Ain't got nothin', won't be nothin'.
That's the motto that most of the boys from the east side of Brooklyn went by. Some of them were thieves, drug dealers, murderers, or even rapists. They were an array of criminals, but all for one reason - t...
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[Jada and Max above.]
Eight AM comes and I've already taken a shower. My clothes are laid out on my bed, down to the socks and shoes. I'm already partially dressed, since there's a black, red, gold, and green bracelet on my right wrist. There's red, gold and green beads after every four black beads and then a brown ribbon to adjust the bracelet's size. My mother gave it told me and said it was from my father, but I never believed her. She knew I didn't; it was clear, the way she smiled but had a doubtful optimism in her eyes while she hoped that I would believe her. I took it and said nothing.
I never feel complete when I'm not wearing it. In fact, I don't remember the last time I wasn't wearing it. It's a part of my wrist now, fused with my skin and nestled beneath my arm hairs. Maybe I could go take the test wearing just the bracelet and nothing else. If anyone says I'm not fully dressed, I'll say "that's subjective."
There are two beds in my dorm, including mine, but my roommate isn't here yet. I heard he had a family emergency and couldn't make it for move-in day. I wonder if I could've used that excuse for the test tomorrow, or the whole first semester. Or the next four years.
The thing about life, though, is that excuses just postpone things, but never erase them. I can never have a family emergency big enough that permanently rids me of all responsibilities instead of just buying me time to run away from them. (Unless, of course, I had a personal emergency. In that case I'd be able to permanently run away from everything.) At some point, everyone has to face the things that they don't like and things that they wouldn't hesitate to change if they could. But we never can.
Well, sometimes we can. We can tweak the circumstances, with the help of a white boy named Danny and a unique memorization technique I learned from middle school. Yesterday, Danny offered to give me the answer sheet and explained to me how he got it (something about his father or his friend's cousin's uncle or something about white kids pulling strings with their important white families). He explained to me how I can cheat flawlessly by tucking the sheet inside the test packet. I asked him if there's a possibility I could get caught, and after dancing around the question for a few minutes he finally admitted that it's possible but unlikely. To avoid getting kicked out of college before it even starts, I took the answer sheet and memorized it so I could have a mental cheat sheet.
The technique I'm using really worked for me on middle school tests, and after testing myself a couple times last night when my insomnia kept me up, I can confidently say that it still works today. If I get a few questions wrong then I'm cool, since it's better than how many I would've gotten wrong if I had no help to begin with. I would end up in remedial classes being forced to keep a GPA that my hatred for Trigonometry makes unrealistic. I would be back home in no time.
I'm still on the fence about whether that would be a good thing or not.
At 8:10 I start putting on my clothes. They seem to come onto my body against my will, like my hands have a mind of their own and aren't aware that they're preparing me to do something that doesn't feel right. Not only have I not decided if I want to stay in school or not, but cheating comes with a price. The size of the price doesn't matter—my pockets are empty either way—but it's a price that makes none of this seem worth my effort or time. It doesn't seem worth seeming like a sellout to my boys or leaving Ma alone at home or being surrounded by people who aren't my friends and probably don't want to be.
