On one hand, that sounds like doing something she wants him to do, which means she is WINNING. On the other hand, he can't actually come up with a reasonable objection to unpacking. He is going to play the long game. Cooperate now and be obnoxious during the unpacking process.

He takes his suitcases up to the room. It is packed full of books. Most of them have titles like The Art of Problem Solving Volume 1: The Basics and A Beginner's Guide To Mathematical Logic and Godel Escher Bach and Cryptography Made Simple and Algorithms and Cybersecurity For Beginners, but there are also a number of science fiction and fantasy novels.  

Evelyn is not actually going to sit there and watch him unpack because, one, he's fourteen and should be perfectly capable of doing it on his own and Evelyn is all about encouraging age-appropriate independence. And, two, the sense she's formed of Wei Wuxian, from the earlier phone calls and also the very briefly-observed dynamic with the poor duty social worker, tells her that having any opinions about his unpacking will just be an opportunity for him to play mind games with her. Evelyn would MUCH rather sit downstairs with a cup of tea and update Lily's fostering log notes. (Wei Wuxian's will be written up once he's in bed.)

She gives Wei Wuxian a very brief tour of his room - he gets the bigger "teens" room, which has its own en-suite and a desk for schoolwork and more storage spaces than the smaller hallway rooms - and cheerfully tells him he should feel free to come ask her questions or request help if he needs it, or join her for a snack if he needs a break. She'll just be down here minding her own business. 

Sulk sulk sulk the shoplifted dildo goes on the nightstand so that Evelyn can see it later and freak out, how about that.

Evelyn is considering her parenting approach here. 

Children act out for different reasons. It can be because they literally don't know that a given behavior is against the rules or rude or disruptive - because of a developmental delay, or because it was normal in their home environment, in the most depressing case she once looked after two young children whose drug-addicted mother had never toilet-trained them, and who thought it was normal to shit on the floor and were baffled when Evelyn told them off for it. In those cases, punishment doesn't help, and the thing that does help is, over and over, re-explaining the rules and boundaries, and being very patient.

She doesn't think that's the case with Wei Wuxian. She's short on details about his home life prior to coming into care, but it doesn't sound like his parents were neglectful, and she's guessing that strict rules and harsh punishment for infractions played into the abuse. (....Okay, she is stereotyping a bit based on his parents being Chinese. She should be aware of that but, like, stereotypes often have some truth in them.) He's also older, and clearly smart, and has been with multiple foster carers who must have tried to explain what was and wasn't appropriate behavior. 

Sometimes kids act up because of untreated ADHD or impulse control issues - they know on some level that it's inappropriate behavior, but in the moment they forget, or 'can't help themselves'. Punishment doesn't help there either, and Evelyn's strategy is to carefully avoid opportunities for them to behave disruptively. They way she imagines it is, every time they're in a situation where they could either behave well, or else make a mess or break her possessions or steal desserts or swear at a teacher, etc, she's asking them to succeed at a very difficult task, and just like you wouldn't expect a child to solve a multiplication problem every time they wanted to use the bathroom or get a snack or take out a new toy, Evelyn can't expect them to be getting that right every time. And often those children have miserably low self-esteem and, more than anything else, need to be rewarded and praised, not face constant punishment even when from their perspective they're trying very hard and solving half a dozen multiplication problems per hour. So she just makes sure the toys are as unbreakable as possible and the kitchen cabinets have child locks and the bathroom only has travel-size toiletries so it's not the end of the world if they pour all the shampoo in the sink because it makes fun bubbles. 

Wei Wuxian may or may not have undiagnosed ADHD - Evelyn is a little suspicious of it based on his school history - but he's obviously capable of behaving with admirable patience and maturity when he wants, like with Lily, and Evelyn doubts that's the root of his smoking and drinking and shoplifting and running away. 

In many, many cases, the children who end up in foster care are acting out because they're in pain. They feel unloved, and unlovable; their self-esteem is catastrophically low; they crave belonging and closeness that feels unattainable; their life is chaos and uncertainty with no stable harbor. They behave badly because, on some level, it proves to them that they're bad and don't deserve to be loved, and that's a more comfortable for them than opening up and extending their trust and then being hurt again. Or because they just want someone, anyone, to pay attention to them, and being in trouble is the only way they know to do that. (Evelyn kind of hates 'attention-seeking' as a label put on children, but there's just definitely a lot of truth to it.) Or because they believe that making themselves obnoxious enough that their foster carer ends the placement will get them sent back to their birth family. For teenagers in particular, they drink and smoke because it makes them feel like an adult (and therefore less vulnerable), because it feels like a way to belong in their peer group, or just because it numbs the pain. 

Evelyn is pretty sure that some variant of this is true of Wei Wuxian. (...Speaking of that, she should figure out what he likes to be called. Wei is his surname, she thinks? Though it's not the same as his adoptive family's surname, she saw that in the paperwork. Should she be calling him just 'Wuxian', or does he prefer the whole name?) Anyway. She can imagine a tiny six-year-old Wei Wuxian bouncing around the foster care system, craving nothing more than a normal loving home, and then they found him a forever family, and he must have been so happy... Except that his new parents abused him, and then - and to him it very likely felt like adding insult to injury, not like being rescued, in Evelyn's experience only the very worst-abused kids are relieved rather than devastated to be taken into care - Social Services came back into his life and yanked all of that away, the good along with the bad. Separated him from his siblings. Handed back and forth between different foster carers like a hot potato, and then told he was just too bad a kid for anyone in the entirety of Vegas to love, and shipped off to an entirely different city halfway across the state, when surely - or very likely, Evelyn is trying not to make assumptions - he had, at least on some level, been acting out because he just wanted to go home. 

What does he need? (This is a very different question in Evelyn's mind from what he wants.) However much she wishes she could, Evelyn can't go back in time and scoop up six-year-old Wei Wuxian and make his life go better. All she can do is start with what fourteen-year-old Wei Wuxian needs to get his life back on track. 

Stability, first and foremost. Which in Evelyn's mind means rules, and predictable consequences for them, because kids - even teenagers on the way to independence - need that, need to know where they stand. Someone who will consistently, reliably, unavoidably be looking out for him. At the same time, he needs to be trusted, to build up his self-esteem, which means Evelyn badly needs to find an area where he's trustworthy. (Lily? She's hopeful about that.) ...And unconditional love and affection, of course, all kids need that, but she can't just shower him in cuddles, that will go...badly. She's not his mother, she's a stranger who, yet again, wants to stroll into his life and change all the decor on him again. 

- and she's pretty sure he does desperately want to belong, and for someone to pay attention to him. Everything about him screams it. The deliberately shocking appearance, the smoking and drinking with his 'bad crowd' friends back in Vegas, maybe even the cross-dressing.

And he does need someone to pay attention to him! Every kid does. But. She suspects he's used to only being able to get negative attention, and that's a pattern Evelyn absolutely needs to break. Which means not rising to his bait, even if he turns out to be very, very good at baiting her. 

At 9:30 pm, if he hasn't already come down, she'll go up and tap on his door. (Even if it's open). "Wei Wuxian? Everything all right in here? I'd like you to come down and have some hot cocoa with me, and I'll explain the house rules here. And you can tell me a bit about yourself and what you like doing." 

He unpacked half a bag (including dildo) and then got distracted by Cryptography Made Simple.

He clearly wants her to react to the dildo and so Evelyn is, instead, not going to react to the dildo. (It's not like it's drugs, though she's definitely tracking the possibility that it might be shoplifted - given that she cannot imagine a foster carer buying it for him, and would they even let a fourteen-year-olds into a sex store? - in which case that's a problem. It's also by far not the first time she's found a teenager's sex toys. Evelyn is kind of hard to shock.)

He looks very absorbed. She taps his doorframe again. "Wei Wuxian? That must be a very interesting book you're reading. Can you please leave it for the moment and come down with me so I can tell you our house rules?"

"No," Wei Wuxian says on general principles.

How incredibly predictable. Evelyn really set herself up for that one. 

"I'll go down and make us some hot cocoa," she says pleasantly. "Unless you'd prefer something else to drink?" 

"Put chili powder in it and I'll come down."

"That's a clever idea! How about you come down in five minutes and you can mix it in yourself to your cup, so I don't put the wrong amount." And downstairs to put a pan on the stove and heat milk for cocoa. Evelyn isn't herself much of a spicy-food person, but she gets down the chili powder and cayenne powder and a little bottle of Tabasco, in case he has a preference between them. 

Wei Wuxian does not come down in five minutes.

Evelyn is not incredibly surprised. (It might not even have been on purpose to be difficult, maybe he's absorbed again in the textbook he had out. It's very...something...to see a child with grades and school attendance as poor as his reading a textbook apparently for fun.)

Once the cocoa is ready, she leaves it on the warmer on the stove and goes up, holding the chili and cayenne spice bottles. She taps politely on his doorframe again. "Wei Wuxian? The hot chocolate is ready now and I wasn't sure which of the spices was right. Come on down and you can pick one out." She waves the spice bottles in her hands. 

He is in fact reading the textbook but this time he's gotten less into flow and he looks up when Evelyn speaks

...Wei Wuxian's determination to not let her win crumbles in the face of spicy hot chocolate. He follows. 

Big mug of cocoa! (It's fairly sweet and milky; Evelyn made it the way Lily prefers.) Array of several different spice options and a spoon to stir! She put out some mini marshmallows too. 

Evelyn sits down with her own mug, and waits until Wei Wuxian has spiced his cocoa. "So. House rules. This might be a little different from your other foster carers, but the point is just to make sure you and the other children are safe. First thing is, we don't go into each other's rooms without permission. The doors don't lock, but you need to knock and ask permission before you go into my room or Lily's room, and I'll always ask your permission too. - I will have to go into your room sometimes to clean it, but only once a week and I won't go into your drawers or anything unless you tell me it's all right to put your laundry away for you - or unless I need to track down a nasty smell, so let's try to avoid that. I won't expect you to clean your bathroom, either, but I do expect you to keep it reasonably tidy. I expect all the children who stay here to help set the table or clean up afterward when we eat together. Other than that, you can offer to do more chores for extra pocket money but you don't have to. Any questions so far?" 

Wei Wuxian dumps in an enormous amount of all the spices available and then drinks it with obvious enjoyment. 

"I don't keep things tidy."

Evelyn has to exert some effort not to burst out laughing. 

"Well, you are a teenage boy, I think that might be listed as mandatory in the teenage boy handbook. You should have seen my son Jeremy's room when he was fourteen. I don't expect you to be perfect, but I do need your room not to be a health hazard, and the floor to be clear on Saturdays when I vacuum." She smiles pleasantly at him. "That might mean we end up having to tidy up together first." 

She sips her hot chocolate. "Rules for going out. I expect you to tell me where you're going and when to expect you back." She's going to leave it at that, for now. Obviously if he's going out every single night that's not very reasonable, and if he's constantly late home and making her wait up for him, or drinking or smoking or committing crimes when he's out, that's a problem, but she's not going to borrow trouble before it happens. "I'd like it if you took your phone with you, so I can contact you. You can always call me for a pickup - I don't know what public transit is like in Vegas, but our buses are notorious for being late, and the nearest bus stop is a bit of a walk from us. Once you're back in school, homework needs to happen first before you can go out for the evening, and I'll expect you back by nine-thirty so you can get to bed at a reasonable time. We can discuss what time is reasonable on weekends. I usually go to bed at eleven, and I'm not going to give you your own house key until we've known each other longer." 

This house is not at all secure or hard to break out of. "Kay."

It's literally against the fostering regulations in Reno for Evelyn to lock a child in the house, but her room is at the front of the house and the door has jingle-bells on the handle and he'll have to exert nonzero effort to get out without Evelyn noticing. If he's sufficiently persistent, he could slip out the back door after Evelyn and leave it unlocked and let himself back in later before she wakes up, but the next-door neighbors have a dog who sleeps chained in their yard and has previously been quite convenient in terms of ensuring Evelyn usually wakes up if a rebellious teen is trying to slip out quietly at 1 am. 

(Also, until further notice, her car keys are staying on her person at all times, and the two sets of spare car keys can live in her safe and with Maureen next door respectively. Wei Wuxian isn't old enough to drive legally but she does not put it past him to notice that a car is basically mandatory to go anywhere interesting in Reno, and take matters into his own hands.) 

"I'm sure you'll be responsible," she says sweetly. "Other rules. You can use the computer in my study, with permission, but not after 11 pm." And it has parental controls on it, but she's not going to mention that and give Wei Wuxian ideas about circumventing them. "No television after 11 pm and I'd like you to keep the noise levels down after Lily goes to bed. If you break something, I'll withhold half of your allowance until you've paid for a replacement. If it's something that belongs to Lily, I also expect you to apologize nicely to her." 

"I'm not going to break things that belong to Lily," he says, offended.

"I'm glad to hear it." Friendly smile. "Hmm, what else. I'd like you to shower or bathe every day, though I'm not going to nag unless I notice you not smelling good. Put your dirty laundry in the hamper at the top of the stairs if you want me to wash it along with everyone else's."

She takes another sip of cocoa. "..I think that's pretty much all the rules, per se, but I'd like to get to know you a bit. You like spicy food, it sounds like? If there are any foods you miss from home, I'm not a TV chef or anything but I can follow a recipe and I'm happy to try." 

"Lotus root soup."

Evelyn smiles at him. (She's feeling very pleased with herself at the fact that he's participating and answering her questions, but she's trying not to show any visible smugness and risk prompting Wei Wuxian to shut down again.) "I don't think I've heard of that! We can try to find a recipe online, or if you know what ingredients it needs, you can come shopping with me tomorrow and pick them out. Is it very spicy?" 

"My sister makes it."

Excellent! An opening! Evelyn leans back in her chair. "She's a bit older than you, right? What's she like? I think her name is Yan-li but I don't know if I'm saying that right."