Boyfriend Season Read Free Page B

insults blew through her opened bedroom window from one floor down.
    Dynasty pulled back the dull white sheer and stuck her head out into the warm sunshine.
    â€œYou better get away from here, Rufus. Or I’m gonna come down and split your head with a brick. You hear me?” she spat, teasing and almost hating that she’d ever taken time out of her life to be nice to her mentally challenged neighbor. Rufus wasn’t really handicapped; he’d just started to act like he was when she wouldn’t kiss him—which was grosser than gross since they’d been close forever, and she viewed him more like family than anything else. Well, at least I did , she thought. They’d only hung out exclusively for a couple of months—as friends—and he’d acted as if they were a couple. She shook her head. She couldn’t understand Rufus, or why he was so upset. She’d never treated him like they were together.
    â€œWhat you gonna do? Hit me with that dictionary you always reading? Come down and do it,” six-foot-five Rufus dared, his voice gruff and deep like a man twice his age. Everything about Rufus was to the second power. His height. Weight. Neediness and attitude. Ever since he’d been put on steroids for his rumored heart condition he’d vehemently denied having for months before she made him spill the truth, he’d ballooned like a jellyfish and wore his insecurity like a cape he thought was invisible. Dynasty could see it, though, because with each rejection from either neighborhood homeboys or some silly girl, it grew thicker and more apparent, and she was always the one to cheer him up.
    â€œYou better get your short-yellow-bus-riding behind away from my window, Rufus! Or I’m gonna have my brother handle you.” She stepped aside, making sure he didn’t see her, and covered her laughter. She didn’t really want to scare Rufus, but he’d been so mean lately she thought a little shaking up might do him some good. She moved back in his sight.
    Rufus looked up and met her stare with his. He flipped up his middle finger. “That’s why you ain’t never gonna get into that rich-people school you keep studying to get in. And I ain’t worried about nobody handling me. Why don’t you have your man do it? Your brother’s not—”
    â€œYou’re just jealous that I didn’t choose you, and, for your information, my brother will be home from jail this week. Wanna try me, Ruthless Rufus?” Dynasty challenged, using one of the nicknames he hated and the only thing she had to help save her from Rufus’s verbal attack—her brother King’s killer reputation. But the truth was her brother was never getting out of jail and her mother was probably never getting off of heroin and she’d probably never get a scholarship to Winchester Hills Prep, her ticket to a good college.
    â€œYeah. A’ight,” Rufus said. “But you know you dead wrong, Dynasty. I know you was messing around with J.R. last night. You kissed him . . . and some. I’m not telling you what I heard; I’m telling what he told me. That’s why you gonna die nasty and young, Dynasty Young!” he barked, then disappeared down the block.
    â€œWhatever. You’re lying. J.R. didn’t tell anything like that. Couldn’t of. And you know what else, Rufus? You make my butt itch!” she said, reaching behind her and pulling a wedgie out—something she had to do often because of the booty shorts she rocked most of the summer. “So go! Get outta here looking like a rejected remix of Biggie Smalls and Fat Albert. You just mad I didn’t want you and you couldn’t pull me, Rufus! This madness is juvenile! One minute we’re cool, the next your ’tude is popping. You keep acting like we’re not friends.” She mumbled the last sentence to his back, knowing every other word she’d said cut into