The Chaos Read Free Page A

(I had a thing for hands), and he walked with a swing in his step that he hadn’t had before. He was the first boy I ever necked with, no matter what Nancy Poretta at LeBrun had said. Michel had wanted to date me. We did for a while, until I’d figured out that that first taste of Michel had only made me even more curious about other boys. Me and Glory and some of the other girls talked about it all the time. How would it be to sit on chubby Walter Herron’s strong, sturdy lap? How would the plumpness of his skin feel under my hands? What did Sanjay Harsha’s breath taste like? What would it feel like to run my hands through his hair? Ever since then, I’d been exploring. I wasn’t the only one, either. Finally, I was normal. My parents would completely lose it if they ever found out. They wanted me to be good little Sojourner Smith, who always did her homeworkand came home on time and who was all meek and shit. They wouldn’t like to find out that their daughter’s school friends called her Scotch Bonnet, the name of a super hot Jamaican pepper, because her moves on her dance team were so hot. My folks wanted me to be safe. They didn’t really understand what I’d learned at LeBrun High; being good didn’t make me safe. Being popular kinda did, sometimes.
    But I didn’t tell Ben any of that. Instead I said, “I am sad that Taf and I broke up. Way sad. I think about him every day. But this . . . thing that I do—”
    “Thrill of the hunt?” Ben said doubtfully. That’s how I’d described it to him once. It had sort of been a joke. Only sort of not.
    I smiled. “Yeah, that. I couldn’t do it while I was dating Tafari, and I gotta be honest with you; I really wanted to.”
    Ben drew back. “You’re joking, right? You had one of the hottest guys in school, and your eyes were wandering?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Ben made a titch sound. “Well, I guess Mr. Liliefeldt just wasn’t doing his job right.”
    “Oh, he was.” I got that sick, lurching feeling in my tummy that I got when I thought about me and Tafari, broken up. “I miss him so much.”
    He shook his head with an unbelieving smile. “Not hating on you, girl. Just not understanding you. I mean, if a guy’s hot, I can totally understand you wanting to get with him. But Jimmy Tidwell?”
    The bell rang. Last period. Glory glanced briefly my way, no expression on her face, before heading inside with her friends. Ben stood with a sigh, brushed the seat of his jeans off. “History class. Oh, yay.”
    “Hey! I like history!” I followed him in as we argued aboutwhether we were going to ever need history again once we’d graduated. Me, I had geography. I said to Ben, “Come and see me in the gym after dance practice, okay? You gonna be around?”
    “You know it. Can’t miss our Friday afternoon ritual. Be nice if Glory could be part of it again.”
    I snapped, “Over my dead body.”
    “Okay, okay. Just saying.”

CHAPTER TWO
    So I jumped in too early again, which meant that Jarmilah swept my legs out from under me again, which meant that I tripped her when I stumbled. Again. And we both fell heavily to the school’s gym floor. Over the music, I couldn’t hear the sound of Jarmilah’s breath escaping on impact, but if the thud of landing had been as bad for her as it had been for me, she probably hated me. Hell, I hated me right now. Gloria was probably gloating to see me make another mistake.
    A few of the others on our after-school dance team saw what had happened and stopped dancing. The rest kept on going, doggedly. Only five days to the dance-off, and we still didn’t quite have that section of our routine down. And I was the one who kept messing us up.
    Gloria ran over to the boom box and stopped the music. She was yelling before she even turned around; “God damn it, Scotch, you jump in on the one, not on ‘and one’! How many times I have to tell you?”
    “I know, I know!” I yelled back. “On the one. I know.” Christ, she’d