Free Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

to be away from his mother’s dramatic mood swings and capricious violence. He also enjoyed the companionship of the male counselors and credited St. Cabrini’s with turning him into a man: “When you’re home with your moms and stuff, it’s you and your mom and your brother, that’s it. I had a chance to spread out, wide, like a wide-angle lens. I got hip to everything that I would need to get hip to and I started analyzing and analyzing.”
    The four-bedroom ranch housed eight boys. George was the youngest, not yet thirteen. The house sat in the corner lot of a residential street of a working-class neighborhood aspiring to the middle class. The rich folks lived on the hill. St. Cabrini’s had a lawn, and fruit trees. George enjoyed his first exposure to raccoons and skunks. He missed the Bronx but resigned himself to life in New Rochelle. “Well, you long to be home, but the reality of the matter is that you’re not—that’s one,” he said. “Two, if the other fellas see you crying and all that—whining—that’s gonna be one sign of weakness that they are going to prey on forever and a day. So why cry over spilled milk? You’re spilled already.”
    The Cabrini kids attended the local schools. Most of the residents, who were poor and minorities, kept to themselves, but George didn’t aim just to get by. He deployed his sharp sense of humor to make himself a place in his class, and he became known as a practical joker. He joinedthe New Rochelle High School football team. The local newspaper published his photograph. Invitations came to him for parties held by the popular kids, and he always brought the Cabrini boys along. “George never forgot that his friends were his friends,” a counselor remembered.
    During one party, George and a few of his Cabrini buddies made off with some silverware. That same night, they burglarized a few other homes. The next day, the police caught up with George at a pawnshop, where he was negotiating with the proprietor. George chose to take the rap for the entire group. He spent thirteen months in detention at Valhalla, a secure juvenile facility upstate, and from there he was sent back to the Bronx.
    George returned to his mother’s and briefly attended Morris High School, but the arrangement didn’t work. She had remarried, and George had his own rules. Morris High School did not hold his interest, and apparently, he wasn’t alone; during those years, only 40 percent of its incoming students were sticking around to graduate. He dropped out of school, onto the street again. “I put it on full turbo,” he said.
    George later tried to explain his ambition: “You can’t read about it in books, and you can’t look at it in movies. I was born with something inside of me that says, ‘George, that’s a pretty girl. Go and get her. George, that’s a pretty suit—go and get that suit. George, this is something out here, it’s for you. We don’t know exactly how long you’ll have it, or how wide a span it’ll get, but you could get it and all you gotta do is just put your mind to it. Don’t think of nothing else. And ask about it, think about it, think with it, act like if you were it and change the shoes around like it was you. And then you’ll see.’ And when you get a feel that you’re almost that thing, you reach out and grab it and it’s yours.” He paused. “You have to have a lot of sleepless nights, but Lord behold, it’ll paint a picture.”
    George’s first opportunity, however, seemed to have as much to do with happenstance as with ambition. During those months he lived at home, he sometimes passed by a doughy, bearded guy named Joey Navedo on his way to school; Joey ran a cocaine operation, and one of his spots wasn’t far from George’s mother’s apartment. Joey was a successful businessman. He woke early to ensure that his spots were open and running efficiently. But he was also a sadist with crazy amounts of money. Joey’s idea of a practical