Black Sheep Read Free Page B

we wanted, when we went to play basketball down Larkside because my cousin lived there. That was back in the day, before my cousin killed a man and had to
fly to Jamaica to avoid getting arrested.
    Those were the days of innocence.
    Then Trevor Dennison, who was about two years older than us, came on to the scene. Me and Marvin were only 11 when Trevor, who everyone started calling Trigger, invited us to start
‘juggling’ for him and Tony. Back then, Tony had felt that we were too young to play the game – but after Trigger gave us our first taste, even he realised that we were just as
hungry, just as primed, as any of the older boys. Then he let us get a piece of the action.
    “So, d’you boys wanna make y’selves some dough?” Trigger had asked after letting us try a bit of his joint.
    The smoke burned the back of my throat and I struggled not to cough. Marvin just took it in, nice and easy. The idea of making money sounded good, especially as Mum had been bugging about buying
me the new trainers I really wanted.
    “Yeah!” we said, our heads feeling light.
    “Here, take this.” Trigger pushed a couple of packets into our hands. “This stuff is worth at least £500, yeah? You can pay us back when you sell it.”
    “Sell it to who?” I wanted to know.
    “Eediat!” Trigger spat on the floor beside my worn black trainers. “To the mandem at school, innit! Go for the Year 11s first, yeah? I’ll come check you later, see how
you got on.”
    To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure about selling at school. I knew that others did it, but I just wasn’t sure. And Mum would bare kill me if she found out.
    “Stop dreaming, fool, and put the stuff away before someone sees you!” That was Marvin, always the practical one. “We’re gonna be rollin’ soon, blud!” he
crowed. “No more tired trainers for you! No more Primark T-shirts! We’re gonna be big men, just like Tony! And no one ain’t gonna be able to tell us
nuffin’
!”
    That’s how it started: a few bags of weed.
    Soon we were all into it. It was safe making our own money, coz none of our parents could afford to buy us the designer kicks, the crisp garmz, the stuff that made us look and feel good. And of
course, no one’s mum was gonna hand over money for cigarettes, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a spliff or something harder.
    A few years later, we all knew how to make money. We became experts, innit, with mad money-making skills. A little dope here; a nice watch stolen there, while out in the West End; a delivery, a
favour. Me and my crew had arrived. And we had a name now: RDS, short for Run Da Streetz and Tony was The Main Nigga in Charge.
    Those years changed us, man, I tell you. We became boys who ‘ran tings’: we wore red bandannas under our hoodies, and we didn’t give a damn about school or our parents or even
the police. Our parents couldn’t tell us nothin’. And we would take the fall for each other, standard.
    I think that’s when Mum really gave up on me, y’know. Before, she had always called after me as I left the house, bopping like a badman, ‘Dwayne! Come back here, boy!’
She had stayed up late to wait for me, scared every time she heard a police siren. She couldn’t sleep when I didn’t come home.
    But then she just stopped.
    “His father was the same,” she began to say all the time. “Wort’less, nuttin’ but trouble since the day he was born.”

Rising Star
    MISHA
    “Well done, darling, I knew you could do it.” I could hear the pride in Mum’s voice as she hugged me, the letter from Oak Hill still crisp in her hand.
    I smiled up at her. I still couldn’t quite believe it myself but the letter said it quite plainly:
On the strength of her mock exams and her predicted results, Oak Hill School for
Girls is pleased to offer Misha Reynolds a provisional place in its prestigious Sixth Form to study Mathematics, Physics, Biology and Chemistry. The offer will be confirmed once the final exam
results