“Where you go to school?” I asked him, sinking into the pile of pillows on the couch.

“Well, I had kind of dropped out for a while. So now I’m just down at Olive Harvey trying to get my GED.”

Great. Another stupid.

“Why you drop out?” I asked him while he lit a stick of incense. I hoped he wasn’t setting the mood for something. Had just let me come and chill at his place because he thought he was about to be getting some.

“I’m not fucking you,” I announced before I knew it.

He didn’t even answer, just bucked his eyes and ran his hands through his knotty Afro. He shook his head back and forth and started to open his mouth, but then just grinned again.

“You want something to drink?”

Hell, why not?

“You got some Kool-Aid or somethin’?”

“Naw … wish we did though. They don’t even buy it. We got some pop though.”

“Okay. That’s fine.”

“What kind you want?”

“Orange,” I said. He walked away.

For the few minutes he was gone I took the time to look around some more. Right next to the entertainment center was a tall bookshelf. I walked to it just to see what it held. I didn’t recognize anything, not that I expected to. I really didn’t read other than in school, and Ma didn’t read much besides the Sun-Times occasionally and The Enquirer. My eyes slowly ran along the titles because they all seemed long as hell: The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, The Souls of Black Folk, Sent for You Yesterday, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Song of Solomon, I Wonder as I Wander, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. They all sounded interesting, but were way too big for me to even think about reading. I saw Roots and The Color Purple way down at the bottom. I had seen those movies a thousand times, but didn’t know they were books too. Maybe I would ask him if I could borrow them one day since at least I knew the stories; I could skip through if I needed to. Roots was about slavery and The Color Purple was about Celie and Shug. And Nettie and Sofia. And I guess Mr.’s stanky ass too. But I had to get my head on straight before I even thought about reading anything.

Rasul scared me when he appeared suddenly behind me with a can of Sunkist (not Aldi’s Sweet Valley like I expected) and a cold glass clinking with ice cubes.