Brainboy and the Deathmaster by Tor Seidler

the fruit stand eyed him warily as he walked by, though
he
hadn’t been the one to rip off a banana when the gang swaggered through the arcade an hour ago. He passed the fish throwers and the big piggy bank his mother dropped change into. When he got to First Avenue, he headed south, toward Pioneer Square,where you could get a bus up Yesler Way. He skulked along in the shadows of the buildings on the west side of the street, hoping to go unspotted by anyone who knew his mother.
    It didn’t surprise him to see somebody curled up asleep in the doorway of a boarded-up Army-Navy store. First Avenue was the original Skid Row, so named because in the old days they dragged skids of logs down to the waterfront on it, and bums and derelicts had always hung out there. But BJ was surprised that the sleeper looked familiar. He stepped into the doorway for a closer look. Stretched out on a sheet of cardboard was the scrawny boy with the ponytail and the tattoo who’d disappeared out the window at the Masterly Children’s Shelter. BJ squatted down and gave him a shake. Boris shot up like a rocket. BJ lunged for his ankle. Boris was too quick.
    But the sidewalk wasn’t crowded, and thanks to his board, BJ was able to catch the weasel and pin him against the smoky-brick wall of an SRO hotel.
    “What’d I freakin’ do to you, man?” Boris muttered.
    “You stole my friend’s GameMaster. Remember?”
    “That’s years ago.”
    “It was a month ago.”
    “So what?”
    This was a good question. What did BJ care aboutDarryl and his GameMaster? In a month Darryl hadn’t bothered to call once. He was surprised he’d even referred to him as a friend.
    “Jeez, man, you need a bath,” BJ said.
    “Sorry. I ain’t stayin’ at the Ritz.”
    BJ relaxed his grip on Boris’s arms. “Listen. If I let go, will you chill a minute?”
    “Sure.”
    BJ let go of him—and Boris bolted. BJ snagged his sweatshirt. As Boris tried to slip out of it, BJ grabbed him around the neck.
    “Let go or I’ll yell for the cops!”
    “Go ahead,” BJ said.
    But of course Boris didn’t.
    “Look, man, I just wanted to know if you found your sister yet.”
    “What’s it to you?”
    “Just curious.”
    “Nah. I was up in Bellingham last week, but it was a bust.”
    “You lost her down in Portland, right?”
    “That’s where we ran out of gas. We was thinking about Canada.”
    “Your sister can drive?”
    “Nah, she’s just twelve. I was driving.”
    “You can drive in Oregon when you’re fourteen?”
    “Nah, I kiped my dad’s car so we could run away. Hot-wired it.”
    “Huh,” BJ said, not sure he believed this. “So you ended up in a shelter and your sister just disappeared?”
    “I figure somebody started beating on her like you’re doing to me. So she split. What’s it to you?”
    “Just it’s kind of strange. Darryl disappeared, too.”
    “The GameMaster guy?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re killin’ my neck.”
    BJ let go of him.
    “It is kind of weird, them two both disappearing,” Boris said, this time staying put. “The two whizzes.”
    “Have you checked to see if your sister went home to your dad?”
    Boris snorted. “No way she’d do that. But yeah, I checked one time. Had this girl I met call and ask for her. My old man hadn’t seen her in months. Not that he cared.”
    Smelly as Boris was, BJ was beginning to feel for him. “How long you been sleeping on the streets?”
    “Who knows?” Boris pulled a beetle out of his greasy hair and squashed it between his fingers. “Tell you the truth, I was thinking I might go back to that shelter for a few days. Rest up, get a shower.”
    “Let’s go.”
    “Now?”
    “We can catch a bus to Madrona down in Pioneer Square. I’ll go with you.”
    Half an hour later BJ was ditching his board under the hedge of old rhododendrons bordering the shelter’s gravel drive. The sneering redhead, still not placed, was sprawled on the porch glider when they walked up.
    “P-U,”