Free Who Am I Without Him? by Sharon Flake Page B

shoulda known they wouldn’t comb hair in the cafeteria. “At least not in this school.”
    In a few minutes our table is full of kids. All black. All loud. Louder than anyone else in the lunchroom. I am so embarrassed. All the other kids are looking over their shoulders. Rolling their eyes. Wondering, I bet, why we can’t act right. Act white , I hear Melvin’s voice say in my head.
    I grab Winter’s lunch bag and head for another table. “Let’s go,” I say.
    Melvin asks her why she puts up with me. “’Cause you’re her only friend, you know.” His lips curl and his words shrink like cheap bacon. “Only black one, anyhow.”
    Winter and I spend the rest of our lunch period working on the paper. When lunch is almost over, in walks Johnny. Winter makes sure he knows his name’s not going on it now. It takes ten minutes for me to make them stop fighting. It’s not Johnny’s fault, though. The only reason Winter is so hard on him is because she knows how much I like him.
    â€œChet Richards likes you. And he’s our color,” she’s said to me before. But do I only get to like boys that look like me? Or can I be like girls who look like Wendy, and get to pick any boy I want?
    Johnny’s tired of Winter, I guess. “Forget it,” he says to her. “Don’t put my name on the paper. I don’t care.”
    I hand the paper to Johnny and let him read it.
    Winter leans over the table and starts poking it. “I think the black girl in the story should be different.”
    Johnny moves his lips while he reads. “She’s all right.”
    Winter looks at me. “See, I told you we need to spice her up.” Her eyes turn Johnny’s way. “For that girl to take Joey away from his girlfriend, she can’t just be all right. She’s gotta be slamming.”
    I finger my short, hard curls and wonder what it would be like to kiss Johnny on his tiny, pink lips. Right then, Melvin walks up to our table. He looks at me, then Johnny. “Got yourself a black girl, huh, Johnny?”
    I roll my eyes. Johnny turns red. Winter laughs.
    â€œEr’ka and you go together now?” he asks.
    â€œErika!” I say.
    Johnny tells Melvin to mind his own business.
    Melvin laughs, then tells Johnny that he should dump Wendy. “’Cause with Er’ka, you get two for one. A black girl on the outside, and a Wendy-white girl on the inside.” He walks away.
    When I stand up, seventeen Oreo cookies come after me like flat black-and-white hockey pucks. Bouncing off my tailbone. Knocking into the side of my head and smacking my shoulder and cheeks. Winter ducks, but gets hit upside the head anyhow.
    â€œCut it out!” Johnny shouts.
    â€œCut it out!” a kid at the table repeats.
    Johnny asks me why they act like that.
    â€œLike what?” Winter says, brushing crumbs out my hair.
    â€œForget it,” he says, brushing off his shirt, then walking out the room when more kids from table nine head our way.
    â€œThat’s the way the cookie crumbles,” I hear one of ’em say when they pass by.
    Winter speaks up then. Says she’s gonna jack up the person who hit her with the cookie. The kids keep quiet and keep moving, because nobody messes with Winter. She is almost six feet tall, runs track, and fights like a boy. In sixth grade she beat the mess out of Gerald Manson for trying to touch her butt. In seventh grade she beat me up. She came up to me after school with her fist tight and her mouth running, and punched me in the face for telling the teacher she was cheating off my paper. I never told that she hit me, so she didn’t get suspended like she should have. But the English teacher gave her an E for cheating and made her come to me for tutoring. “Since you think Erika is so smart, let’s have her tutor you three days a week after school,” she said. That’s how we