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Most people think the three of us are friends, since we’re almost always seen together. But we’re not friends. Our relationship is a transaction. I need a close, attractive circle. Small, because the smaller your group, the less people know about you—and the more they want to know. And, in return, Ava and Ruby like how powerful the three of us are together.
Hello, Niveus High. It’s me. Who am I? That’s not important. All you need to know is … I’m here to divide and conquer. Like all great tyrants do.—Aces
Note to self: Don’t delete numbers of the people you hate. They might come in handy someday.
He presses his head against mine, digging into my skull, but I don’t care. I grab him and he kisses me, long and deep, and I cry, tears tickling my chin as they leak down my face. I hold him and we kiss and kiss until he’s pushing away and shouting. “Get out.” He shakes his head, moving back a little. “Get the fuck out!” he yells, wiping his face roughly.
:(
When you grow up like this, whether it’s in your nature or not, sometimes survival overpowers doing the right thing.
It makes me wonder if my resemblance to my mother has anything to do with this—with Aces. Whether Devon and his Blackness and myself and mine are the reason this creep is picking on us. I feel sick at the thought of it.
“That’s wild,” I say. “Yeah, it is. I think anyone can be nice, but it’s not about being nice. You can’t escape a history like that and not be affected. Us Blacks, we start hating ourselves, and them whites start thinking they’re all better than us. Even if they aren’t thinking it constantly, it’s in there somewhere.”
Aces is about race, and someone powerful at the school has made it their mission to create a group to get rid of me and Devon. And they’re winning.
Problem. No matter what I do, no matter how much I iron down the hair that springs from my scalp, or work as hard as I can, I’m always going to be other to them. Not good enough for this place I’ve tried to call home all my life.
This world isn’t ideal. This world, our world, the one with houses as crooked as the people in them. Broken people, broken by the way the world works. No jobs, no money; sell drugs, get money. That’s what this world is, that’s how it works.
I hate that these systems, all this institutional shit, can get to me. I hate how they have the power to kill my future, kill me. They treat my Black skin like a gun or a grenade or a knife that is dangerous and lethal, when really it’s them. The guys at the top powering everything.
