7. As part of his new life as an adopted rich kid, Tommy has to adopt the mannerism and dress of the rich. When his slum buddies of Newsboy Legion send him a jacket, he has to reject it because it bears the markers of his now shameful class origins which he is trying to erase.

8. Unlike Podhoretz in Making It, Tommy in Kirby's story doesn't accept the "brutal bargain" of upward mobility. It turns out the whole adoption was a criminal scheme. In end he's reunited with his buddies in Newsboy Legion. But the two stories, one a memoir & one fictional, strongly overlap