chance to scar.
Other times, the Winters won't react and the gang who did it will think this is a sign they're getting complacent, weak, which means it's ok to strike. In reality, the Winters are playing dead, waiting to lure their prey out into the open when they think it's safe. That's all anyone is to that family, meat waiting to be clawed off bones and devoured.
Paige nudges my leg. "You wanna go make like a hero again?" Her eyes are still fixed on the scene playing out below us. On the kid who may or may not die bloody and pointless after tonight, depending on how lazy the Winters family are feeling this week.
"No," I mutter angrily. I neverwantto get involved in this crap. Don't need the headache. Don't need the possible blowback. Yet somehow, every time I catch one of these stupid little shitheads signing their own death warrants, I'm unable to stop myself from offering a backhand of reality. I blame my mum for overdosing before she could teach me how to be a worse person. More like my dad. Able to walk away from a bad situation I know can only ever repeat and deteriorate.
Paige makes a low humming sound, fully aware of what my 'no' really means. Her asking was a formality, a game of pretend she lets me play. We've been running together long enough to predict and occasionally indulge each other's weakest instincts.
Bo and Amira look over at me again when I jump down from the ledge, their next move caught in stasis, waiting to be either recruited or told to stand down.
"Wait here," I tell them all, sweeping a glance up at Paige, noting her change in position. She's shifted to sit cross-legged on the ledge. When she tilts her head at the binoculars, I throw them back up to her. She catches them deftly in one hand and nods at me, turning her attention to the street below. She'll keep an eye out in case I need backup for whatever reason.
Amira and Bo seem less happy about letting me go alone, but they don't protest out loud. We've only been together a few months, but they know by now I won't change my mind once it's made. Paige can get away with pushing me sometimes, although it rarely works out in her favour. The others haven't quite worked up the confidence to actively fight back against my orders. I'm enjoying the easy compliance whilst it lasts.
It's better if I go on my own to confront this kid, otherwise, he might feel crowded and lash out. I'd rather not get a ratchet swung at my face if I can help it.
Shoving my hand into the pocket of my hoodie, I run my fingers along the outline of the pocketknife I've taken to carrying with me at all times. It's unlikely the kid's reaction, whatever it is, will necessitate such a demonstrative threat, but having the knife there makes me feel better. More secure. No idea why since I've witnessed plenty of fights that ended in chaos the second a blade was brought into the fray.
Picking my way down through the derelict building and carefully undoing the safeguards my friends and I have set up to stop people from getting in takes a couple of minutes. Once I'm out on the street, I don't bother to hide my presence, boldly walking across the road and stopping in full view of the kid so as not to startle him. The kid is still kneeling beside the car, working away at the wheel with his ratchet.
Now that I'm close up—and woah, the Porsche really is alarmingly orange, holy fuck, why would you buy this?—I'm able to make a better assessment of the kid. A boy, I think. He looks older than I thought from a distance, but still quite small. I'd guess about sixteen years old, at least a year or two younger than me. His hood is up, but from this angle, I can see his face well enough and it catches me off guard for a moment how my heart seizes in reaction to it. I need a few seconds to recover from the unexpected blow, a few seconds of blinking stupidly at him before I'm able to get my brain back into the right gear and figure out what I'm so struck by.
Jet-black curls frame the heart shaped face of a princess doll, too perfect to be real, with a distractingly full mouth and cheeks that guarantee dimples. He has long, dark lashes and irises the colour of fern bristles. His eyes are too big and round, like he's the cartoon version of himself come to life.
He is, without a doubt, the most beautiful person I've ever seen. It feels weird to think that, too elaborate and soppy, but it's true.
Something inside my stomach congeals when the obvious signs of homelessness become evident the longer I stare at the kid. His black curls are unwashed and threaded with grit from the pavement and dust from abandoned buildings. There's dirt under his fingertips, dug in so deep it must be the work of weeks rather than days. His pale skin has smears of dirt and grime.
Maybe in some other world, I'd think it was a good thing, to be so pretty. But not in this one. Not when you're out here on these streets, making a go of it alone. Unless you're willing to make very specific use of it, beauty is nothing but a liability, a thing for other people to soil and distort. It makes you vulnerable, even more so than you already are, and that is to be feared. Most kids afflicted with a pretty face either become shadows, untouchable and obscure, or they learn to protect themselves with a different kind of ugliness. They build barbed wire around that vulnerability so anyone who tries to take advantage of it will come away mangled and bloodied, wrought by the experience.
