Free Dope Sick by Walter Dean Myers

made a smoking rhyme about a brother who got killed on 125th and Park underthat little railroad bridge that goes into Grand Central Station. Maurice, my ace, had dug it and asked me to do it on tape over a reggae beat. I did it and he burned a bunch of copies on CDs and we passed them around, so they knew I was strong.
    Miss Oglivie didn’t like it, but she had to take me. Omar, Victor, and Deon stuck together like the lames they were, and I knew a vote was going to go against me.
    After school I saw Lauryn on Lenox Avenue. For a change she wasn’t with Silly. I had just got some fresh minutes on my cell and called her. We were walking downtown, me on one side of the street and her on the other side.
    â€œI heard you and Deon almost got into it,” she said.
    â€œNo, he don’t want me,” I said. “All he wants is to run his mouth.”
    â€œIt’s still about naming the group?” she asked.
    They had wanted to call the group The Righteous Brothers, which was definitely up there and I would have gone along with it if the raps they wererunning were good. But they were just catching words from Miss Oglivie and snatching slogans off the wall and laying them out like they were something somebody wanted to be hearing.
    â€œIt’s not just about the name,” I said. “It’s about the whole set, same as it was before.”
    â€œWhere you going?” Lauryn asked.
    â€œThought I’d check out Milbank,” I said. “See if anybody’s over there.” I was really going to the brownstone man, but I didn’t want to tell Lauryn that because she didn’t want me using anything.
    â€œWhy don’t you come over to my place and check me out?” she said.
    â€œI thought you and Silly were supposed to be doing something,” I said.
    â€œSo you saying that you don’t want to see me?” she asked.
    â€œI’m just saying that—” I looked over to where she was and saw that she had stopped walking. “I’m just saying that after all the grief I had today, I need to relax a little. Thought maybe I would hoop a little.”
    â€œLil J, you going to cop?” Right up front.
    â€œNo,” I lied. “I’m just tense, that’s all.”
    â€œSo why don’t you cop and then come over to my house?” she said. “Do it in front of me. Why you slipping and sliding?”
    â€œI told you I wasn’t going to cop,” I said.
    â€œWhy you shouting into the phone?” she came back.
    â€œSo what you want?” I asked. It even sounded weak to me.
    â€œStay there,” she said. “I’ll go with you to get the stuff.”
    Lauryn was treating me like I was a stone head, but I knew I wasn’t. I could let the shit go in a heartbeat, but I just wasn’t ready to go, not just yet, and she couldn’t get next to that. But I knew where she was coming from, because I had seen a lot of dudes who thought they just had chippies and they was drowning and looking for the big fish to come save their butts but the big fish wasn’t coming. My roll was different. I was correct and knew where I was going, and that was the truth—only it didn’tsound so good when I wasn’t shouting it. When I was just saying it to myself, it didn’t sound too good at all.
    I appreciated where Lauryn was coming from. She was steady in my corner and I knew it.
    I saw her coming across the street. She was looking good, as usual. What she didn’t know was that I was as tense as I told her I was. She thought I was just out to party a little. But all that crap with the rap group was getting me down, and I didn’t feel like going home and dealing with my moms. Lauryn came up to me and I could see she was wearing her attitude.
    â€œI did think you were going to be hanging out with Silly,” I said.
    â€œIt’s nice of you to be concerned about her,” Lauryn said.
    Silly was the