Chapter 1: A Day in the Life…
New Orleans has been through a lot ever since Hurricane Katrina. The city has pretty much been abandoned. My family evacuated, but we lost almost everything. Yeah, we moved back, but we had to make more than 10 loans from the bank in order to pay the rent for our apartment. My dad is working two jobs, and my mom will sell anything just to get some money into our wallet, so we can pay off our debt to the bank. School didn't start until the next year for us. I was in seventh grade when all that happened. Being in eighth grade now, I have a lot more responsibilities. I have a part-time job at the local thrift store, close to the Winn-Dixie. I walk to school and to work, which takes me about 1 hour to get to school and 20 minutes to get to my job. Here is an average day in my life.
I walked out the door with my Nike Air Force 1s on. As I strolled down the sidewalk, a bunch of gangsters came up to me asking me for money. I told their gang leader that I don't have anything to give them, but he kept denying it. I thought about fighting, but I started to run. My dad always told me not to fight to solve a problem, but I knew that someday in these streets, I would have to use fighting to my advantage.
Finally, I got to school and met up with my friends: Million, Jay, and Q.
"Waz up, T?" Q asked. Q was always using his hood slang around us. Luckily, we all came from the same part of the hood; otherwise, we would probably end up being gang rivals. Gangs are groups of people that hang out with each other and do whatever they are known for. We aren't part of a gang though. All we do is call ourselves the "Champs" and stick with it. None of us have been to jail before, but Q's brother was close one time. It was a "wrong place, wrong time" situation. He was hanging out by the Shell station, when a gang, named the "Pythons," drove by in their new 2008 Cadillac Escalade. The gangster started shooting their guns at him, but the idiots didn't know that there were police cars stationed all around the gas station. Q's brother was so relieved that the government finally was on "our side." I don't know what he meant by that, but he sure was happy when he said it.
Million is …unique, if I can put it like that. He's a Halfling. This means that his parents aren't the same race. His mom is white and his dad is pure black. Lots of kids in our school don't accept Halflings because they think that their weird, but we're a weird bunch. Million has no hood slang in him at all, but he can definitely keep his ego up. He's so tall and muscular that he makes all the football jocks shudder in fear.
Jay, on the other hand, is from Houston. His parents moved here two years ago. He's not such a strong guy, but all the girls fall for him. He's just as tall as Million, but he doesn't have all the muscle that Million has. Some of the girls around here call him "Dark Chocolate," but there isn't anything dark about him! He's an urban white kid that doesn't have the same stereotypical personality as the white kids that you see on TV.
TO BE CONTINUED…………………………………………………………………………….
(sorry about some grammar and spelling mistakes)