I’m skipping 9th grade entirely. Honestly, that year was mid—nothing but a filler arc. Nothing happened
worth taking note of. But 10th grade? That was easily one of the happiest times of my life.
For one, those two dickheads Marcus and Diquerius finally moved out for college. The house was
actually quiet for once. With them gone and Ms. Patterson working late, me and Jasmine were definitely
taking advantage of the alone time. I mean, why the hell not?
Academically, I was killing it. I’d been in the gifted program for a minute, and my grades were so
high they offered to let me skip a few classes and move ahead. I turned them down, though. I chose to do
it “the long way” just so I could spend more time with Jasmine.
I thought she’d be hyped, but she was actually pissed.
“Rico, you’re holding yourself back just to be with me?” she said, looking me dead in the eyes. She
wasn’t playing. “I don’t like that at all. You’re too smart to be sitting in here just to hold my hand.”
She was right, and I hated it. It’s rare to have a girl stay on your ass about your future like that. She
wasn’t delusional or worried about me cheating; she just loved me enough to correct me when I was being
a fool.
Since I wasn’t skipping ahead, I decided I needed something to do with my extra energy. I decided to
try out for football. Now, I used to hate the idea of football because my foster brothers played it, and since
they were dicks, I figured every football player was a dick.
At tryouts, I realized I was about half right. There were definitely some assholes on the field, but I
also realized something else—I was actually a natural. Turns out, all those years of running from my mom
and dodging the twins gave me some serious wheels. I had talent I didn’t even know about.
The season was going crazy. I was holding it down in the classroom, keeping my grades in the A and
B range, and on the field? I was a problem. I even bagged MVP a couple of times. But popularity comes
with a tax, and that tax was bitches.
They were everywhere. In my face, in my locker, trying to walk me to class. I turned every single one
of them down. I did it so much that the rumors started flying—the whole school thought I was gay. I
didn’t give a fuck. Let ‘em think I’m sweet; it was better than them finding out the truth.
But then, one day between classes, I saw some bullshit that made my blood boil.
One of the seniors on the football team was cornering Jasmine in the hallway. Now, where I’m from,
you can stay in public school until you’re twenty-one. This dude had been held back twice, so he was a
grown-ass man with a beard and probably a mortgage, and he’s over here hitting on a freshman.
I saw that R. Kelly shit he was pulling and I didn’t even hesitate. I walked right up into his space.
“Yo, what you doing with my little sister, son?” I said, my voice low and dangerous. “With your
grown ass?”
Jake didn’t back down. He stood there towering over me, looking like a whole-ass mortgage-paying
adult in a high school hallway.
“I know your big-ass brothers ain’t here to save you, Rico,” Jake sneered. “They told me all about
you. Said you were a little bitch with no backbone and a big mouth. Now that they’re gone, who’s gonna
protect you?”
I looked him up and down. I wasn’t scared of this dude—I’d lived with Marcus and Diquerius; I was
used to being around oversized idiots.
“That’s funny,” I said, loud enough for the people gathering in the hall to hear. “Because you sound
like a straight-up pedophile targeting a freshman. What happened? The twins whoop your ass so bad back
in the day that you gotta come after their sister to feel like a man?”
That hit a nerve. Jake’s face turned a nasty shade of red. Before I could even brace myself, he wound
up and cracked me right across the jaw.
The force of it sent me spinning to the floor. My ears were ringing, and the taste of copper filled my
mouth. But as I laid there for a second, I realized something—it didn’t even hurt that much. My mom
used to hit me with her full weight when I was eight. This dude was twenty-one and he couldn’t even put
me out.
Jasmine screamed and ran over to check on me, but Jake reached out and snatched her by the arm.
“Hey!” she yelled, trying to pull away.
Seeing him touch her made something in me snap. I stood up, wiped the blood from my lip, and spat a
red glob right at his shoes.
“My mom used to abuse the shit out of me,” I said, my voice steady. “And I gotta say… you hit like a
bitch for real.”
Jake lost it. He lunged at me, and we went at it right there in the middle of the hallway. I wasn’t a pro
fighter, but I was fast. I got in a couple of good hits—a cheap shot to the solar plexus and a nasty bite to
his cheek when we got tangled up. I was fighting like that chimpanzee I’d been when I was a kid.
But Jake was too tall and way too strong. It stopped being a fight and started being a beating. He
pinned me against the lockers and started raining down haymakers.
The worst part wasn’t the pain. It was the sound. The whole hallway was crowded with students, and
they were all screaming and cheering like this was some hyped-up UFC match.
Why is everybody cheering?! I thought, my vision starting to blur. Y’all don’t see this grown-ass man
beating on me? Help me!
But nobody moved. They just held up their phones, recording my face getting turned into hamburger
meat while they waited for the drop.
I saw Jasmine’s face. She wasn’t just crying; she was falling apart. Seeing her like that made
something deep inside me snap. It wasn’t a little snap, like a twig—it felt like a heavy-duty chain being
ripped off a door.
Suddenly, a cold, dark voice echoed in my head, loud and clear: Man, fuck all this fighting shit. That’s
a grown-ass man trying to molest your girl and you think you can beat him with your bare hands? Fuck
that. Up something on this bitch.
The moment that voice spoke, my eyes locked onto a yellow number-two pencil laying on the floor. I
didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I lunged.
I didn’t go for his chest or his face. I went for the weak spot. I drove that pencil straight into his
knee—not the bone, but right into the side where the ACL is exposed. I felt the wood sink deep into the
meat of his leg.
Jake’s scream was high-pitched, like a tea kettle, before he crumpled onto the floor.
Everything else went black.
When the world finally came back to me, I was being pinned against the lockers by at least five
teachers. My lungs were burning, and my vision was blurry with sweat and blood. I looked down at my
hand. I was still clutching the pencil—it was snapped in half and soaked in deep, dark red.
Jake was laid out on the floor, clutching his leg and barely breathing, his face pale as a ghost. The
hallway was silent now. Nobody was cheering anymore.