MR. JACOBS WAS getting mad. But that didn’t stop us from talking. “Settle down!” he yelled again.
The boys did quiet down a bit. The big-mouthed girls kept right on yakking.
“Do you understand English?” Jacobs said, smacking his hands like cymbals, right in Marimba’s face.
“Whatever,” Marimba said, turning her back to him.
Jacobs picked up an algebra book and dropped it on the floor. “Okay, girls. Out of my room— now!”
Us boys really started talking then. Telling the girls to quiet down. “So y’all can stay.”
Girls ain’t usually allowed in this class. Only boys. Up till this year, the school district wouldn’t even let Mr. Jacobs teach this class. They said it was against the law to have single-sex classes. But finally, after two years of fighting with the school board, our school won out. Now we got the only class of its kind in the city. It’s called Boy Stuff. It’s a tenth-grade elective where boys talk, write, and report on things important to us. Like sex, gangs, money, drugs, living, dying, and yeah, girls.
I pull back my chair, stand on top of my desk, and shout, “Be quiet!”
Jacobs pushes up his glasses and fingers his gray baby locs. “Leave now if you aren’t mature enough to handle things.”
All thirty of us kids lock our lips and listen up when Jacobs heads for the blackboard.
WHY DO BOYS ALWAYS DOG GIRLS? he writes in blue chalk. Then hot-pink words roll onto the blackboard. HOW COME GIRLS THINK THEY OWN BOYS?
Nobody can hear anything after that, ’cause all thirty of us are talking at once.
Jacobs shouts, “Who wants to go first?”
Anna’s hand goes up. “What’s the question again?”
“Stu-u-u-pid,” Tyrek says.
“Go back to sleep,” I yell.
Jacobs points to Ryan Sims.
“Well. It’s like this,” Ryan says. “Girls, like . . . you know, ummm . . . treat us, like, like, I mean . . .”
Melon-head Marimba covers Ryan’s lips with her hands. “Boys dog girls ’cause they dogs,” she says, ducking when Ryan takes a swing at her. “Rotten, no-good dogs.”
Boys ain’t gotta take stuff like that from girls, especially girls that look like Marimba. So I ignore Jacobs banging his fist on the desk and I stand up and say my piece.
“Boys dog girls ’cause y’all let us,” I say, making my eyes stay extra long on the girls that I know will do anything a boy wants.
Heavenly Smith’s got the biggest brown eyes and the biggest mouth. She don’t even let me finish talking. She’s on her feet, eyes popped and mouth going a mile a minute. “All y’all boys is dogs,” she says, waving her finger around the room. “Y’all big, fat, ugly, stinking, rotten dogs.” She fixes her eyes on my boy D’Little.
Jacobs reminds everybody that his class ain’t about negativity. “It’s about growth.” He turns to me and tells me to finish making my comments. I tell the class that girls just get stuck on stupid when they fall for boys. “They believe what you tell ’em—anything.”
D’Little jumps in after me. “Far as I’m concerned, girls want boys to treat ’em bad. Otherwise, why they keep letting the same thing happen to ’em over and over again, even when they with a different dude?”
Girls are just too emotional. That’s what I think. So they going off on us boys again— Heavenly especially. She’s still mad that D’Little dumped her last semester, so every chance she gets, she’s on his case. Jacobs takes her hand and leads her over to his desk. “Ms. Smith. Your next step is out that door.” He points.
Jacobs’s shiny black penny loafers move through the room, stepping over backpacks and big feet. “Jonathan,” Jacobs says, sitting down next to him. “Why don’t girls know what boys really want? How they really feel?”
Jonathan is smart. Got hisself a 4.2 average. Ain’t got no girl, though. “I don’t know,” he says, not looking Jacobs in the eyes.
Jacobs stays put. He asks him again.
Jonathan taps his fingers on his desk like he’s typing out what he’s gonna say. “Girls think they know what they want until they get it. Then when it ain’t right, instead of ditching it like an old skirt that don’t fit no more, they let out the seam, dye it, or try to change it into something it’s not.” His fingers stop moving. His voice drops. “Then they complain about it not fitting and stuff.”
Nobody says nothing for a minute. I mean, we all surprised, especially us boys, ’cause Jonathan got it right.
“Who agrees with Jonathan on this one?” Jacobs asks. Almost everybody’s hand goes up. “Then how come boys like Jonathan can’t get no play?”
It takes five whole minutes for Jacobs to settle us back down after that one.
Marimba answers the question first. “He’s too nice.”
“Boring,” another girl shouts.
Jacobs goes and sits by Marimba. “Give me more,” he says.
Her thumb goes in her mouth, then comes out wet and wrinkled. “You can feel the scared coming off boys like him,” she says.
Heavenly butts in. “Like a force field or something.”
That’s it. Everybody is loud and laughing now. Making it so Jacobs gotta flick the lights off and on and tell three girls to leave the room. By the time class is over, Jacobs reminds us again that tomorrow we won’t be just talking about relationships. “We’re gonna be testing ’em out, like new cars fresh off the showroom floor.”
D’Little asks if that means he gets to kiss Michelle’s pretty brown lips. “Or rub Denise’s . . .”
Jacobs throws an eraser at him. “Mr. D’Little,” he says, “you can put your arms to good use right now—wipe off all three boards. As for your lips,” Jacobs says, tapping the floor with his new shoes, “well, the floor could use a little cleaning too.”
Jacobs teaches the kind of class you think about four periods before you gotta go to it. So in biology class the next day, me and D’Little already trying to figure out what Jacobs gonna have us doing when we get to his class two periods from now. Heavenly sits near us, and even though we aren’t talking to her, she got plenty to say. D’Little asks her very nicely to mind her own business. But he the one that gets kicked outta class when she goes off on him. Saying he said something inappropriate to her. Our teacher, Mr. Pillo, always takes the girls’ side. He don’t know that Heavenly used to go with D’Little. That she’s mad at him all the time now, ’cause she paid $400 for a gown to the ninth-grade ball and he never did show up to take her.
Jacobs is a short, skinny man with an itty-bitty head. But he walks around the room like he is seven feet tall. Arms folded, mouth wide open, clapping his hands whether we say something he likes or doesn’t like.
“Mr. D’Little,” Jacobs says when D’Little walks into his room late. “Hall pass, please.”
D’Little pulls the balled-up pass out his back pocket. “Heavenly’s gonna get hurt, Jacobs. I’m telling you.”
Jacobs takes him aside and settles him down. Then he tosses the hall pass into the trash and walks over to the window and pulls it wide open. “We are going to try something that’s never been done in this school before.” He goes to the next window and lifts. “And please, people,” he says, picking up a paper blown onto the floor, “don’t give me any lip.”
In the course description for this class, it says that boys will learn to interact better with girls by engaging in something called “an arrangement.” I remember that part because my mother had problems with it at first. Then Jacobs explained things. “Young men today think dating is about finding a girl, mounting a girl, and ditching a girl,” he told her. “I want them to see there’s more to it than that.”
I almost didn’t take this class because of that part. I mean, what right does a teacher have to be messing round with your personal business anyhow? But my mother liked what Jacobs said about a man being more than the sum of his parts. I didn’t get it, myself. But my mother did, and she signed me up before I had my mind made up good.
Jacobs and the teacher next door worked it so that girls can take part in the class for the next four weeks. The girls are getting paired up with the boys. I know the girl I want. But Jacobs got other ideas. He’s sitting on his desk, reading names off a list. He points, and a girl goes and sits by a boy. He points again, and a boy drags his feet, holds his head down, and walks over to a girl with gold highlights in her hair. Dog barks and cat hisses fly through the air when somebody gets hooked up with an ugly girl or some dude that stinks or can’t match his clothes.
“Aw, no, man. Please?” D’Little says, when Jacobs takes Marimba by the arm and stands her between him and me.
Jacobs tells us to accept the partner he gives us, or take an F for the course.
I speak up then ’cause I don’t want no ugly girl for my partner neither. “This ain’t India or Africa, Mr. Jacobs. This here’s America. We got the right to pick the person we wanna hook up with.”
Jacobs is the golf coach. His thick brown fingers feel like pliers when he takes hold of my neck. “Mr. Wilson, if you don’t close your mouth . . .”
Marimba eyes me and D’Little. “You don’t know nothing about Africa. ’Cause if you did, you’d know your family would have to pay money, a dowry, for you to marry me.” She puts her hand out. “Money. Cash. Lots of it too.”
I look at Marimba and bust out laughing—the whole class does. First off, because she’s wrong. It’s the woman’s family that pays a dowry to the man’s. Secondly, ’cause nobody would pay money for her. I mean, ain’t nothing pretty ’bout Marimba except her name. She’s a short, stubby thing that plays b-ball, baseball, and tennis. She looks like a dude in her baggy pants, giant shirts, and zigzag braids, so that’s what we call her most times—“dude.”
D’Little looks at Marimba and tells Jacobs there’s no way he’s gonna partner with somebody that looks like her. Marimba slams her fist into his right shoulder. His knees buckle.
I shake my head. “Jacobs hooked you up with a dude, man.”
Jacobs asks the girl next to me to move over, and he stands Marimba in her place. “This here’s your fiancée,” he tells me.
Everybody laughs, except me.
I tell Jacobs that I ain’t never gonna hook up with Marimba, even if it’s just for pretend.
He gets loud. “Don’t like it? Leave.”
For the next twenty minutes, we all take what we get. No complaints. Then Jacobs explains what he’s really up to. “Boys and girls in this country can date anyone they like. So today Jack’s dating Jill, but tomorrow he’s kissing Jill’s best friend and trying to get next to her cousin.”
D’Little slaps his chest. “He’s talking ’bout me, y’all.”
Jacobs keeps talking. “We’re going to spend the next few weeks seeing just what you all know about making relationships work well.”
He assigns each couple a recorder, someone who will follow them around and give the couple feedback about how well they communicate, respect one another, and manage finances—three key ingredients to a successful relationship, so Jacobs says.
If the couple doesn’t do something the way the recorder thinks they should, the couple loses points. Kenya Adams is our recorder. That’s messed up too, ’cause I been liking Kenya since forever and here she is gonna decide if I’ll make a good boyfriend or not.
“Yo, Jacobs,” I say, walking up to him. “Hook me up with Kenya?”
Jacobs is sitting at his desk, writing. The fat gold bracelet he always wears drags across the paper right behind his little brown fingers. “No.”
I look over at Kenya and wonder why Jacobs didn’t see that he shoulda hooked me up with that.
Jacobs meets with the recorders while he makes us take our fiancées into the halls to get to know them better. I turn my back to Marimba when we get out there. She hits me in the head with her fist. “You . . . you ain’t all that good-looking neither, you know.”
I try not to let on it hurts. “Whatever,” I say. “So what we supposed to do?”
She hunches her shoulders, then slides spearmint gum into her mouth. Her and me, we stand around looking at our feet. Then Kenya comes our way, smiling.
Kenya could be a model. She’s, like, five-foot ten, got enough boobs for two and a half girls, perfect teeth, big eyes, and a butt so round your hands just naturally wanna touch it.
“Hi,” she says. “I’m your recorder.”
“And?” Marimba says.
“And, well, I’m gonna follow you around. But I gotta tell you the rules first.” Kenya leans against the wall and sighs. “You and Marimba have to ‘work toward a common goal,’” she says, reading off the paper. “‘Like completing a paper on this class, buying a house together through the ads in the newspaper, or adopting your recorder.’”
“What?” we both say.
Kenya smiles. “That’s what Jacobs says. You two can adopt me for your project. You have to research how to adopt somebody on the Internet. Then adopt me, if that’s what I want.”
“That’s what I want,” I say, moving closer to her.
Marimba’s pissed, and we ain’t been together ten whole minutes. “Why we wanna adopt you?”
Kenya reads from the paper. “‘Before the couple can say yes or no to any of these options, they must meet and discuss them alone. Recorders may not advise them.’”
Marimba pulls me by the arm and drags me over to the stank-smelling water fountain nobody drinks from. “Listen, we ain’t adopting her.”
“You just jealous.”
Marimba sets me straight, telling me that she’s part of this couple and she ain’t adopting no big-behind girl. I look back at Kenya with her shiny brown hair and big butt. “Whatever,” I say, opening the door and heading back into class.
Jacobs makes us stand by our girls, then dumps, like, a hundred rings on the table. Real ones. He got ’em on the cheap from Goodwill, he says. The diamonds are dulled and the gold is faded on most of ’em, but the girls still act like they’re new from the store.
“Remember, boys, your recorder is taking notes. If you just shove that thing on your girl’s finger— well, that’s ten points. If you kneel down and propose, that’s fifty points.”
I smack my forehead. “Why you doing this, man?”
Jacobs walks to the back of the room. “Two hundred points for the couple that does the best proposal. All right now. Your recorders have numbers on their papers. It tells which couple goes first, second, third, etc.”
Marimba and I are couple number ten, so we have a long time to figure out what to do. The girl’s bossy, so she keeps telling me how I should propose to her. I shut her down, though. Told her I was the man. That I was gonna do it the way I wanted. So I did.
“Marimba and Brandon,” Jacobs says. “Your turn.”
I walk up to the front of the room, trying to be cool. Marimba sits down in a chair and crosses her legs. She’s nervous. Her foot keeps shaking.
I clear my throat, turn my back to the class, and think about Kenya. I start off wrong, though. “I’m only doing this ’cause I have to,” I tell Marimba.
“Oh, no he didn’t,” one of Marimba’s friends says.
I keep talking. Looking right at Kenya. “I really want this other girl.”
Everybody laughs. Not Marimba. She is sitting like a statue, staring at her feet.
I keep going. “I need a girl,” I say, looking over at Kenya. “Not a dude.”
Marimba bends down and ties her dirty, loose sneaker strings. “Mr. Jacobs, this boy ain’t gonna be my fiancé.”
Jacobs tells her we have to get engaged. “Right now.”
I look at Kenya again, then I hand the ring to Marimba. “Here.”
“You supposed to put it on my finger. And propose, too.”
I slide it on her left middle finger. “Will you . . .” I say, turning to Jacobs.
“Go ahead,” she says.
“Marry me,” I say under my breath.
Marimba does what all the girls do when they get the rings on, she holds it up in the air, smiles, and wiggles her fingers.
I walk away. Jacobs shakes his head. Kenya writes the number ten on our paper. That’s the lowest score you can get. “Pathetic,” she says.
“If it was you,” I say, cornering her, “I’d get down on my knees and beg.”
* * *
Marimba and me are the worst couple in the world—even Kenya says that. We fight and argue all the time. Jacobs says there are real couples out there who do just that. “And they get married anyhow.” Our goal, he says, is to try to be more supportive of one another’s differences. But how am I supposed to do that? I don’t like the girl—period. I like tall, sweet-smelling girls who wear clothes as tight as skin. So every day I tell Marimba the same thing—dress up a little. “Put some nail polish on and do your hair every once in a while.” Every day her answer is the same: “Screw you!”
Kenya told us the other day that we’re gonna fail this part of the class, and she will too, unless Marimba and me do better. “Brandon, this class ain’t about how Marimba looks or dresses. It’s about relationships, and relationships ain’t got nothing to do with clothes.”
I can’t make them girls understand. A boy’s got his reputation. If a boy’s got a woman, he wants her to look like something.
We’re sitting on the floor outside Jacobs’s class before school starts. Kenya called the meeting. Said we needed to get on the ball, or she was gonna ask to be assigned to another couple.
“You two are supposed to buy a house. Here’s the paper. Let’s start now.”
Marimba and me look through the ads together. The whole time, I’m checking out her long Big Bird–looking tube socks.
“Brandon, what kind of house do you want?”
“A house. Any house.”
Marimba wants a house with an eat-in kitchen. “I can burn some pots and pans.”
I look at her. “You cook?”
She smiles. “Yeah. I help my mom cater.” She scratches her head, then checks out the stuff left under her nails. “Gonna have my own catering business one day.”
Kenya steps in. “So y’all’s house is gonna need a really big stove.”
“And a patio for grilling,” Marimba says.
The girls in my family cook. The men drink brewskies and watch the games. “We gonna need a family room with a wide-screen TV,” I say. “And a pool.”
Funny I said that. It turns out that Marimba’s on a city swim team. Every morning at 5:30 she’s at the pool doing laps.
Marimba and me stay a little longer and pick out our house. It is a three-story colonial, whatever that means, on the north side of town. It’s got five bedrooms and two baths, ’cause Marimba wants to have five babies. Before we are done, D’Little comes up to me. “Yo, Brandon. Your girl. She’s just . . . ill.”
Marimba looks at me like I’m supposed to take up for her. I do. I don’t know why, but I do. I tell D’Little to shut his face. “You ain’t so hot looking neither. Anyhow,” I say, surprising my own self, “long as me and Marimba gotta be together, ain’t nobody gonna dog her.”
Later Kenya walks up to me and hands me some bonus bucks. She says Jacobs made it so couples can earn extra points and dollars for doing the unexpected. You can lose points and dollars that way, too. For the next two weeks I’m trying to think of stuff to do to get some extra dough. It don’t work. Kenya says I’m not being sincere. But all my trying paid off in another way: Kenya is talking to me more often. We are in three other classes together. Before they start, me and her talk about Jacobs’s class. We talk about other stuff too—personal stuff. One day it got so good she wrote her phone number on my arm. She said for me not to tell nobody ’cause recorders can’t have one-on-one relationships with any one person that makes up a couple. “‘Otherwise,’” she quotes, “‘the group loses points.’”
The only person I told about me and Kenya was D’Little. He told six other boys in our room, “accidentally,” he says. I’m hoping Jacobs don’t find out. But mostly, I’m hoping Kenya don’t. Otherwise she won’t have nothing to do with me . . . again!
Jacobs is getting on my nerves. I’m ready for this engagement mess to end. I’ve been at it four weeks, and now he’s wanting us to make regular progress reports. Halfway through the presentations, he starts writing on the blackboard.
DOES A COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP MEAN THE SAME THING TO GIRLS AND BOYS/MEN AND WOMEN?
Hands go up and mouths start moving.
“Tyrek, speak,” Jacobs says. “Then let’s hear from your woman,” he says, meaning his fiancée.
Tyrek moves his chair away from Olivia. “She ain’t my woman, man.” Then he starts talking ’bout how guys are like lions—they supposed to roam free and have lots of females at their disposal.
Olivia says that girls are more committed because they were born to be mothers, so they are wired to find lifelong mates, not just the boy with the cutest face or the nicest butt.
I raise my hand and say that makes a lot of sense. Then I ask Jacobs how marriages and engagements are supposed to work if men and women want two different things.
“Yeah, man, I mean, I don’t wanna hook up with nobody—for long,” D’Little says, holding out his arms like wings. “I gotta spread myself around. Pollinate the place, you know.”
Marimba’s hand goes up. “How come in nature it’s the male animal—like peacocks—that’s gotta be extra pretty to get the woman. But with people, it’s the girl that’s got to do all the work to get a boy?”
I wanna tell her not to worry. Ain’t nothing she can ever do to make herself look good.
Jacobs checks out the time, then says class is almost done, so he’ll make this quick. “You, you, and you,” he says pointing to me, D’Little, and Tyrek, “would get absolutely no play in the animal kingdom.”
The class goes off.
“You’re not cute enough,” he says, busting on us. “Or tall or muscular enough.”
Kenya points out that things in nature are different because all male and female animals want to do is procreate—“Make babies so their species don’t die out.”
I wouldn’t mind her having my baby, I think. Once the bell rings, I go up to her and ask if she wants to go to the movies. Marimba is nearby, so Kenya ignores me. Later on, she walks up to me and says she’ll go. “But Marimba’s gotta go, too. Jacobs’s rules. Recorders can’t be alone with one member of the couple.”
I wanna tell her to forget it at first. But she says she’ll sit next to me. “And, well, Marimba ain’t gotta know everything.”
All day long I’m thinking ’bout that girl. Feeling sorry for Marimba, kinda, too. I mean, I’m supposed to be her fiancé. And I don’t even give her no play, not even for pretend. That’s messed up. But Jacobs shouldn’t have hooked me up with her. She ain’t my type.
We all agree to meet at the movies at Ninth and Oak at nine o’clock. I’m there waiting when Kenya calls my cell and says she got stuck taking care of her brothers, so she can’t come. Now I’m stuck with Marimba.
For a while I try to figure out how to get out of this movie deal. But Marimba’s dad drops her off and, well, I don’t wanna tell no man the size of the Statue of Liberty that I’m ditching his daughter. But the whole while we’re watching the movie, I’m checking my cell, hoping Kenya calls. I’m excusing myself and going to the bathroom, calling Kenya and talking to her five, ten, fifteen minutes at a time. Kenya keeps saying that I’m doing Marimba wrong, but she don’t hang up on me.
Marimba is boiling mad. After I leave her for the ninth time, she calls her dad and tells him to come get her. I don’t stick around. I’m gone before she is. Kenya tells me I’m gonna lose points for the way I treated her. “Fiancées can’t be mistreated. Jacobs’s rules.”
“I don’t care,” I say, “as long as I don’t lose no points with you.”
“One more week,” Jacobs says. “And this is the final test.”
D’Little and me standing by each other. He says this has been the worst three weeks of his life. “And I ain’t never getting married neither.”
I slap him five. Jacobs lets us know that things are gonna get worse, not better. I look over at Marimba. She ain’t spoke to me since the movie thing last weekend. I don’t care really, but Kenya deducts fifteen points for every day we two don’t communicate. Marimba and me gonna fail this project if she keeps this up.
“You can double your total points this week,” Jacobs says. “If you decide not to do what I’m asking, you’ll lose four hundred points—which is half of all the points you can earn.” Jacobs heads my way. “That happens, and there’s no way you can earn higher than a C for the course.”
Everybody tells him that’s not fair.
“I’m not trying to be fair, here,” he says, wiping chalk off his hands. “I’m trying to teach you about relationships—none of which is fair, boys and girls.”
I like what Jacobs says we have to do. Marimba looks like she wants to cry.
“Gonna have to change them clothes, huh?” I say. “Buy you a dress or skirt or something,” I say, laughing.
Kenya explains the rules. Me and Marimba have to pick something we don’t like about one another. Each person has to do what the other wants for one whole week. I knew right off that I was gonna tell Marimba to get rid of them clothes and get her hair did. But me, I dress like a king. I smell like heaven and I got the best cut in this school, so there’s nothing she can ask me to change. Even Marimba can’t think of nothing for me to do differently, till Kenya whispers in her ear.
“Be nice to me,” Marimba says.
“I am nice to you.”
She shakes her head.
“She means, open doors for her.”
I shake my head no.
“Pull out chairs for her when y’all in class together.”
“What?”
Marimba’s liking what she’s hearing. “And . . . and tell me I’m cute in front of your boys.”
I shake my head no. “That ain’t the kind of stuff Jacobs was talking about.”
Kenya puts up her hand and Jacobs comes over. He laughs after she explains our conversation. “Yep. You have to do it, if Marimba wants you to.”
“She trying to make a fool outta me.”
“You already a fool,” Kenya says, walking off with Marimba.
I walked right by Marimba. Didn’t even recognize the girl. She had to take hold of my arm and ask me how come I didn’t speak to her. My mouth fell open. “That your hair?” I asked. “Your clothes?”
This is the first time I ever saw Marimba in shoes—girl shoes—with high heels and pretty colors. She got nice legs, too. “Man,” I say. “You look awright.”
Kenya clears her throat. “How she look?”
I know what she’s doing. “You look pretty,” I say, low enough for my boys not to hear.
All during class I stare at Marimba. She’s pulling at her short pink skirt—grabbing hold of her collar top and snapping her bra straps.
“All this time,” D’Little says, “I thought the girl was a dude. And here she got more up top than any girl in this class.”
I just stare at her.
“That her real hair, you think?” D’Little asks.
I ain’t sure. She always wore braids or her hair under a cap. And here it is, straight and black and down past her shoulders. “She still walk like a dude,” I say when she goes to sharpen a pencil.
D’Little follows her with his eyes. So do most of the other boys. “I like the legs,” he says. “The butt ain’t bad neither.”
Kenya whispers in my ear. I don’t want to do it, but before Marimba sits down I go over to her and pull her chair out. Everybody laughs, even Jacobs. Marimba knocks her book on the floor, on purpose, I think. I pick it up. I woulda left it down there, but I need the points, and Kenya’s watching.
“In three days, you will have to turn in a written assignment,” Jacobs says. “I hope you’ve been keeping careful records. Class dismissed.”
When Marimba gets to the door, I open it without anybody telling me to. D’Little says I’m pathetic. Heavenly asks how come I didn’t hold it open for her. “’Cause I ain’t no butler,” I say.
Everybody’s teasing me. Calling me “Mr. Manners.” Asking how come I’m waiting on Marimba hand and foot. I tell ’em it ain’t something I wanna do. I gotta do it for class. Only it ain’t as bad as I thought, opening doors for girls, pulling their chairs out. Besides, the more I do it, the more girls be coming up to me and talking to me. Girls that never paid me no attention are giving me a little play now. This girl Elizabeth made me stop and talk to her. She was all up in my face. Kenya saw it and deducted fifty points. I’m starting to wonder about that girl.
Jacobs walks through the aisles collecting our final papers. “Recorders come to the front, please.”
Ten students go up front. It’s funny, I never realized that half the recorders were boys and half were girls. And they are the cutest, or best dressed, or most popular kids in school, too. When Jacobs joins them up front, he explains why those kids got picked in the first place.
“In relationships, there are lots of distractions. The pretty girl,” he says, standing next to Kenya. “The jock,” he says, pretending to throw a left hook to Kevin, who heads the football team. “People with a big chest, pretty eyes, or nice hair.”
Jacobs says the recorders were placed in our groups to distract us from our mission. He asks the recorders to raise their hands if they were able to make one or both people pay more attention to them than their fiancés. Eight hands go up.
“Kenya,” Jacobs says. “Explain.”
Kenya tells all my business. How I tried to hit on her. How I paid her more attention than Marimba. “And when I didn’t show up for the movies like you told me, Jacobs, he didn’t even talk to Marimba.”
Marimba raises her hand. She called Kenya that night, she says, ’cause she was hurt I didn’t say one word to her during the movies. “I know he doesn’t like me, but he coulda at least treated me decent.”
I’m pissed. This whole thing was a setup from the start. “Wasn’t no way I could be a good fiancé, Jacobs. Everything you did made it so I’d mess up.”
Jacobs settles me down. Then D’Little’s recorder gives a report. Another pretty girl saying almost the same thing Kenya said about me. “Listen, Jacobs,” D’Little says. “A boy’s gonna try and talk to a looker. That’s just how it is.”
The girls get mad at that, but the boys clap— ’cause they know it’s true.
Jacobs hits the board again. ALL BOYS ARE DOGS THEN, RIGHT?
I’m expecting Kenya, Marimba, and the rest of the girls to say, Yep! But Kenya’s singing a different tune. Telling Jacobs under the right circumstances anyone could cheat—be a dog.
Jonathan’s fiancée raises her hand. She says she didn’t have one bit of trouble out of him. “He’s a gentleman.”
“A nerd,” I say.
Kenya speaks up again. “Maybe people cheat or look around when they know better’s out there for them.”
Marimba ain’t buying that. She says couples have to learn to work out their problems. Not sniff after someone else when things get rough.
I wanna tell the whole class that this was a project, an experiment, not no real relationship. But Marimba’s got a point. So does Kenya. When you ain’t happy, it’s easy to go sniffing. But do that make it right?
Jacobs picks on the girls, too. A lot of ’em tried to hit on their recorders. It was different for them, though. They called the boys day and night. Spread rumors about ’em when they didn’t give ’em no play.
“Brandon,” Jacobs says, pointing my way. “Learn anything, buddy?”
“No,” I say at first. But once everyone’s done laughing, I tell him what he wants to hear. “I learned that relationships are hard work.”
He’s smiling. I’m not. I’m thinking about Kenya.
How she played me—used me, even. But then it hits me; I used Marimba. When class is over and everybody is gone, I ask Jacobs why he made us do all of this in the first place. “Everybody used everybody else in our group.”
“Did you like being used?”
“Naw, man.”
“Remember that,” he says, wiping chalk off the board, “when you hook up with a girl next time.”
I slap him five and head for the door. Before I’m halfway up the hall, Elizabeth is hunting me down to give me her phone number. I take it. But I don’t know if I’ll call her. Not just yet, anyhow.