Don't Be Disrespecting Me

Free Thinker

On the bus ride home , E wondered what Ona and her family did on weekends. On Mondays , she always seemed to have on some new outfit or a new piece of jewelry. E always looked the same : jeans , run-over sneakers , and a coat with sleeves much too short .

"That's How it is when you got eight brothers and sisters ," he once told a boy after he'd cracked on the hole on his shirt. Two days later , E stole some jeans off a clothesline in the backyard near his school . Now every year before school started , he stole one pair of jeans. Even so , kids still teased him about his clothes . But not Ona . She never seemed to notice . E never told his boys , but he dreamed about that girl at night . The dreams always ended the same , too --  with Ona and him kissing and holding each other tight.

Ona knew better than to be making eyes at a boy like E .

" Dirt Poor ," her friends called him behind his back .

But Ona liked him anyway . Figured you could always make a nice person look like something . But a no-class knucklehead like Noodles is gonna be just that , no matter how much you dress him up , she thought .