Leaving home - age 6

He remembers the families by name. The faces and the fear blend together, but the names were always different. Carson, Dorsey, Lancaster, Delacruz. It was .. the Pucketts, at age six.

Leonard - they always called him Leonard - was in the kitchen, alone. The door blew off its hinges. Standing in the doorway, holding a smoking weapon, was his father Judson. Past him an oblong slab was parked at the curb. The Gnome's escape vehicle.

"Come on, kid, we're leaving." The old man grabbed Leonard by the collar and hauled him away from the kitchen and through the living room, past the handful of half-unwrapped toys the Pucketts had bought for him, past the photos of Mr. and Mrs. Puckett and their dead son. They'd have to find a different replacement boy now, Leonard thought sadly.

Leonard was tossed into the passenger side, while Judson climbed into the driver's seat and started up the car. Any ordinary person would have been shocked by the unfamiliarity. The whine of electrics and the fully computerized panel wouldn't be present in regular vehicles for decades. To Leonard, the comfortable house and family were the unfamiliar element. In a way, this felt more normal. In a way, he was grateful.

He remembers asking questions that felt banal at the time. "Why aren't there sirens, daddy?" his six-year-old self said. Judson, driving, laughed at that. "Cops were too slow, and your dad was too smart, kid."

He remembers the two weeks he spent with Judson Snow. He remembers getting anything he wanted - all McDonald's hamburgers, all the time - and finding that he didn't much like the taste. He remembers asking about mommy. That was a new idea to him, a mother figure. He remembers Judson laughing in a way that wasn't funny at all.

He remembers the hotel room door being blown away, and thinking, "dad's here." Only his dad was in the room already, and it was a team of superheroes. Like Saturday morning cartoons, only serious. They acted like cops back then, but they dressed up like it was Halloween. He remembers the brief fight, and his dad being handcuffed and blindfolded. He threw himself at the old man, crying, trying to shield him with his body from these strange people.

The police were there, the real police, and one of the cartoon cops handed him over to a man in a black suit. The pattern of his tie fascinated Leonard, and he never looked the cop in the eye that day. The conversation was boring anyway. Questions about Judson, questions about himself, confirmation of his vital information, a discussion about foster families. The cops always called it a "discussion" when they were really telling you what they were going to do to you.

The Pucketts were too worried to take him back, the man said. Their safety had to be taken into consideration. And the Gnome knew where they lived. Leonard would have to be placed with someone else. But he knew that.

"Is daddy going to jail?" he asked finally. The cop with the interesting tie said he was. "Why can't I live there?" he asked. The cop said that would be silly, that was no place for a boy to grow up. "Well... he's just gonna come find me again," he pointed out, and the cop was silent.