Picking Locks
Locking a door is harder than unlocking one. He'd learned that early. People were always amazed at his lock-picking skills – at how quickly he could open a door. He learned when he was 9. He could get out of any house, office, classroom, closet, cellar, storeroom, interrogation room or dormitory that he'd ever been locked into. Not that they were all places he necessarily wanted to get out of. But it was fun. He was good at it. Opening a locked door was easy.
The trick was locking the door behind you, if you didn't have the key and someone had messed with the doorknob. That's when you had to get creative. Most guys who can pick locks know how to open doors. He knew how to lock them. That was unique.
He'd figured it out over the course of five days when he was 14. "You can't hide from us," the boys at the group home would say. "These doors don't have locks." And for four and a half days, he couldn't hide. Because the doors didn't have locks. None of the doors did, even in the bathroom. The people running the home didn't want the boys to be able to lock themselves in. But he had learned how. He had locked the door behind him and sat on the side of the bathtub and laughed as the other boys cursed and yelled. By the time the house parents came and took the door off its hinges to get in, he was out the window and long gone.
That was the last place he'd ever stayed as a guest of the foster system. Because, really, once you could lock the door behind you, you could stay anywhere.