Summer Schooled

1: Ayla

        Summer school. The last place I thought I'd be spending the summer between junior and senior year. This was supposed to be my last hoorah before having to prepare for college next summer. As much as I wanted to blame everything around me for the reason I was stuck in the halls of my school, I knew it was all on me.

        In the middle of the school year, some family drama had pulled me away from school for almost a month. My grandfather on my mom's side had passed away and there were some problems surrounding his will. He lived in California, while my family lived in New York City and the rest of my aunts and uncles flew to Cali from around the country. The death of my grandfather was enough pain, but my family's bickering only made it worse.

        My mom was the second oldest after my uncle Craig, who lived in Seattle. Younger than my mom was my aunt Yvette, who came in from Atlanta, and the youngest, Gina, who lived in California with my grandfather. The fact that I only saw my family when something bad happened was tough enough, but when the will was read, all hell broke loose.

        Uncle Craig and my mom seemed okay with the way my grandfather's assets were split, but Yvette and Gina felt otherwise. Aunt Gina was upset and felt she deserved more for taking care of her father while the other siblings moved away and continued their lives. My grandfather had split the money pretty evenly, but left some of it unaccounted for and aunt Yvette wanted to claim it all for herself since she was the most business savvy of the siblings and handled most of his expenses. 

        Long story short, I missed almost a month of school becasue of my family's arguing over who got how much money that was leftover from my deceased grandfather. The arguments even put myself and my brother at odds with my cousins becasue of our parents. I had left school with no warning and missed a crapload of work and when I came back, my English teacher didn't come to me with any makeup work,  so I thought I was home free. That was until the end of the year when I realized she had left all the grades in the marking period I missed as 0's and I was left with not enough credit for the school year. My only choice was to take the English class over the summer. Talk about a summer bummer.

        The first day of summer school I realized that I would be almost completely out of place. The majority of the kids enrolled were the usual school scum that could care less about their grades and had slacked off all year. However, there were a few kids who had barely gotten in becasue they had only failed one class. That was my case. I didn't have enough credits, so I was forced to sit in a class with God knows who from 7:30 in the morning until 12:30 in the afternoon. 

        The first day was the worst day. No one wanted to be there, even the teacher seemed more than unenthusiastic about having the summer gig. For the junior English class, there was a good amount of studetns in there, but less than I expected. Who fails English? I looked around the room and saw I was surronded by the lowest of the low. I technically hadn't failed becasue I was dumb, I only lost credit because I missed school. There was a thick line between why I was there and why some of the other students were there.

        One of the kids was someone I had heard about around school. I only knew him by his street name, O Dog, or O for short. I wasn't even sure if his real named started with an O. He was a tall, brownskin boy who was undeniably fine, but nothing but trouble. He had strong cheek bones and dark brown eyes that you could get lost in if you stared too long, but he had a constant scowl on his face.  He was known for fighting and usually winning, and you could tell he was not one to be messed with by his muscular chocolate arms and solid chest and abs that I had seen occasioanlly when he played street ball around the corner from my house. No matter how handsome he might've looked, O Dog was a bad kid and would probably never get very far at the rate he was going. I heard he had to make up almost all of his classes except gym.

        "Welcome students," our teacher said dryly, "to summer school. I'm sure you're all here for various resaons, but no one is here to judge. We're all here to learn."

Yeah, ok. I just need the credits back, I'm not an idiot.

"First I'm going to take attendance. Omari Anderson?"

O Dog was slouched in his seat but put his hand up. "Just call me O."

"Ok 'O'." The teacher tried to joke, but O Dog wasn't having it from lack of reaction.

"Alright...I'll just continue." He kept reading off names and then got to mine.

"Ayla Mitchell." The teacher raised his eyebrows, suggesting he was just as shocked as I was to be in the classroom. O Dog, or better yet, Omari, turned around when my name was called. He eyed me for a moment and then turned back around in his chair. O Dog honestly scared the hell out of me and I was hoping he never turned around again. After attendance, the teacher went on to teach for an hour and a half before our first break. It was only 15 minutes long, but was an escape for the snooze fest going on in the classroom. I had been the only one answering any questions while the rest of my classmates either dozed off, didn't know the answer, or flat out paid no attention to our instructor.

        I made my way to the snack table that was set up for us and pulled out a couple dollars to buy some chips. While I had my head down counting money, I felt a large shadow appear beside me and looked up to see it was O Dog. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of change and started counting it out on the table. I had already purchased my chips, but noticed he looked a little short on change.

"Damn!" O Dog started to pick up his coins off the table, but before I knew it I found myself speaking to him.

"How much do you need?" I didn't know O Dog at all, and was a little afraid of him, but I always found myself doing something nice for people, no matter who they were.

"What?" He said and looked up like he hadn't even realized I was there.

"If you don't have enough, I can lend you a dollar."

O Dog shook his head. "No, no. It's fine." But the growl that emerged from his stomach proved it wasn't really fine. I handed the woman at the snack table another dollar for a chip bag and gave it to him. 

"Here. It's not a big deal." I found myself starting to smile, but I didn't know why.

"Uh, thanks." O Dog took the bag and opened it immediately. "I owe you a dollar."

"No, it's fine. It's just a dollar, I'm not worried about it." 

"Nah, if it was me, I'd want my dollar back. I'll get it to you." He insisted. His eyes looked to me, then away as if he had something to say but didn't know how to word it. I simply nodded and started to walk away, and he stood there, probably watching me. I wasn't sure why I had just purchased a bag of chips for the local thug, but it felt...right. The only thing I was worried about was him thinking this was the start of any type of friendship between us. He hadn't formally thanked me, but him promising to return my dollar was his way of doing it. The way he looked at me right before I walked away showed some type of emotion I thought I'd never see in eyes as stoic as his, as if he wanted to actually talk to me.

But who was I kidding? Me? Friends with Omari "O Dog" Anderson? Not in a million years.

 Note: Ayla in the media