Facts about Thad
1. Thad's dad used to tuck him under his arm and pretend he was a helicopter, and run around the house. He still remembers how dizzy it'd made him feel, how great it'd been, and how it had made his mom laugh and his sister clap her pudgy hands and squeal a lot.
2. He remembers more distantly the chemical smells that would waft up from the basement of their rowhouse in Virginia, and how those had made him a little dizzy, too.
3. His name says Thaddeus on his birth certificate, but he's only ever gone by Thad. The only time he remembers being called Thaddeus is during the hearings social workers would drag him to at the family court. He'd had to wear corduroys and a brown clip-on tie, but to this day, he couldn't tell you what those hearings had been for.
4. Fire both fascinates and terrifies him. One of his clearest memories from childhood is dragging Harley past a wall of it in the entryway when he was six, choking him and blocking his way to the basement to see if his mom and dad are okay. They weren't, anyway.
5. Thad and Harley share a bedroom in their first foster home, same as when they had their own house. But it's not their house, and all their stuff fits into one green trash bag, and the man who lives there with his wife doesn't do helicopters with Thad. If he did, Thad doubts he'd like it as much.
6. He's good at making pancakes and microwaving things. Their next foster mom works all the time, so he comes home from school and makes mac and cheese for Harley. He slaps her hand when she throws it across the room, and cleans it up before anyone finds out about it and kicks them out.
7. He's twelve when Mrs. Oakland gets sick and can't take care of him and Harley anymore. They have to go quickly, and when the social worker tells him Harley's going to a new home and he can't go with her, he stares at her in blank shock. He doesn't even get a chance to say goodbye to her or figure out what's happening. She's just gone.
8. Thad's first time behind the wheel of a car is when he's thirteen. The woman who takes care of him has a boyfriend who drives an Eclipse with side skirts and a turbo engine. One night when they're busy in an upstairs bedroom, Thad uses it to run away and look for Harley. He gets almost as far as Falls Church before he's caught, but the social worker has to find him another place to stay.
9. Thad likes school, and it doesn't really matter that he can't keep up with a lot of the work. There's routine to it no matter where you go, even if they're always in different units of things than the last school district he was at. He spends more time in detention and ISS than he should, but his friends always dare him to do stuff, so he'll do it if it means they'll like him.
10. Girls always liked him, and he likes them back, both in school and out of it. He loses his virginity at fourteen to a girl who lives in his foster home (by now he's lost count of how many homes). She's nearly sixteen, and he figures that means she loves him, but when her mother finds out, that's the end of that.
11. The group home he's placed in is a last resort for his caseworker but he likes having so many people around. It gets lonely when he's by himself too long. He stays there for a while and it isn't that bad except for the guys who beat him up sometimes, mostly because he's skinny and they can. He makes friends easily, because he's good at making people happy, but the first time he's caught going down on an older boy, he gets beat up worse. Eventually, he runs away again, even though he hasn't seen Harley in almost three years and has no idea where to find her.
12. He winds up in D.C., where he catches up with Cole Wallace, an eighteen-year-old from the same group home who aged out of the system. He shows Thad how to jimmy into cars, and they spend a few months selling handjobs to strangers and boosting stereos before they end up hooking up with SouthEast Crew, a decent-sized gang that mainly runs cars and drugs.
13. Thad's pretty good at stealing cars, but he doesn't love that as much as he loves belonging to something. After a few months the crew starts to feel more like a family than any of his foster ones had.
14. He doesn't ever expect to see his sister again, but he does, when he's seventeen. Stunned, he watches her picking pockets on the Mall for twenty full minutes before he approaches her. She leaps into his arms like no time has passed, but it has, and while he's happy it breaks him up that she's not with some nice family like he imagined.
15. It's hard keeping the gang stuff separate from Harley, but he tries for a short while. There's no hope of getting her back into school or anything as they've no permanent address or guardians. But he drives her around in stolen cars and takes her around the city, showing her things, then makes her stay in his girlfriend's dingy apartment when he goes out.
16. The first time he forgets that Harley's not 8 years old anymore is only a week after she arrives, giving his girl the slip and following him to the chop shop one night. She's made of questions, just like always, and he puts her to work adding scrap metal to the heap while he pulls out stereos and rims. The guys tease him, call him a babysitter, but he doesn't want to hear it, because fuck them, he's got his sister back. And anyone who picks on Harley gets popped in the jaw.
17. The second time he forgets that Harley's not eight is when he sees her pop a guy in the jaw on her own. She bruises her hand so bad, he gives her a set of brass knuckles for next time and teaches her some tricks. But he still forgets sometimes.
18. Thad's had three run-ins with the DCPD. When he's sixteen and still green, he tries to sell a subwoofer to a fence he doesn't recognize who turns out to be a cop. He spends three months in a juvenile facility because he refuses to tell the police who he was working for. The second time he's brought in, he's nineteen and this time he's in a '92 Supra that was reported stolen. His public defender is good though, and he manages to get away with just probation. The third time he's picked up, he's twenty-three, and he and Harley are sent to Richmond to pick up a couple of Navigators. When they get back, the chop shop is crawling with police and the crew is scattered. The cops know he was with a partner, but they never find her because he made sure she got away before they could see her. Because he doesn't roll on her, he gets charged with two counts of felony theft instead of one, and this time he doesn't get out of it.
19. The one time Harley visits him is just after he's put away, and he urges her not to come back. They're still looking for his accomplice, and what members of the SE crew didn't get locked up will wonder if she rolled. It's just as well, because he never wanted this life for her, and it's the perfect time for her to get out of it. As far away from it as possible.
20. Thad's a model prisoner, and anyway, close security lockup could be worse. Not that he can ever forget about the walls and bars and charged wire fencing, but they let him get his GED there and he even gets to work. It's not the same as the real world, but there are people he's gotten to know and like. He might be released at the end of April, and it feels like his life has been on hold for five years. Only not really, because he's not sure what kind of life he has to go back to.
2. He remembers more distantly the chemical smells that would waft up from the basement of their rowhouse in Virginia, and how those had made him a little dizzy, too.
3. His name says Thaddeus on his birth certificate, but he's only ever gone by Thad. The only time he remembers being called Thaddeus is during the hearings social workers would drag him to at the family court. He'd had to wear corduroys and a brown clip-on tie, but to this day, he couldn't tell you what those hearings had been for.
4. Fire both fascinates and terrifies him. One of his clearest memories from childhood is dragging Harley past a wall of it in the entryway when he was six, choking him and blocking his way to the basement to see if his mom and dad are okay. They weren't, anyway.
5. Thad and Harley share a bedroom in their first foster home, same as when they had their own house. But it's not their house, and all their stuff fits into one green trash bag, and the man who lives there with his wife doesn't do helicopters with Thad. If he did, Thad doubts he'd like it as much.
6. He's good at making pancakes and microwaving things. Their next foster mom works all the time, so he comes home from school and makes mac and cheese for Harley. He slaps her hand when she throws it across the room, and cleans it up before anyone finds out about it and kicks them out.
7. He's twelve when Mrs. Oakland gets sick and can't take care of him and Harley anymore. They have to go quickly, and when the social worker tells him Harley's going to a new home and he can't go with her, he stares at her in blank shock. He doesn't even get a chance to say goodbye to her or figure out what's happening. She's just gone.
8. Thad's first time behind the wheel of a car is when he's thirteen. The woman who takes care of him has a boyfriend who drives an Eclipse with side skirts and a turbo engine. One night when they're busy in an upstairs bedroom, Thad uses it to run away and look for Harley. He gets almost as far as Falls Church before he's caught, but the social worker has to find him another place to stay.
9. Thad likes school, and it doesn't really matter that he can't keep up with a lot of the work. There's routine to it no matter where you go, even if they're always in different units of things than the last school district he was at. He spends more time in detention and ISS than he should, but his friends always dare him to do stuff, so he'll do it if it means they'll like him.
10. Girls always liked him, and he likes them back, both in school and out of it. He loses his virginity at fourteen to a girl who lives in his foster home (by now he's lost count of how many homes). She's nearly sixteen, and he figures that means she loves him, but when her mother finds out, that's the end of that.
11. The group home he's placed in is a last resort for his caseworker but he likes having so many people around. It gets lonely when he's by himself too long. He stays there for a while and it isn't that bad except for the guys who beat him up sometimes, mostly because he's skinny and they can. He makes friends easily, because he's good at making people happy, but the first time he's caught going down on an older boy, he gets beat up worse. Eventually, he runs away again, even though he hasn't seen Harley in almost three years and has no idea where to find her.
12. He winds up in D.C., where he catches up with Cole Wallace, an eighteen-year-old from the same group home who aged out of the system. He shows Thad how to jimmy into cars, and they spend a few months selling handjobs to strangers and boosting stereos before they end up hooking up with SouthEast Crew, a decent-sized gang that mainly runs cars and drugs.
13. Thad's pretty good at stealing cars, but he doesn't love that as much as he loves belonging to something. After a few months the crew starts to feel more like a family than any of his foster ones had.
14. He doesn't ever expect to see his sister again, but he does, when he's seventeen. Stunned, he watches her picking pockets on the Mall for twenty full minutes before he approaches her. She leaps into his arms like no time has passed, but it has, and while he's happy it breaks him up that she's not with some nice family like he imagined.
15. It's hard keeping the gang stuff separate from Harley, but he tries for a short while. There's no hope of getting her back into school or anything as they've no permanent address or guardians. But he drives her around in stolen cars and takes her around the city, showing her things, then makes her stay in his girlfriend's dingy apartment when he goes out.
16. The first time he forgets that Harley's not 8 years old anymore is only a week after she arrives, giving his girl the slip and following him to the chop shop one night. She's made of questions, just like always, and he puts her to work adding scrap metal to the heap while he pulls out stereos and rims. The guys tease him, call him a babysitter, but he doesn't want to hear it, because fuck them, he's got his sister back. And anyone who picks on Harley gets popped in the jaw.
17. The second time he forgets that Harley's not eight is when he sees her pop a guy in the jaw on her own. She bruises her hand so bad, he gives her a set of brass knuckles for next time and teaches her some tricks. But he still forgets sometimes.
18. Thad's had three run-ins with the DCPD. When he's sixteen and still green, he tries to sell a subwoofer to a fence he doesn't recognize who turns out to be a cop. He spends three months in a juvenile facility because he refuses to tell the police who he was working for. The second time he's brought in, he's nineteen and this time he's in a '92 Supra that was reported stolen. His public defender is good though, and he manages to get away with just probation. The third time he's picked up, he's twenty-three, and he and Harley are sent to Richmond to pick up a couple of Navigators. When they get back, the chop shop is crawling with police and the crew is scattered. The cops know he was with a partner, but they never find her because he made sure she got away before they could see her. Because he doesn't roll on her, he gets charged with two counts of felony theft instead of one, and this time he doesn't get out of it.
19. The one time Harley visits him is just after he's put away, and he urges her not to come back. They're still looking for his accomplice, and what members of the SE crew didn't get locked up will wonder if she rolled. It's just as well, because he never wanted this life for her, and it's the perfect time for her to get out of it. As far away from it as possible.
20. Thad's a model prisoner, and anyway, close security lockup could be worse. Not that he can ever forget about the walls and bars and charged wire fencing, but they let him get his GED there and he even gets to work. It's not the same as the real world, but there are people he's gotten to know and like. He might be released at the end of April, and it feels like his life has been on hold for five years. Only not really, because he's not sure what kind of life he has to go back to.