Flying Lessons & Other Stories(39)
I signed it
Anonymous.
THERE’S ONE (BIG) PROBLEM, THOUGH
As beautiful as Angel is, she’s even more stuck up.
So nobody really likes her.
(Except me.) We’ve been classmates since fourth grade and she’s never even smiled at me.
Some of the girls in our class say she thinks she’s better than us.
When I told her what they were saying about her
(to get on her good side), she whipped her long brown hair and replied, “I am.”
BEFORE I CONTINUE
with this memoir I’d like to remind you that this part of my life
happened at my previous school so don’t try to figure out who’s who, plus all of the names (except mine) have been changed to protect
the innocent
and the guilty.
Now, back to the story…
SWAG
I’m standing in the hallway getting daps and high-fives from my classmates
when who walks up to me but, yep, you guessed it: ANGEL CARTER.
OH SNAP! This is the BEST. DAY. EVER!
But, wait, she doesn’t look happy.
The most beautiful girl in school
walks up to me
fast and furious
like a wave rushing
to the shore.
I feel like
I’m about to drown,
but I don’t care,
because like my dad says about my mom,
“She’s a stone cold fox!”
(I don’t even know what that means,
but it sounds pretty cool.) Her hair is braided in hundreds of tiny cornrows, so thin you could lace
sneakers with them.
She’s wearing capris and pink high-top Converse.
Now she’s smiling. Or smirking.
Maybe she’s gonna give me my props.
When she gets near me, I hear, What a lowlife.
Who’s she talking about? I wonder.
“You ain’t all that, Monk. I don’t even know why everybody’s sweatin’ you. You’re such a geek,” she says, and that’s when I realize I’m the lowlife
she was talking about. GEESH!
“Yeah, a geek,” says Angel’s best (and only) friend, Carla.
They laugh, then, like the tide, go back into
the big middle school sea, and
I know I won’t get
too many more chances like this.
LAST CHANCE
“Um, Angel, maybe I am all that,” I say nervously. “Maybe I read Mr. Olley’s mind
and knew the quiz
was gonna be on mitosis and DNA, and that’s why he canceled it.”
Carla stops, turns around, and yells, “OH, NOW YOU GOT ESPN?” which sends the entire hallway into raucous laughter.
Angel shakes her head. “It’s ESP, girl.”
And this is The Moment
when my Entire. Life. Changes.
“BET I CAN READ YOUR MIND, ANGEL,” I holler, sweating profusely.
JEOPARDY, PART TWO
Part of me wishes she’d just keep on walking.
The other half prays
she turns around.
Everyone is quiet.
Angel stops, drops her bag, and marches toward my locker like I just started
something.
I got to pee, I hear her say to herself.
“Excuse me, geek? I know you’re not trying to start nothing,” she says.
“I’m just saying, I know a lot more than you think I know,” I fire back.
“Okay, so just because you’re smart, you may know all the subjects and school stuff, but you don’t know stuff that matters.”
If he wore some better clothes, he might be kinda cute. NOT!
“Maybe I do.” Sweat drips down my neck. “Maybe you should ask me something, anything you want to,
and I’ll tell you the answer.”
Angel and Carla laugh real loud.
The other kids join in.
It’s like a circus in the hall and Angel and I are the main attractions.
“You want a question. ?Cuál es la fecha de hoy, stupido?”
And even though I take French instead of Spanish,
I don’t need telepathy to know that whatever
she just asked me,
she ended with Stupid.
The whole hallway
is laughing at me, and she’s eating it up.
THE QUESTION
“I’m serious, Angel. Ask me a real question, something I could never really know, and if I get it wrong, I will do your geometry homework for the rest
of the month.
But if I’m right, you have to, you have to, uh, eat lunch with me all next week.”
GEESH! I finally get
Angel Carter’s attention, and all I can think
to ask for is a measly lunch.
Maybe she’s right. I am stupido.
Why didn’t I say a movie or a hug?
(That would have been real nice.) What is he doing? He’s kind of strange.
I think we used to go
to the same elementary school.
“All right, stupid, if you wanna do my geometry,
it’s a deal. Let me see what I can ask….”