Ziggy Octavius, sixteen years and several thousand bad ideas old, sits cross-legged on the crusted green carpet of his bedroom, surrounded by the scattered carnage of late-night snack wrappers and a perimeter defense of plastic dinosaur skeletons. His mom calls it the landfill; Ziggy prefers the term "prehistoric diorama." A beanbag throne, barely serviceable after last year's failed lava-lamp experiment, burps out its foam intestines beneath him every time he shifts. He flips a battered spiral notebook closed with a kind of practiced contempt, as though even the concept of homework can be warded off by sufficient physical disdain.
Raven is perched on the window ledge, the screen already bent outwards from months of after-hours break-ins. They're all angles: pointed elbows and knees tucked in against the late spring chill, dark red hair flaring out like they've just been electrocuted. Their olive-green eyes glint under the LED fairy lights that zigzag across Ziggy's ceiling, a makeshift aurora borealis whose only purpose is to keep the room looking alive.
"You're not even listening," Raven says, and when they say it, it isn't a complaint so much as a statistical observation.
"Sorry," Ziggy says, "I got distracted by the mental image of a triceratops eating my calculus homework. It's how I cope."
Raven smirks. "You know, if you actually did the homework, you wouldn't have to imagine it being eaten."
"Tell that to the triceratops," Ziggy shoots back, but his heart isn't in it. He's too busy watching the thin yellow shadows leak from the hall under his door, the way they pulse with each footstep as his little brother wanders back and forth between the bathroom and the TV room, never quite making up his mind.
"Speaking of distractions," Raven says, pivoting the topic with the subtlety of a fire axe, "did you ever finish the thing with Arty's—"
"No," Ziggy interrupts, and his voice stutters, like a video skipping frames. "No. I mean, what's the point? He's gone. The cops did their best. Nobody cares but us."
Raven lets the words breathe, like they're counting to ten. "I care," they say, finally.
Ziggy lets his head fall back so his neck is at a right angle to his spine, and for a moment he's a brontosaurus too tired to keep his skull upright. "Yeah, well, you're a masochist," he says, voice syrupy with exhaustion.
"You say that like it's an insult," Raven replies, and grins, showing off a mouth full of perfectly imperfect teeth.
The silence that follows is thick with the junkyard stink of adolescence: half-finished soda cans, sweat, guilt, and the fidgety anxiety that comes from knowing you're too weird for regular friendships but too regular to be legendary. Ziggy feels a weird kind of safety in it, like even the air molecules know better than to judge him here.
"So what's the plan?" Raven asks, swinging their feet so the heel of one combat boot thunks rhythmically against the drywall.
Ziggy shrugs. "Wait out the semester, dodge the guidance counselor, maybe die of embarrassment at the prom." He casts an eye over his dinosaur kingdom, trying to find comfort in the orderly grid of Jurassic predators and prey, but all he sees are little monuments to extinction.
"Cool, cool," Raven says, dragging the word out until it's more of a threat. "Except that's a garbage plan and you know it. Come on, Z. We could go back to the library. Check the old newspaper archives, see if—"
"They already digitized those, and the servers are locked down tighter than my brother's room after he found out about incognito mode," Ziggy says.
"That's what social engineering is for, my dude," Raven says, eyes glimmering with the kind of mischief that usually precedes either expulsion or the discovery of a new chemical element. "We just need a teacher's password. You wanna bet on which one has their pet's name in it?"
Ziggy cracks a smile despite himself. "I bet the math teacher's password is literally just 'math.'"
Raven shakes their head in solemn disappointment. "Low stakes, Z. We gotta go bigger."
"How about 'math2,' then?" Ziggy counters, and for a second, the sadness loosens its grip.
They fall into the kind of mutual planning session that would make Ziggy's mom proud, if only she knew it involved as much genuine brain power as actual homework. Raven takes out a mini legal pad from the depths of their patched-up army jacket and starts a hit list: Teachers, possible passwords, weaknesses. It's basically a heist movie but with fewer lasers and more cafeteria rumors.
"Okay, if we get into the archives and find anything on Arty, what then?" Ziggy asks, not because he expects a real answer, but because he can't stop himself.
"We confront the murderer," Raven deadpans.
"Or," Ziggy says, "we find out it was a tragic accident and then feel weird about snooping in the first place."
"Either way, we get closure," Raven says, softer now. "That's the point."
Ziggy nods, not looking at them. "Okay."
His phone buzzes, lighting up with a text from his mom downstairs: DINNER. "Weird time for dinner," Ziggy mutters, but it's as good an exit cue as any.
"You hungry?" Raven asks.
"Always," Ziggy says, rolling off the beanbag and landing with a thud. He rights himself and starts shoving dinosaur skeletons back into defensive formation, making sure none of the pointy ends are facing out—just in case his little brother comes in and tries to use them as caltrops.
They file downstairs, the familiar creak of every fourth step acting as a countdown to the inevitable awkwardness of family dinner. His little brother is already at the table, slamming chicken nuggets into ketchup with the tactical aggression of a seasoned food assassin. His dad is absent, as per protocol, probably lurking in the garage and pretending to fix the car. Ziggy's mom has set out enough plates for everyone, but she's only got eyes for the stack of utility bills next to her salad.
"Hey, Raven," she says without looking up. "You're joining us?"
"If it's okay," Raven says, with the weird formal politeness they only ever use around parents.
"Of course," Ziggy's mom says, then remembers to smile, like someone flipping a switch. "We're always happy to have you."
Ziggy glances at his brother, who's already building a ketchup fortress. "Wanna trade one of your chicken nuggets for a dino fact?"
His brother eyes him suspiciously. "Only if it's a good one."
"Stegosaurus had a brain the size of a walnut," Ziggy says.
His brother considers. "Okay, but you have to give me two facts next time."
Ziggy nods gravely, sealing the deal. Raven snorts into their water glass, then wipes their mouth and says, "I bet you could fit more than one brain in there if you tried."
"Maybe that's why they had two brains," Ziggy says.
His brother looks up, sauce-smeared and genuinely fascinated. "Wait, really?"
"Urban legend," Ziggy's mom says, finally coming up for air from her bills. "But I'm glad to see you're educating your brother."
Ziggy beams, then immediately realizes he's beaming and reins it in. "Just doing my civic duty."
Raven mouths, 'Show off,' across the table. Ziggy considers giving them the finger but remembers his mom is only pretending not to watch.
The rest of the meal passes in a blur of table clatter and family bickering. When they're done, Ziggy and Raven excuse themselves with the vague excuse of "projects," which everyone pretends to believe. They return to the sanctity of Ziggy's room, fortified now with the extra calories and a renewed sense of purpose.
"So when do we break into the digital archives?" Ziggy asks, settling into his beanbag like a king returning to his throne after exile.
"Tonight?" Raven suggests, with the optimism of someone who's never once considered consequences.
"Tonight," Ziggy agrees, and this time, he actually means it.
He digs out his old laptop from under a fossil layer of dirty laundry and powers it up. The screen flickers to life, displaying the garish wallpaper of an Allosaurus eating a Ford Fiesta. Raven makes a face but says nothing, already focused on their own phone, probably scouting teacher email addresses or downloading illicit VPNs.
They work side by side, the air between them dense with unspoken stuff: fear, hope, the endless drumbeat of not wanting to disappoint each other. Every so often, Raven leans over to point out a flaw in Ziggy's logic, or to poke fun at the sheer number of pop-ups his computer has accumulated over the years. Ziggy responds with a steady barrage of dinosaur facts, each more useless than the last.
It's the closest thing either of them has to happiness, and for tonight, that's enough.
Somewhere between compiling a list of possible teacher security questions and a heated debate about which dinosaur would win in a fight (Raven insists on Utahraptor, Ziggy stands by Spinosaurus), the clock tips past midnight. Ziggy is still typing, hands trembling slightly from a mix of too much sugar and not enough certainty.
"So what do we do if we actually find something?" Ziggy asks. His voice is quiet, not just to avoid waking the house, but because the question itself feels fragile.
Raven leans in, their eyes catching the reflected glow of the laptop screen. "We keep going," they say. "That's the point, Z. We keep going until we know what happened."
Ziggy nods, even though every cell in his body wants to quit, to hide, to never think about Arty again. "Okay," he says. "We keep going."
They don't say anything else, but the rest of the night is a study in stubbornness: two weird kids in a dead-end town, determined to solve a mystery nobody else remembers.
And if Ziggy falls asleep at the keyboard, forehead pressed against the space bar, Raven doesn't call him out for it. Instead, they throw an old blanket over his shoulders and go back to their research, alone but not alone, not really.
Outside, the streetlights flicker through another hour, casting dinosaur-shaped shadows on the walls.
Tomorrow, they'll start the real hunt.