Dear Girl with All the Answers @ Teen Queen Magazine:
I like my boyfriend, but I like my best friend’s boyfriend better. Help!
You can call me Cheryl. I ain’t gonna tell you my real name, ’cause if I do, my girls are gonna find out what I’m up to and jack me up. ’Cause there’s two rules you don’t break ’round where I live—you don’t squeal, and you don’t go sniffing after nobody’s man.
Anyhow, don’t let me get sidetracked. I’m fifteen years old. Me and my man been going together for two years. He is fine. Better than fine, really. I ain’t giving you his real name here ’cause he would be hurt if he heard what I’m about to tell you. So let’s just call him J. Anyhow, me and J been going together since seventh grade. He the boy that all the other girls want for their boyfriend. He on the basketball team. He on the baseball team and he got a job, too. He got pretty, light brown eyes, good hair, and good manners, unlike most boys his age. J opens doors for you. Says “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, sir” to grown-ups. He always remembers my birthday. He the kind of boy everybody say is sooo nice. Well, that’s the problem really. He’s too nice. Boring, really. Why can’t he be different? Like my girlfriend’s boyfriend. He a thug. And more and more I been thinking, I want one of them, too.
Now, ’ fore you start going off on me, let me tell you this. All thugs ain’t bad. I mean, they ain’t all out there playing girls and hanging out and making trouble. Some of ’em is nice, like my girlfriend Katherine’s (not her real name) boyfriend, Rowl-D. He makes a girl want to lose her mind. All he got to do is look at you, and you be wanting to rob banks and knock old ladies over the head for him. He got sneaky little brown eyes that look at every girl like maybe they got a chance with him if only they play they cards right. He ain’t tall, like J. He average height. He wears braids with a bandanna wrapped ’round his head, diamond hoop earrings, and designer clothes. He smokes, too. (That’s the only thing I don’t like.)
Now, I know what you thinking. Why I want to trade J for a boy like Rowl-D? Especially when Rowl-D’s failing ninth grade, been kicked out the house by his parents, and don’t treat my girlfriend like she really his? Well, I know it sounds stupid, but I think he’s gonna be different with me. See, me and him been talking. My friend don’t know it, but him and me been on the phone late at night after my parents go to sleep. And Rowl-D been telling me stuff. You know that boy been taking care of hisself since he was seven? And his momma ain’t never been married, but she done lived with four men in the last six years? You’d be a thug too, if you was him.
Rowl-D says he likes nice girls. Quiet ones, like me. My girlfriend ain’t quiet at all. She so loud that you can hear her down the hall when she talks. I asked Rowl-D, “How you get hooked up with her?” “I don’t know,” he said. “Guess you drink Pepsi if ain’t no Coke around. But when the real good stuff show up, like you, then the crap gotta go. Know what I’m saying?”
I like that. Him calling me the real good stuff. I am, too. J knows that. That’s why he be treating me so good. Only he boring. Don’t want to do nothing but watch TV and play basketball. Rowl-D says he be clubbing. That if I was his girl he would hook me up with a ring, or necklace, or something. Miss Answers, did I say he ain’t got no job? He wears chains so big ’round his neck, I wonder how he can stand up straight. But he say he ain’t never worked. He got connections. That’s kind of scary, you know. Kind of exciting too. Is it wrong for me to like that about him? I hope not.
I told Rowl-D that I feel bad about him and me talking behind my friend’s back. He told me not to worry. He gonna dump her soon. “Then it’s you and me. All right?”
I don’t know. Katherine is my friend. We been tight since elementary school. When she first met Rowl-D, I told her not to have nothing to do with him. “He trash,” I said. Now here I am, dreaming ’bout that boy. Sneaking ’round after school just so I can be with him. The other day I came in so late my father took the belt to me. Rowl-D and me wasn’t doing nothing. Just talking. For real. Thugs know how to hold a conversation too, you know.
Anyhow, I’m writing you for a lot of reasons. Do you think I should tell my friend Katherine what’s going on? And what about J—would you dump him if you was me? Most important of all, do you think a girl like me stands a chance with a thug? I mean, some of the people Rowl-D run with is in gangs and stuff. Most of ’em been kicked out of school, or just stopped going. But not Rowl-D. He a thug, but he got potential. He say that somebody like me make him want to do right. I think he’s right about that. What you think?
Can’t wait for you to answer me,
Dear Melody:
Sorry, but your letter won’t ever appear in Teen Queen magazine.
I pulled it as soon as I read it. I stashed it in my purse and took it home with me. That’s against the rules, you know. But I don’t care. ’Cause if I had published your letter, your girls woulda beat the crap outta you, and everybody at school would know what kind of girl you really are.
You see, I know you. (You signed your real name at the end of your letter.) I’m in two of your classes. I’m not telling you my name. That’s a secret I can’t reveal. But I am in eleventh grade at John Marshall High. I lucked out six months ago and got picked to write for Teen Queen magazine. This is the first time I broke the magazine’s rules, though. But to me, it’s worth getting caught, and maybe fired, to let you know where I’m coming from.
You probably think you’re the only girl with this problem. You’re not. Recently we got a letter just like yours. But the editors didn’t include this girl’s letter in the magazine. They say girls take other girls’ boyfriends all the time. But I figure you can learn a thing or two from her. So here goes.
I can’t give you her real name so I’ll call her Shavon. Anyhow, Shavon attended five different high schools before coming to ours. You’d think somebody was chasing her, huh? Well, they were. A whole gang of girls—who were better than dope-sniffing dogs when it came to tracking people down—showed up every place she went.
Things for her started out the same way they did with you. She liked her best friend’s boyfriend. He was so cute, the girls nicknamed him Pretty. She wasn’t looking to take him from her girlfriend, either. It’s just that one day Pretty came up to her when her friend Cassandra was home sick with the cramps. It was after school and nobody else was around. You know boys. He got closer to Shavon than he should. Said all the right things. Then he kissed her. Naturally, she kissed him back. Wouldn’t you?
You know, Melody, girls like you and Shavon always end up the same—chasing some boy who already got some other girl chasing behind him too. Anyhow, Shavon decided she wanted Pretty all to herself. So she started writing anonymous letters to Cassandra, telling her she’d better watch her man because he was stepping out on her.
Shavon figured Cassandra would dump Pretty. But Cassandra wasn’t letting go of her man that easily. So she got her friends together and asked them what was up. She followed Pretty everywhere he went. That’s when Pretty told Shavon him and her had to chill. And that’s when Shavon really screwed things up. Putting notes every place Cassandra went—in her locker, under her desk, and stuffed in her sneakers just before she put ’em on for gym. Making it so Cassandra wouldn’t let Pretty out of her sight.
Shavon and Pretty didn’t hang together after that. They started arguing and fighting. That’s when she let it slip that she was the one who wrote the notes. You’d think a boy like Pretty woulda slapped her silly. He didn’t. But he got even with her anyhow. He told Cassandra what she did, and Cassandra came after Shavon. She hit her in the head with a geometry book. But that was just the beginning. For the rest of the year, she kept it coming. Her friends called Shavon’s house almost every hour on the hour for six months. Even after her parents changed phone numbers for the fourth time. They drove by her house and hit it with raw eggs, rotten chicken, bags of garbage. They scratched up her dad’s ride. They stole her little sister’s bike. They chased her home from the park, from the pool, from the bus stop, the mall, the movie theater—everywhere and everyplace she went.
Sometimes when Cassandra or her girls came after Shavon, she’d see Pretty’s ride waiting. For a long, long time she said she was madder at him than at Cassandra. But then she said she finally figured it out. She didn’t have a right to be mad at him or her. “I invited all that drama in my life by digging in somebody else’s trash. So why should I be pissed off ’cause maggots got all over me?”
Melody, I’m telling you this so you don’t end up like Shavon—dogging your girl and chasing a boy that ain’t gonna respect you one bit when it’s all said and done. But that ain’t the only reason I’m spilling my guts. There’s another reason too. See, I know the girl whose man you’re trying to take. He ain’t worth two cents. But she likes him—loves him even. And since she’s my sister, the baby of our family, I gotta look out for her. Right? And well, I ain’t gonna let nobody do her wrong. So consider yourself warned. Get out from under Rowl-D, ’ fore things start happening to you. Bad things. The kind of things that happened to me. And you already know from this here letter that I ain’t forgot one thing that was done to me by them girls. And you know what? You won’t never forget what I do to you, neither. Yours truly,
The Girl with All the Answers