Qwan said, “I don’t know, but I should be the one teaching it. Bet I know more than Coach.”

He was probably right. Coach Scott never struck me as much of a ladies’ man, particularly with those Mickey Mouse prayers at First Missionary, but the point was moot. For the second time that day I was face-to-face with my favorite teacher, MJ, waiting in the door of Health Sciences Room 1.

Beyond him, at Health Sciences Room 2, was one of the guidance counselors, Mrs. Gaither. Without being told, boys with permission slips handed them over to MJ, while the girls with permission slips continued on to the second room. Anyone without slips kept on to the gym, where they’d probably run laps for the next forty-five minutes.

“What up, MJ?” I handed over my slip, then engaged in a fist bump. His calloused knuckles always hurt a little, but I made sure not to flinch.

“So we meet again,” he said.

MJ’s English class wasn’t exactly fun. He made you work, and you better not be behind on the reading and trying to focus on your desk so he didn’t call on you, because then he’d call on you first. I don’t know, though, it was still better than most everything else in school. From day one he told us his class wasn’t one where “old dead white dudes” (MJ’s actual words) rule. We still had people like Dickens and Steinbeck—Of Mice and Men was dope—on our summer reading list from before the school year started, but there was also Gloria Naylor, and Walter Dean Myers, and Meg Medina, and graphic novels by people like Gene Luen Yang to pick from now that school was in. Writers I didn’t know about before I knew MJ; writers I couldn’t wait to read.

None of that had a thing to do with Healthy Living, I didn’t think. So why was he here?

Inside the Health Sciences room, another oddity. The rumpled gray suit that was our never-happy vice principal. Mister Terrier. He hovered in the corner, scowling at nothing in particular, his cheeks and crinkled forehead an irritated red with beige splotches peeking through. He usually lurked in the halls, giving people detention for the most minor infractions or yelling at them to go to class. I’d never seen him in a class before.

Qwan and me took seats among classmates who were all going for different levels of aloofness as we filled the twenty-plus available desks, the same dudes in the same general sectors we’d occupied for most of our school careers. Slouched weed-heads gravitated to the center of the desk grid, stretching legs into the aisle, playfully tripping those walking by. Burnouts settled on the back row. The JROTC crew, led by future supersoldier Mason Miles, came in all buttoned up in their olive-green uniforms, and took seats at the front. Me and Qwan were in the row closest to the door, him ahead of me. Slack, annoyed facial expressions were set. Any visible interest—even though I was hyped about MJ being in the mix—was unacceptable.