Chapter 9

• 1. David feels like he has a dark cloud over him because he believes at any moment he may be sendback to the hill. He must look around every street corner for a county car. He just wishes he had a place to call home.
  •2. Every night he prayed that Gordon Hutchinson would come and decided his fate. David was wearing ragged, moldy clothes and still sleeping on the couch. He needed a real home.
  •3. Alice tell David that she and Harold are working on getting their boy fostering licenses and that she would like David to stay for as long as possible.
  •4. Harold never seemed to talk to David, and when he did he just utter a few word he was just trying to get David to read instead of watching television. Although Harold was much of a friend, David still respected him immensely.
  •5. Ever since David was a small child, he fantasized about building a log cabin at the Russian River, so he sometimes imagined him and Harold working on it together.
  •6. Dr. Robertson was David’s new psychiatrist. He greeted David with a handshake, and turned out to be the complete opposite of David’s first doctor. He treats David like the teenager that he is, and never forces David to talk about anything he doesn’t want to.
  •7. I think that it will help David eventually. It is important for David to talk to someone about the things that have haunted him for so long. It is the first step in mental recovery.
  •8. There are a few things in this chapter similar to my life. For example, the fact that David is deemed stunt king later in the chapter is very relatable to my life. I have always liked to perform dangerous stunts, not for any amount of money prize, but simply for a feeling of accomplishment.
  •9. His speech problem disappeared because Alice taught him how to slow down his train of thought, and try to picture himself saying the words before they came out.
  •10. Alice is a very involved mom. She loves walking with David to the mall, and watching movies with him. Also, she often buys him toys for no apparent reason. For the first time David feels like a real kid.
  •11. David is beginning to learn how to accept presents. Up until now he has never felt that deserved presents so it is a big change for him. The most important gift David received from the Turnboughs was a chance at being a kid while being prepared for life as an adult.
  •12. Being alone in the wide open world was the scariest thing that David could imagine. Up until now he never had to think more than hours or days into the future. The idea of making a life for himself seemed impossible.
  •13. David felt as if he had nothing in common with the other kids at his school. Wile they all fought to impress others by acting cool, David really didn’t care one way or the other what people thought of him. He felt like the outcast.
  •14. David wanted to learn how to cook. He was pushing 16, and since everyone else was either going to Disneyland or Hawaii, he felt as though he needed to find some skill that he could call his own.
  •15. David left by choice because he was disgusted with the two, older foster boys that had moved into the home. They did not work, and many times they would find David’s savings stash and steal money. David made it clear to Alice that if those boys stayed he would leave.
  •16. His new family were very chill and laid back, allowing David to come and go as he pleased. They neighborhood they moved to consisted of houses that looked more like miniature mansions, and every car had a astounding shine to it. It was the perfect place to live.
  •17. David’s new friends are two boys from that live on his street named Paul Brazell and Dave Howard. David took an instant liking to the two, and they constantly raced each other on their mini bikes.
  •18. I think she is a very stereotypical, and simple minded piece of scum. She talks to David in a disgusting tone and constantly talks about “his kind,” and how he should give up on his future because he does not have what it takes to make it in this world.
  •19. The Marshes are neighbors of the Walsh's. David spends countless hours with them and their children. They have an enormous book collection in their house and David loves to read as much as he possibly can, sometimes taking books home with him and finishing them in one night.
  •20. The stay at the Walsh’s was nice at first, but as arguments began to be a regular routine David was becoming desperate. Whenever he anticipated an argument, David would quickly direct the kids out of the house as to avoid any physical or verbal