Semester in Space BxB (Staten Krown)

1

"Oh shit...oh shit...they 'bout to call the next number!"
I'm at home. Thousands of students across the country are listening to the lotto. Most of them are listening. They call the next number. It's not mine. My heart is racing. I had to get out of Compton and this new program was my way out.

I look at my number again. I'm praying to God. My homeboy Andre is next to me. He's holding onto his ticket. None of us expects to get it. Hell...no one in LA has won yet. Shit. Only one person from California has even won and it's someone that we know from high school. Andre's ex girlfriend actually.

The woman comes back on television.

"And the next number is..."

I feel my mother holding onto her chest. She's praying that I get it. It cost us everything that we had to just be even put into this lottery.

The lottery was for a new program. They call it "High School in the stars". It was a big deal. No. It was more than a big deal. Billions of dollars were put into this by some private company. They wanted to send kids into space to learn about astronomy first hand. Astronomy was my passion. Before my dad died of Cancer he used to take me out to see the stars in the park. It used to be clear back in the day. Now the sky is so polluted you can't see anything. I don't have money for a telescope. I only see the stars online nowadays. Online at the library. They cut off the internet at my house awhile ago. Yeah. I'm pretty broke.

That's why this is so important. See...once you passed the hard ass class...and yadda yadda yadda, you still had to pay for the ticket. And that shit was expensive to say the least. 5 thousand dollars for a single ticket. 5 thousand dollars! First I had to enroll in a hard class in order to qualify to even pay for the single ticket. The class was a nationwide astronomy class. Only the highest 10 percent of every class was qualified to buy the ticket. This eliminated a lot of high school students. That was all I could control though. The

"Mario...if you don't get it, it's ok," my mother tells me, "There's other options."

"Public school in Compton? Those are the other options?"

She sighs a little bit. She's given up on me already. I know she has.

You see...gangsters killed my older brother Troy this past summer. They thought he was tryign to set them up. They thought he stole money from me. Those same guys were looking for me all the time. Mind you—I'm a fucking nerd. I don't know shit about gang anything. But they think Troy must have told me where he kept their money. It's so much drama that I've just been trying to get away!

Compton was getting worse and worse. Street wars were breaking out between the local gangs and innocent people were being pulled into it. My high school was the breeding ground for crime and drugs. I had no future in this city. I had no way of getting out. I was stuck...literally.

And I only option. I only had one ticket.

"7..."
It matched.
"8934..."

I look down on my ticket. Holy shit. Well G'dam it, Mario! I'm one lucky motherfucker, aren't I? One more number. All the numbers are matching so far. There is one more number that they have to call. One more number.

I look down at the ticket.

"3..." the woman calls.
I look down on my ticket. I got it...I fucking won.

I look to my right. My homeboy Andre is looking over my shoulder at my ticket, "Ay Mario. What you got there?"

"Nothing," I lie.

Andre and I have been best friends since middle school but this program was something that we all wanted. Ride or die. You know the type? The kind of guy who has your back and all that. He's pretty smart too, just like I am. We are are a couple of geeks who always had plans to do bigger thangs in these Compton streets. A program like this changes the world for kids like us. Kids like us didn't get the opportunity to do things like this. We weren't provided that.