Where I'm from, having a dream doesn't make you smart.

Pre-pilot. Multi-chapter.

So why did Ryan go boosting cars with Trey that night? Didn't he use to be the good boy? What happened?

DISCLAIMER: Characters etc… are property of Fox and Schwartz. Not mine. Don't sue.

Thanks to BonnieD for being a cool, efficient, supportive and speedy beta!

Thank you all for the great reviews – do keep reviewing.

Warning – R-rated for language, sex and drug references.

And this is the last chapter – I hope you enjoyed the ride.

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Chapter 7: The Great Escape

It took exactly six hours for Ryan to feel he was really home. Six hours – most of them spent without the benefit of AJ's presence – before he could enjoy the full Technicolor glory of daily life at home with Mom and her motherfucker boyfriend.

And it had started so well, relatively speaking.

When Ryan arrived on his doorstep, sometime on Sunday afternoon, dragging a duffel bag that contained his remaining unspoiled possessions, he hesitated a few seconds before ringing the doorbell. For some reason, it seemed wrong to let himself in if he was coming back for good.

The first good omen was that it was Dawn and not AJ who made it to the front door.

"Hey baby, what's up? You lost your key?" she asked, and she sounded downright friendly.

"Um, no. I was just… Mom, can I crash back here for a while?" Ryan stood on the doorstep squinting at his mother and feeling like an ass; a very hungover and jittery ass, but an ass nonetheless, asking his mom if it was okay to sleep in his own bed and hoping she would say yes.

"Are you boys in trouble?" she asked immediately, suspicious.

He shrugged.

She rolled her eyes and held the door open.

"I swear, Ryan, you better not turn out like Trey. One of you's enough in the family."

Ryan bit back the urge to point out that in the fucked-up drug dealer stakes, she'd pulled a winner with AJ, and walked past her and straight to his room, where he dumped his bag. He sat on his bed and looked around him, taking in the faded posters and stickers on his wall, the TV – which he was surprised to still see here – the few books on the shelf next to his bed.

"Welcome home, Ryan," he muttered under his breath, before stretching out on his bed and promptly falling into a doze. He had a lot of sleep to catch up on.

He was woken up a few hours later by the sound of voices arguing next door. It didn't take long to figure that it was the usual mix of drunken argument and bitching about money, which had been part of the background noise of his growing up. That he hadn't missed. He debated whether or not it was worth intervening this time, but it didn't sound like AJ was really pissed, so he decided to lie low, maybe even skip dinner and stay under his radar.

No such luck, though, because approximately twenty minutes later, the big man himself appeared at his door, scowling, a bottle of beer loosely held between his fingers. Ryan sat up on the bed, eyeing him warily.

"So, you little fuck, you're back," AJ said, and Ryan tensed up instinctively. "You better keep out of my way this time, if you know what's good for you."

"Nice to see you too, AJ."

"Yeah, and you can keep that smart fucking mouth of yours in check, too," AJ said, before taking a swig from the bottle. He looked relatively calm, though, so Ryan let himself relax a little. Maybe tonight would be okay after all.

Except it wasn't – but not for the reason he feared. A short while after AJ stomped out Ryan heard the front door slam and quiet descended on the house. He stole into the kitchen for a snack – generally a depressing prospect at home, but even day-old bread and peanut butter was better than nothing – and grabbed a beer, confident that neither AJ nor Dawn would notice one missing. He settled back in his room for a short evening of TV watching before much-needed sleep. Before going to bed, Ryan smoked a quick joint outside his window, ears trained to spot anything sounding remotely like AJ's truck.

He was woken from deep slumber by the unmistakable sound of AJ and his mother having loud, drunken sex. Extremely loud, drunken sex, in the case of Dawn. Ryan groaned and hid his head under a pillow, trying to muffle the sound, but to no effect. Christ, the walls were so paper thin it was like they were fucking right next to him, on the floor. Yeah, these were the sounds of home all right.

He ought to have become inured to it, over the years, but every time he heard her fucking one of her thug boyfriends, Ryan wanted to curl up in a ball and die. And AJ was, without a doubt, the worst – the loudest, most vocal of them all, and he sounded like a complete brute even when he was mid-fuck. Which, unfortunately, was often. Ryan felt anger and disgust welling through his body. He craved nothing more than to grab a baseball bat and bash AJ's head in once and for all, and then maybe kick his unconscious body a few dozen times with a steel-toed boot.

Usually, he would have slipped out of the window and gone straight to Theresa's. This time he slunk off to get his bike and rode off to get stoned in a rundown children's playground down the road. When he got back, they were still at it, but he was wasted enough that it didn't matter anymore. He stripped quickly to his boxers and got into bed. The minute his head touched the pillow, he was gone.

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The next day, Ryan left the house early to avoid having to face either his mom or AJ and cycled over to Jackie's. Trey had told him she worked, so they could probably meet there and sort out some business while she was out. Ryan wasn't too keen on dealing out of someone else's home, but Trey assured him she was cool with it. Ryan didn't believe him, but he went along with Trey because at this point, he was fresh out of options.

It was strange to see his brother in a neat, tidy setting. Ryan had met Jackie a couple of times – she seemed to be a semi-regular girl of Trey's – and she was nice, if not terribly bright. He also suspected she was more than a little naïve. She let Trey crash at her place without asking him either about his drug dealing or why he was homeless at such short notice.

"You didn't tell her why you left your place, did you?" he asked Trey when they were going through their stash on the living room table.

"She doesn't need to know." Trey said, avoiding Ryan's eyes.

"Yeah, sure. Because those guys would never follow you, would they?"

Trey shrugged. Ryan felt a surge of annoyance – he was getting really pissed at his brother for his cavalier approach to the whole situation.

"I mean, man, what are you doing about them? And should I be watching my back?"

"Man, give me a break. I ain't dumb. I have a plan, okay?"

A plan. Great. That was Trey-speak for 'let's go and do something stupid'.

"What?"

Trey didn't respond and focused all his attention on the scales in front of him.

"Trey?"

"Just make sure you're free tomorrow night, okay?"

"Not if you don't tell me what you're up to," retorted Ryan, zipping up another baggie. Although he knew that if AJ was around he'd be out and at a loose end. And Trey knew that, too, because he looked up at Ryan with something like pity in his eyes.

"C'mon, Ryan. It's just something we have to do. I need to teach you a bit more about shit. I'll tell you about what happened, too. Deal?"

Ryan shrugged. He suspected Trey was going to take him out to boost a car, which was something he'd been dreading. He could handle dealing pot. Jacking cars? That was a stupid idea. But going out, even to do stupid things with Trey, was better than staying in his bedroom waiting for AJ to get angry at him, or trying to block out the sounds of his mother getting laid.

So yeah, deal.

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When he got home, late that afternoon, Ryan was relieved to see the pick-up gone. Maybe AJ was out doing the rounds of his skuzzy dealer friends – or possibly, checking out what was happening to the wife and kids he'd left behind. But Ryan didn't have many illusions about AJ's grasp on the responsibilities of fatherhood, so that last option was probably out of the question. Sometimes Ryan wondered about AJ's children. He knew there were three, two boys and a girl, and that the eldest was something like – what, thirteen now? He wondered whether AJ was as much of an asshole to his own kids as he was to Ryan, or whether he could be nice to them. He wondered if they missed him, like he missed his dad sometimes, even though Dad had been a son of a bitch most of the time anyhow.

"Where you been all day?" his mother greeted him when he walked in through the door, her voice shrill. "I thought you'd be around now. I need you to go buy some food while I'm at work. You got money?"

Here goes, thought Ryan.

"Sure," he said. "I can get some food."

"Thanks, honey," she said, reaching out to tousle his hair, while Ryan ducked. "I'm a bit short this week, but I'll pay you back."

Ryan knew better than to hope that would ever happen. But he was reasonably flush at the moment, and it was drug money anyhow – which somehow wasn't the same as hard-earned proper work money, so he didn't mind so much feeding fucking AJ with it. Although he still didn't like it.

As he cycled back from the store with a full backpack, he caught sight of a familiar figure trudging up the street. He debated whether to cycle past without saying anything, because he was pretty sure she'd snub him anyway, but it was probably bad policy. Theresa did not take kindly to being ignored.

He overtook her and braked sharply.

"Hey."

She looked up at him with a frown, her brown eyes serious. She would get lost in thought when she walked along, and more than once, Ryan had met her in the street and tapped her on the shoulder only to be greeted with a blank look as her mind was stuck somewhere miles away. Ryan felt a pang of longing. This was Theresa, his oldest friend, the one positive constant in his fucked-up life. How had he managed to mess up so badly with her?

As she recognized him, he saw the ghost of a smile forming on her lips, and then abruptly her face closed down.

"Fuck off, Atwood. I'm not talking to you."

"Theresa, come on," he pleaded, but she pushed past him and continued up the road. Ryan sucked his upper lip between his teeth and stood watching her long-legged silhouette walk away until she turned a corner and the spell was broken.

Once again, he felt like a complete jackass. He was beginning to get used to it, though. Wearily, he got back on his bike and cycled the last few hundred yards, the weight of his backpack digging into his shoulders.

When he dismounted in front of the house, AJ's truck was there.

The evening was looking ever more promising.

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After the tense, unpleasant experience that had been Monday evening – even though, miraculously, he and AJ had spent most of the time alone under the same roof without resorting to fisticuffs – Ryan was determined to be out on Tuesday. The luck wouldn't hold two days in a row.

Which meant, rightly or wrongly, that he'd agreed to go with Trey for his latest lesson in crime. Apparently, the lesson started at the pool hall near his old place, and Ryan braced himself in case Eddie was there – which he wasn't, thankfully, probably because it was a weekday night and he took his job seriously. They ended up with a couple of Trey's more disreputable friends, guys Ryan had met a couple of times but didn't particularly like or trust.

One of them, Manuel, a shaven-headed Latino guy with a snake tattooed on the back of his neck, kept jostling Ryan when he was trying to line up a shot.

The third time, Ryan snapped.

"Will you quit fucking shoving me, man? I'm trying to play here."

Manuel snarled at him and Ryan felt the adrenaline flooding through his veins. He was wound up tight as a spring after all the fucking hassle of the past couple of days, moving home, tiptoeing around AJ and having to put up with all the loud sex from his mom. Besides, he was still really angry with Trey for losing the apartment in the first place

Yeah, he was game for a fight if that dickhead wanted to take it outside. He rested his pool cue against the side of the table and looked Manuel straight in the eye, his jaw clenched.

"You got a fucking problem, man," he growled, and despite the fact that Manuel had a couple of inches on him, Ryan was convinced he could have him in a straight one-on-one fight.

Somehow, the message must have got through pretty clearly because he caught a flicker of hesitation in the other guy's face. Ryan saw an opening and stepped forward, his eyes still locked on Manuel's.

He could feel Trey's presence at his back, and he knew that if things really got ugly Trey would step in, but he wasn't sure whether Trey would intervene if they came to blows or let them duke it out. You could never tell with Trey.

"Okay, okay," the other guy said, backing off. "Chill out, dude."

Ryan felt slightly disappointed – part of him had been looking forward to letting rip and evacuating some of the pent-up anger and frustration. But he wasn't stupid enough to chase a fight when there was no need for one. He nodded and picked up his cue again.

A couple of games later – and forty dollars richer – Ryan was starting to feel relaxed. He'd drunk a couple of beers, and had almost forgotten that the evening had an ulterior purpose. When Trey signaled for him to follow him out of the bar, the reality of what they were about to do hit him anew. He noticed Trey had picked up a crowbar along the way – and there no longer was any doubt about what they were up to.

He fell in step with his brother outside the bar as they walked up the deserted streets. Trey wasn't saying anything, and Ryan wasn't asking, but he could see him scanning the cars they passed for an easy, or an inviting, target. After ten minutes of silent car stalking, Ryan was beginning to feel conspicuous, and wondered whether Trey would let him bail on him.

"Now that's what I call a car," Trey murmured as they turned a corner.

The gold Camaro was parked under a streetlight, by a graffiti-strewn wall, and was a little too exposed for Ryan's taste. But Trey was clearly sold. He approached the car with an intent expression on his face, and then turned to Ryan with a grin.

"I'm your big brother," he said. "If I don't teach you this, who will?" And he swung the crowbar, smashing the driver's side window while Ryan jumped back in shock. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. It was a terrible idea.

Trey popped the lock and got in the car, checking the glove box and the sun visor for a spare set of keys. Apparently, some people in Chino still trusted the locals not to break into their cars, because Ryan saw Trey fitting a key to the ignition.

"I don't know, Trey," he muttered, feeling very stupid and very afraid. He felt in way over his head – this was a different kind of thing altogether, something he'd been avoiding his whole life. This was following into Dad's footsteps in the dumbest way. What the fuck was he doing here?

"Quit being a little bitch! Get in!" Trey shouted, and Ryan started walking towards the passenger side. The engine rumbled.

"Yeah let's go!" Trey urged him. "Get in""

As Ryan stood by the passenger door, paralyzed with fear and indecision, a police car drove by in the main road behind them.

Trey's voice took on an edge of panic.

"C'mon let's go Ryan!" And then the police car reversed back towards them, and the siren went, and Ryan found himself running alongside the car and hopping in, terrified and utterly convinced he was making the worst mistake of his short life.

Trey was in full manic mode, laughing uproariously and apparently enjoying the whole chase. He gunned the engine down an empty road, tires screeching. He was completely getting off on the whole thing, and Ryan realized he was a lot drunker – or more stoned, whatever – than he had given him credit for earlier. Great.

"You should see your face, man!" he cackled at Ryan.

And then another police car appeared in front of them, cutting them off, and suddenly they were being shunted down a side street with a sound of crumpling metal as the police car rammed them, and Ryan could hear his voice shouting "No no no no no!" as the car spun and crashed.

He raised his hands above his shoulders and looked at Trey in the glow of the police lights. The manic laughter had gone and all that was left was a defeated look. Their ride was over all right.

Shit, he hoped Trey wasn't carrying drugs. Or worse, his fucking piece. And as they got out of the car, spread their legs and leant against the side of the car for a quick search, Ryan saw the gun being pulled out of Trey's waistband and handed to another officer, and his heart sank further. There was no way Trey could avoid doing time now, not with this, not with his priors.

The ride back to the police station was a blur – he was too scared and hyped to think straight, his hands hurt behind his back, he could feel Trey breathing shallowly next to him, and he knew then Trey too was scared, and that made the fear ten times worse. When they got to the station, they were sat unceremoniously on a bench in the booking area, and told to shut up. Ryan rolled his shoulders to ease the knots – it was damn uncomfortable to ride in a car with hands cuffed behind your back. He could feel his wrists chafing against the metal of the cuffs and wondered how long it took to be used to being cuffed. Not that he wanted to find out. Ever.

When Trey was called in for his booking, he turned back and gave Ryan a long look in which Ryan could read fear, despair, and above all, guilt. Immense, soul-destroying guilt, because Trey had always been his big brother and, in his misguided way, had always looked out for him. And now, he'd sent him to jail.

That was the last he saw of Trey in a while.

A police officer called his mother when the time came for Ryan to be booked – and judging by the look on the man's face, Dawn was pretty hopping mad. She was probably blind drunk, too, Ryan reflected, which was unlikely to play in his favor. At any rate, she point blank refused to talk to him.

By the time they took him through to the juvenile detention center, he was exhausted, depressed, still terrified and feeling completely bereft.

He was truly on his own.

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Ryan looked around the cell, furnished with a couple of bunk beds, a toilet, and a sink. He was alone, which had to be a blessing, because he'd been psyching himself all the way down the corridor to look as mean as he could in case he was sharing with some evil-ass teenage gangbanger with a grudge against short white boys.

He was glad it was night, too, and he had some time to pull together before he got to mix with the other inmates, because what he'd heard from Trey about lockup didn't inspire him with much confidence. He knew he was going to be a prime target – he was fresh meat with no experience of juvie, no friends inside, no connections. He was a blonde, blue-eyed white boy in a penal system filled with Latino and black kids from the ghetto. All he had in his favor was his capacity to keep his head down, lie low and shut the fuck up. That and a willingness to get into a fight with bigger guys, even if he ended up getting his ass kicked.

He sat on the bottom bed and rested his back against the tiled wall. He had a few hours to figure out how badly he'd fucked up, and it didn't look good. If Ryan was honest with himself, he was in more trouble than he had ever been. And Trey – fuck, Trey had to be headed for jail time. Trey was really up shit creek.

Ryan dropped his head into his hands. He felt like a shit for even thinking about himself at this point, but hell, the thought of life without Trey was just chilling. No matter how miserable and fucked-up and dead-end life with Trey was, at least he represented an escape, an alternative to his soul-destroying existence with Mom and AJ. Now – there was nowhere for Ryan to go. Theresa would never forgive him for messing up with Eddie; Eddie – well, Eddie probably still hated his guts for having tried to kiss Theresa at the party. Eddie, who, it turned out, had been remarkably accurate in his predictions for Trey and Ryan's future. Except in the timeline he'd sketched out – because it had barely taken a week, in the end.

He rubbed his face, feeling the nascent stubble under his fingers, and sighed, a long, trembling sigh that left him on the verge of tears. The adrenaline rush of the past few hours was finally subsiding, leaving in its place gut-rotting fear and uncertainty. Ryan had no idea of the sentence he was likely to get, but he knew jail was definitely a possibility. At best, he'd be released to Dawn and he was – at the very least – going to get a serious beating from AJ. It was too good an opportunity for him to let pass. At worst, he'd be wearing somebody else's fucking clothes for a while. He looked at the dark blue jumpsuit he was wearing, the fabric stiff against his skin. It smelled of cheap detergent with an undertone of old sweat, a thoroughly unappealing combination, which he really didn't want to have to endure for longer than was strictly necessary.

He forced himself to lie down on the hard bunk. He could feel the unyielding surface under the thin foam mattress, and the blanket he pulled over his body was scratchy. Maybe it was tiredness, but his senses were revolting against the drabness surrounding him. Everything felt wrong, smelled wrong, looked crap. The thought of having to spend actual time in this sort of place made him want to throw up – and that was before factoring in the other inmates, the thought of whom was enough to scare the shit out of him. Ryan liked to think of himself as a reasonably tough kid – and had had plenty of occasions to prove it – but in jail, he was aware that he was just bait.

Despite the exhaustion he felt, sleep eluded him for much of the night, and when it came it was rife with nightmares, staccato dreams of getting chased and caught, again and again, of walls closing in on him, of nameless faces crowding him into his cell. He woke several times, heart racing, only to realize he'd just been dreaming. By the time his door was unlocked for breakfast in the morning, he felt like he'd gone several rounds with Tyson.

Ryan splashed water on his face before walking out to line up with the other inmates on his way to the cafeteria. He kept his head down, but his eyes kept darting to the sides, looking at the boys either side of him. He was obviously in with the older, rougher crowd, or maybe he was just unlucky. Either way, the tattooed guys he could see out of the corner of his eye looked hard, and fucking scary.

He picked up a metal tray and followed the line through the cafeteria, selecting cereal, juice, milk and some unappetizing looking yellow mess that looked like it might be scrambled eggs. He sat alone on the edge of a table and ate quickly, avoiding other boys' eyes. As long as he didn't stare at anyone, and eschewed any physical contact, he figured he might be able to make it through the day unscathed. After he ate, he asked to return to his cell and was escorted back.

By the time he was called to the visitors' area later that morning for the meeting with his court-appointed lawyer, Ryan had had a good couple of hours to build up various scenarios of doom in his mind, and he had used them fully. He expected his attorney to be incompetent, and the authorities to be merciless. He suspected he could end up behind bars for vehicle theft, even though it was a first offence. He had a father in jail, a brother who was headed for jail, and a mother who wasn't exactly the world's most reliable character witness. He was fucked.

When he stepped out of the door, the guard rattled the handcuffs at him and motioned for him to place his hands behind his back. Ryan obeyed and clenched his fists behind him. When the cuffs clicked shut, he felt a shiver go through him. He couldn't bear being chained like a wild animal.

The walk down the corridors with the guard seemed endless. After what seemed like a dozen metal doors and grilles, each locked and equipped with buzzers and cameras, he was finally pushed into a dingy room with a table and a few stools bolted to the floor. A dark-haired middle-aged man in a suit was sat on one of the stools with a pile of papers in front of him and looked up at Ryan as he walked in, propelled forward by the guard's none-too-gentle touch.

Ryan felt lightheaded, his stomach queasy with apprehension, and he could hear his heart thudding in his chest. He was terrified, he realized, because now all the stuff he'd been imagining was about to turn into reality. Or not. But probably, yes.

And no matter how bad his life had been until now, he feared it was about to get much, much worse

The End (or perhaps more appropriately, The Beginning).