Wednesday 4/9/08 Who: Tad, Calvin and Ciri Where: in the city and other places When: early evening What: Tad has left TJS to get into trouble.
Ever since the horrible fight he'd had with Dante, Tad felt lonelier than ever. He had no idea how to make friends in the first place, but part of him wanted to try. There was a high possibility that a friend he'd make in TJS would know Dante in some way and he was not willing to take that risk. The only chance he had was to leave the campus and he needed to think of a way to do that.
One night, when Ciri went to check on a crying Onyx, Tad slipped out the door and ran to the garage. He managed to find a bicycle that was chained and broke it so he could use the vehicle to ride to the city. The bike ride took a long time and finally he arrived in a place with more buildings than normal. There were signs that said Boston so he knew he was in the right are. Unfortunately, not as many people as he liked were out in the open, and so Tad had to be on the lookout for potential friends.
He walked up to a parking lot next to some store, noting in particular a group of several teenage boys ahead of him. They were talking and crowding around a boombox playing rock music, holding thin white sticks in their hands that emitted smoke. The more they laughed, the greater Tad wanted to join their group and have a good time. It took courage on his part to approach them and say, "Hello." The boys looked at him as though he were odd and made him feel uncomfortable, so he had to resort to a "magic trick."
Tad grabbed some dirt out of his pocket and concentrated, making it float in a ball an inch above his hand. "Woah!" came the chorus from the young men and a couple of them slapped him on the back. "That was great!" said one of them. For some reason, just like that, he was in. Another guy handed him one of the white smoking sticks and Tad learned to inhale from it. It was disgusting, but doing do was obviously what the group did. A guy named Mark had a basketball that they bounced between various members as some of them told jokes and talked about girls.
"The last time I saw a girl's boobs was a week ago," another one, Steve said, "when I banged her good and hard over the couch." The other guys catcalled and laughed, so Tad, in his desire to make them like him, wanted to share a story of his own.
He tried to think of a good lie before he raised his voice to add a comment. "I saw a girl's boobs today." An accidental glimpse of Ciri feeding Onyx. What would be a good story for the guys to hear? "We fucked in the shower and then in the kitchen." Tad had heard something similiar when he crashed the luau party, so maybe this would be acceptable. They rewarded him with hoots and grins, as well as comments like, "How old are you? Fourteen?" Good start, and the smoke in his hand was starting to make him light-headed.
Ciri made sure that Onyx was asleep before she came out of the bedroom to check on Tad. Maybe they would play a game, because he seemed a little sad today. To her horror, she saw that he wasn't in his room or the rest of the apartment. Where was he? She tried calling his cell phone, but Tad wasn't answering. Her heart pounded faster in fear, worried that he had run off again, and she had to call Calvin to let him know.