First Semester (13 page)

“That's my boy Deiondre Harris's jersey,” he said. “We balled on the same high school squad in Houston.”

“Damn, Downtown-D can hoop too?” Fresh asked.

“He's just an all-around athlete. He is the only person in history to be named Mr. Basketball and Mr. Football in Texas in the same year. He was on the first-team All-American hoop squad as a sophomore. To this day, D is the only nigga I've ever seen take one step and do a three-sixty. We won three state championships at Hill Ridge High School.”

“That's crazy,” Fresh said. “Y'all must've had a squad. What's good with that bottle, though?”

“I'ma bring it over there to y'all boys in about five minutes. I gotta call my T-Lady back and give her my account number so she can wire me some dough…Oh yeah, before y'all leave, anybody need any textbooks? I got those for the low too.”

“What you got?” Fresh asked.

“Everything,” Stretch said, reaching under his bed and pulling out another suitcase. When he opened it, I couldn't believe my eyes. He literally had photocopied versions of just about every textbook in the bookstore. “I'm all out of biology and Spanish books. But if you need books for any other class, I got you.”

“How much is this precalculus book going for?” Fresh asked.

“Man, I've been letting those go for thirty-five,” Stretch said. “But I'll let you slide with one for about twenty-five. Just make sure you send me some clientele.”

“I got you,” Fresh said. “Just set that book to the side for me. I should have the money by this time tomorrow. I
really
need that book, though.”

“If you need it like that, just take it,” Stretch said. “You live right across the way. Just bring me the bread for it when you get it.”

“I save more money fucking with you than switching to Geico,” Fresh said as he picked up the textbook off the bed. “Man, you must've saved me about seventy bucks! There was no way I was paying ninety-five bucks for that book in the bookstore. I was just going to have to share with somebody else for the rest of the semester, but I was getting tired of that. Good looking out.”

“Speaking of looking out, any of you guys taking Professor Obugata for biology?”

“I am,” I said. “Why?”

“Y'all got quiz number two coming up, right?”

“Yep.”

“I got the answers to that on sale too.”

“You've got the answers to the quiz?”

“Got 'em.”

“You've gotta hook me up with those, blood!”

“For the low price of $21.65, you can hook yourself up. As a matter of fact, for you…no tax. We can make it an even dub.”

“That's nothing,” I said, reaching in my pocket for my wallet. “Are you sure these are the right answers?”

“C'mon, playa. I wouldn't even do it like that, baby! This one is a money-back guarantee. However, it comes with one warning.”

“What's that?”

“If you haven't been getting a hundred percent on the rest of your tests and quizzes, I suggest you mark a couple answers wrong intentionally, just so you don't look too suspect.”

“Good lookin',” I said as he passed me a palm-size cheat sheet.

“Already,” Stretch said. “I'll be over there to holla at y'all boys in a minute.”

When we walked into Fresh's room, a viciously funky odor lurked. It was thick, humid, sticky and reminiscent of Lawry's morning breath. I tried to hold my own breath and make sure I didn't open my mouth. Lawry broke the uncomfortable silence.

“Damn, shawty,” he said, plugging his nose. “Why the hell does it smell like old bus seats in here?”

“That's my roommate, folk,” he said. “He weighs about two hundred pounds, but he's barely five feet tall.”

“If that was my roommate, I would make homeboy wash his ass,” Lawry said.

“It's not that he ain't clean,” he said, reaching in his drawer for some Glade to spray. “He takes showers. He's just got a lil' odor to him. I don't think he can help it.”

The Glade did the trick temporarily, but Fresh's spot was clearly not the room to get drunk in. You didn't need a drink to get nauseous up in that piece.

“Your boy Stretch is the man, though,” I said. “He's got the hookup on a little bit of everything, huh?”

“Yes, sir,” Fresh said. “He'd probably be able to stack some serious bread if he didn't have to support his habit.”

“I never would've thought he was a smoker, with him being a hooper and all,” I said.

“Oh, I don't know if he smokes weed or not. But he drinks like a fish. I don't even know how he keeps his stash stocked. Ever since I've known him, he's had a drink in his hand—even in class.”

As if on cue, Stretch stepped through the door.

“Y'all boys ready to do this?” he asked as he hoisted the pint of Grand Marnier high in the air.

“Fa sho,” I said. “But let's shoot back down to the first floor. Y'all are hot as fish grease up here. Plus, the R.A. on my floor is cool.”

After sitting around the washer and dryer drinking, shooting craps and talking shit for about an hour or so, I'd learned a lot of things I didn't know about my new friends. All of us had stories to tell about the cities we were from, and how we ended up at U of A.

“I would have went to a D1 school to play ball, but my grades were fucked up,” Fresh started. “In high school, instead of going to class, me and my niggas would roll up a fat sack, get blowed and go to Frenchy's to eat fried chicken before practice. My grades were always just good enough to play, but that shit came back to haunt me when I started looking for a college to go to. I just transferred from Houston Community College. I'm supposed to be a sophomore but some of my credits didn't transfer, so I'm a freshman credit-wise.”

As Lawry crouched to shake the dice up in his hand to roll them, I noticed the R.I.P. tattoo with T-Love written in cursive underneath it on his right shoulder again. He was wearing a wife beater, which left it exposed and easy to read. Normally, I wouldn't have asked him about his tat in front of other people, but the Grand Marnier had my mouthpiece going.

“That tattoo is tight, family,” I said. “Who is T-Love?”

Lawry looked hesitant to comment, shifting his body uncomfortably. His hand stopped shaking and he swallowed a big gulp of Grand Marnier.

“That's family business,” he said, looking me in my eye. “But since we gonna be going to school with each other for the next four years, and y'all my patnas, I consider y'all my extended family.”

Lawry had never looked or sounded this serious since I'd met him.

“I ain't even supposed to be here right now, shawty,” he said. “Three years ago, me and my cousin Tyrone—we call him T-Love—we was moving work out of this trap in Decatur. We had ounces of that hard white pumping every hour on the hour. The money was coming so fast I thought about dropping out of school to hustle full-time. Everybody in the hood knew we were in the game coming up. Two years ago, on Halloween, three niggas kicked our door in wearing those white ghost masks.”

He stopped to take another swig of the Grand Marnier. Usually, when somebody takes a gulp as big as he did, their facial expression would frown up a little bit. But he didn't twitch.

“When my cousin saw that all of them were strapped, he punched the window out with his bare hand and shoved me out. That's when them pussy-ass boys started firing. They only hit me once, in my stomach,” he said, pulling up his wife beater to show us the quarter-size bullet entry wound just under his right rib, then turning to show us the exit wound in his back.

“Luckily, the paramedics found me before they did, and that bullet went in and out,” he said.

He finished his cup of Grand Marnier and his eyes became slightly teary. “They got my cousin, though. When they took him out, they got a piece of my heart, shawty. It was rough. But like I said, at the time I wasn't even planning on going to college. It just so happened that my pops and Dr. Broadlax were line brothers when they were in undergrad at Boward, so he pulled some strings and got me in.”

“I didn't know your pops is Greek,” Fresh said. “What frat is he in?”

“He's a Q-dog.”

“I can't picture Dr. Broadlax pledging Omega Beta Phi,” Fresh said.

“Whoever Dr. Broadlax is, if he got Lawry into school after all he went through, he must have pull around here,” I said. “Who is he?”

“He's the school president,” Lawry said. “I know you haven't had a chance to read the whole First Year Seminar book yet, but damn! I'm gonna need for you to know who the school president is.”

“I haven't had a chance to look through it yet,” I said.

“You couldn't have,” Stretch said, laughing. “His face is on the very first page.”

Stretch kept the stories going, as he schooled me on the ingredients of sizzurp—the purple drink that Houston rappers boast about in their songs. Until our conversation, I had no idea that “lean,” “bar,” or “drank,” as he called it, was actually liquid codeine mixed with Sprite.

“I'm trying to tell y'all, man,” Stretch said. “We be going hard in the H, fool! You think you getting fucked up on this Grand Marnier. Boy, you wouldn't know what to do if you were on that lean. I'ma put y'all boys on, one of these days. As a matter of fact, if y'all come down to the Bayou Classic with me for Thanksgiving break, I'll have some down there.”

“You know somebody down there who sells it or something?” I asked.

“My cousin does,” Stretch said. “He's supposed to meet me down there and ride back to the A with me to get off a couple of pints down here. So you know we gonna be pouring up some drank on the road.”

“You talking about the Bayou Classic in New Orleans, right?”

“Already.”

“How you getting down there?”

“They got a party bus going for like two hundred and fifty bucks. It covers everything from your hotel room to tickets to the game and all that. I'm gonna ride back with my cousin, though.”

“Man, I wish I had the bread to get down there with you,” I said. “I'm probably gonna be right here in the A, eating over at my uncle Leroy's crib.”

“Not me!” Fresh said. “I'm headed back to the Chi for Thanksgiving. I need me some home cooking.”

Fresh told us about where he and his homies kicked it on the West Side of Chicago. He talked about how he inherited his pimpin' persona by watching the real pimps on Kedzie Street, bragged about how many people show up at the Taste of Chicago, and told us about how much he missed getting the wings with mild sauce at Harold's Chicken and coming up on females at the Regall Theatre.

“Let me ask you something, blood,” I said. “If you so in love with your girl back home, why are you always talking about coming up on other breezies all the time? I mean, if your girl didn't call you every ten minutes, I wouldn't even know you had one.”

“Man, it's like this, joe,” he said. “I love my girl to death. I mean, she's been down since day one. But I look at my girl like chicken.”

“What you mean, blood?” I said, laughing.

“It must be finger-licking good,” Stretch said, cracking up.

“Stay with me, y'all,” Fresh said. “Don't get it twisted. Chicken is my favorite dish, but there's only so many ways to cook it. I mean, after you've had fried chicken, baked chicken, barbecue chicken, chicken strips, chicken noodle soup, lemon pepper chicken, buffalo wings, chicken nuggets, chicken fettuccini, jerk chicken—”

“Damn, Bubba Gump!” Lawry said, interrupting him. “What is you trying to say, shawty?”

“Every once in a while, a nigga wants a piece of steak, or a pork chop, or a fillet of salmon!” Fresh said. “Every now and then, a nigga just wants something different. Not to say that I don't appreciate my lady, because I do. As a matter of fact, she's coming down for homecoming next week.”

“Coming down for
homecoming?
” Stretch asked. “You bringing sand to the beach, ain't you?”

“Nah, joe,” Fresh said. “If anything, she's a beach ball.”

“So you're gonna order chicken strips at the all-you-can-eat buffet, huh?” Stretch said, laughing.

“That's why I'm glad I can order off of any menu I want,” I said. “There just isn't as much to choose from in the Town as there is out here.”

“What y'all do for fun out there in the Bay?” Fresh asked.

“In the Town, everybody gets hyphee at the sideshows on the weekends,” I said, reminiscing as if everyone else knew exactly what I was talking about.

“What the hell is hyphee?” Lawry asked.

“Getting ‘hyphee,' ‘going dumb,' ‘getting stupid,'” I said. “I guess it's the same thing you guys call getting ‘crunk.' Basically, getting hyped. You know?”