The 9-year-old kid was again sleeping in our clubhouse again when I opened the door at 5 AM. Third time this week. He was curled up on the leather couch with his backpack as a pillow, and he’d left a crumpled five-dollar bill on the coffee table with a note that said “for rent.”
His name was Marcus Webb, and every foster family in three counties had given up on him.
He’d run away from fourteen different homes in eighteen months.
The social workers called him “unplaceable.” They said he had severe attachment disorder and would probably end up in a group home until he aged out of the system. What none of them knew was that Marcus kept running away to the same place.
Our motorcycle club. The Iron Brothers MC in Riverside, a club of mostly veterans and blue-collar guys who spent our weekends doing charity rides and fixing bikes.The kid would show up, sleep on our couch, and be gone before most of us arrived in the morning.
But today I’d come in early. And today, I was going to find out why this kid kept choosing a motorcycle clubhouse over an actual home. I didn’t wake him.
I just sat in the chair across from him and waited.