Choosing Sides Read Free Page A

real motivation behind his extreme performance that night. After every basket he scored, he pointed to her in the stands.
    â€œGirl, he’s pointing at you.” Nikki bumped Halleigh’s shoulder as she sat there in the stands right next to her.
    Halleigh cheered loudly throughout the game and admired her man as he brought the packed crowd to their feet time and time again. With every point he scored she thought, I’m really about to give it up now. He’s working hard for this. She almost felt honored that her high school would have her to thank if they won tonight’s game. A tremor of exhilaration mixed with fear frissoned up her back.
    By the last few seconds of the game, Malek had managed 47 points and 15 assists, and his team had a 10-point lead. During his final moments on the floor, he simply dribbled the ball, showing off his handling skills as the crowd began to chant his name in unison. Malek scanned the crowd until his eyes met Halleigh’s, and then he smiled at her as the final buzzer sounded off. The crowd went absolutely crazy as they rushed the floor.
    Halleigh eventually made her way down to the court, and Malek made a beeline over to her, bypassing all of the flocking reporters. Once he reached her, he picked her up and hugged her tightly, kissing her as he celebrated his team’s championship victory.
    â€œI love you,” she whispered in his ear.
    â€œI know,” he said. “And I can’t wait for you to show me just how much.” Then he quickly ran back onto the floor to hoop and holler with his team.

Chapter Two
    A fter the game, Halleigh leaned on Malek’s beat-up Ford Tempo and waited patiently for him to exit the school.
    One dude yelled, “Hal, tell Malek I said good game!”
    â€œYeah, he did his thang out there!” a girl added.
    Halleigh smiled. “Yeah, he gon’ be feeling thick tonight.” She had to admit that Malek did play a good game. She was proud of him for everything that he was accomplishing and felt blessed to know that he’d chosen her to share his future with.

    On the outside, Halleigh Walters looked like a regular, carefree teenager without a worry in the world, but on the inside, she had come up in a harsh environment. Growing up in a single-parent household, it had always been hard for her mother, Sharina, to take care and provide for her. Sharina had never had a real relationship with Halleigh’s father, who never played a role in his daughter’s life, so the sole support for Halleigh fell on her mother’s shoulders.
    In Halleigh’s early years, Sharina had worked as a line worker at the General Motors plants. Many people say that shop jobs aren’t meant for women because of the strenuous labor that comes with it, but Sharina did what she had to do to make ends meet. Making pretty decent money, she took care of Halleigh, and although her long work hours left Halleigh alone most of the time, they never needed for anything.
    Unfortunately, Sharina had become another casualty of economics and was one of thousands to lose her job, when the hiring of cheap, overseas labor took its toll and General Motors decided to downsize their plants. General Motors was the livelihood of Flint, so the loss of these jobs hit everybody hard. If you worked in the shop, you lived a middle-class lifestyle. But for Halleigh, it seemed to have hit her mother the hardest.
    Out of work, and depressed because she wasn’t having any luck finding another job, Halleigh’s mother fell victim to her circumstance, and ended up turning to drugs as her daughter sat by helplessly and watched. A strong drug habit quickly formed, and Sharina became addicted to heroin, which affected Halleigh’s entire outlook on life.
    Once unemployment and government assistance would no longer do the trick, instead of turning tricks herself, Sharina started boosting clothes, not to feed her daughter, but to feed her habit instead.