“I pay attention.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Bet I can make her forget about her books and her mean ass pappy.”
“Stay away from her.” I threw the ball at his face, and he almost missed catching it.
He frowned. “Oh, we claiming girls now? You like her like that?”
Refusing to answer his question, I countered, “You like a challenge. Leave her alone, Ko. She’s one of the good ones.”
He chuckled. “Which means you need to stay away, too. If her daddy is a cop and doesn’t let her date any of the guys here now, he sure as the fuck ain’t gonna let you date her.” Kody tossed the ball back at me. “When is your court date again?”
“Fuck you.” I retorted, half-joking. I dribbled the ball out of the front door of the school, into the warm and bright day.
Of course, a girl like Jamaica wouldn’t give me the time of day, and even if she did, her father wouldn’t allow it. She deserved one of the guys in our class who came from a good home like she did, and expected to continue good family values. Even Kody fit that profile more than I did. He grew up with his mother and sister in the hood like me, but at least he had a decent relationship with his father, who lived in Chicago. He never had to figure out where his next meal was coming from, like me and Peace often did, since his mother had a decent job at the Food Stamp office.
I’d noticed Jamaica when she politely corrected my grammar after I answered a question during English when we were freshmen. She was quiet and shy and only spoke in class when asked to or in small groups. I developed a crush on Jamaica last year during gym when she raised her arms too high, revealinga glimpse of her pierced belly button. In my sixteen years on Earth, I’d gone through things most people don’t go through in a lifetime, and I was rarely surprised.
Jamaica was the girl who wore her clothes fitted but never tight, and kept her skirts or shorts right above the knee. Her hair was usually in a sleek ponytail, and she never hung around boys. In fact, outside of class, she seemed to have only one friend, Lori Johnson, who appeared to be just as quiet and studious as she was. Jamaica also had a strict father who wore his cop badge with honor. Yet she had a piercing that the hot girls usually had. That glimpse of that diamond sticking out of her cute belly button fascinated and hooked me.
For the past year, she had all of my attention. I greeted and teased her playfully whenever the rare moment of us being alone in the same space happened. She would duck her head and blush, and didn’t flirt back. A fact that drew me in even more once I realized she didn’t know how to banter or play the games the other girls loved to do. I couldn’t tell if she liked me, and that both bothered and intrigued me. I messed around with other girls, hoping to erase Jamaica Bennett from my mind, and yet nothing worked. And now Jamaicareallyknew I was paying attention, and the light in her eyes told me she was pleased and returned my feelings, too.
The whole walk home, half-listening to a chattering Kody, I thought about Jamaica and what I had to do if I wanted her to be mine. I couldn’t be the boy who didn’t give a fuck about school and adults. I definitely couldn’t be the boy who dabbled in minor crimes to provide for my younger brother when my father disappeared on his drinking binge following most paydays. I had to hustle in a different way if I wanted that pretty, shy girl to ever take me seriously.
“What do you think about me being in the choir this year?” I asked Kody as we turned on our block.
“Instead of being done with classes by noon? That’s what we’ve been waiting for since ninth grade. We don’t have to cut school now. We can leave early. If anything, you need to be looking for a job.”
“I can do both.” I grabbed the bouncing ball out of his hand before he caught it and started walking backwards. “If I join the choir, Ms. Jenkins can really work on my voice. I already know the guitar, and you know I can spit rhymes.”
“Then record you some videos and drop them on YouTube or make a mixtape.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “You don’t need to sing in a lame choir.”
“We loved that song with Nelly and Tim McGraw. Why can’t I do that? More songs like that, except I can sing and rap to my guitar.”
“Or you can play basketball and get a scholarship.”
I groaned. “For the last time, I don’t want to go to college or play basketball. All the practices and the games take me away from home. Who’s going to watch Peace?”
“Peace, the fourteen-year-old that’s as tall as us? He doesn’t need anyone watching him.”
Looking from the outside, Kody was right. My brother was more than capable of taking care of himself, except when it came to my father, who had tried on more than one occasion to beat the queerness out of him like he used to try to beat my willful defiance out of me. I intervened with my brother whenever I could and had welts for days from my father’s belt. Over the last year, my father had finally grown tired of fighting me, now that I was taller than him, and would usually leave my brother and me alone to fend for ourselves. I hid my scars from Kody, too ashamed for even my best friend to know that I’d been abused.
“Maybe because you’re the baby in your family, you don’t get how I feel responsible for him,” I improvised. “Ms. Jenkins is always announcing some talent contest, and she has realconnections. Maybe if I’m in the class, she’ll enter me or help me enter. Talent is a dime a dozen. I need a way in to the industry, and maybe if she sees that I’m serious, she’ll help me.”
He grabbed the back of my neck playfully. “Bruh, now you want to be in talent shows? I mean, you play and sing alright…but enough to win shows? You need cold, hard cash, not these unrealistic dreams that come out of nowhere.”
I snatched his hand off me. “It didn’t come out of nowhere. Just never told you for the reaction I’m getting right now. My mother loved my voice and used to tell me I would be famous one day from singing. Get the fuck on, if you can’t support me.”
His head snapped back, and he sobered, “Chill. I’m just looking out for you. You want to rap, then rap. Put Dallas on the map. You got mad skills. But you talking about singing and playing guitar like some damn country star. Did you forget we’re black?”
“Naw…” I gestured to my brown skin. “Every time I look in the mirror, or a cop car slows down when they see me, or I walk in certain stores, I’m reminded I’m black. I’m already a statistic with my family history and arrest record. A rapper with my background is old news. Maybe I want to break out of people’s expectations of me.”
Kody tapped the ball against my shoulder. “Then stop doing stupid shit that I need to cover up. I don’t want to lie to my mother anymore about where we are or supposed to be doing.”
I stepped into his face. “What? You mean the shit that’s your idea, and you’re too much of a fucking coward to do. Like you stealing weed from that kid to sell, and I have to smooth it over with his father, who the weed really belonged to. Could’ve got us both hurt or killed. We're lucky, he knew my dad from back in the day.” My father had a rep on the streets that protected my brother and me from being forced to hustle or join a gang. And it also allowed me to ask favors.
“It was your idea to sell weed. Where were we going to get it from if we didn’t take it from that bitch ass kid?” He hurled back, though I saw a flash of fear in his eyes. Though we were the same height, in a fight, I would win. I’d been through more, had more scrapes, giving me the edge.
“Yeah, I did. Every fucking body wants to get high. Why not make cash off it? You got impatient.” I shoved him away from me. “I never asked you to do it with me in the first place.”
