ODDS OF LOVE

Episode Four

                    Spencer: The Past

Fifteen year old Spencer hated this ridiculous prep school his mother insisted he attend. His great grandfather Reginald Van Buren had attended it. His grandfather Gordon Van Buren had attended it. His mother and Aunt Samantha had attended it. His siblings attended it. And so was he.

Richard, his brother, was seventeen and a senior. Lorraine, his sister, was thirteen and in the middle school division. They both pretended he didn't exist in their universe. The teachers all hated him because in classes he pointed out their flaws and mistakes. It was not his fault if he corrected his Math teacher Mr. Sykes when he was deliberately showing them the wrong way to solve an equation was it ? The man had no right to yell at him the way he did in front of the whole classroom of snickering students including Jonah Farnsworth the Third. It was bad enough he had embarrassed himself in front of Jonah already in gym class. He was naturally clumsy and had fallen against the taller more muscled boy. Yes he had leaned in more than he should have before he steadied himself. Yes his lower extremities had betrayed him. But that was no reason for Jonah to shove him so hard he fell back onto the hard wood floor. He called Spencer a pansy and a homosexual. He told him to keep his hands to himself or he would kick his ass.

Spencer wasn't a homosexual. He didn't think he was. He didn't look at girls the way the other boys did. The way Richard looked at his regular rotation of pretty well bred girlfriends. That was because his studies came first. Besides the Prep School girls were all idiots. They didn't stimulate his mind. So were the boys for that matter. It didn't make him a homosexual. Did it?

What were the odds? , his mind pondered as he opened his locker swiftly.

The bright red word that had been spray painted on the inside of his locker door nearly screamed at him with the intensity of a sucker punch.

FAG.

Spencer closed his eyes and tried to drown out the loud snickers and smirks and laughs of his classmates. He wanted to go home and lock himself in his bathroom. He wanted to punch himself in his body just to feel pain. Just to feel like he was in control of something. Anything.

He wanted to go to sleep and die.

                  ----------

          DuBuis : The Past

Fifteen year old DuBuis Lane loved school. That was not something he ran around bragging about though. None of the other Project W boys that he ran with were down with no learning. Most either dropped out or were kicked out by the principal as soon as their sweet sixteen cake candles flickered. Then they were recruited by Uncle Panther who was running the drug business by himself since Uncle Eddie had been shot and killed by his long time girlfriend Mirelle after she found him in bed with her mother. The only ones who wanted to stay in school were the ones just there to get that paper to secure a JOB after graduation.

Like the White boys across the hall. Mark and Scout Mullins who lived with their crackhead mama Bev Mullins who supplemented her welfare check money with money from Uncle Panther's more sexual enterprise. Any money she got she used for drugs. That was why the Mullins brothers were always at his apartment eating. Everyone in the project knew his Mama never let anyone go hungry. She didn't make much from her job as a maid for a rich family in Montgomery County Maryland but she would share with anyone in need and she gave regular to the church.

Mama was a good woman, he thought as he forced himself to focus once more on the old battered math textbook that reclined on the scratched wooden kitchen table. He loved learning and all but he had to work hard for his grades. Especially in math. Math was his weakness. None of his boys understood why he studied so hard. They said he could just go to college on a b ball  scholarship. Hell they couldn't get why he was even trying to break out of Project W into the whitewashed world outside it. Nobody understood but Mama did. She had big plans for her children. She wanted them all educated. She wanted them all to escape from the enormous sprawling red brick housing complex that smelled of urine, cabbage, weed and depression. She wanted him to be a doctor. She wanted the girls to be teachers. She wanted a big yard with a garden she could wile away lazy hours in. And she knew just how to get the life she wanted.

His lips tightened.

She invited the how over last night. To meet them all. She made them wash up good and put on their good Sunday clothes. She scrubbed the apartment so hard it reeked of lemon cleaner. Auntie Vera had released her hair from it's usual braids and relaxed it into a stiff straight bob around her oval cinnamon brown face that just barely showed her age. She took Pop's picture off the living room coffee table. The one of them hugging and kissing on their wedding day. She hid it in the China cabinet. Because of the man.

Mr. Sam Johnson. A fat ass light brown man in a tight suit with a too cheerful smile that stretched his plain jowly face. Mr. Johnson, Mama chortled proudly as she set a double helping of spare ribs, mac and cheese and collard greens before the man the girls eyed curiously and he secretly called Santa Fats , worked as a supervisor at the post office. He was on a talking basic with the postmaster general and owned not only a new Cadillac car but a beautiful five bedroom house in Largo , Maryland which everyone knew was in predominantly Black and wealthy Prince George's County. His Mama wanted to live in PG.

Santa Fats gave them a big box of imported chocolate. The girls ate them greedily and he ignored it.

Santa Fats told them stories about Disneyland and his son Sam Jr. who was a senior in highschool and a star football player who had his eyes on Harvard. He said he was going to take them all to Disney World.

Santa Fats wanted to marry her.

DuBuis slammed the book he was holding closed sharply.

He didn't need a father.

He was the man of the house. He had been since he was nine.

Reaching into his backpack, he pulled out the picture of his parents he had taken from where his mother had banished it. He traced the features of the man he could just barely remember anymore.

He was good at it too. Better than Pop. He would never just up and leave his family. Like Pop had.