Free Time to Steal by John Gilstrap Page A

a ball around in some front yard somewhere, hanging out in the neighborhoods where kids like me never had a chance in hell of living. It was like I’d get this really big jump start on my life. And then, after Mom was healthy again, she’d join us, and everything would be just like it was on television.
    â€œThen I hit the first foster home. Nice enough people—I mean, they fed me and didn’t scream at me—but they were both four hundred years old and smelled like dirty underwear. That’s what I remember most about them, seriously. They smelled like dirty underwear.”
    Nicki laughed. “How pleasant.”
    â€œNo, it wasn’t. I stayed there for a few days, I guess, maybe a few weeks, they all run together after a while. They drove me to a new school where I’d never been before, with kids who only knew that I was somebody’s foster. That meant I was fair game for anything anyone wanted to do. Who’s gonna complain to the principal, right?”
    â€œWhat, did they beat you up and stuff?”
    â€œOnly at the beginning. This ‘nobody cares’ shit cuts both way, you know? It wasn’t like I was gonna get in trouble at home if I got expelled from school. There’s nothing like getting beat up a few times yourself to teach you how to beat the shit out of others. I was never in one school long enough to have any friends, so it was fine with me to have only enemies. Just so long as they were all scared shitless of me. In the long run, it’s easiest to have one really nasty, nose-crushing, ball-busting fight at the beginning, so that everybody knows to stay the hell away from you. When you’re the new kid and you’re nice, people just think you’re a pussy.”
    â€œSo, how many fights did you get into?”
    Brad launched a bitter laugh. “Hundreds. Thousands, maybe. How many days are there in a school year? Times how many years in school. I was the baddest guy in the building, all the time. It was the way I survived.”
    A station wagon on their left was pacing the Sebring as the traffic crept along, its turn signal blinking relentlessly. When Brad paused to let a space open up in front, the guy behind them blasted them with his horn. Nicki spun in her seat and gave the guy the finger.
    â€œWay to go,” Brad laughed.
    â€œFastest finger in New York.” She let a moment pass before pressing for more. “What happened to you after you left the Bensons?”
    Brad didn’t want to go there. “You want the first day or the second?”
    â€œThere’s a difference?”
    Brad considered changing the subject, and then just went for it. What the hell. “The Bensons were fed up with me. All of the foster families got fed up with me. It’s my special gift. But giving the devil his due, they did keep me for almost two years. That was, like, eight months longer than anyone else. Anyway, the burglary beef was the final straw, I guess, and your father’s never-ending desire to make his house a convent. Since I was seventeen then, just a few months from official sorry-pal-you’re-on-your-own emancipation, the social workers didn’t want to endanger another family by putting me in with them, so they sent me to another group home.”
    â€œA detention center?”
    â€œNot really, but it might as well have been. Nasty-ass place. One thing for sure, I wasn’t the baddest guy in the house anymore. There, I wasn’t even in the top ten. So, after one night, I said screw it. I packed my stuff into my school backpack, walked out the door in the morning, and never checked back in. I lived on the streets after that.”
    Nicki looked horrified.
    â€œIt’s not that bad,” he said, shooting her a smile. Then he had to hit his brakes hard to keep from hitting that station wagon, whose driver had finally decided to move over.
    â€œIt has to be scary,” Nicki said.
    Brad shrugged.