by S. Walden
HOODIE
A LOVE STORY. IN BLACK AND WHITE.
S. Walden
Penny Press
Hoodie
Copyright 2012, S. Walden
Publisher: Penny Press
This work and all rights of the author S. Walden to this work are protected under U.S. copyright law, Title 17 of the United States Code. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. This ebook may not be circulated in any format, resold, or given away. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover art by Alfred Porter
[email protected]
To Marsha—who openly wept for my characters in public, the only validation I really wanted. Your support and love for my book is the reason for its publication.
Important note from the author: Hoodie was completed in May 2011. The novel does not speak to any specific current social, political, or economic event, and any similarities between said events and the novel are purely coincidental. The characters and places in Hoodie are fictional.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
CHAPTER 1
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15
Emma observed her partner from the opposite end of the classroom. He slouched in his seat, long legs spread on either side of the desk in front of him, arms folded over his chest defensively. He looked like he had an attitude, and she wondered if she should speak to him at all.
She was annoyed watching him. Apparently he cared very little about the project, and while she felt her irritation growing exponentially, she decided against voicing it. After all, she didn’t want to be responsible for an uncomfortable, rocky start to their working relationship. So she forced a smile, walked over to him, and took a seat in the empty desk in front of his only after he moved his leg aside for her. She tried her best to appear friendly, but her body language betrayed her. He noticed her rigid posture, how she sat stiff and straight with her legs crossed tightly. She was uncomfortable near him, he realized, and it pissed him off.
“I’m Emma,” she said working hard to maintain the smile painfully plastered on her face.
“I know who you are,” Anton replied. He studied her. There seemed to be an air of haughtiness about her—an attitude of superiority—though perhaps he was imagining it.
Emma didn’t know how to respond. Anton said nothing as he reached in his book bag for his cell phone.
“What’s yo’ number?” he asked indifferently.
“Here,” she said, handing him a small piece of paper with her full name, address, home and cell phone numbers, and the best times to reach her written in a neat, slanted cursive.
Anton laughed. “You that student,” he observed, shaking his head as he glanced over her information. “But I knew that already. Got it all together. Always on point. Axin’ all kinda questions in class all the time. Makin’ comments. Tryin’ to impress us with yo’ literary insights.”
“Excuse me?” she replied. The smile vanished.
“Literary insights,” he repeated. “Oh, I see. You thought I wouldn’t know words like ‘literary’ and ‘insights’ ‘cause I’m black.”
Emma stared at him mouth slightly agape only closing it when he indelicately informed her that it was hanging open.
He moved his eyes over her then, taking in the long auburn curls that framed her face, her light blue eyes with just the right amount of eye liner and mascara, soft peachy cheeks and glossy lips, her shirt that hugged her breasts perfectly. She was meticulously manicured, he thought, like an airbrushed picture on the front of a magazine. No, more like a porcelain statue than a real person, he decided. He was afraid if he touched her she would shatter.
He opened the notebook on his desk and scrawled his information. He ripped out the sheet and held it out to her watching her face. She looked put out, and he liked it. She snatched the paper from his hand, and he watched as she read to herself: Anton Jamal Robinson. The Projects. Cell: 919-555-4621. Call for availability. She looked up at him and saw a slight grin on his face. She stuffed the paper in her binder and left the room before the bell rang.
***
She couldn’t concentrate in Sociology. She couldn’t concentrate on anything since English class. She could think of nothing all day but the assignment and her partner who she already disliked—a partner who appeared to dislike her. She was confused and angry. What had she done to deserve such a reception from him? He was rude without cause, and she bristled at the idea of spending six weeks working with him. She wondered at her teacher’s thought process in choosing the pairs. She could hear his voice booming in the tiny classroom, and scowled.
“Sit down and shut up!” Dr. Thompson bellowed from behind his desk, pushing his crooked glasses farther up his nose.
A low grumble throughout the room replaced the rowdiness as students reluctantly shuffled to their seats. Dr. Thompson waited for absolute silence before continuing.
“Okay. So you’ve gotten your acceptance letters,” he said. “Well, probably most of you. And good for you. We’re all very impressed that you’ll be taking the next step in your academic careers by going to college.” His tone dripped with sarcasm.
“You’re comfortable and happy and could care less about the next six weeks of your lives here at school,” he continued. “So where does that leave me as your educator?”
He scanned the room of half-interested to completely indifferent faces and rolled his eyes.
“That leaves me in the unfortunate position of having to teach a bunch of self-absorbed students who don’t give a shit when I’d rather be playing golf.”
Some students perked up at that.
“Dr. Thompson, are you allowed to talk to us like that?” came a girl’s voice from the middle of the room. She often asked this question because Dr. Thompson often talked to them like that, but he never answered her once the entire school year. He did, however, have to answer to the principal on a few occasions when her parents complained about his lack of professionalism.
“So after extensive arguing with the other English teachers and most of the administration at this school, I finally succeeded in getting approval for my end-of-year project for this class.”
There was an audible groan throughout the room, and Dr. Thompson patiently awaited silence once more.
“You won’t have a final,” he said, and the groans immediately turned to cheers. “What you will have is a term paper due to me on the day the final is scheduled,” and the cheers died away.
“The term paper will count for sixty percent of your grade. So if you do a lousy job, chances are you’ll receive a failing grade on the paper and flunk the class. If you don’t pass my class, you won’t graduate. So bye-bye carefree summer and hello summer school.
“You will work with a partner to explore each of your cultural backgrounds using what you’ve learned to analyze our most recent book. Think about it like this: How woul
d you interpret the plot, characters, and themes in our novel based on your culture?” he asked.
Most students stared blankly. A few scribbled notes furiously, Emma being one of them.
“Dr. Thompson, man, this sound like some college-level crap,” offered a student from the back of the classroom.
“Well, lucky for you, Mr. Robinson, and take that hood off your head, I have my Ph.D., so I’m more than qualified to teach you on the college level.”
A few students laughed.
“People,” Dr. Thompson continued, “you act like this is the first time you’ve ever studied a novel. You’ve been doing it all year.”
“Yeah, but not like this. What does our culture have to do with this book?” whined a student from the front of the room.
And then the questions and comments poured forth as though a dam suddenly broke.
“I don’t even know what a culture is.”
“Why you havin’ us do this? Can’t we just take a test?”
“We’ve gotta work on a paper this big with someone we don’t know?”
“That’s not right, Dr. Thompson. What if the other person does nothing?”
Dr. Thompson listened patiently to the comments and concerns, running a hand through his graying hair.
“Dr. Thompson, why was it a big deal getting this assignment approved?”
He decided to address the last question.
“Because most of the teachers and staff at this school think you’re too immature to handle such an assignment. They don’t think you can deal with hanging around a person who’s totally different from you and then write a paper together on top of that.”
He paused for a moment as though considering something. “They think it’s too hard,” he admitted and heard a murmur of agreement throughout the classroom. “I look at it as a learning experience, a chance for you to try and break free from the high school mold.”
“What’s the high school mold?” asked a tall boy in the back row.
“I’ll strive for elegance here, Mr. Andrews. Cliques. Cliques that create within young people minds so narrow that they haven’t the ability to look beyond themselves to the world around them. They hide within the safety of their own kind, afraid to venture out and attempt to understand something new. Does that answer your question?”
“See, Dr. Thompson, I take great offense to that. Just ‘cause we hang with our own kind don’t make us narrow-minded. It’s in our nature to wanna be with people like us.”
It was the boy Dr. Thompson called Mr. Robinson who spoke. He received several nods of approval and grunts of appreciation.
“Then perhaps it’s time to call into question your nature, Mr. Robinson,” Dr. Thompson replied.
Many of the students turned to look at the boy called Mr. Robinson in anticipation of his reply. But he had none, so Dr. Thompson continued.
“I’m giving you a handout that explains this assignment in detail. Read it over to yourselves. You’re seniors. You can do that.”
He walked across the front of the room handing stacks of papers to the students in front of the rows to pass back.
“Now listen carefully for the name of your partner,” he said. “I’m giving you class time today to meet and exchange contact information. Talk over the assignment together as well. Don’t come to me. Try to get a sense of what’s being asked of you on your own. Again, you’re seniors. You can do that.”
“But what if there’s something we really don’t understand?” Emma asked.
“You can ask me all the questions you want tomorrow, Ms. Chapman. We’ll have a discussion day for the assignment then.”
The announcement of partners was more tedious and time consuming than Dr. Thompson thought. He prepared himself for a few grumbles and protests, but instead he got utter confusion. As he called names, students wandered around the classroom aimlessly. It occurred to him that no one knew each other. How was that possible, he wondered, that students who had spent an entire academic year together in his classroom had no idea who their classmates were?
Emma sat patiently waiting for Anton to approach her and exchange information, but he never came. She turned around to see him lounging in his seat, staring straight ahead, apparently indifferent to Dr. Thompson’s instructions. Her heart dropped. She instantly considered the possibility of being stuck with a bad partner, one who would do very little to no work at all leaving her to write the entire term paper alone for which he would receive equal credit. She hated collaborative work, and feeling her face tighten, she got up from her seat to go to him.
“Jackass,” Emma muttered as she thought of Anton. A few students sitting close by turned in her direction.
“Who’s a jackass?” whispered a boy to her left.
Emma jerked up from her notebook and looked at the boy who addressed her. She didn’t recognize him and was sure she had never before spoken to him. She smiled at him sheepishly as the final bell rang. He returned a grin and hopped up from his desk to join the other students exiting the classroom. She followed behind him navigating the crowded hallway to Dr. Thompson’s class. She had a few concerns she needed to voice.
***
Dr. Thompson listened patiently as Emma finished. He was hoping to leave work right after the final bell and had just locked his desk when she came into the classroom. She spent ten minutes listing reasons why she felt it appropriate to be assigned a different partner for the term paper. He tried twice to interrupt her, but she appeared to have memorized her speech and did not leave room for so much as a nanosecond between breaths and words. It was flawless; her intonations and voice fluctuations were spot on as well, and he was tempted to ask her when she found time during the school day to write, edit, and practice her speech.
When he was certain she was finished, noting a look of premature victory on her face, he replied, “I’m sorry Emma. It’s not going to happen. The partners stay as is. And anyway, it’s just the first day. How could you already have such issues with Anton?”
Before Emma could reply, she heard the door to the classroom open.
“Forget something, Mr. Robinson?” Dr. Thompson asked, peering around Emma’s body.
She tensed up immediately.
“Maybe,” he said.
“Listen, do you have a minute?” Dr. Thompson asked.
“I guess,” he replied, sauntering up to the teacher’s desk.
He stood close to Emma, his arm brushing hers, knowing full well that it made her terribly uneasy.
“Let’s get this figured out now,” Dr. Thompson continued. “Emma is concerned about doing this paper with you.”
Emma didn’t know where to look. She couldn’t look at Dr. Thompson. She wanted to fly across the desk and claw his eyes out. She didn’t dare look at Anton. She could only imagine the thoughts going through his head, calling her any number of unmentionable names.
Anton looked at Emma with an expression of mock surprise.
“You told me you couldn’t wait to get started! You said you was so happy we was partners, that you was secretly prayin’ Dr. Thompson’d pair us up. You said you had a crush on me! Now I’m hearin’ this? Dr. Thompson, I don’t even know what to think right now. My feelin’s is so hurt.”
“Give it a rest, Anton,” Dr. Thompson said flatly. “Now, Emma is concerned that you have no plans to take this assignment seriously, and quite frankly, I’m starting to understand why. This isn’t a joke, son. This is sixty percent of your grade. So stop clowning around and figure out how the two of you are going to work together for the next six weeks. I will not change the partners. You’ve got to learn to work with people you might not necessarily want to. That’s life.”
Anton nodded while Emma didn’t move.
“And as for you, Emma,” Dr. Thompson continued. “You’re a senior. Know what I mean? It’s time to grow up and deal with it. And when I say ‘it’ I mean, well, everything.”
Emma felt the heat of humiliation on her face. There was nothing left
to say. She turned to leave the room wanting to follow behind Anton, but he waited for her to go first, opening the classroom door like a perfect gentleman.
Once they were in the deserted hallway, she finally forced herself to look at him. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words failed her.
He looked her up and down and snorted. “You nothin’ but an uptight white bitch who’s mad she gotta work with a nigga.”
The words stung, and she stood speechless as she watched him walk away.
***
“He called me a bitch,” Emma said into the phone.
“Well, you’ve got to tell Dr. Thompson. Isn’t that, like, harassment or something?” Morgan asked on the other end.
Emma sat on her bed studying the ends of her hair. She snipped the strands with a pair of scissors when she found splits in the follicles. She had her best friend on speaker phone.
“No, I can’t tell him. Didn’t you hear what I told you he said to me?” Emma replied irritated. “Apparently I need to grow up and deal with it.”
“Then go to the principal about him. He’s a teacher. He can’t talk to you like that. He’s supposed to be helping us,” Morgan answered.
“I am so not doing that, Morgan,” Emma replied. She found another split end and snipped.
“Well, what are you going to do then?” Morgan asked.
“Deal with it, I guess. But how am I going to work with someone who called me a bitch?” she asked. “I’m not a bitch, am I?”
“Girl, you are so far from a bitch. Now Alyssa, she’s a bitch. Beth? Total bitch and ugly too. But you? You’re an angel from heaven,” Morgan said sweetly.
Emma grinned. “Thank you.”
“So anyways, I gotta run. It’s family game night. Isn’t that the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard?” Morgan said.
“I don’t know. I think it sounds kind of nice,” Emma responded whose family never had game night.