The final bell rings after a long day of school, causing Tim to sigh, wincing as his shirt’s sleeve briefly rubs against a scrape. It’s one of many, fresh and stinging, joined by bruises scattering amongst them. He feels around his face and winces again as he finds one on his cheek, which curves up into a smug smile as he sees his opponent leave the principal's office.

  Darik is equally covered in injuries, although the black eye he bares is much more striking than the long streak of a bruise across Tim’s face. Tim spots grass and dirt still in Darik’s black hair, so he runs a hand through his red, picking out a blade and stuffing it in his pocket.

  Tim makes eye contact with Darik, who narrows his eyes at him in a look of pure rage, Tim further inflating it with a wink. Darik balls a fist and approaches him, before his father puts a hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you stupid? Don’t start shit here boy.” Bernard pushes his son forward. A pirate of a man with an unkept scraggly beard, long drained of any color.

  “Don’t forget ice!” Tim calls as they walk out, causing both to shoot him another angry look.

  “Tim! Come here,” The principal calls out to him, flinching him out of his smug taunting.

  “Take a seat,” Mrs. Ross tells him, peering over blue thick rimmed glasses

  He does so, giving her a smile and a nod. “So, in my defense...”

  “Tim, this is the 3rd fight you’ve been in this year.” Mrs. Ross frowns at him.

  “And, coincidentally, the 3rd drug sale, thwarted,” he quickly throws out before the principal can continue. “Just doing my civic duty Mrs. Ross.”

  “But it isn’t your duty, it isn’t your job, we—”

  “Your narcs aren’t doing it so...” Tim cuts her off, then stops, as she raises an eyebrow to the comment. “Sorry, but come on.”

  “Tim, they do plenty, they do everything they can, and without resorting to violence.” Her tone grows stern. “Tim, we cannot tolerate violence in the school, the only reason you haven’t been suspended, or expelled is because enough of the staff sees potential in you.”

  “He was going to sell someone meth! That ruins people’s—” he’s cut off by Ross holding her hand up.

  “Hush, first things first,” she says with a sigh, “I need to call your parents.”

  “That’s sort of a waste of time.” Tim leans back in his chair.

  “And yet.” She picks up the phone.

  “It's a different number than last time,” Tim sighs. “Six one nine...”

  Tim’s sure Mrs. Ross expects the next few minutes to be awkward, it's far from the first time they’ve done this since he began High School. Despite not being able to “tolerate violence” the overcrowded school had plenty of fights, all the time, it's just normally the kids would get away with it. Tim had certainly been in more than three this year, and he'd lost count how many he was in since he was a Freshman.

  The phone goes to a full voicemail, and Mrs. Ross tries a second time for posterity's sake, before sighing and hanging up half way through the call.

  “Well, looks like this conversation is going to be between just us then.” She folds her hands and places them on the table. “Tim, you’re suspended.”

  Panic lances through his veins like venom, he can’t get suspended, not now. “Wait what? But they found the drugs!”

  Mrs. Ross sighs, “They didn’t, but even if they did, that’s not the point.”

  “The point is that it was the right thing to do,” Tim loses his cool, raising his voice as anger takes hold of him, “no one was around! Am I just supposed to let...”

  She holds up a hand for him to be quiet and calm down, and he begrudgingly complies. She lets the quiet sit for a while before continuing.

  “To answer your question, yes, you're supposed to just let it happen.” Mrs. Ross reprimands him. “And while it happens, you go tell someone, a teacher, one of the guards, an adult. Then you let them take care of it.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong,” he tries.

  “Tim, you’re not getting it, which is why I’m suspending you in the first place. Hopefully that’ll get through to you.”

  He can’t let this happen, not this week, there is too much riding on this week. His eyes go down to the floor as he thinks and thinks, surely there is a way to swing a... lesser sentence.

  “When?” He finally asks.

  She raises an eyebrow. “When? Effective immediately.”

  “Wait wait wait,” Tim says with genuine panic, but makes sure to play it up a little. “But the field trip is tomorrow!”

  Mrs. Ross leans back in her chair. “Yes, I'm aware.”

  “Mrs. Ross, please don’t,” Tim pleads. “This Arch trip is a once in a lifetime chance, my chance, I need to go.”

  “You should’ve thought about that before...” She hesitates as she sees Tim’s face contort into something desperate.

  “Please—I—I’ll go grab someone next time,” he promises, noticing the principal's demeanor soften. “I don’t get a lot of things to look forward to Mrs. Ross, I really don’t. Arch is the leader in... just about everything I’m interested in. They specialize in paleontology, biology, genetics, they’re basically inventing paleogenetics! I’ve followed them for as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to work there for as long as I can remember, and this is my one chance to leave an impression on someone important.” He sighs. “It can get me a foot into the life I want, it's a way out of the life I have now.”

  Hope and guilt both well up in Tim as he watches Mrs. Ross consider his words, shake her head, sigh, and then smile.

  He got her, it felt bad to do it, but he got her.

  “Alright Tim, alright. You’ve convinced me, but you’re not getting off scot free. Detention, for a month.”

  “A week?” He tries.

  “Tim.” She frowns at him. “We aren’t bartering, this isn’t a negotiation. You’ve gotten very, very lucky today. That’s all.”

  Despite the idly threatening tone behind her words, Tim lights up, beaming a bright smile, making the principal chuckle.

  “I don’t know how you keep convincing me, but this is the last time, do you hear me?” She gets serious again. “One more fight, and its suspension, at the very least.”

  “At least? Is the most capital punishment?” He jokes, making her sigh.

  “Yes, send you right to the electric chair.” She chuckles and shakes her head as the final school bell rings. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer, believe it or not I want to get out of here too.”

  “Thank you Mrs. Ross.” He gets up and waves as he heads out. “See you at my execution!”

  “I’ll make it two months!” She frowns and Tim takes that as cue to leave before he decides to test his luck further with any more jokes.

  Much brighter than his smile is the San Diegan sun that batters his eyes upon leaving the brick and mortar building. The campus is a relatively large one, yet the halls are still packed to the brim, Tim needing to squeeze past people multiple times during the end of day rush to leave school. Being an outdoor school barely helps the matter—Tim’s High School has around twenty five hundred students this year, more than twice the average for most places, and even with its large size it struggles to accommodate everyone.

  There were some efforts to improve the bloating population of it, a whole new area of buildings are under construction, but work is slow and the funding comes in even slower, so now it just congests the foot traffic even more, to the point it wasn’t uncommon for kids to end up five or more minutes late to class, a fact plenty take advantage of.

  Eventually the cramped corridors give way to the more open courtyard where blue metal lunch benches are scattered about, cooking in the hot sun. Though still crowded, it quickly empties as students rush off to finally be free of the school day.

  To the courtyard’s left is the bus loading and unloading zone, which Tim quickly hurries to, using the scattered trees for occasional relief from the Summer heat.

  Under a tree near the congested street, sits an almost chair shaped boulder, and on that sits Tim’s best friend, Jane. Her long black hair droops over her shoulders and reaches her seat, and Tim notes how pretty it looks glistening in the sunlight. She leans back while biting her lower lip and cutely shuffles her feet as she reads what must be a particularly tense scene in the manga she reads.

  Tim tries to quietly sneak up on her from behind, jumping to the top of the rock and shouting “Boo!” at the top of his lungs.

  She snorts and smiles up at him, “Who did that to your face?”

  “No one, I slipped on a banana peel.” He jokes as he leans further over the rock, losing his footing and beginning to slide down it.

  “Ow ow ow ow.” He complains as he earns himself a couple more scrapes as Jane laughs at him.

  “Dumbass.” Jane covers her mouth as she laughs some more. “So did you win?”

  “Yes and no.” He says, getting up and brushing himself off. “Did I win the fight? I think so, did I get away with it? Nope!”

  “This is what happens when you don’t have a look out.” She rolls her eyes and puts her manga in her backpack.

  “Well I wasn’t going to let Darik sell anything on my watch.” Tim shrugs, “and it's not like I had time to go and grab you from class.”

  “Yeah yeah, so what’s the damage?”

  “I talked it down from suspension to a month of detention.” Tim says.

  “A month?!” Her face scrunches up and she punches his arm.

  “Ow, bruise!”

  “A month, I'm going to be so bored at lunch, uuuuugh.” Jane groans.

  “Could do something productive? Anger management?” He teases and smacks her next punch away.

  “Dick, I'm going to be bored out of my mind.”

  “Could join the new anime club?” He offers as they begin to walk. “Plenty of fellow weebs to talk to.”

  “You serious? I’m good, I don’t want to associate with people who show up to school with tails up their ass and who think its ok to run up and bite the fuck out of you because you had two decent conversations.”

  “Yeah, Cristine has always been off.” Tim sighs.

  “Understatement. I’m shocked she’s never ended up at your house, honestly I’d be more ok with how she acts if she was actually—” Jane trails off as Tim shoots her a look of annoyance.

  “Anyways... excited to abandon me for your nerd shit tomorrow?”

  “I’m so excited!” He says while involuntarily quickening his steps. “They’re going all out, bringing in a ton of brand new fossils they helped categorize and name, new models for new phylogenetic placements, tons of new discoveries, and they’re going to talk about their de-extinction process.”

  “Riiight, they're making Jurassic Park, you know, you made me watch those movies a lot. Makes me think the lesson of “don’t fill a zoo with dinosaurs” didn’t really get through.”

  “Eh, that’s not even the message. Its hubris of man and blah blah blah, besides, the design of the enclosures were dumb. All you’d need to keep the T’Rex from not ripping through the wires to its enclosure would be strong metal bars and a moat. Bitches hate moats.”

  Jane laughs at the stupid comment as they pass under some shade, approaching the corner of the high school. “You got any plans today besides geeking out?”

  “Also they’ve been doing de-extinction projects for years now, bringing back species that we wiped out and making ecosystems around the world more...”

  “Ok, but do you have any plaaaans today?” Jane repeats loudly.

  “That entirely depends on how things look at home,” he shrugs as he looks both ways for them both before crossing the street.

  “Your house phone on right now? Or your sister’s? We can call Rowan to see if we can go over.”

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “Yeah, house phone is up for the moment. May as well give it a shot.”

  “God I hope his mom isn’t feeling like a bitch today, I want to stay out as long as possible. Dad has a new girlfriend again.”

  “Uh oh, Spaghetti O's.” Tim shakes his head and sighs. “I have a pack of earplugs if you want them.”

  “Yes please.” Jane nods as they round another corner, leaving the school behind and now entering a main street populated by lower middle class, or just low, housing.

  Cars drive past at a near constant rate this time of day, everyone trying to beat the traffic congestion of more than 2000 kids all trying to go home at once. It makes speeding common, the impatient and uncaring clipping cars far more often than the entire rotten neighborhood is comfortable with. This has led to people who live on the street to nearly never park on it, even if their driveways are too small they’ll move their trash cans to the back to make extra room for any additional vehicles, all except one house at least, one that was simply too full.

  “Your dad’s car is here.” Tim gestures to a beat up red Mustang parked in front of his home.

  “Shit.” She rolls her eyes “No way I’m going to get to go to Rowan’s now.”

  “Don’t give up, he might not even notice you.” Tim says as they near his house.

  As far as this street went, it was one of the better looking ones, though mostly because of its most unique aspect, a Jacaranda tree, in full bloom with vibrant, purple flowers. The path to the door is littered with them, squashed under heavy foot traffic, their nectar making dark stains around them, almost like blood from a fresh body.

  A warm breeze rustled through the tree, knocking a few more flowers down to the path, Tim nearly stepping on one, only to pivot his weight and hop over it. He kneels down and picks them up, letting two fly back into the breeze, before setting the last one on top of Jane’s head.

  “Hmmm.” He inspects carefully while rubbing his chin, met with Jane simply raising an eyebrow to him.

  “Nope, not your color.” Tim shrugs and approaches the door.

  Jane rolls her eyes and follows behind him. “What is then? Green?”

  “It is the best color.” Tim shrugs as he jostles the doorknob, just in case it's unlocked, before giving the door a hearty knock.

  Tim backs off and stands by Jane, rocking back and forth.

  “I bet we’re out here 30 minutes before someone answers.” Jane says nonchalantly.

  “No, noooo! Don’t jinx it man, it's too hot.” Tim scrunches up his face at her, wiping sweat from his hair.

  “I’m not trying to jinx it, I’m trying to bet.” She shrugs.

  “Shouldn’t... you try and jinx it then? That way you just win.”

  Jane holds up her hand and repeatedly opens and closes it while mouthing “blah blah blah.”

  Tim snorts, “What are we betting then?”

  Jane shrugs “I don’t know, you’ll just owe me something.”

  “Dangerously vague.” Tim raises an eyebrow.

  “Owe me something within reason?”

  Tim shrugs, “Better, I’ll call you on that.” He says as he steps to the door again and bangs on it, and as he steps away it opens up.

  “Fuck.” Jane sighs.

  “Ha!” Tim snickers as he turns to a stranger in the doorway.

  “What do you want?” The short haired woman looks Tim and Jane over while she leans against a heavy security door.

  “I live here?” Tim blinks in response.

  “What’s your name?” She asks.

  “He lives here, let us in.” Jane quickly grows irritated.

  “Tell me your names so I can ask about you.” She shrugs.

  “Right right, in case we’re teenage FEDs, right Agent Ramirez?” Tim nudges Jane.

  “Right...” Jane sets aside her annoyance to play along. “We can always come back with a warrant, wouldn't even take 10 minutes.”

  “Not even 10 minutes.” Tim smirks.

  “There’s some kids out here trying to come in,” The lady shouts then turns back to the kids.

  “I’m going to kick your...” Jane sizzles but is cut off as the woman disappears and is replaced by a more familiar sight.

  Delilah, Tim’s sister, replaces the stranger and opens up the security door. She is significantly older than him, taller, and with tanner skin, a result of him and his siblings all having different fathers.

  “Sorry Buhbuh,” She says as she rubs Tim’s head as he passes by her, though he quickly shoves her hand away from him.

  “Mhmm,” Tim glares over to the back of the stranger’s head as she sits down on a couch to play Wii bowling with several other people, one of which being Jane’s father, who doesn’t seem to notice them come in.

  The light of the huge, box TV recovered from the dumpster is one of the only sources of light illuminating the cramped living room. Stacks of boxes, crates, and suitcases line the walls, belonging to the revolving door of people who move in and out, often paying rent via food stamps, drugs, or both. More boxes sit under a large L desk in the corner, covered in ash trays, the smell of cigarettes choking most other smells from the living room, something Tim might even be grateful for.

  The couch Jane’s father and the stranger sits on is overflowing with people, and they leak onto a second couch sitting back to back with it. A few people crane their necks to watch the bowling while others stare jealousy at a full mattress on the ground, being taken up by a young couple who currently pay more than the rest of them, hence earning the extra space.

  “Oh don’t be like that.” Delilah chuckles, “I’ll buy you some snacks to make up for it,” She offers before she frowns, looking at the small bruise on his cheek.

  “Did you get into another fight?” She reaches out, looking over the injury.

  “Did you sell drugs to someone at my school?” He counters as he takes a step back.

  “How do you think I got the money for the snacks?” She frowns and shrugs.

  Tim’s skin begins to redden as his blood boils. Delilah broke their mother’s “rule” to not sell to kids long ago at this point, but now she’s so deep in she’s willing to just come out and admit it? Just like that? Tim opens his mouth, ready to reignite a common shouting match, when Jane touches his arm, calming him just enough to get his senses together.

  “Deleelee,” Jane tugs on her shirt, “can we use the phone? We wanna see if we can go to Rowan’s.” Jane asks in a low voice while watching her father.

  “Mom’s on it, you’ll have to ask her.”

  Tim takes a deep breath, coughing on the scent of nicotine, before letting out a long sigh and heading deeper into the house, Jane following behind. Tim flicks a switch and an old lightbulb flickers a few times, illuminating a hallway. They walk towards the very end of it and Tim curls his nose, the smell of marijuana leaking out from the bottom. There are worse things she could be high on, Tim supposes, but it still makes a white hot pressure build in his chest.

  Tim holds his breath and knocks on the door, then loses his patience too soon and raps on the door harder. Shuffling comes from the door and hoarse “Who is it?!” calls from within.

  “Me, mom! I need the phone.”

  The creak of a bed and the quick shutting of drawers before the hiss of a Febreze can heralds Tim’s mother opening the door. With a creak, fading smoke leaks out before her head follows, like some rotting, undead dragon from a fantasy comic leering out of its cave. Her pepper colored hair falls over her face for a moment before she moves it back behind her head, showing hard eyes with dark bags under them that soften once they settle on Tim and Jane.

  “What happened to your face baby?” She frowns.

  “Fight.” Tim shrugs.

  “Well, did you win?”

  If Tim could grimace any harder than he already is, he would. Of course that’s what she cares the most about. Can’t have the former terror of the streets’ son lose a fight, or else it could hurt what was left of her street cred.

  “Yeah, he won.” Jane says as she reaches out and squeezes his hand.

  “Good.” She smiles and reaches out for him, grabbing his arm. Tim resists but she pulls him in anyways and kisses him on the forehead. He quickly rips his arm away and wipes off his forehead before taking a deep breath to recollect himself.

  “Can we use the phone? Wanted to see if we can go to Rowan’s.”

  “Sorry baby, I need it. Gotta make money to keep it on.” She smiles.

  “If you didn’t get high every hour on the hour I bet you wouldn’t have to worry.” Tim rolls his eyes.

  “Hey! Watch your mouth!” His mother instantly escalates to shouting.

  “Isn’t weed supposed to make you calm? Or having withdrawals from whatever else you’re smoking this month?” He raises his voice to match hers.

  She scoffs in some sort of act of hurt, “I don’t use anything like that, how could you even accuse me of that? I am your mother.”

  “Jesus Christ, you’re such a fucking liar!”

  “Don’t cuss at me Timothy, or use the lord's name in vain!”

  The argument quickly escalates into a full shouting match as they go through a familiar back and forth, going in circles and circles and circles as the same lies and accusations repeat over and over in a rageful, sad dance, drawing the attention of the rest of the house.

  “Tim.” Jane pleads while tugging on his sleeve.

  “Huh?” He answers as she pulls him away from the rage for a moment, a moment too late.

  “Jane!” Her father calls down from the hallway, causing her to jump.

  “Fuck.” She sighs and rolls her eyes.

  “Shit, sorry.” Tim’s rage quickly is drowned out with guilt.

  “Come on, you need to clean the house.” Her father orders her, and Jane’s shoulders droop.

  “See you.” She says with no small amount of irritation.

  “Sorry.” Tim hugs her, and he catches Jane’s father glaring at him from the end of the hallway. “I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

  “You better.” She hugs him back and then slowly makes her way to her father, then they both disappear from view.

  Once the echo of the door shutting reaches them, Tim’s mother sighs and shakes her head.

  “If you hadn’t started that fight, then maybe Dan would’ve let Jane stay longer.” She tsk tsks.

  Tim wheels on her, hateful eyes meeting her, for some reason making her smile. She opens her mouth to say something, when a distinct, rhythmic, heavy knock pours from the front door and occupies every corner of the house. A dread filled shadow creeps down the tile floor of the hallway, before it climbs up the wall and enshrouds Tim and his mother. A huge, meaty hand sits on Tim’s shoulder and gently guides him out of the way, as a wall of a man looks down at him and smiles.

  “ ‘Scuse me Timothy, I need to talk to Beth.” Rob Reynolds acknowledges Tim for a moment, before nodding to his mother.

  “Come on in Robby.” Beth steps into her room and Rob follows behind, ducking to clear the door frame.

  The door shuts and Tim glares at it for a few moments, considering pressing his ear against the door to listen in on whatever Rob and his mother are discussing. Not that he needs too, he can guess well enough that it has something to do with selling drugs, after all, Rob apparently runs a lot of the drug rings in San Diego.

  It wasn’t always that way, Tim’s mother and Rob are childhood friends, so he was in and out of Tim’s life for as long as Tim could remember, and he definitely didn’t use to be in charge of much. Still, like Tim’s mother he has quite the reputation on the streets, and unlike Beth he continued building it up. That seems to have eventually led to one thing, then another, and now Rob was sitting on top.

  A few years ago Rob re-entered Tim’s family’s life, and began to give Beth, and soon thereafter, Delilah, a lot of opportunities to sell more and more drugs. It was why they were living in a house now, Bobby’s house, as opposed to constantly jumping apartments, hotels, and rooms like they had been since Tim was little.

  Despite how much Tim hates it, he begrudgingly appreciates the benefits that have come with it, like having his own room. It was the smallest of the 3 bedrooms, cramped and with little place to move, but it was a safe haven from the rest of the house. The smell of nicotine barely reaches, and the insulation was enough to mostly keep out the constant Wii Sports theme that never stops coming from the tv, along with the myriad of voices that are present in the living room.

  No black out curtains cover his small window in fear of a random cop or person peering in and seeing all that went on, no, the sunlight shines through in his haven. Despite hating the summer heat, Tim basks in it, and uses the natural light to search through his things, trying to decide how to occupy his time.

  Tim hops onto his plushie filled bed and pushes them to its head so he can climb over to the wardrobe that takes up a good chunk of his tiny space. Textbooks upon textbooks on paleontology, biology, and zoology dominate the top of the wardrobe, with a small spattering of action figures posing among the paper city. He traces his finger across the spine of a geology book and considers brushing up on it, or any of his other dinosaur and dinosaur adjacent tomes, before deciding against it. Today ended up being pretty stressful, best to dive into his other favorite thing.

  He opens up one of his drawers and paperback comic books practically fly out. He brings out stack after stack and casually flips through the many adventures of Captain America, Superman, Optimus Prime, and most of all Spider-Man. He places a stack of plushies and pillows behind him, and leans back with a comic in hand, handing another one to an old blue bunny plush, for his own amusement, and then starts to read.

  Despite how many times he’s flipped through the pages, read every word, taken in every detail of art, he quickly finds himself completely immersed. Not just because he loves the stories, loves the characters that stand against the very foundation of the life he’s been dragged through, but because of how easily imagination takes hold and allows him to escape. Each colorful costume's contents are replaced with himself, as he gets to make the world a better place.

  He is the one who gets to stop the bank robberies, the gang wars, and the drug sales. He’s the one who gets to soar through the skies, totally free, and live his best life. He gets to have all the power in the world, the power to change his own life. Not just that, the power to change his life now. No longer does he have to sit and wait for an opportunity from Arch, he doesn’t have to wait for college, he can do whatever he needs, whatever he wants, in the here and now of his imagination.

  What would he change? What would he do? What would he put a stop to? His ears catch Rob’s heavy footsteps passing by his door, and his eyes narrow to them as the thuds pull him out of his fantasy. He knows exactly what he would do.

  Not that it matters, that was all just a dream, a fantasy. Instead he’ll focus on something real, something tangible. He’ll become a paleontologist, he’ll land a job at Arch and finally leave this life behind, taking Jane and his friends with him. All things considered, it's all so much closer than it really feels like, and it starts tomorrow, with the Arch field trip.

  It's going to be his big day, he’ll pull out every stop, every factoid, every modicum of knowledge he has to impress every single staff member he can find. He’ll get their attention, get himself on their radar, get an internship, all of it. Tomorrow will be the first day of his and his friend’s future, tomorrow, their world will change.