Ryan keeps on trying, despite the fact he must know there's no point, that it's too late. His expression is furiously determined, still, like how he gets sometimes when he can't see the impossibility of a task set before him. Ryan is always the last person to give up on anything. On anyone. It's my favourite thing about him.
But now, at times like these, it's something that hurts me to see.
I get up from the floor and move around to kneel beside Ryan. He doesn't react like he's noticed me. But when I put a gentle hand on his arm, to stop him, he lets out a frustrated noise from deep in his throat and sags, halting his ministrations on Tony like he was just waiting for me to give him permission.
Ryan lets me wrap my arms around his shoulders and tug him towards me. He closes his eyes and presses his temple to mine. Air shudders out of his mouth like he's biting back a sob and I hold onto him just that little bit harder.
Neither of us speaks because really, there's nothing to say.
From the corner of my eye, I look at the body that used to belong to Tony and silently swear to him that whoever sold him the drugs that did this will pay dearly for it.
Ryan
TonyRiverswasbarelysixteen years old when he died. He'd been kicked out of his parent's house for having a boyfriend and was on the streets nine months before he found the shelter. I met him the day after he arrived, when he was still distrustful of anyone offering help without asking for anything in exchange.
After three months, Tony was just starting to decompress and make friends with the other kids at the shelter. When I last saw him, he was eating spaghetti and laughing with his friends in the cafeteria. One week later and he's laid out in the morgue, cold and alone.
The day after he dies, my friends and I find ourselves sat up at The Refuge’s bar listening to Ben tell us what little he knows about the drug that killed Tony.
“People are calling it ‘Epic’, because that’s how the drug makes you feel. Invincible. Incredible. Like you can be and do anything. Supposed to make you faster and stronger and smarter.” Ben’s voice is laced with bitterness. “The rush is meant to be insane and lasts for ages. More addictive than heroin, apparently.”
Ben admits he doesn’t know much else. Can’t even confirm who’s selling it.
I slap a bag partially filled with blue powder down on the bar in front of Ben. "It has to be coming from the Winters."
Before the paramedics arrived to take him away, I searched Tony's pockets and found a coke bag, except the powder inside it was blue rather than white. I hid the bag of powder from the police when they showed up to question everyone. Milo and I stuck to the usual procedure of telling them fuck-all.
We can't rely on the police to help us with this. Most of them are on the Winters family payroll and even those who aren't I wouldn't trust. I've spent too much of my life viewing the police as the enemy to ever put my faith in them.
Besides, I don't need anyone to tell me who these drugs came from. All drug and weapons trade goes through the Winters. No way something new gets sold in Danger without their approval.
"But the Winters family don't sell to kids," Milo points out, looking beyond tired. He didn't sleep at all last night, which is fair, because neither did I. We lay facing one another for hours, silent and too angry to mourn. "It's their one decent rule. Has been for fucking decades."
"Yeah." Ben picks up the bag of blue powder and scowls at it like he’s expecting contrition. "But ever since Paul Winters took over, things have been different. It wouldn't be the biggest surprise if he got rid of the 'no selling to kids' rule."
Milo blows out a loud huff of air. "True." He's sat up on the stool next to me, arms crossed and resting on the bar.
"We need to get the name of who sold this shit to Tony." I cast a furious glare at the small bag of powder Ben is still holding.
"We should go to the shelter. Ask his friends," Bo suggests. They're sat a little way down on another stool, flanked by Amira and Paige. All of them are wearing similarly grim expressions.
It hits us hard when a street kid dies. We see ourselves in them, knowing how easily it could have been any one of us who got in too deep with some brand of trouble and had our lives cut brutally short.
"Yeah." Paige nods in agreement, meeting my eyes. "If anyone will know who he was getting this stuff from, it's his mates."
She's right. Friends are everything to people like Tony, to people like us. Those connections we build across thin air like bridges between mountains, the ones that remind us we aren't climbing and falling alone. My parents might have given me life, but it was my friends who saved it, who make getting through the shit parts worth doing.
I hold my hand out to Ben for the little bag and he drops it into my open palm. "We need to get this sorted fast," I tell the others. "If nothing else, Tony's friends might have access to the same drug."
"They probably don't know he's dead." Milo looks at me with sad eyes. "No one will think to tell them."
Of course not, they're not related by blood, so there's no legal reason to tell them what's happened to their friend. I don't know when we started needing reasons to be kind to each other, whencomplicatedbegan automatically translating toimpossible, whenthat's just how things arebecame an acceptable excuse for acts of mass cruelty.
Climbing off my stool, I stuff the bag of powder into my jeans pocket and use that freed hand to clasp Milo's thin shoulder. I lean in close and press a soft kiss to his temple. He releases a slow exhale, like the touch of my lips is a relieving balm to the jagged criss-cross of anguish yesterday cut into the insides of his mind.
Milo is prone to stress headaches. I've lost count of the times he's had to lay on our bed, in the dark, head in my lap as I gently massaged away the pain.
"We'll go to the shelter," I tell my friends, squeezing Milo's shoulder. "Whilst we're doing that, you lot can hit the streets and start asking around. Either way, we should end up with some useful information."
