Wei Wuxian does not understand why, if he keeps running away to go live with Yanli, they are taking him to Reno which is the exact opposite direction from where Yanli is. He would not run away if they let him live with Yanli.

Instead of expressing this opinion to the social worker he glares at her in surly silence to express the extent of his displeasure

...

wow surly silence is really boring actually. But he refuses to let her win by making conversation so instead he stares out the window and contemplates how there is far too much Nevada in Nevada. 

It’s a really long drive! Though at least they got confirmation someone in Reno would even take the kid, and managed an early enough start that they’re avoiding any particularly bad traffic and should get there before dark.

The junior social worker who drew the short straw for this expedition has never met Wei Wuxian before and is not exactly delighted about this assignment. (He won’t be able to make it back tonight even if the handover goes flawlessly and takes five minutes, though at least his supervisor promised they would reimburse him for a motel in whatever small town he manages to hit before crashing.)

He’s fine with sullen silence! He’ll put the radio on. He seems to listen exclusively to talk shows making political commentary.

Wei Wuxian is unable to resist the urge to add his own political commentary.

He is a Communist, mostly because it seems to annoy adults the most.

Getting annoyed would imply that he cares. The social worker is not going to say anything unless Wei Wuxian is advocating murder or something. Or using swearwords, that’s also not acceptable— you know what, does that seem like a battle he wants to pick half an hour into this seven-hour trek, no it does not. He occasionally makes “mmm-hmm?” noises but mostly focuses on the GPS, he’s never driven this way before and the highways are confusing.

An hour and a half in, they stop for gas. “Interested in going into polysci, are you?” he says to the kid in a pleasantly bland tone.

"I'm a programmer," he says in a tone that strongly implies that he really wants to be saying "you are a pile of dog shit."

Well, it doesn't contain any rude words and that's really as much as you can expect from teenagers in care. The social worker doesn't even blame Wei Wuxian for being snippy with him, obviously he's going to be upset about being moved halfway across the state, honestly he doesn't know what Social Services was thinking. The kid doesn't even seem that bad so far. 

"Good for you," he says. "I hear it's a great way to make a living." (He is absolutely assuming that Wei Wuxian means he did a summer program that taught very basic programming for teens, or something, he thinks that's a thing.) "I'll get you a snack from the convenience desk if you want, what would you like?" He needs another coffee, this is too much driving to get through on one morning espresso. 

Evelyn, meanwhile, is back on the phone with Darryl. "You've got an entire six hours!" she's telling him. "I'm sure you can get me his file. Isn't Vegas supposed to be going all-digital? ...Just his school records would be a start, I want to call the local high school while they're still open, but if you can find contact info for some of his previous carers, I can call and ask about his interests." Which she needs to know in time to go shopping if she wants his room set up with appropriate decor. Sometimes you don't have time for that, but Evelyn was given, like, an entire eight hours of lead time, and she intends to use it. 

Darryl will see what he can do. 

Darryl comes up with high school records! Wei Wuxian's grades are terrible. A closer examination shows that this is because he misses as many classes as he attends and never does his homework; when he shows up on test days he reliably gets a 100%, even if he showed up fifteen minutes late. 

Phone calls to foster carers reveal that Wei Wuxian is goth and also wears a lot of makeup and skirts whenever he can get away with it. He likes.... metal and Broadway, both at ear-splitting decibels, ideally at 2am. He likes... breaking into places that he is not supposed to be... shoplifting... pulling pranks... cardsharping other foster children and convincing them to bet their underwear and winning and then they don't have any underwear... He presumably has some hobbies that aren't also discipline problems. One of the carers says that he likes computers but adds that she ended up taking the computer away because he used it to talk to people twice his age online. 

One of the carers explains that Wei Wuxian spent ten days refusing to speak to her in anything except Mandarin and then says "good luck."

Meanwhile--

"You're right," Wei Wuxian says. "Holding big corporations' computers hostage for cash is a great way to earn money. --I don't want anything." If he lets the social worker buy him food they will be WINNING. 

Uhhhhhhhh wow okay he is not going to say anything to that but is going to make a mental note of it to add to Wei Wuxian's file. It's probably just bragging, right, this fourteen-year-old kid in care can't actually be a hardcore hacker? 

He gets himself a coffee and, since they're exchanging words and everything now, asks Wei Wuxian if he has a favorite radio station. "Or you can maybe try to play a podcast or music from your own device. You'd have to figure out how to make it connect to the sound system, I have no idea, but it sounds like you're good at that sort of thing." 

That sounds like the kind of thing that is LETTING THE SOCIAL WORKERS WIN. "No."

(Incidentally, he shoplifts some candy while the social worker is getting some coffee, but he's good enough at this that the social worker won't notice unless he's really good at this.)

The social worker is not that good at this. The cashier also fails to notice. They can go back to talk radio, ideally for the rest of the trip and without drama? 

Wei Wuxian cooperates with this plan for lack of obvious ways to not cooperate with it. 

...Man, this kid really isn't that bad? The social worker is sort of struggling to figure out how he ended up with no foster carers in the entirety of Vegas willing to take him after his last (fifth? sixth?) placement broke down. He hasn't even raised his voice! Let alone announced he would scream the entire way unless they turned around and went back, and then DONE IT. 

From his perspective it's as pleasant and uneventful trip as a semi-consensual seven-hour drive that was sprung on him with thirty minutes' notice can possibly be. 

- wow. 

Well, that's definitely - a lot - but Evelyn is finding that she sort of likes this kid already? He sounds like A Character. And "school non-attender with terrible grades who gets 100% on every test" is a much more promising starting point than "school non-attender who is relatedly multiple years behind their peers on all academic subjects." Though maybe it's not for the happiest reason – didn't she read about Asian parents being very intense about academic success, sometimes to an abusive level? (Is that racist of her to think?) ...Anyway, that's in the past, he's away from them now, and he's going to be with her and safe and she is determined to make sure he ends up thriving, like he deserves, even if it takes six months of misery first. 

Evelyn spends ten minutes on Google looking up "goth"-related topics and gives up in confused and mildly unsettled despair. ...God, though, if this kid is questioning his gender on top of everything else he's been through, no wonder he's having a hard time of it. Evelyn is not here to judge! She's not not vaguely uncomfortable about it, but being a foster parent involves a lot of being vaguely uncomfortable about a huge range of things and doing her best anyway. 

Lily likes Broadway! Well, dancing to very loud songs from Broadway musicals, they haven't exactly had a chance to go see any, and she's more into the Disney kind of musical, but Evelyn is definitely on board with playing Broadway loudly as a family activity. Shared interests! ...She is perhaps less okay with it being at 2 am. In fact, she's definitely not okay with that, because Lily needs her sleep. But the room she's putting Wei Wuxian in doesn't currently have a stereo player, and if he, uh, shoplifts one, then Evelyn feels like she has very reasonable grounds to confiscate it. 

He should clearly not be shoplifting! Evelyn knows people at just about all of the places he could possibly try to shoplift from, so hopefully it won't need to become a police matter. ....He really needs to not pull pranks on Lily or entice her into gambling, though. Especially not her underwear, god, Evelyn is personally pretty sure the poor kid was sexually abused. She has no idea how to tell Wei Wuxian to leave her alone in a way that isn't horrifically privacy-violating, though. Hopefully it won't be an issue because Lily's language delays and learning disability - and the fact that she's seven - seem like a major barrier to gambling-related games (and if she gets frustrated she'll probably just try to hit Wei Wuxian, which is obviously unacceptable behavior but might at least dissuade him?) 

Working with computers is a good hobby! ...Honestly, Evelyn would be a lot more worried about a girl aged fourteen talking to people twice her age online. Call her sexist - and it's obviously not necessarily a good idea for Wei Wuxian either - but fourteen is old enough to have some "streetwise" instincts, especially with his background, and if computer access is a reward she can offer him for good behavior (she doesn't like the word "bribe" but it's not entirely wrong) she isn't necessarily averse to that. 

- wow, refusing to speak anything except Mandarin is...actually pretty clever? (As, presumably, a strategy to punish his carer for some perceived unfairness, or just to express his general upsetness at the world). It sounds spectacularly frustrating but it's not - swearing or hitting or destroying household objects, and if it was the language spoken in his home it's hard to even call it rude or unreasonable. Hopefully Evelyn can just - get off on a better foot with him, somehow, and avoid it coming up - but if he insists on speaking Mandarin, well, she has Google Translate, right? And can probably scrape up an acquaintance who speaks it, if she puts in some effort. 

She decides against decorating Wei Wuxian's room in any particular scheme. And also against calling the school, because it sounds like Wei Wuxian's education needs might be...complicated...and she wants to have a conversation with him about why he's avoiding school, and figure out what he would need to want to attend. 

Lily's school bus drops her off at 3:55 pm, and Evelyn's thinking time is disrupted by the presence of a very hyped-up seven-year-old tearing around the living room with arms outstretched making airplane noises, occasionally pausing to recount how they had ART CLASS and she drew the SUN. 

...It's easy to forget how...much...Lily can be while she's not physically in the house, and Evelyn is abruptly questioning the life decision of inviting another troubled child in here, one with completely different needs. 

Though - her ever-optimistic side points out - it sounds like Wei Wuxian has the opposite pattern from Lily's. It's a common observation between herself and her fostering friends, that children will often behave much better, or at least differently, in one of 'school' and 'home'. While Lily was still with her birth family, she was by all accounts a nightmare at school - one of the main reasons why CPS was alerted in the first place - and likely because she didn't have that outlet at home, and school was where she felt safer and thus, almost paradoxically, where all of her suppressed feelings came out. Since coming to Evelyn, she's settled down fairly well at school, and Evelyn is trying to interpret it as a sign of trust that Lily is such a handful here.

Anyway, it sounds like Wei Wuxian isn't necessarily badly-behaved in his foster households, just constantly looking for outlets elsewhere. Which isn't not a problem, but does make it feel more manageable to prevent the two children from crashing into each other in destructive ways. ....Maybe. Hopefully. Evelyn is going to set that line of rumination aside rather than borrowing trouble before it even shows up. 

Once Lily has worked out some of her pent-up energy in the backyard, Evelyn sits her down with a snack and tells her that she has important news. "There's going to be another boy coming to live with us. A big boy, he's in high school. His name is Wei Wuxian." 

Lily looks at her, nonplussed. "A...big...bwuvver?" she says eventually, clearly paying an enormous amount of attention to the words. 

This child needs speech therapy so badly. "Yes, more or less. He's bigger, and while he lives here you're both my children. He's like you, Lily, he can't live with his own mummy and daddy anymore so he's going to come live here in our house."

Lily is staring at her with big eyes, her usually vibrating-with-energy body held still, and as usual Evelyn is very unsure how much of it she's taking in. More than you would think from how well she can speak her own thoughts, Evelyn thinks. 

"- But it's different for him because he had a brother and a sister before," she adds. "And he misses them a lot. So he might not want to have a new sister yet." 

Lily looks baffled and slightly offended. "Wanna big bwuvver." 

"Yeah. I know." Evelyn pulls Lily in for a cuddle. "I'm sure he's going to like you, because you're lovely." Lily needs her self-esteem boosted so badly. "But - it's scary and a lot for him, right?" She strokes Lily's hair. "Just try to remember that, okay?" 

Lily is DUBIOUS but OKAY.

And they can get through dinner (Evelyn texts the social worker for an updated ETA and doesn't hear back and is quietly stressed), and after-dinner cleanup, and a sliiiightly delaaaaayed Lily bedtime - teeth must be brushed and pajamas must be donned but Lily can watch cartoons for a few minutes (Lily is at this point absolutely not going to go to sleep without meeting her future big brother) - 

- seriously how long can it possibly take to drive from Vegas to Reno, didn't they leave before 11 am - 

Look, the driving time according to Google Maps doesn't take into account bathroom breaks. Or the fact that highways are confusing. 

The social worker drives up with Wei Wuxian in tow at 7:35 pm. "Here we are! Your new foster carer is called Evelyn." Does he know any other facts about 'Evelyn', no, no he does not. Hopefully they'll be answered very soon by Evelyn herself. 

Evelyn herself is indeed coming to the front door even before the social worker rings the doorbell. 

She's maybe in her 50s, wearing jeans and a sweater and house-slippers, with shoulder-length blonde hair that might be considered 'fluffy' or 'frizzy' depending on the charitability of the observer. She smiles and waves. "Should I help you carry anything in?" 

He is not sure which of the options would mean that she was WINNING and settles on surly glaring. 

He's wearing chipped black nail polish, eyeliner, black jeans that are not so much "ripped" as "holes barely connected by the remaining shreds of fabric", and a T-shirt that bears the names of nine famous assassins with a letter in each highlighted so that it spells ASSASSINS vertically. His hair is shoulder-length. 

...Evelyn wants to give him a hug. 

This is not a helpful impulse right at this moment and so she ignores it. "Sounds like you have it covered? I'll just go and," put the kettle on? Wei Wuxian doesn't so much look like a tea drinker - they give you the little tea things at Chinese restaurants - wow okay Evelyn's brain can shut up right now. "I'll be right in here." 

...Ten seconds later, a small blonde-pigtailed figure in Disney Princess pajamas tears through the still-open front door. "Mummy mummy mummy s'it m'big bruvver?" 

Evelyn understood that fine but she's used to Lily's speech patterns and isn't sure if it was comprehensible to non-her people? 

...It does not currently seem like it would necessarily help if she went out to try to intervene and grab Lily (who does at least reliably know not to run away), so she'll hover by the door and observe. 

Well, he got the jist. 

"Yes," Wei Wuxian said instantly. "Do you like princesses? Which is your favorite?"

Lily is nonplussed enough by his clothing and nail polish that she doesn't immediately run in and hug him. She crosses her arms and leans her head to one side and looks at him. 

"M'like Awwil," she decides. "Limimaid." 

"She means Ariel from the Little Mermaid," Evelyn translates. She doesn't want to involve herself too closely, when Wei Wuxian seems determined to keep his guard up with her but is clearly already building some rapport with Lily. That being said, the only reason she understood that is because she already knows which movie Lily has asked to watch eight times in three and a half weeks. 

"A solid choice. I like Mulan the best. --Sorry, Lily, but I've got to make a call, we can talk about princesses in a minute?"

He flips open his phone, calls someone, and begins speaking very rapid Mandarin. Judging from how few pauses he's taking, the other person doesn't talk much.

Wow. That is a result of the combination of 'has his own cell phone' and 'speaks a second language at home' that Evelyn had NOT considered and she is pretty unhappy that she apparently has zero ability to monitor who the heck Wei Wuxian is talking to. And there's no way in the world he's going to tell her if she asks. He might tell Lily? Evelyn has never felt so grateful for Lily's often-exhausting chattiness and curiosity. 

Lily may not have ever experienced listening to someone speak in another language for more than a sentence or two in front of him. She stares at Wei Wuxian in complete befuddlement.

Conversation is over after a few minutes!

"Sorry, Lily," he says, "that's my friend Lan Wangji"-- Wei Wuxian pronounces it the Chinese way-- "he lives on the East Coast so it's very late for him and he wouldn't go to bed unless he knows I'm all right."

To Evelyn: "You can't tell me not to talk to him. He's a good influence. He has straight As and plays the guqin and can write characters and has never broken a rule in his life probably. Other than being friends with me because that's definitely against the rules."

"Thank you for explaining who you were talking to," Evelyn says, because he absolutely did not have to do that. "I absolutely don't want to stop you talking to your friends. Friends are important and you've been through a lot of upheaval. How did you meet him, if he lives that far away?" 

(He could be lying, of course, but, one, she always tries to start out giving a child the benefit of the doubt - children can tell when adults assume they're lying, and being assumed to be lying when they're not has to feel awful - and, two, she...doesn't think so? She doesn't have much of a read on Wei Wuxian yet, but he seems like the sort of kid who is - certainly rebellious and headstrong and allergic to the entire concept of being told what to do by an adult, but also basically honest about it? She can absolutely picture Wei Wuxian smoking and drinking but she doesn't see him lying about whether he had been drinking, if asked outright.)

"His brother got into this, like, summer geology internship thing? That was studying the Mojave. And he and his brother didn't want to be separated so they got their uncle to move them both to Vegas for the summer."

"Have you seen Mulan?" he says to Lily.

Lily shakes her head solemnly. Seems to consider this for a while, and then lights up. "I watch n'you!" she says, as though announcing the solution to an unsolved physics problem. 

"It's the best one because it has explosives."

Lily looks kind of worried and dubious about this. 

Also they should go inside. "Lily, sweetie, why don't we head back in. It's past your bedtime, but I wonder if Wei Wuxian might be willing to tuck you in if you ask him very nicely?" 

Lily will run to the door while clearly working on mentally formulating how to ask Wei Wuxian nicely to tuck her in. It takes her a while to process it but she does, eventually, come out with an only somewhat garbled sentence. 

"All right!" Wei Wuxian says. 

He follows her into her bedroom, prepared to engage in Brotherly Activities. 

Lily has firm preferences about the brotherly activities involved in tucking her in! She is not incredibly good at communicating them clearly but she tries very hard. Wei Wuxian should tuck in this teddy and that teddy on either side of her, and tuck in her dolls in the doll bed, and she pretends to pick a story for the dolls and a story for the teddies and also herself ("'cus's'not fair f'only me gets it"). 

Evelyn has no idea why she was so worried about this before! Oh, she's absolutely expecting Wei Wuxian to be a challenge, but in terms of his effect on Lily's placement and emotional wellbeing, everything seems to be going swimmingly. 

Wei Wuxian goes along with these preferences obediently, then flips off the light and sits next to her and sings a lullaby in Mandarin.

Hopefully the lullaby is not entirely consisting of Mandarin swearwords or something because Wei Wuxian thinks it's funny, but - honestly, even if it is Evelyn can't see how it would do Lily any harm, it's not like she knows. Also this is the least stressful Lilybedtime she's had all week and Evelyn is appropriately appreciative. She doesn't know or trust Wei Wuxian enough to leave him unsupervised up here and go have a much-needed cup of tea, but it actually seems plausible that she'll get there? 

Once Lily is asleep, she'll ask Wei Wuxian if he wants to see his room and start putting his things away there. As is common for children who've been in care for a while, he has kind of a lot of belongings, several suitcases and holdalls worth. 

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." 

"Yanli," he says, "but don't try to do the tones, white people doing tones is horrifying. She's perfect."

Awwwwwwwwwwww. "I will endeavor not to horrify you. ...You must miss her a lot. Do you talk on the phone often?" 

"Sometimes."

Nod. "You're welcome to use our house phone to call her, if your phone plan doesn't cover it." 

She sips her cocoa again, choosing her words carefully. "It must be difficult being in another city from her. Do you understand why Social Services wasn't able to place the two of you together?" 

"They think she's better off without me."

Oh noooooo kiddo. Evelyn keeps her face calm and level but oh no. 

"...Listen, honey, I really doubt that's why. In an ideal world there would be a nice family with a big house who could take all three of you. But the thing is, there aren't enough foster carers, and most of them have children with them already. Finding a placement for three siblings is difficult. And Yanli was almost eighteen when you three were taken into care, so Social Services would have wanted to support her in becoming independent, rather than finding a family she could stay with for years, even though in a perfect world of course I would want to take her too. But you're only fourteen and it wouldn't have been appropriate to place you in a group living situation like her. Does that make sense?" 

"I told them I wanted to live with her after she turned eighteen, I get that their stupid bureaucratic rules won't let her have her own apartment until her eighteenth birthday and I can't live in the group home with her but there's no reason I can't live with her afterward. And they said that she needs to start her own life without needing to take care of me because I'm just a burden on her and she doesn't want to see me."

None of this is right which is why Wei Wuxian is going to run away from foster care. With Lily. Yanli is going to love Lily.  

Careful, Evelyn reminds herself. She still doesn't know much about the situation. Maybe Yanli is overwhelmed by the abrupt transition in her life and did express to Social Services that she couldn't cope with being responsible for her wayward brother on top of everything else she's dealing with already. 

"I don't know what other people told you," she says quietly. "And I haven't met Yanli so I can't say what she wants. In my past experience, Social Services is desperate to find relatives to place children with, and it be a relief for everyone - and save them money - if you could live with your sister. But we also have a duty to make sure that you're safe and well cared for, and having to live independently with no family support at eighteen is hard enough without also being a parent to a younger sibling. Social Services would want to make sure Yanli is coping well on her own before feeling comfortable asking her to look after you too. ...Also, I believe she's still in the group home and not her own place? She would be eligible for housing assistance but it can take a while sometimes for an apartment to be available and for everything else to be lined up." 

"I can find her an apartment. How hard can it be to find an apartment?"

"...Oh, love. I think it's a lot more complicated than that. And it might be a lot harder for her to get set up with an apartment that has a bedroom for you too, at least to start. But - hmm." She would not be surprised at all if the Vegas Social Services completely failed to update him on anything related to his siblings. "Once you have a social worker here, I can ask them to call the department in Vegas and find out what the next steps are for Yanli and how long it will be before she has her own place?" 

He does not buy that for a minute. 

"...kay."

Of course he doesn't believe her. Which is exactly why Evelyn is intending to be very on top of this, even if it requires making herself annoying at a social worker. She's pretty good at that; she has a lot of practice. 

"And I think it would be nice to call her tomorrow. It's too late tonight, but I'm sure she would want to hear from you and know how you're doing." ...Oh dear hopefully that's actually true. But Evelyn is almost certain that even if Yanli is struggling and doesn't feel able to raise her younger brother, she would be graceful about taking a call from him. 

"It is actually never too late for Yanli to hear from me, because she loves me. And it's what, 8:30? Yanli is not in bed at 8:30. But it's the same bullshit from all of you people. Next thing it's going to be 'well, we were too busy to get to it today but I'm sure we'll get to it tomorrow' and then 'well, you can call Yanli if you do your homework...' and then it's Privileges Like Speaking To Yanli Are For People Who Haven't Stolen A Car Recently, Wei Wuxian. I don't even see what the problem was with stealing the car. I didn't damage it, it was the middle of the night so they weren't going to be using it for anything, and I refilled the gas. If I had a nice sportscar I wouldn't mind teenagers borrowing it." 

It's closer to nine now but that's a fair point, Yanli is eighteen and probably not asleep at nine. 

"- Well, stealing a car is against the law and you could end up with a criminal record that would make it a lot harder to get jobs in the future," she says. "But you're right, it isn't that late. I don't mind if you call her, but would it be okay if I talk to her a bit too? I always like to get to know people who are important to my foster children, and I can ask her for her lotus root soup recipe." 

That worked????

"I don't have her current number."

"Do you know if she has her own phone or if she uses a phone at the group home she's staying in? I can probably look up where that is and I might be able to find a phone number for it tonight. Or if she has an email address, maybe you can send her an email and ask what phone number she's using now?" 

"She uses the one at the group home, I think. She has an email but she never checks it."

"Right. I'll do what I can to find it tonight, but there's a good chance I won't, I'm sure you've noticed by now that sometimes the paperwork can be - problematic."

Sigh. "I'm sure there's Social Services funding for Yanli to have her own cell phone - not a fancy iPhone or anything, but a basic one - and then it would be easier to stay in touch with you. Not to mention I don't think a shared phone number is ideal for putting on job applications. I can try to get in touch with her social worker on Monday and ask about it?" 

"... ... ...thanks."

What does that expression mean. "- I won't if you think it would make her uncomfortable? But she may not know what she can ask for, and her social worker probably has an enormous caseload."

(Certainly Evelyn's stereotype of a Chinese girl raised by strict parents is 'polite and unassuming' - who knows if the stereotype is accurate here but Yanli might just not want to cause trouble or make a fuss - and also she has a vague sense that Asian kids, maybe especially girls, aren't necessarily expected to move out at eighteen unless they're, like, going to Stanford or something. Which Yanli is clearly not doing. The foster care system...really doesn't do right by the 16-18 age group, in Evelyn's opinion, you can say that someone is an adult at 18 and should be fine to manage their life alone with a bit of benefits money and a list of phone numbers for services, but god forbid, Evelyn wouldn't have coped, and her parents had been preparing her for independence. Just, like, the kind of independence where she went home on Sundays for a good meal and could call home anytime she had a flat tire or lost her wallet or even just had a fight with her roommate. 

...She's trying not to stereotype too hard but it would be kind of shocking if Yanli hadn't had college plans, aren't Chinese families all about academics? And that could really throw a spanner in "plan Wei Wuxian lives with his sister until he's eighteen", if she's going to spend the next four years in a dorm. But it would be even worse if the poor kid's college plans get scuppered because Social Services is used to the teenage demographic where a GED is high achieving and Yanli is too timid to advocate for herself. Evelyn is probably meddling way too hard here and it's not, in fact, her job or her business - and Wei Wuxian might actively prefer she leave the matter alone - but she can't help it.) 

She is sure acting like she wants him to be able to talk to Yanli. But that's how they get your hopes up. This one is not different. None of them are different. 

"Anything else I need to know?"

"Not that I'm thinking of right now! You're welcome to stay down here and watch television if you like, or hang out in your room if you keep the volume down so Lily can sleep." The volume on the television set is, with Jeremy's tech support advice, locked to a highest setting that Lily will sleep through. "- No food in your room but you can help yourself to anything in the kitchen as long as you clean up after yourself and write it down on the fridge if you finish a package of something so I know to get more."

That's not the rule for younger children, obviously, but she didn't get any red flags about Wei Wuxian's diet in particular, and he doesn't seem likely to have challenges with food insecurity and hoarding (unless, of course, it's a habit he's picked up to annoy foster carers, but in that case Evelyn will simply have to not rise to his bait). If it's a problem, she'll bring it up then. Her alcohol stash is down in the basement in a locked cupboard. If Wei Wuxian manages to get into that, she'll...have to relocate it to Maureen's house next door or something...and also be genuinely impressed at his ingenuity.

If Wei Wuxian seems fine, she'll go wake up the computer in her study and start poking through scanned digitized paperwork. Would Yanli's number be on the school records, maybe - no, even if she used to pick him up sometimes when they lived at home, Social Services wouldn't have considered it appropriate once the kids were in care - maybe some of the previous foster carers have it, it's a bit late to call but she'll text everyone whose number she has... 

Wei Wuxian returns to his room and Cryptography Made Simple. 

It is, unsurprisingly, not actually realistic to find a contact phone number for a specific group home in another (large) city under a different Social Services department, when the files she has are incomplete and also for a different child. Only one of the other foster parents replies to her text, and says she doesn't have the current number anymore, she had Wei Wuxian with her for a couple of months last year and she's pretty sure Yanli moved since then. She didn't supervise the handful of sibling calls they had, since there weren't any safeguarding concerns with Yanli specifically. She says she offered to Wei Wuxian that Yanli could come over for dinner if she wanted but either Wei Wuxian never relayed this or Yanli didn't want to or didn't get around it, so she never met her. 

Evelyn does, somewhat miraculously, manage to find the name of Yanli's social worker, though not contact info. Some determined Google detective work finds him on LinkedIn and she's able to locate which office he works from. Which is also findable on Google and has a generic office phone number and email listed. Evelyn emails the office and leaves a moderately snippy voicemail for the receptionist, saying that while it's not an emergency, sibling contact is very important for foster children and it's unacceptable that she wasn't provided with details to arrange it, and she would like direct contact info for Yanli's social worker as soon as possible. (She won't be snippy with him directly, even if she thinks he's asleep at the wheel on Yanli's case; it's more important to have a friendly working relationship.) The poor social worker who drove Wei Wuxian over probably doesn't know anything or have anything to do with this case, but unluckily his cell number was on the paperwork. He gets a (less snippy) text asking for his manager's details so that Evelyn can sort out some missing information in Wei Wuxian's file related to sibling contact. 

...Okay, that's probably a more-than-reasonable amount of annoying to make herself about this. 50/50 odds it gets her an answer by Monday. 

Evelyn goes upstairs and taps Wei Wuxian's door to let him know. "I'm afraid I can't find where Yanli is staying, it sounds like she's moved at least once, but her social worker is Dan Forster and I should know his contact details soon. Maybe tomorrow, definitely by Monday. I'm sorry this wasn't handled before you arrived - it's my mistake, I assumed you would have her details." 

"Thank you."

"Sibling contact is important." And she's a little worried about Yanli, but she's incredibly uninformed and anyway it's not appropriate to express that to Wei Wuxian, he's already dealing with enough.

(She's also pretty mad at whichever foster carers thought that withholding calls with Yanli was an even slightly reasonable punishment - how could anyone expect that making a foster child feel even more isolated and uprooted would improve their behavior - and she's nonzero confused that Wei Wuxian didn't just find a way around it and call her anyway. It's not appropriate to badmouth his previous carers in front of him, though.) 

"I'll be going to bed in an hour or so," she tells him. "I'm assuming it would be way too uncool to watch some television with an old fogey like me, but the offer's open." She goes downstairs again. 

Yeah, TV is one of the many things that is more boring than Cryptography Made Simple. 

He stays up until 3am but is reasonably quiet. 

Evelyn will stick her head in at 11 pm to let Wei Wuxian know that she's going to bed and suggest he try not to stay up too late, but there are going to be a lot of battles to pick here and - since he doesn't have a school placement right now anyway - she's not going to prioritize this one. It's always better, if possible, to let kids make their way to responsible choices on their own based on "natural consequences" as the parenting-book jargon calls it, and the "natural consequence" here is mostly going to be that Lily is an early riser and not exactly good at remembering to use her indoor voice. 

She always sleeps poorly on the first night with a new child, especially a teenager with a habit of absconding. She finds herself waking up at every creak in the house or gust of wind against her window, and then listening intently for floor creaks or door-jingling in the downstairs front hall below her. 

At 4:30 am when she gets up to go to the bathroom, the light is out in Wei Wuxian's room. Evelyn decides against sticking her head in to check on him, but she wants a glass of water anyway, and might as well discreetly check the front door and confirm his shoes are still there. Oh good. She tiptoes back to bed. 

When Lily wakes up at 5:57 am, Evelyn is in a deep enough sleep not to wake at the sound of her door. Lily isn't a quiet kid, and usually goes straight to Evelyn's room, and Evelyn no longer bothers setting an alarm; if Lily happens to sleep in an extra few minutes on a given day, she wants all the sleep she can get. 

Today, though, Lily knows that there's a BIG BROTHER in the house! She is Not Allowed to sleep in Mummy's bed or go crawl in with her in the mornings because it's Not 'Propriate but Lily is pretty sure that a big brother is different. And then Mummy can sleep and won't be grumpy. Mummy doesn't say that waking up early makes her grumpy but Lily isn't a baby and she can tell, and her other foster mummies (who were not as nice as this Mummy) didn't hide it so much. 

She gets up and tiptoes over, barefoot, to Wei Wuxian's door. She knocks and waits and then goes ahead and lets herself in. "B'bwuvver? I c'dle?" 

Wei Wuxian briefly surfaces from unconsciousness, agrees "c'dle", shifts himself into a somewhat more cuddling-appropriate position, and falls back asleep.

This is great for about ten minutes and then Lily is BORED. She pokes Wei Wuxian. "Pway? D'a bounce?" She pulls the covers off him and starts jumping on his bed, which is way bouncier than hers. 

She gets an incoherent half-asleep grumble.

Her new big brother is such a sleepyhead! Lily is BORED.

Eventually she goes to her room and gets some picture books and brings them back to "read to herself". Lily is pretty far behind on reading at school - she can write her name and knows the alphabet but sounding out words is so hard and makes her head feel all muddled - so this mostly involves describing what's in the pictures and occasionally remembering a line from when Mummy reads it to her. Also lots of aside commentary to Wei Wuxian. 

Yeah, he can't actually sleep while she's doing that.

He sits up. "Do you want me to read to you?"

Happy beaming child. "Yah! Peeeeeeeez." 

Story reading!

Wei Wuxian is a theater kid's theater kid and he does ALL the voices.

Lily is enthralled! She's a rewarding audience, too. She snuggles against him and listens intently with her mouth slightly open, and at the tense parts she gasps and grabs his arm and tries to burrow under the blanket, and at the funny parts she collapses in peals of giggles. 

Wei Wuxian reads more loudly than Lily, especially at the dramatic parts. Evelyn wakes up to his voice, muffled enough that the words aren't totally audible, and Lily's delighted shrieks of laughter. 

That seems...fine? Evelyn should ask Wei Wuxian later if he minded. And remind Lily that she's still only supposed to go into other people's rooms with permission, and "knocking and then going straight in" doesn't count. But Wei Wuxian was lovely with her last night, Lily is clearly having a great time, and overall it seems very good for Wei Wuxian to participate in family life. 

She gets up, puts on a dressing-gown, and knocks politely. "Come on down whenever you're ready for breakfast!" Which will hopefully be in another book or two, long enough for Evelyn to drink her coffee. The extra few minutes of lie-in doesn't really make up for her broken sleep earlier in the night. 

And in a book or two, one (1) delighted preschooler and one (1) goth teenager in yesterday's clothes come down for breakfast. 

Wei Wuxian looks pretty cheerful for a teenage boy who definitely didn't get enough sleep. And it's not incredibly fair for Evelyn to complain that he hasn't showered or changed when he's been in the company of a relentless seven-year-old since he woke up. She'll remind him later, once Lily is occupied doing something else. 

"Morning!" she says brightly. "It's a school day, so Lily has to be out at 8:05 am, which means she needs to go up to get ready by 7:45 at the latest. But that's not for an hour, so I think we have time for a proper cooked breakfast, if that sounds nice." She doesn't normally cook when it's just Lily, but it is Wei Wuxian's first morning here. 

Lily lights up. "Pa'cakes!" She looks over at Wei Wuxian. "B'bwuvver like pa'cakes?" 

B'bwuvver has collapsed asleep on the couch.

That's actually kind of impressive. "Lily, let's leave him be for a while, okay? He's clearly tired." 

"He a s'eep'hed!" Lily says (not quietly) and giggles uproariously. 

Evelyn will make pancakes. Lily runs around making airplane noises the whole time; Evelyn is going to be pretty impressed if Wei Wuxian sleeps right through that. 

As long as Lily doesn't glomp him he'll remain unconscious.

Lily can be enticed by pancakes to avoid glomping, though her volume level is still high. Evelyn may be secretly pleased that Lily is a deterrent to staying up ill-advisedly late (and, though she's not thinking about this very explicitly, might be a deterrent to running away, she would be so upset if she woke up to no "b'bwuvver" there) but 6 am is in fact very early for a teenage boy, and she's not going to be mean. 

She's not going to try that hard to keep Lily off him until her school bus arrives, but she will gently suggest that Lily play with her dolls and let "b'bwuvver" be a sleepyhead, big kids like him are often sleepyheads in the morning. 

"Uhvver mummy w'a s'eepy'ed," Lily agrees. "Aw's late." 

"When you lived with your tummy mummy you were always late for school, that's right." Evelyn's birth mother was an alcoholic and drug addict who, at least in the six months before Lily went into care, frequently needed half the day to recover from the previous night's benders; one of the reasons Social Services was alerted was that she rarely turned up before noon, and frequently hadn't eaten anything yet. 

"B'bwuvver mrr nice," Lily says thoughtfully. "He s'eepy n'still reada'me." 

"It was lovely of him to read to you even though it was very early for him," Evelyn agrees. "But who wouldn't want to read to you? You're a lovely girl." 

Lily, as usual, looks kind of nonplussed when Evelyn says things like that. She trots off to go make her Barbies have a loud "f'mly gummet", playing at the base of the sofa where Wei Wuxian is sleeping but not actually jumping on him. 

(Lily's Barbies have a lot of family arguments. It's pretty much Evelyn's only window into Lily's former home life, since Lily won't talk about it directly, so she's left it alone except for trying to work on Lily not using swearwords. She's managed to get Lily to replace the f-work with 'pickle'. which she pronounces more like "ficky", and the c-word with "ants." Lily was willing to comply mostly because she thinks this is hysterically funny. Lily says 'shit' indistinguishably from 'fit' and 'crap' indistinguishably from 'cap' so Evelyn mostly hasn't worried about it at this point.) 

Well, at least if she makes the Ken doll "sex" one of the girl dolls, it won't be introducing Wei Wuxian to new concepts he's too young to know about. Evelyn will leave them to it and wash the dishes. 

About ten minutes later Wei Wuxian wakes up.

"Lily, I had a thought."

Lily puts down her Barbies. “B’bwuvver NO s’eepy. …Wa’tot?” 

"'Big brother' seems kind of hard for you to say, and my name is hard too. But in Chinese you'd call your big brother 'ge.' Is that easier to say?"

"Geh!" Lily says proudly. ...No that came out wrong. "Guh? L'tat?" She knows a word in CHINESE. She's going to tell Mummy and her teacher and they will be PROUD of her. 

"Yep!" He's not going to explain tones to a small child with a language disability.

Lily sprints off to the kitchen! "MUMMY a'nw t'neez! Guh! ...Is b'bwuvver." 

That is in fact adorable. "Awww, love. That's lovely." And in fact easier to say, though presumably Lily is mangling it in some way not apparent to Evelyn, mostly a monolingual English speaker who can muddle through a bit of Spanish if she has to. "Why don't you go ask Wei Wuxian what the word is for 'Mummy'?" 

Lily will do it! She runs back over to the lounge. "Guh, ho' Mummy n't'neez?" 

"It's Mama! It's the same because babies can't say many sounds so mommies are called 'Mama' all over the world."

"Wow! n'da HU'WLD!" 

...Her guh is over being a big boy sleepyhead now, can she snuggle? 

"Lily, love, five minutes. Then you need to come upstairs with me to get ready." 

"'Kay!" Snuggle? 

Snuggle.

"I'd call you 'meimei.' That means 'little sister.'"

"Yay!" Lily has never been a little sister before! (One might say that having a big brother automatically makes you a little sister but this had not totally clicked for Lily until Wei Wuxian actually said it and now she's so happy.) 

She wants to introduce her guh to her Barbies! This is Bald Tattoo Barbie. She's six, so almost as big as Lily but not quite. There's a Mummy Barbie with blonde shoulder-length hair and bangs. There's a "Jewmy'bee" Ken doll for Jeremy, who is nice. They live in the dollhouse, except Jeremy only sometimes does. There are also Old Mummy and Old Daddy dolls, who live faaaaaaaar away in a different house. (It's a shoebox.) Sometimes Bald Tattoo Barbie has to live there and she's sad. "Gwapa'bee" (not technically a Barbie, but one of those wooden drawing-prop figures with joints, scribbled all over with Sharpie because he has 'toos) is currently "d'wning n'a 'piky lek" in the duffel bag of Lego. Lily does not provide any other explanation for this. 

Wei Wuxian follows like a quarter of this because he is still very sleepy.

Well, once the five minutes has elapsed he can be left alone! Evelyn will come collect Lily and chivvy her upstairs to put on her school clothes and wash her face and brush her teeth, and then make sure her lunch and planner and pencil case and workbook are all in her school bag, and get her to the front door to put her sweater and shoes on. She has it down to a crisp routine and they have time to sing the alphabet song together one and a half times (Lily's reward for getting ready in time) before the school bus pulls up. 

She heads back in once Lily is safely embarked. If Wei Wuxian is still asleep, she'll make herself another coffee and sit at the kitchen table for a while, reading the newspaper. She does want to catch the ten o'clock news but that's not for a while. 

Wei Wuxian went to his bedroom and collapsed asleep, and if left unbothered will stay there until 2pm.

Honestly that doesn't even tell her a huge amount about how late he was up. Teenagers who don't have to be in school can sleep a remarkable number of hours. He's now missed breakfast and lunch, but it won't do him too much harm, he'll make up for it. 

Evelyn watches the morning news and vacuums and does an online foster training and makes herself a sandwich. She'll be in the living room reading a biography of Bob Dylan when he comes down. 

Look at him, coming down, reading a math book, probably not causing any sort of horrible problems.

...Oh, you know what she should do, is check her email. She hasn't gotten any phone calls back but she sent a lot of emails last night. She had just well and thoroughly forgotten about Yanli in the rush of getting Lily to school. 

"Afternoon!" she says brightly to Wei Wuxian. "What do you usually like for - I guess it's still breakfast for you? I'll show you where things are and then I need to see if anyone's gotten back to me about Yanli's contact information." 

"Congee. But since you don't have that whatever's fine."

"I bet the internet has a recipe! What's in it?" She'll show Wei Wuxian the cupboard of assorted cereals, though. They have Cheerios and cornflakes and bran flakes and granola and muesli, as well as a big canister of quick oats (the instant oatmeal packets are overpriced), and milk or yogurt and fresh fruit in the fridge. 

He pours himself some cereal and instead of answering the question says "when am I going to have to go to school?"

“When we have a school placement for you. A week or two, I imagine.” Sunny smile. “At which point it would be nice if you did attend. Can we talk a little bit now about why you were skipping school before? Were you being bullied?”

"School teaches two kinds of things: shit I already know and useless shit. Put me in college and maybe I'll go."

Given his reading habits so far, Evelyn could actually sort of believe that. Also it matches her stereotype that Asian kids are academic overachievers Evelyn tries not to be someone who gets stuck blindly in her stereotypes, but - well, there are a lot of kids where this would sound like motivated bragging to get out of a thing they hate, and with Wei Wuxian– well, it's still also that, but it's not unreasonable of him to hate school if it feels like, and arguably is, a waste of time he could be using on learning more advanced material instead. 

"Hmm. I think college admissions do want a high school transcript, love. We can see about getting you into an accelerated program, if you think you could pass the senior year exams on the subjects you'd want to study in college next year?" 

"I can. I could probably pass freshman year, too."

Nod. "I'll see what we can do about letting you test out of subjects you're ahead in rather than making you cool your heels in a classroom for a whole semester." How much progress she can make on that is unfortunately going to depend on which social worker he's assigned, but - well, it doesn't seem complicated to make the case that this is in Wei Wuxian's best interest and will help him settle. 

"I don't want to learn English either. It's stupid."

Evelyn can't help grinning. "What, the essays on symbolism? Yeah, my son used to complain bitterly about those. I used to tell him that it's practice for when your boss wants a three-page writeup on your team's project for tomorrow morning and you don't have three pages of stuff to say." 

"I will be so good at my job that no one will make me do bullshit writeups."

"You might! But I think even programmers at big companies sometimes have to do writeups like that. My friend Krystal's brother is a programmer in Vegas, we can ask him next time he's in town." Shrug. "Is there anything you would like writing about? Might be able to get you an alternate credit for English if you're, like, 'I wrote a book of sonnets where each poem is a math lesson' or something." 

He considers this. "That sounds really stupid."

"You might be able to get it published for money! Though my point was, can you come up with anything you don't think is stupid, that involves writing? I can't guess for you, I don't know much about your interests other than math and programming, but maybe think about it?" She stands up. "I'm going to go check if anyone got back to me about Yanli." 

He wants to go out and cause trouble.

...He senses that there is much less trouble available in the suburbs of Reno than in Las Vegas, especially if you do not have a car and don't want to commit to stealing one at this juncture. 

He settles for texting Lan Wangji dick jokes. 

(This is, indeed, perhaps part of the point of placing him here! And Evelyn does have a car and knows the neighborhood really, really well, and it wouldn't be the first time she's chased down a child who had tried to slip out the door while she was occupied elsewhere in the house.) 

Evelyn checks her email. Finds a moderately passive-aggressive response from Yanli's social worker's office, from the weekend duty receptionist based on the footer, saying that she Can't Just Hand Out Information To Anyone Who Asks For It and Evelyn will have to ask Wei Wuxian's social worker to call. 

...Wei Wuxian doesn't currently have a social worker, almost certainly won't until Monday, and it's unacceptable to just ignore everything until then. Evelyn gets the fostering paperwork from last night out of her filing cabinet, photographs it, and - almost immediately runs into the usual issue where she theoretically knows the steps to transfer images from her camera SD card to the computer, she is running into a Mysterious Problem. And Jeremy isn't around. 

- you know what, whether or not it's 'unprofessional' or something is a different question from whether it will improve their rapport if she asks Wei Wuxian for help. 

She heads back to the kitchen. "Hey, I need a smart young person who's good with computers to rescue me - I'm trying to send proof that you're my foster kid to the office receptionist for Yanli's social worker, so they'll believe I'm not just some random person who wants Yanli's info to stalk her or something. Only I'm hopeless at this SD card file transfer thing. Can you help me out?" 

"That is a blatant attempt to manipulate me into liking you through incompetence at computer tasks."

Evelyn laughs. She really can't help liking Wei Wuxian, however difficult he promises to be. "Maybe! The incompetence is genuine, though, I'm sure my son Jeremy will tell you in lots of detail whenever you end up meeting him." 

"Can I convince you that you'll be happier using Linux?"

"You're welcome to try! You'll have to start by explaining what that is, though." She waggles the SD card at him. "While you help me get this file so I can email it." 

Wei Wuxian begins working on the SD card.

"It's free software! As in speech, not as in beer, although you don't have to pay for Linux. Most software is unfree, which means that you can't study the program to figure out how it works, can't change the program so it does what you want, and can't give the program to other people with or without your changes. Sometimes it'll just stop you from doing things because the programmers thought you shouldn't be able to do it. And that's not right. If you bought a car, you'd be able to drive it in ways that the engineer doesn't approve of, and you can fix it when it's broken, and you can repaint it or add those stupid giant wheel things. And people should be able to do that with software too."

"Huh!" Teenagers with political opinions are adorable Wei Wuxian will not appreciate the sentiment and Evelyn keeps any hint of it off her face. "...I have to admit, I wouldn't know the first thing to do to fix my car either, if it broke. And I get a bit nervous about free software - as in you don't have to pay for it - what if it's actually a virus? I guess if you're very clever with computers, you know how to check?" 

This is the sort of sentence that will get her a passionate infodump about infosec from a fourteen-year-old who hasn't yet realized that not everyone knows Lisp.

It is however fairly obvious that Wei Wuxian mostly views the issue from the "wanting to put viruses on other people's computers" side.

Evelyn is pretty sure she's not the right person to lecture Wei Wuxian on why one should not put viruses on other people's computers! She'll have to mull on whether she can arrange a visit from a friend who can sneak in some advice in a way that won't utterly backfire. In the meantime, she can be genuinely interested in a passionate infodump even if she's not entirely following a lot of it. 

Is her SD file issue being solved? She does want to promptly email back Yanli's passive-aggressive social worker with the photos attached, to point out that a) here is photographic proof that she's not some random person and is in fact fostering Wei Wuxian, and b) there is not a name filled out for "social worker" in the paperwork she got, so no, she cannot get his social worker to call. 

Well, he seems to be doing things on the computer, at any rate.

Eventually he says, "here you go."

"Thank you!" Though not too effusively, teenagers find that weird. "I'll let you get back to whatever you were doing before I bothered you with this. - and I can't promise anything, but my hope is that if I send this to your sister's social worker, she'll send me a phone number. Maybe even later today if we get very lucky." 

"It's about time someone let me talk to my fucking sister."

"Language," Evelyn says very mildly. "...Though if you rephrased it without the F-word, I wouldn't say I disagree." 

"It's about time someone let me talk to my goddamn cocksucking 他妈的 鸡巴 sister. 该死."