“Hey hobos, wake up!”

Two chop-chop claps echoed from the back of the room to the front.

Ruse awoke with a crunch of a snore and looked around groggily. Astra awoke behind her in a similar daze and grunted “who’s there?”

“You’re not supposed to be here! This building’s getting demolished in a few hours!”

Ruse’s vision came back into focus and she saw a man standing in the doorway of the courtroom; the courtroom where she had just been sound asleep with her lady-friend Astra and her bestie Kevin. The man looked of Indian descent, light skinned with jet black hair pulled back into an enormous poofy ponytail hanging down his back. A thin but equally inky black well-trimmed beard framed his face. He was dressed in casual clothing: a rust colored plaid button-up shirt, jean carpenter shorts, and flip flops on his feet. What looked like solid gold rings adorned his ears, nose and fingers. He was taking a glance over the few items spread out between the three squatters: Astra’s backpack, the button lamp, Ruse’s bookbag purse and merchandise bag, Kevin’s banjo…

“I’m the building inspector,” said the man. Even though he looked more like a dad at a barbeque. “You guys need to pack up your shit and leave.”

The three grumbled in a shared fatigue, but all got up and began to gather their things. None of them had rested up enough to protest, anyhow.

Kevin unfolded his trench coat and slipped it back on, then donned his fedora and slung his banjo back around his chest. He stretched his arms up over his head, yawned, scratched some dandruff loose from the back of his neck, then proceeded to scratch his butt.

Ruse felt as if she had hardly slept, even though it was daylight now and she had fallen asleep when it was dark. “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“Six forty-five,” said the inspector, unmoving from his spot in the doorway.

From what Ruse recalled of the last night, she and Kevin had tossed their phones at around one in the morning, so none of them had gotten their full eight hours.

“It’s coming down at nine sharp. You better hurry.”

“Can I take these towels?” Astra asked, holding up one of the towels she had slept under with Ruse. “I found them in the janitor closet.”

“Take a guess.”

Astra dropped the towel and sighed.

Ruse spritzed herself with perfume to fight the smell of grime on her skin. Astra put her long blonde hair back up in a high ponytail with some strays sneaking around the side of her face to form a fringe, then she caught the aroma of the perfume. “Ohh…can you spray me too?” And Ruse sprayed her, which made them both smell of orange blossom.

Ruse then grabbed her shoes from the red floor mat where the building inspector was, well, inspecting them. She gave him as polite a smile as any exhausted soul could as she pulled on the flats and backed away. Astra was still behind her in the aisle, pulling her Converse back on over mismatched socks.

“If you’re done wasting my time, follow me.”

The inspector led the three out of the courtroom, past the black trashcan that had become suspiciously full of paper overnight, down the grand staircase and out the courthouse’s actual front doors, which had the wooden boards previously nailed to them removed. There were a few nails and a hammer on the cement just outside the entrance. The inspector picked up the hammer and held it over his shoulder and held his other hand up to his brow to block out the sun. He took in a breath of the crisp morning air and turned to the three squatters behind him. They looked so frumpy and dejected with their few belongings on the ground at their feet.

“You’re very lucky I found you. Much better me than that.” He pointed his thumb over his shoulder to a huge crane with a wrecking ball hanging from it behind him on the street. Sunlight sparkled through the rungs. “Imagine getting woke up by that crashing through the room you’re asleep in!”

“She said it wasn’t coming down just yet!” Kevin snapped, referring to Astra. He knew he had a right to be suspicious about this!

But both the girls scowled at him. It was as if he wasn’t even trying to be nice, like he said he would. Like he woke up and choose rudeness.

“Oh yeah. I forgot to put up the signs. Oh well, I’m not afraid of OSHA.” Clearly. The inspector wasn’t even wearing any personal protective equipment like a hard hat, or a high-visibility vest. The guy clearly held no regard for their rules.

He laughed at the trio’s predicament, then turned on his heel, slipped the hammer through a loop in his shorts, and strode down the walkway toward a large windowless white van that was parked directly in front of the crane. “Welp,” he said without turning back, “I hope you three can find a new place to stay!”

Before any of the three could even think of a new solution to their hideout problem, a sudden buzzing and high pitched beeping broke the tension between them.

“Is that your phone?” Ruse accused Kevin, the pitch of her voice up a few notches. She pinched the bridge of her nose in aggravation. So much for solidarity between friends... “Why do I even bother…”

“I knew you couldn’t get rid of the porn,” Astra cackled quietly.

Kevin blushed in embarrassment; they weren’t supposed to find out so fast. He then pulled the phone from his trench coat breast pocket, keeping his eyes fully on the screen so to avoid eye contact with the girls. There was an Amber alert. He told Ruse as much, but it didn’t change her mood one bit. She grabbed the phone from his hand and examined the image and description.

The alert depicted a black boy, no older than ten, with a woman hugging him from behind and peeking over the top of his head.

“Holy shit,” Ruse said, looking back up at Kevin from the phone. “Blake Van Dyke. Last seen with his mother Breanna…this is Breanna’s son.”

“Whatchu call me?” Astra teased in regards to the child’s last name. “Kidding, who’s Breanna?” She placed her arm on Ruse’s shoulder and smirked at her. “You got that much game?”

“Yeah, I’ve never heard of any ‘Breanna’,” Kevin added, sounding much less enthused. “Someone you know? You’re friends with people who let their kids get kidnapped now?”

“Fuck off,” Ruse said, almost sounding serious. She handed him back his phone. “Breanna’s Henry’s cousin. I found her on Facebook when I was still dating him…she’s a stripper at that club with the stupid name across town…she was kind of my…gay awakening…” The last part sounded somewhat like a question, as if she wanted to appear more innocent than she was when it came to her attraction to the woman.

“Oh, so the real reason you came to live here?” Astra continued to tease.

“What are the odds of this happening? It’s like a one in a million chance,” Kevin commented, mostly to himself.

“Crazy,” came a reply from the building inspector. The three looked over to see him not yet at his white van. He was fully facing them again, looking surprised and immersed in their conversation. “I can’t believe she didn’t name him ‘Omaha’. That’s so like her.”