Chapter 2

Shrill beeping pierced through drifting, filmy clouds…

Joshua opened his eyes and groaned. For a couple seconds, he managed to cling to the sensation of buoyancy left over from his sleep. But the beeping continued, piercing and insistent.

Joshua flung out his left hand and slapped it toward what he thought was the top of the cheap plastic digital alarm clock that sat next to the battered metal desk lamp on his rickety nightstand. Instead of hitting the alarm, his hand landed on the cassette player near the lamp. He felt his fingers brush against a paperback book, and then he heard the book swish off the nightstand and hit the thin carpet on his hardwood floor with a soft thud.

Joshua pulled his hand back. His fingers, in full-on early-morning klutz mode, once again bumped something. This time it was a plastic bottle of pills. Joshua heard the tippity-tap down the side of the nightstand and land on the carpet with a shushing sound. He cringed, hoping he'd remembered to put the cap on tight.

Joshua started to get up, but the motion sent what felt like a jagged shard of glass through his temporal lobe. He clutched at his head. The feeling started moving around in his skull. The alarm's continued screechy beep seemed to drive the feeling even deeper into his brain.

Joshua squinted toward his nightstand and once again attempted to turn off the alarm. This time, his palm hit its target. The infernal noise stopped.

Joshua groaned again and rubbed his temples. Sighing, he swung his legs out of bed and reached for the glass next to the cassette player. At least he'd managed not to knock that over. The glass was still half-full of water. Joshua guzzled it and set the glass back down.

His bare feet shifted, with his right one encountering his prescription pill bottle. Wincing as he bent over, he picked up the dark amber plastic container. Thankfully, he had put the cap on the bottle. The little dozen white prescribed pills were still safely inside.

Joshua stuffed the pill bottle underneath his mattress, just a few inches from the edge. Then he leaned over again, gritting his teeth against the increased jabbing in his head. He picked up the book that had fallen. Setting the book next to the cassette player, Joshua hit the "rewind" button on the machine.

Once the cassette tape started its whispery whir of motion, Joshua managed to calmly inhale. Finally, his morning routine was starting to fall into place.

Usually, Joshua's first motions after waking up were rote. Hit the alarm, hide the pills, rewind the tape. This morning, the unusually high pain level of his headache had turned his routine into an absolute shitshow. The tape's smooth rewind settled him back into a sense of normalcy.

"Okay," he said. He stroked his hands through his hair.

Standing, he took a couple steps away from his bed and planted his feet at the edge of his threadbare pale blue-and-gray rag rug. He stretched his arms overhead and willed himself to ignore his headache. He dropped to the floor and began doing push-ups. Not counting, he lowered and lifted himself over and over and over again.

Beneath his palms, the carpet felt scratchy and dirty. Vaguely, he tried to remember when he'd vacuumed his room.

Lifting his head as he pumped his body up and down, he took in the familiar sparsity of his space. The nearly empty room - it held only his narrow bed and the small nightstand - was nothing but a bare cell, a cell that kept Joshua separate from the world. Even his one window, which might have reminded him that a reality existed beyond his own suffering, was covered by heavy blackout curtains. Dropping his head again, Joshua continued to pound out his push-ups. The routine, though painful, comforted him, as did his prison-like surroundings. A few more minutes of this punishment, and he might be able to face his day.

Ava bent over her collection of Pokémon cards, concentrating on organizing them in the perfect order. Tucking her tongue between her teeth, she picked up the cards one by one, placing them into tiny slots in her card book. When she was finished, she frowned. Did that look alright? Not sure, she lifted her gaze. She looked out through the opening in her blanket tent that surrounded her.

Constructed from thick quilts held into place by her white-painted nightstand, her matching small desk, and one edge of her squat bureau, Ava's tent snuggled up to her bed, a bed she didn't like nearly as much as she liked the cozy confines of the tent.

With two fluffy pillows on the floor and another blanket scrunched up around them, the inside of Ava's tent was like a little nest that made Ava feel safe, like a well-protected baby Fletchling. The pillows and blankets smelled like the detergent they were washed in. Ava had seen the detergent box; it was rain scented. Ava didn't think the detergent smelled like rain, but at least it didn't smell bad. It was kind of sweet and fruity. That meant the inside of her tent smelled sweet and fruity, too.

Ava liked it in her tent. She could handle almost anything when she was tucked inside of it, including the grunting coming from her brother's room. Joshua was doing push-ups again, and Ava wished she didn't have to listen to him. He clearly didn't like doing them. Ava could tell that from all the moans and groans. When Joshua did push-ups, Ava felt bad, as if something hard was poking her in the belly. She didn't like feeling like that.

Although inside Ava's tent, it was cool and dim, a fat ray of sunshine sweeping past the tent's opening. The sunlight landed on the wall opposite the tent. Many of Ava's old drawings covered that wall. Ava used the drawings as nudges to help her draw better. Although most of the things in the drawings were stick figures, some of them were more real-looking. Ava was getting better at drawing. That made her feel good. Drawing was the only activity she liked to do outside of collecting Pokémon cards.

Not much else made Ava feel good. Forever and ever, she had felt like she didn't really know how to be. No one seemed to want her around much. Not her brother. Not her babysitter, Ann. Not the kids at school or the ones at the Development Center. Well, "no one" wasn't quite right. Dr. Franny seemed to like having Ava around. Dr. Franny was the one who got Ava drew better than other kids her age. Drawing made Ava feel special. So did the things she drew. So did the things she drew. Those two things: drawing and Pokémon cards, were Ava's way into a world that she liked being in. It was a world where she was wanted.

A sharp knock sounded on Ava's flimsy wood door. Ava put aside her drawing pad and pulled closed the two sections of blanket that formed the opening of her tent. She picked up a plush Finizen. Through the narrow crack between the blankets, she looked toward the scarred pale brown surface of her door. She wished her door was big and thick and had latches on it, kind of like a castle door.

"Ava!" Joshua called out from the other side of Ava's door.

Ava didn't answer her brother.

"Are you ready, Ava?"

"I'm not here." Ava whispered.

Ava's door opened. Joshua stuck his head into Ava's private space. He looked toward Ava's bed, then shifted his gaze to the crack in the blankets that Ava peered through.

Ava stared at Joshua's feet as they headed toward her tent. Her brother wore a pair of black dress socks. They were faded and stretched out so they kind of crumpled around his ankles, and both socks were full of holes. His left big toe stuck out through the largest of the ragged openings.

The sock-covered feet stopped really close to the front of Ava's tent. Joshua's feet smelled sweaty; Ava wrinkled her nose and put her face into the plush Finizen's soft fur. It wasn't as clean as the blankets in Ava's tent so it didn't smell sweet and fruity. But it didn't smell bad. It smelled kind of like Ava, who smelled like lemons, probably because of the lemon-scented shampoo she put in her hair.

"Ava," Joshua said. "Are you awake, Ava?"

Ava squeezed her eyes shut. She heard whispery movement, and she felt the blanket flaps of her tent separate. Joshua let out a sigh.

"Ava, please."

As Ava kept her eyes closed, the plush Finizen pressed against her face. She didn't move.

A scrape. A fluttering sound. Ava felt air whisk over her bare arms. She opened her eyes. Joshua was shaking one of the chairs that held part of her tent in place.

"Okay, okay! I'm up!" Ava yelled.

Joshua's head poked through the tent's flaps. His curly hair stuck up all weird. She thought it looked stupid that way, but he might have done it on purpose. Some of the boys at school had their hair like that.

Ava thought about her own hair. It probably looked stupid at the moment, too. Her hair always went all over the place where she slept, and it was thick and fine like her brother's so it tangled easily.

Ava glared at Joshua. "You jerk." she grumbled.

Joshua rolled her eyes. Whenever he rolled his eyes, Ava felt like she was looking at her own eyes in someone else's head. Both Ava and Joshua's eyes were a lot alike, even though his were a darker shade of brown than hers. Their eyes sloped down at the outside edge, like they were a little sad all the time. That made sense, actually.

Besides, their eyes and the black hair they both had, Ava didn't think she and Joshua looked much alike. Joshua's face was kind of hard, whereas Ava's face was softer and rounder.

Joshua jostled the tent again. "Come on, Ava. I have somewhere to be. You know that."

"It's not my fault you lost your job." Ava said. Although she had been to Naranja Academy a few times before, there was not much of interest there for her, so she often stayed at home with Ann.

"You're right about that," Joshua said, "but if I'm late, that will be your fault. Five minutes, I want you dressed."

While Joshua turned to leave the room, Ava looked at her plush Finizen, raising an eyebrow. In a moment of frustration and stress, she picked up the toy and threw it through the opening of the tent. It arced through the air and plowed into the middle of Joshua's back. As it made contact with the wooden floor, Joshua turned around.

Ava looked at Joshua's feet. "Nice socks," she said.

"Nice socks," Joshua repeated. He turned and left her room.

Ava crawled out of her tent and scooted forward to grab the Finizen plush. She scrambled upright and looked down at her own feet. She wore one red-and-white-striped sock and one yellow polka-dotted sock. Ava shrugged and hugged the Finizen plush close. It didn't seem to care about her mismatched socks.

Joshua glanced up at the gray clouds that hung so low it felt like they were pressing him down into the cracked concrete walkway that led up to the sad, rectangular brick building he didn't want to go into. The building, whose simple, downtrodden architecture shouted "Underfunded Government Office," looked like it could barely hold its own under the overbearing stratus clouds.

Joshua hated stratus clouds. They were always iron-like and depressing, and they were spineless, all show and no substance. Stratus clouds made the sky look dark and threatening, but they actually held very little precipitation. Joshua had learned that in science class and, for some reason, he remembered it. Maybe that was because he felt a little like a stratus cloud himself.

Joshua hesitated at the base of the shallow steps leading into the building in front of him. How many times had he been in this miserable place? He had lost count ages ago.

Joshua kicked loose a piece of crumbling concrete from one of the steps. He found the crunching sound satisfying. Squaring his shoulders, he slogged up the steps and went into the building.

The interior of the building that housed Cabo Poco's social services offices was even uglier than the exterior. With dry cream walls and industrial-grade, faded brown carpet, the lobby and main hall weren't much more attractive than a sewer. Not that Joshua had ever been in a sewer, but this place looked close enough to one.

Shuffling forward, Joshua plucked a number from a scarred, black number-dispenser near the counter at the far side of the lobby. He looked at the little piece of paper in his hand. Number thirty-four. He looked up at the dimly-lit number display on the wall. The number twelve flickered anemically under the fluorescent light that cast a harsh glare over everything.

Great, Joshua thought.

Joshua dragged his feet across the nubby carpet as he headed toward a line of molded-plastic chairs along the left wall of the lobby. There were a few other people and Pokémon in the lobby with him, all holding paper numbers of their own. An end chair was open, and Joshua headed toward it and took a seat. As soon as he sat down, he scooched his butt and the chair away from the middle-aged woman sitting next to him.

Joshua felt the woman's gaze on him as he repositioned the chair. He heard her huff but he didn't glance up. Looking into the eyes of the other people and Pokémon waiting to see a social worker was never a good idea. He could get swallowed by a mire of life-sucking depression if he made eye contact with the others in the building. Everyone here was in one crummy situation or another. Dealing with his own baggage was hard enough; he didn't need to get a glimpse of anyone else's.

Even though Joshua didn't see the others in the room, he could still sense them. Their presence felt like the bars of a prison cell.

Joshua could smell and hear the people and Pokémon around him, too. The waiting area was filled with sounds - nervously shuffling feet, sniffles, coughs, throat-clearing, a couple weak sobs - and murmuring voices. Even though Joshua didn't want to hear about other people's problems, some snippets of conversation got past his intention to mind his own business.

As the saddened people and Pokémon around him kept talking, Joshua mentally plugged his ears and stared at his feet. Tuning out his surroundings, he disappeared into his imagination once again, trying to imagine what he would be doing if he were a different person.

Joshua liked to play out all sorts of imaginary scenarios when he indulged himself. Sometimes he imagined himself to be a news reporter, or a traveling photographer. He could be a scientist, or a doctor, or a judge. Most often, he liked to imagine himself as a Pokémon Trainer. Maybe if he interacted with Pokémon more, he wouldn't be in the position that he was in now. He didn't want to feel like an unemployed loser looking for whatever work he could find.

Joshua knew that playing this kind of make-believe game was something he should have outgrown years ago, but letting himself imagine a life different than the one he lived was what allowed him to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other. When Joshua dropped into being pretend-Joshua instead of real-Joshua, he could work with a clean slate. He could stow all the baggage, all the disappointment…and all the guilt. And if he couldn't put that away from time to time, the weight of it would probably have driven him up the wall by now. Or killed him. He wasn't sure which would be worse.

"Number thirty-four?"

Joshua looked up. Already?

A young twenty-something woman with a tight perm and extremely tired eyes looked around the room. Joshua lifted his hand to get her attention.

The woman tugged on the hem of her wrinkled orange blouse, and it clashed with her rust-colored skirt. The skirt hung crooked on the woman's skinny hips, two inches above her right knee and an inch below the left. "Number thirty-four?" the woman called out to Joshua.

Joshua nodded.

"Follow me," the woman said.

Joshua stood up and followed her.