Two things you can count on in our school: one, that you will find a pregnancy test in the girls’ bathroom, and two, by the end of school, everybody knows who took it. News and rumors spread faster than the bossip at West Charleston. The only way to guarantee that nobody finds out your business is not to tell anybody your business, not even your best friend. I learned that the hard way freshman year.
So it didn’t take me long to hear it from Blu, who heard it from Tami, who heard it from her sister, who heard it from her boyfriend, who overheard his big brother, Willie Mack, talking to Freddie Callaway about it on the way to school one morning.
Claudia Clarke: Yeah, I know all about your little bet.
Omar Smalls: What bet?
Claudia Clarke: You’re not the first, Omar, and you won’t be the last. Like I said, I’m not interested. I got plans, and shallow jocks with no purpose other than to throw a ball don’t fit into them. We can’t be friends. I’m on a mission, and right now my focus is on taking a stand against the wack school board. So you can either be down with that or keep it moving. Feel me?
Omar and I stand with nine other students on the school’s side lawn at seven thirty a.m. Six of them, including Luther, who helped me with the Save the Chimps project, aren’t even here for the rally. Apparently we’ve intruded on their smoke zone.
Before school, at lunch, and after school, the same group of eighteen-year-olds gathers on the side lawn near the picnic tables to smoke cigarettes. A part of me is glad that at least we look like we have a small crowd. The other part of me gags on all the cancer smoke that is going to kill them. And me.
The sweat on Omar’s head can’t be from the weather. It’s not even sixty degrees. He’s nervous; in way over his head. He’s probably happy that not a whole lot of students have shown up. I guess you won’t look like the fool you and I both know you are.
He apologizes to me for the whole bet thing. But like I tell him, “It really doesn’t matter. You’re a guy. And guys are apes.” I’m probably too hard on him, but it is what it is. Guys only want one thing: to get inside our minds, so they can get between our legs. My last boyfriend was a professional primate.
Leo was a sophomore in college. He spoke French, quoted Shakespeare, drove a Benz; and his singing opened me in ways that I’d never been opened. I used to go hear him play guitar and sing on Monday nights at a local coffeehouse. Unfortunately, it was months after I’d given him the lala before I realized that Leo was a frickin’ rock star by all definitions—he sang for Lindsay on Wednesday, Dominique on Thursdays, and Tina and Bubbles on Saturday. I haven’t dated since.
“Hey, T-Diddy, you wanna toke, man?” Luther says, taking his cigarette out of his mouth and offering it to Omar. When Omar shakes his head, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out option number two, definitely not a cigarette. Omar grins at him, looks at me, frowns, then shakes his head again. If I didn’t already have a million reasons not to get to know him, I would now. A jock who sleeps around and smokes weed. How cliché can you get?
“Well, we tried, Claudia. No point in staying out here in this nip,” Omar says to me.
“What about the teachers, the band, the school’s arts funding? What about galvanizing the streets?”
“We can’t have a rally with no troops, homegirl.”
“I thought you said you were going to get the word out.”
“I did. Put it on Facebook. Like fifty people said they were coming. Look,” he says to me, pulling out his phone and showing me his Facebook page.
“Hey, look!” Angel, Luther’s girlfriend, screams, pointing to the front of the school. Coming from the direction of the buses is a swarm of West Charleston students.
“Oh, snap,” says Omar.
“I guess I underestimated you and Facebook,” I throw in. “It’s on now, Mr. Football.”
Within minutes, more than two hundred kids, led by half the football team, fill the lawn in front of us. Five minutes later, most of the school is out here.
“Pass that Bobby Brown,” one of the football players yells, the smell of Luther’s weed still soaking the air.
“T-Diddy’s. About. To. Bring. That. Funk,” Blu whispers, sneaking up behind me.
“This should be interesting,” I answer.
“Why we here?” a kid from the crowd screams.
“I guess we better do this, Omar. You okay? I only ask because you don’t look okay,” I say, somewhat mockingly.
“T-Diddy’s fine. Let’s do this. Introduce me.”
“What?”
“T-Diddy needs an introduction. Part of my game ritual. You know, a hype man. Or woman.”
“You serious? What should I say?”
“You’re the writer,” he says, and jumps up on one of the picnic tables, leaning down to give me a hand up. Before she goes off into the crowd, I see Blu taking a puff of one of Luther’s cigarettes. I can’t tell which one it is.
“Come on, homegirl.” He pulls me up. Strong hands.
“It’s up to y’all to save the band. Do this thing big, for real,” Belafonte screams up at us.
“IsThisSomeKindOfCampaignSpeech?” Freddie Callaway, another football player, yells from the front.
“Isth T-Diddyth runningth forth presidenth?” Tami shouts, and the first couple of rows in the crowd roar because no one has a clue what she said. She’s with Eve and Kym, and they’re gritting on me like we have beef.
Standing on the table, I shout to get everyone’s attention. It doesn’t work. I do it again. Same result. Eve and Kym laugh. T-Diddy looks at me and smirks, then mouths, “Let me help you.”
“Na na na na!” he yells with his hands cupped around his mouth. Random.
The crowd screams back, “Na na na na!” Then they chant, “Hey hey hey, good-bye.” They sing it twice more, and then they stop and applaud. I have no idea why it works, but I’m glad it does.
“Fellow classmates, thank you all so much for coming out this morning,” I say to the almost silent crowd. I say almost, because I do get a few boos. Okay, maybe a lot. “Some of you may know that the arts funding has been cut in our school. Well, today we are going to take a stand for what’s right.” I can feel the sweat trickle down my back and forehead. Why are you nervous, Claudia. Jeez! Now I’m stuck. Now more kids are booing. I have no idea what to say next.
“Hole up, hole up! This is your boy T-Diddy. All homegirl is trying to say is our school is in trouble.” Omar apparently has an idea. “We lookin’ bad, y’all, real bad. Our school is one of the worst schools in the country for two reasons: one, they don’t care about us, and two, we don’t speak up for ourselves.”
“Preach, T-Diddy,” a kid in the back of the crowd yells, and everybody laughs. I’m surprised they’re actually listening to him.
“How many of y’all take art?” About fifty kids raise their hands. “How many of y’all take theater? Who’s in the gospel choir?” It seems like most of the hands go up. When he asks, “Who’s in the marching band?” cheers and barks fill the air. Belafonte throws his fist in the air and gets the crowd high-stepping. It’s not like a pep rally. It is one.
“Well, T-Diddy and homegirl want to school you on something: the governor of our great state and the school board have cut the arts funding, so ain’t gonna be no more marching band or music class or school plays or gospel choir. Feel me!” The boos and shrieks from the crowd are loud and angry. We have ourselves a rally.
Omar continues, “But we don’t have to accept this. They don’t want us to survive, it’s a setup, but even if you’re fed up, guess what?”
Seems like everybody in the crowd screams, “KEEP YOUR HEAD UP!”
Tupac, really? Jeez.
“Panthers, look up at the sun. Do you know what that means?”
“It don’t mean it’s summer. Hurry up with your speech, cuz. It’s chilly,” a kid screams from the back of the crowd. Everybody, including me, laughs at that one.
“True! It also means this: the sun illuminates the head, I mean, the eye of the man, but it shines into the heart, I mean, it shines on top of . . .” Omar fumbles, looking at me for help. I shrug because I have no idea what he’s doing.
He continues, “I mean, the time is now for us to speak up. The sun is telling us to shine, to speak up now. We must all be the sun. BE the sun . . . yeah, that’s it: BE THE SUN, AND LIKE THE SUN . . . WE WILL, WE WILL, WE—”
“What we gonna do, Omar?” asks Luther, who along with the other smokers is now as amped as the rest of us.
“We will do, uh . . . nothing,” he finally says.
Blu and I look at each other like WTH! I shoot Omar a look of puzzlement and rancor. Seven hundred apathetic kids in West Charleston finally got excited about something other than football, parties, and sex, and this fool tells them to do the same thing they’ve been doing all along: nothing.