Buck (15 page)

Every period I think about Amir. Sometimes it feels like he’s right there, sitting next to me cracking jokes and sunflower seeds.

Third, fourth, and fifth periods—

Lunch, lunch, and lunch. Every student is assigned a lunch, either third, fourth, or fifth period. I don’t know which lunch I am … so I always hit up all three. The cafeteria guard doesn’t say shit because he’s a customer, buys an eighth of Sour Diesel from me every other week.

The cafeteria: bananas, pure chaos. The benches and tables are bolted down and midget-low from when this used to be a middle school. There’s always a couple fights during the first lunch, mostly girls, haymakers and windmills, boobs popping out like Jell-O, spinning, spitting, a lot of hair pulling. The fights leave weave tracks and braids scattered on the floor, right there with the spilled milk, baked beans, and textbooks facing down, pages open like dead birds.

Fourth lunch is live because that’s when my homies Q-Demented, QD, this Puerto Rican rap crew from Olney, come through and murder the cypher. They roll into lunch mad deep like Wu Tang. It’s usually Apathy, Blacastan, Block McCloud, Celph Titled, Crypt the Warchild, Demoz, Des Devious, Doap Nixon, Esoteric, Journalist, Jus Allah, King Magnetic, King Syze, Planetary, Reef the Lost Cauze, Vinnie Paz, and V-Zilla. I huddle with them and kick freestyles:

Boom box, beat box, or table drum, don’t matter—the beat goes on like life does. Girls come around, dance, back it up for us real quick, and stomp away laughing.

Fifth lunch is the Wild West.

I shoot dice with the get-money boys in the corner. I shake, roll, then jump back fast like bacon’s popping.

“Door blow … head crack … faded … bet, bet, bet …” as red dice tumble around fresh Timbs, Air Maxes, and Jordans. Sometimes I come up a couple hunnit, sometimes not. That’s the game, like life, mountains and valleys, ups and downs.

Fifth lunch is like a slaughterhouse, the killing fields. Gang fights, knives, all-out food fights, even race wars: Cambos vs. blacks, Puerto Rocks vs. blacks, whites vs. everybody. Me, I’m cool with all the races. My favorite color is green.

I don’t know what classes I have after fifth period; I never stay longer than the last lunch. There’s really no point. There’s no learning going on at Fels, just rules and yelling and chaos and screaming correctional-officer teachers. I feel like I can learn more outside of these dead school walls.

Every day I dip out the back door of the cafeteria, hop the metal fence, and speed away from the school that looks like jail, feels like jail. They do what they always do, the only thing they know how to do, what jails do: punish me with detention and probation, like the judge did Uzi.

—“ ’Sup, this Malo. Right place, wrong time. You know the drill …”

—*10

—“Welcome. You have eleven new messages …”

In Fresh Cutz barbershop getting my weekly shape-up, checking the voice mail on my new Motorola StarTAC. I give everybody my new number, even my school so they don’t stress my mom with their BS. I keep my hair in a low, dark hustla jawn with long sideburns. In Philly, a fresh cut is mandatory. Jawns be like,
Damn, ngh, you wolfin
, if your shit ain’t sharp.

—“What’s up, Malo? Dis Keisha from the other night, at Gotham. Hit me up, boo.”
Message deleted
.

—“Son, it’s your father. I’m trying to connect with you. How are you? Call me back, please. I want to see you, need to see you, it’s been way too long.”
Message deleted
.

Fresh Cutz is around my old way in Olney. They sell
everything: DVDs, water ice, birthday cards, socks, incense, whatever. They’re always selling random shit. When I walk in, Mike, my barber, asks me, “You know anyone who wants to buy some vending machines?” Mike is a cool old head hustleman. He’s pigeon-toed, which makes all his sneaks lean.

“Vending machines?” I laugh. “Nah.”

—“This is a very important automated message from the School District of Philadelphia; please listen carefully … Hello, this is Samuel Fels High School calling about your child’s attendance who was absent today, missing all scheduled periods. Please call the office—”
Message deleted
.

The crackheads outside the shop are wiping down my new whip: a baby-blue Ford Explorer coupe, eighteen-inch Asanti wheels, 5 percent limo tint, an Xtant/JL Audio system so loud you can hear me coming from a block away.

“That muhfucka bad,” the smokers say when I pull up. I can feel all the girls in the salon next to the shop checking for me when I pull up. Driving this car, hanging with Scoop, and getting paid has got grown-ass women throwing the panties at me. MILF jawns with mortgages and kids my age.

—“I don’t even know why I would even believe that you would call me back after I let you hit. You’re a trifling-ass person but it’s cool ’cause karma’s a bitch and I wish I could be there when it bites you in the ass! Fuck you, you stupid lying-ass bitch … Oh, and I’m not trying to make you feel some type of way because I’m sure you don’t even give a fuck but—”
Message deleted
.

—“Son, it’s your father. Please call me.”
Message deleted
.

I’m blowing money faster than a hollow-tip. I get it, I spend it. It takes my mind off the bullshit: off the fact that my best friend is gone, my mom is in a coma, my dad left, my sister’s on the funny farm, and my brother is locked in a dog kennel in Arizona. I run through Vizuris and Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus with Scoop. Versace. Iceberg. Moschino. Ralph Lauren Purple Label. Tommy Hill. YSL. Jordans. Timbs. Air Maxes. DKNY. Gucci. We walk out of the mall swinging bags like bandits.

I’m like my mom in that way, I like all the finer things in life. Everything I want is expensive. It’s crazy that people only say hello and thank you in this city when you’re in a store buying shit. When you’re spending money, everyone is your friend. People open doors, smile at you, laugh at your jokes, apologize all the time.
Let me get that for you … Can I help you?… May I?
 … Fake fucks.

New Jack City
is on in the barbershop. Nino’s like: “I’m not guilty. You’re the one that’s guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Colombian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You’re the one who’s guilty. I mean, c’mon, let’s kick the ballistics here: Ain’t no Uzis made in Harlem. Not
one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way.”

—“Stay away from my girl, dog, forreal. Keisha’s mine. I’m not gon’ tell you again, man, she mine.”
Message deleted
.

I realize you can spend any amount of money too. The more you get, the more you spend. I used to think a thousand dollars was a lot of money, but me and Scoop blow that in a night now. My Versace jacket cost a G. No matter how much I spend, though, the pain is still there, it never goes away, like a tattoo.

—“Malo, it’s Bone. Hit me up, let’s get this paper.”
Message deleted
.

I’m spending money and, at the same time, learning all types of interesting things about money. I don’t even call it “paper” anymore like everybody else does because money isn’t actually paper—it’s cotton, the same cotton my dad picked, his dad, and his dad before that. One of my customers works at the Mint in Old City, he showed me how they make money. I broke him off with an eighth of Purple Haze and showed him how I make money.

—“You are the most ignorant person I have ever met in my life! Fuck you, Malo! You ain’t shit and I hope your ugly black ass gets hit by a truck—”
Message deleted
.

I also stop calling money “dead presidents.” Jay-Z’s got that song “Dead Presidents” where he samples Nas on the hook, saying, “I’m out for presidents to represent me.” Then there’s that movie
Dead Presidents
with the chick blasting out of the dumpster in whiteface. But Benjamin Franklin is on the hundred-dollar bill and he wasn’t a president. Then there’s Alexander Hamilton on the ten-dollar bill, John Marshall on
the five hundred, and Salmon P. Chase on the ten thousand, and none of them were presidents either.

—“A chick who knows her position will never lose her place … I know my position, so hit me up, boo … Ashley.”
Message deleted
.

Mike is telling everybody why he thinks Tupac is still alive. “He’s alive, man, he’s alive, he’s alive,” he says like Frankenstein. “No pictures of him in the hospital … No funeral, no viewing … He changed his name to Machiavelli. That’s the ngh that faked his death … In the video for ‘I Ain’t Mad At Cha’ he’s already in heaven, the shit was planned … His last album was called
The 7 Day Theory
and he was shot on September seventh, survived until the thirteenth—seven days!—then died … In ‘Toss It Up’ and ‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ he’s rocking the Air Jordans and the Pennys that didn’t come out until after he died … In ‘God Bless the Dead’ he says ‘Rest in peace’ to my ngh Biggie Smalls, but Pac was murdered before Biggie … Explain that!”

—“Son, this is your father. Why are you doing this? Why—”
Message deleted
.

“But you know how I really know Pac is alive? How I really, really know?”

“How you know?”

“ ’Cause real nghz don’t die.”

—“It’s me … Nia.”
Message saved
.

“What are you doing?” I slam the journal closed but it’s too late—I’m caught. My mom studies her secret words between my palms. “Why are you reading my journal?” She’s standing in the doorway to my room, eyes glassy from meds, staring at me like I broke her heart.