Free Fast Forward by Celeste O. Norfleet Page A

what she was saying and realized she was right. I loved to dance, and it always made me feel better. “Okay, I will. And the next time I feel like slapping somebody, I’ll call you.”
    “Excuse me,” she said jokingly.
    “You know what I mean,” I said laughing. She laughed, too. So the driver dropped us off at our grandmother’s house, and we chilled the rest of the day. I waited for my dad to call me, but he never did. I guess that was it for us.

seven
    Penitentiary
    “Whoa, culture shock, reality 101. I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz . This seriously wasn’t Kansas anymore. It was like being dropped in the middle of the ocean and told to tread water. I could already feel myself drowning.”
    —MySpace.com
    Monday morning. It was the first day of school, again. But this time everything was different. I seriously thought I was ready, but driving up and walking into Penn Hall High gave me second, third and even fourth thoughts. There was no way I was ready for this.
    See, all my life I went to Hazelhurst Academy for Girls, so it was a serious culture shock: guys walking around in school, no uniforms in sight, old everything, ugly everything, noise everywhere and metal detectors. What’s up with all that? They had massive security and armed police officers.
    My grandmother and I went to the main office and went through the paperwork process. Thank goodness forcomputers and the Internet. The school was able to acquire my full Hazelhurst transcript within seconds. They saw my grades, my awards, my accomplishments and they also saw that I’d been fighting. I knew exactly when the vice principal read the notation ’cause she looked up at me and frowned. They didn’t know my mom and didn’t have a clue and probably didn’t care how her death affected me.
    “You’re seeing a counselor? Dr. Tubbs?”
    “Yes. I had my first session last Thursday.”
    She nodded, then of course it came. She read me the riot act about rules and consequences. And just because I came from a private school I wasn’t going to get any special treatment. She said that there were kids in the school that had real issues and that everyone was treated equally.
    I nodded appropriately, giving her the standard I-get-it look. But the truth was I was getting scared. This was nothing like I imagined. I thought it was going to be easy because it was a public school. I was wrong.
    The vice principal gave me a class roster and a map of the school. She told me that this was still first period and that the days were split with four classes each. There were blue and red days, and I’d catch on eventually. She wished me luck and with one last warning, she sent me to class.
    Two minutes later, I knocked on the door and walked into English class. I gave the teacher a form, and he told me to take a seat. All eyes were on me as I found a seat in the back of the class. I sat and looked up at the board. They were studying the Crucible and the Salem witchtrials. We did this last year, so I pretty much knew what was going on. So I’m sitting there and everybody tried to turn around to get a look at me, the new girl.
    Okay, I knew it was going to be a long day after that. I suffered through the next two classes, went to my next class, had lunch and then went back to that same class. I ate alone.
    My last class that day was French. They were pretty much up to what I was learning, so it was pretty good. I’d gotten all my books but didn’t get a locker yet so I had to lug all this stuff home.
    I was walking down the street loaded down when this girl came up to me. “Hey, you’re new right?”
    “Yeah, I’m Kenisha Lewis.”
    “I’m Cassandra Mosley, but everybody calls me Cassie. Yeah, I thought I knew you. You live around the way. You go to Freeman Dance right?”
    “Yeah, you?”
    “I live down the street. I’ve seen you and your friends dance. I don’t know their names, but y’all are tight.”
    “Jalisa and Diamond. Diamond is really