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  Later that evening, Brina and I went to a birthday party at our friend Eugene’s house. Brina was spending the night with me so my mother could drop us both off and pick us up. Her mother was a single parent and had to work late that night.

  The party was cool. However, I was depressed because Mohammed couldn’t make it, and Jason was there with his thing. We didn’t dance much because Eugene’s parents were kind of old-fashioned and didn’t want a whole lot of touchy-feely going on. They made one vital mistake though: they bought Eugene the game Twister for his big day.

  Somebody spiked the punch with grain alcohol and set the party off. I don’t quite remember how it happened because I was tore up, but some time between watching Beach Blanket Bingo on TV and playing charades, Jason and I ended up on the Twister mat together. Boy, was Chandler upset! I think she was a bit psychic as well, aware of something I wasn’t. She knew Jason liked me just as much as I liked him.

  I did figure it out during the game, though. Jason had to put a hand on red, I had to put a foot on blue, and his pelvic area ended up pressed against my behind. Before the hand on the spinner landed on the next color, his dick was hard, and the gigantic, elephantine sanitary napkin my mother made me wear was twice as soaked as before the game. It wasn’t soaked with blood, however, but with my pussy juice.

  I jumped up off the mat in the middle of the game— not because I didn’t enjoy the way his hard dick was feeling, but for fear he would somehow catch wind of the sanitary napkin. The damn thing was so big, I thought for sure he would discover it, and I was so embarrassed.

  My mother couldn’t get there fast enough to pick us up, and when she finally did, I flew out the house like a bat out of hell, wanting to put the whole episode behind me. We went back to my house, and Brina was brushing my long, light brown hair that reached my bra strap. “Zoe, what’s the matter with you?”

  “What makes you think there’s anything wrong with me?” I snapped at her and immediately regretted my tone. Even though Brina was my best friend in the whole world, I was ashamed to tell her what had happened.

  “You’ve been acting weird, is all!” She pinned my hair up with a giant hair clip. “Is it because you started your period? Don’t sweat that. I’ve been having them for almost two years now, and they’re not so bad.”

  I got up from the padded bench of my vanity table, cut off the lamp on my nightstand, and got into my double canopy bed. “It’s nothing, really. Let’s just get some rest.”

  Brina got in the bed and instantly fell asleep, since she was tipsier than I was. Girlfriend put a hurting on that punch. For me, sleep would not come easy, and an hour later, I was sitting in the window seat and looking up at the moon and stars. I began to imagine Jason looking at the same moon and same stars from his bedroom window, but for all I knew, he was out necking with Chandler. The mere thought of him touching her was devastating. It was hard to imagine falling for my archenemy. That’s exactly what happened, though, and I made a promise to myself that somehow, some way, I would win his heart and make him mine. The sun was coming up when I snuck back in the bed with Brina, pretending to have been there the entire time.

  The very next day, I forgot all that nonsense about winning Jason’s heart. I think it had something to do with the way he was sucking his teeth and smirking at me when I came out of the house and started down the street to the corner market a few blocks away.

  I ignored him and kept walking. I winced when I heard him approaching fast behind me on his skateboard, yet another item my father had helped him make.

  “Zoe, wait up, girl!”

  I rolled my eyes for my benefit alone, since my back was still facing him. “I’m in a hurry, Jason!”

  I could hear him speeding up even faster then. “I said hold up, girl!”

  I swung around and glared at him. Damn, he was fine! “Whatchu want, nucca?”

  He caught up to me and used his heel to kick his skateboard up into his hand, placing it underneath his arm. The sunlight hitting up against his eyes was nothing short of mesmerizing. I wanted him, and at the same time I couldn’t stand his ass. I was mad confuzzled .

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You just did, dummy,” I hissed at him and folded my arms, repeating the eye roll so he could see it this time.

  He sighed in frustration. “Aight, damn, can I ask you another question then?”

  “You just did, dummy,” I reiterated, giggling at the ingenuity of my comment.

  He glared at me like he wanted to slap me. “You’re a trip, girl!”

  I looked down at the red-and-yellow Swatch watch I was sporting because it matched the red stirrup pants and yellow baby-doll shirt I had on perfectly. “Are you going to ask this question sometime today? Because I have things to do.”

  “Where you headed? Over Brina’s?”

  “Brina’s? Brina lives like fifty million blocks away. I’m not walking all the way over there. Nucca, please!”

  “So where you headed?”

  For the first time, I noticed how deep Jason’s voice had gotten. Boy, was I getting overheated! “To the store to get sumptin’ I need.” Jason laughed like I had just told an Eddie Murphy joke. “What’s so damn funny?”

  “Nothing,” he chuckled. “I was just wondering if this thing you need from the store has to do with last night and what happened at the party.”

  “Say what?” I wondered what the hell he was talking about, so I asked him, “What the hell you talking ’bout?”

  He glanced down at the sidewalk, breaking eye contact. “I couldn’t help but notice while we were playing Twister.”

  “Notice what?” I was getting pissed off because I realized my worst fears were coming true.

  He looked back up at me and blurted it out. “Didn’t you have on one of those sanitation napkins last night?”

  That did it! I slapped his ass right across his skank face and started walking again. “First of all, nonaya damn business, and secondly, it’s sanitary napkin, not sanitation napkin, dummy!”

  “Why you hit me?” I could hear the tremor in his voice, but his ass deserved it. “You always hittin’ some damn body, Zoe!”

  I turned around and flipped him the finger. “Why you worried about what I have between my legs?” I immediately regretted that statement the moment it left my lips. It sounded so, so, so sexual.

  He grinned. “Now that you mention it, I do have another question for you.”

  “Aw hell, what now?”

  He hopped back on his skateboard to catch up to me. “Can I ask it?”

  “You just did, dummy!”

  He grabbed a hold of my right elbow, and I got weak in the knees. “Look at me, Zoe.”

  I looked. Damn, damn, damn, he was fine! “Yes?”

  “You wanna go with me?”

  “Go witchu where?” Aw dayummmmmmm, he was actually asking me to be his girl, his woman, his hoochie.

  “You know what I mean, Zoe.” His frustration with my antics was obvious. “So do you or don’t you?”

  “You have a woman already, and I have a man.” He started looking down at the sidewalk again, muttering something I couldn’t quite make out. “Besides, you talking about us kissing and all that stuff?”

  He gave me a quick peck on the lips but never made eye contact. I was likely to faint. “Yeah, kissing and going places together and you know?”

  He raised his eyebrows at me and I knew he meant the wild thang. “Ewwwwwww, hell no! Hell no, I don’t want to go with you!”

  I stormed off, mad. Not because he asked me, and not because I didn’t want to. I was mad because it seemed apparent he and Chandler had been going at it. The mere thought of it made my stomach turn.

  I heard him yell behind me. “Whatever, Zoe! I was just kidding with your skeeger ass anyway!”

  I turned around and laughed in his face. “It’s skeezer, dummy! Learn how to talk, why don’t you!”

  I picked up my pace and rubbed the edge of my training b
ra through my shirt to make sure the $3.00 my mother had given me to buy some more of those elephantine sanitary napkins hadn’t fallen out.

  chapter

  three

  Have you ever been so utterly embarrassed and ashamed that you wanted to crawl up in a hole and die?

  That’s exactly how I felt the following Monday at George Washington Carver Middle School. Even though it was a Monday, I affectionately renamed it Hellday.

  Hell! That’s what Jason tried to put my ass through that day. He went to school, obviously still feeling the sting from my refusal to go with his ass, and told everyone he could get to listen that I was on my period.

  Looking back, I realize it wasn’t such a horrible insult. After all, periods are periods, and all women have them just like all women have coochies in the first place. Periods are a fact of life.

  I couldn’t relate to that philosophy in the eighth grade, though. For me, it was a traumatic experience to have all the boys pointing at me while I walked down the crowded hallways between classes.

  The girls weren’t any better, giggling and snickering behind my back like they didn’t already have them on a monthly basis or, for the late bloomers, weren’t ever planning on getting them. The nerve of the heifers!

  By the time lunch period rolled around, I was doing battle with a migraine and contemplating taking Jason out in the parking lot so I could whup his ass in front of the entire student body.

  I got my tray of slop. That’s exactly what school lunches were—slop. One of the local network news stations did an investigative report about school lunches and discovered that most prisoners in the United States ate more nutritious meals than schoolchildren. That’s a damn shame, but I deemed it a true statement, even though I had never seen the inside of a penitentiary.

  Usually, I sat right smack in the center of the cafeteria, but not that day. I took my ass over to an empty table in the far corner, hoping I would become invisible to my peers.

  After taking a bite of the cheeseburger I had selected over the pepperoni pizza and egg salad sandwich, I spit it back out in a napkin. I couldn’t even deal: it tasted more like a rat than a cow. I wondered if the city of Atlanta had devised a sneaky, underhanded method to get rid of the rodent overpopulation.

  I glanced over toward the serving station and noticed Brina standing there, surveying the room in an effort to locate me. We didn’t have any morning classes together that semester, but we always ate lunch together come hell or high water. I stood up just long enough to flail my arms in the air. Once I saw her acknowledge my presence with a nod, I quickly sat back down.

  She came over and plopped her tray down across from me, throwing her legs over the bench one at a time to sit down.

  “Zoe, why are you sitting all the way over here?” she asked, confused. “Everyone else is at our regular table.”

  “Haven’t you heard?” I whispered, diverting my eyes from hers and trying to hold back a tear.

  “Heard what?”

  “Jason’s trick ass has been going around school telling everyone I’m on my period and that I had on a sanitary napkin at the party Friday night,” I blurted out, ashamed to even speak the words.

  Brina started falling out laughing. She laughed so hard, she had to take a swig of her iced tea to prevent herself from hyperventilating.

  “This shit’s not even funny, Brina,” I hissed, ready to smack her ass for betraying me. If I was upset, she damn well better be too.

  “I’m sorry,” she stated adamantly, holding her stomach-and sucking in air in an effort to calm down. “But it’s not like you’re the only girl in school with a period. Like I told you the other night, I’ve been having them for two years now.”

  “That’s you,” I said, smacking my gums and crossing my arms over my chest. “Besides, when you started your periods, you didn’t have a knucklehead running around school telling every damn body!”

  “You’re right! My bad! Jason should be ashamed of himself for doing this to you! I’m going to tell him off when I see him.”

  “No, that’s okay! That’s my job! I’m going to fix his ass but good!” A look of worry overshadowed Brina’s face. “What’s wrong with you, Brina?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I hate it when people tell me nothing. Now tell me what you’re thinking about?”

  “It’s just that when I started my period, I was bigtime embarrassed too. That’s why I never mentioned it, even to you. The only person I ever told was my mother so I could get some napkins from her. She didn’t care though. She was drunk that night. She just threw a bag of Stayfree at me and slammed her bedroom door.”

  I was speechless. I had become suspicious about Brina’s mother and alcohol about a year before but never asked any questions. This was the first time Brina had come straight out and admitted it.

  I reached over the table and took her hand. “You want to talk about it?”

  “No,” she replied abruptly, tearing the plastic wrapper off her utensil packet. “There’s nothing to talk about!”

  I decided to leave well enough alone. I sat there pretending to be enthralled in my side dish selection of succotash, but I was really trying to think of another subject. I wanted to discuss anything except Jason, and Brina wanted to discuss anything except her mother.

  “Zoe, what’s up, gal?” I whiffed the air and knew who it was without even looking over my shoulder. Could the day get any worse? Hell yeah! It just did! “Umph, umph, umph, you’re just lookin’ too fine for words, baby!”

  Lyle Harris was by far the ugliest boy in school. We’d never taken a vote on the issue, but trust me; his ass was ugmo. He was skinny, short, high yella with red zits all over his face, and thought he was an extra for the movie House Party with the high-top fade he was trying to sport. On top of all that, he stank big-time. You could smell his ass coming a mile away. He was in my geometry class, and the teacher, Mr. Wilson, always had to crack a window during sixth period to try to air out some of Lyle’s au naturel body fumes.

  I didn’t even give him the courtesy of an obligatory glance. “What you want, Lyle?”

  He sat down beside me on the bench, and I almost passed the hell out. Brina started holding her nose. I wanted to puke.

  “Listen here, Zoe,” he said, rubbing his grubby fingers up and down my right arm. “I heard you a woman now. A real woman.”

  I knocked his hand away. “Keep your paws off of me, Rin Tin Tin!”

  Brina giggled. So did I.

  He threw his hands out, and the central air-conditioning-system got a hold of his underarm stench, redirecting it my way.

  “Aight, you wanna play me like that huh?”

  I igged him.

  “I just wanted to holla at you. I was wondering if you wanted to go to a movie or sumptin’ this weekend. That new Lethal Weapon joint is coming out, and I figured you might want to check it out.”

  I glared at him then, though that was a task. “You can’t be serious? Besides, your armpits are already hollering at me. Those bad boys are screaming!”

  “I’m dead serious.” He grinned at me, and I almost lost my stomach contents for real. His gums were jet black. “I want to get to know you better wit’ your fine ass!”

  Brina fell out laughing.

  “Lyle, why do you have to pick today of all days to get up in my face?” I snapped at him. “I’m not even in the mood for your drama.”

  “Like I said, I heard you a woman now. I figured by this weekend you might be off those pads, and we can do a little sumptin’ sumptin’.”

  That did it! He obviously didn’t know who he was messing with. I picked up my tray and threw the whole thing at his ugly-ass face.

  “What the hell you go and do that shit for?”

  “I warned you to leave me alone!” I got up from the table. “Come on, Brina! Let’s jet! The air is mighty foul around here!”

  We walked away from him. People were teasing his ass with no mercy. I felt no remorse. He asked for i
t.

  We were halfway out of the cafeteria when I spotted Jason and Chandler sitting at a table with their clique.

  “Hold up, Brina,” I said, yanking Brina backward by the elbow. “I have something to take care of!”

  “Aw hell, Zoe!” Brina tried to drag me in the opposite direction. “Just drop it already. Jason has had his fun, and the day is halfway over. By tomorrow, everyone will forget all about it.”

  As we approached their table, I heard Chandler bragging about trying out for the cheerleading squad later that week. She was positive not only that she would make it but that she would be the captain.

  “I’m so pretty, I know Miss Weeden will pick me as the captain,” she boasted. A couple of the other girls at the table looked away, probably wanting to slap the hell out of her. I felt the same way. She was the most uppity Miss Thang in the school. Most tolerated her, but very few truly liked her. She leaned over and pecked Jason on the lips. “Baby, will you come to the tryouts and cheer me on? I know you’ll make the captain of the basketball team again this year. We’ll be the top couple in the school.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” Jason replied. “I really need to get some things done around the house Wednesday afternoon. My mom’s been after me to sandpaper and repaint the shutters for months now.”

  “Why can’t your daddy do it?” Chandler pouted, hoping to win Jason over.

  “You know my daddy always works late,” Jason replied. “Besides, I like doing things with my hands. Zoe’s daddy has taught me a lot about building things.”

  Chandler smacked her lips and rolled her eyes. “Zoe?”

  “Yes,” I replied. Everyone noticed my arrival at the same time. All eyes were on me, but my eyes were drilling a hole through Jason’s skank ass.

  Brina made one last attempt to bring me back to my senses. “Come on, Zoe,” she insisted, yanking on my arm. “This isn’t even worth it. You might get in serious trouble. Lyle’s already fuming. You and Jason can settle this at home.”