New England preparatory school was a Gold family tradition, apparently. Or at least that was what the thin older man in the designer suit and clutching the fancy cane (his grandfather, Henry mentally corrected himself) had said. And It's not that Henry didn't believe him. His mom had always told him that she could spot a liar, it was something in their eyes, she said. But this wasn't like that, it wasn't Gold that made it seem like a lie. The information itself just didn't feel true.

It didn't mesh well at all with image he had of his father, the image he had been given by his mom's tales of misspent youth. His father, Neal Cassidy, as his mom had known him, was a beatnik, a thief and an artist both con and otherwise. Together his parents had spent years running from the law, living in the backseat of a beat down Beetle, surviving off their stolen goods and being kept entertained on lonely nights by the tales they spun of their future in small house in Tallahassee with a picket fence and a couple of children.

He had died not long after Henry's birth in a car accident but through his mom's stories and whatever elements of the works of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and other great beatnik writers of the 60's Henry felt were appropriate to apply to the biography of his father, Henry had always felt like he had a good idea of who Neal Cassidy was.

And the Neal he knew had not gone to boarding school. He had sprung up from whatever void vagrants came from, full of natural wisdom and a casual laid back, all-American spirit and had returned to that same void at the most romantic and dramatic of times.

He did not have any money and his father was not this spindly lawyer type who Henry had met not more than six months ago. The revelations that all these things were in fact real had left the boy feeling nauseous and , for the first time since he could remember, slightly resentful towards his mom for letting him go so long with the false image of his father or perhaps for allowing it to ever be shattered. Henry had not yet decided which.

But whatever the reason, this new found resentment or a desire to feel a connection to the father that now seemed like a distant stranger to him, Henry agreed to take on this family legacy despite his mom's protests.