“Don’t say it out loud,” hissed Brielle, glancing around. She forgot all about her deep crush for the boy in front of her. Most of the other students had moved on to their respective classes, but in her experience, they had ears like cats if somebody said something that could be used to blaze a person with later. If they all started calling her Baby Shaq she was going to have to kick Damon Hamilton in the nuts. Hard.
“Right,” said Damon, with a slight wince. “Sorry again.”
He bent and picked up the trigonometry book and handed it to Brielle. She slung the purse strap over her forearm and hugged the books to her chest.
He reached over and tugged on a curl.
“What would you like me to call you?” he asked.
“You know my name,” she said, frowning at him.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And it’s not Baby Shaq.”
He quirked a slight one-sided smile that revealed a deep dimple in one cheek.
“Now you said it out loud,” he said.
“You know what I mean,” said Brielle, frowning fiercely. She tapped her right foot in frustration.
“I could call you Black Swan, like your friend Sammie does,” said Damon, teasing. The bell rang. Brielle glowered at him. “By the way, I like your hair.”
“My name is Brielle,” she said, fiercely and whirled away from him. She stomped into the classroom in front of him and flounced into the first available seat. Damon ambled in behind her, with a puzzled expression on his face.
Damon
The rest of the first day of school passed in an uneventful blur. At least fifty girls introduced themselves to Damon along with three or four guys. Several of the girls and all of the boys knew his little sister Jada so he was absorbed into the social scene with very little effort. One thing about the Lansing area, instead of six degrees of separation between people, there was about two.
Damon discovered that Brielle was in his World History class as well as honors literature, but she hadn’t looked his way for entire rest of the school day as far as he could tell. Whenever he chanced to see Brielle in the hall, she turned her head away from him as though it hurt her to look at him. Damon watched her whenever he could, trying to get an understanding.
Damon knew that he was clueless when it came to girls and their emotional states. The only ones he ever talked to besides crazy Sasha, were his sister’s friends and when they weren’t acting whacked out over some boy, they were pretty sensible. Most times, it was like talking to another dude, except that babes were much more excitable. Brielle was a part of his sister’s crew and they had taken time to get to know Damon and could actually carry on a conversation. For any other girl, he’d never had to actually make an effort to get to know her. Any attention, even negative attention seemed to be enough for most girls.
As a result, he’d put girls into two categories in his mind. Potential sisters and potential sexers. He’d thought about calling them potential lovers, but after his involvement with Sasha, he’d figured out that love didn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex. Before the act, he was all into Sasha, but after, he took a shower and forgot about her until the next time.
Now, he had a new category of girl to figure out. Brielle. Apparently, Brielle was different.
He didn’t view her as a little sister. If he admitted it to himself, he had never viewed her as a little sister. Wasn’t he always finding an excuse to touch her hair and tease her, even before he himself was aware of how much he liked her?
He had not expected Brielle to get all emotional over a little mishap in the hall. And the Baby Shaq thing, he’d been calling her that for years. Until recently she’d been taller that Damon. Why hadn’t she told him that she didn’t like it? How was he supposed to know? Why did he even care if she was upset? And how was he supposed to get her alone to apologize? Every time he saw her in the halls, at least two other girls surrounded her. He did not understand why the girls traveled in packs like a bunch of wolves.
Damon sighed, unable to come up with any answers to these new questions and squinted at the piece of paper in his hand.
“What’s up, dude?” said Chauncey, one of his new acquaintances. They were sprawled in the plastic cafeteria chairs, chilling for lunch period.
“Just trying to figure this thing out, man,” said Damon, peering at his school schedule.
“What?” asked Chauncey.
Chauncey played running back on the varsity football team, and had spent the last hour trying to convince Damon to go out for the team.
“Gotta work tonight,” said Damon. He might be clueless when it came to girls, but he wasn’t stupid enough to discuss Brielle with Chauncey. In his experience with his brothers, dudes gossiped worse than females. Brielle would be certain to hate him if he put the business about Baby Shaq around the school. He didn’t want Brielle to hate him.
Damon had already discovered that Chauncey was incapable of keeping a secret. Within minutes of introducing himself, Chauncey had pointed out the popular ‘fly’ girls, the skanks, the stalkers and the untouchables. The untouchables were either fat, ugly or under age sixteen, which made them jail bait according to Chauncey, who had turned eighteen in January.
Damon also knew which girls Chauncey had already had sex with because he’d say, “Suzy. I tapped that, she ain’t about nothing. Lola, she got her knees so tight together it’s a wonder she can pry them apart to go to the bathroom. Don’t waste your time.”
Damon said nothing, just listened to Chauncey prattle on about
