The Come Up

Chapter 3-Do Better

School has never been so hard to sit through. Senior year is coming to a close, I already got accepted to three of the colleges I want to go to and it all just feels so pointless. I'm basically done with it all so most days I just feel like staying my ass home. I sit in Calc waiting for 12:45 when Trisha walks by my classroom door with her tongue stuck out and her eyes bulging out of her head. I always sat in a spot where I could see her pass because she was always doing something dumb. I smile and pretend to keep writing, my eyes on the board. She passes again, her eyes squinting at me as she sticks her middle finger right up to the little glass on the door.  I pretend to be scratching my nose with my middle finger and make sure she catches it as she walks by again.

You would have thought this girl doesn't have class right now, but she just never goes. It was almost funny how much Trish doesn't care about school, but sometimes it just made me sad. I want the best for her and she's a very smart girl but I think over time the system got to her just like it got to most of the people in the hood. They don't think we'll go anywhere with poverty set up like this, the violence and the drug mix up. I don't blame them. It's all they've known.

Living in Brownsville was like walking into a heated room while wearing glasses. It's fogged up, you can't really see past it and some of these people don't understand that you can take the glasses off your face, wipe off the barriers they're putting against you and put on clean new glasses with a whole new vision. They have no vision because they've always been in a heated room with little to see.

I try to develop this concept in my mind enough to write a poem that embodies it all. As I write, I forget that Trisha is in the hallway being stupid. The teacher momentarily stops talking and is staring at the door with his eyebrows pointed down in confusion. Trisha's little head is peaking through the square glass and she quickly runs away from the door like a 5 year old.

The class giggles and Mr. Armstrong shakes his head and continues to work on the problem on the board. I don't know if he noticed that no one was paying attention. The rest of the class passed so slowly I didn't know what to do with myself. It's been at least 2 weeks since I met Flex, and in that two weeks Trev and I had already laid out lyrics and melodies and combined so many ideas. Flex said that I had a strong enough voice to sing independently so I've been working on a song of my own, with a poem for a bridge. I feel like people are about to call me the singing poet.

Either way, Trev has been working on some dope sounds, and most of the time I just enjoy being in the studio and listening to him, or writing my poems and listening to him, or doing homework and listening to him.

I just liked listening to him.

I know  he was talented, but there's so many people who don't know. So many people he keeps it from.

It be like that in the hood though. People get jealous easily, and they don't want to see you doing anything positive, or else they think that you think you're better than them. Even going away to college is an issue. People change up when they come back apparently.

Trisha waits for me outside laughing as she approaches me.

"Yoo, Armstrong got them big ass eyes, scared the shit outta me." Her hair is in blonde and black box braids and she is wearing her favorite pair of jeans with a fitted pink top. She had a way of making the simplest outfits look really nice.

"Watchu up to lil nigga?" She said jokingly. It was something Jay always said to us. When he went off to college and came back nobody really talked to him except me, Trish and Trevon. Even his closest friends, or what used to be anyway, didn't like him. Yea, he dressed better and spoke a little more confident. I don't know what they did to him upstate but he even came back cuter than he left. But more than anything, Jay had looked happier, he had a successful glow. The hood saw someone different return that left, and even if he changed for the better, he still changed. That was all they needed.