Money Hungry Read Online Free PDF

says.
    I reach into my pocket and hold tight to my money. “I’m gonna have me a Lexus one day. Y’all won’t be laughing then,” I say, turning my back on them.

Ja’nae and Mai are waiting at the door for me as soon as I get inside the building. Ja’nae’s got spit on her finger. She’s telling Mai to come closer so she can use it to help lay down them wild eyebrows of hers. Mai says she better not put that stuff on her. Ja’nae wipes her finger off on her skirt. “I gotta talk to you, girl,” Ja’nae says to me. Then she tells Mai her brows look funny. Like they painted on or something.
    “What?” I say. “Tell me now.”
    “Later,” Ja’nae says, telling Mai she needs to use her own spit on them brows. Mai sticks her finger in her mouth, and traces her brows with it. She tells Ja’nae to get off her case about her eyebrows, but she keeps wiping spit on ’em till the three of us are way down the hall.
    We’re almost to Mai’s locker when Kevin calls Mai over to him. She tells him she ain’t got time to talk. That she’s going to class. Kevin says, “So?” and keeps waving Mai over his way. After Mai turns him down four times, he yells out real loud, “I don’t want no crooked-eyed half-breed—no way.” That’s when Mai stops, turns around, and stares Kevin down.
    Mai is so small that he could fold her up and put her in his pocket if he wanted. But she’s all guts, and so she drops her books and goes to him. She don’t get in his face, point her finger, or make her head go from side to side like some girls do. She’s standing straight and still. She’s talking slow and easy. “I’m black, like you,” she says.
    “Your daddy ain’t black,” Kevin says under his breath. He won’t leave it alone. “That rice walker father of yours ain’t black, and neither is you,” he says, picking up his books.
    Mai’s standing there, like she don’t know what to do. But she don’t want to defend her dad. Shoot, he’s the reason she’s always being picked on. But she don’t want to back down neither. “If you want to know what I am,” she says, “look at my nose and my hair, and my skin. Not my mixed-up mom and pops.”
    Kevin starts to walk away. But he stops a minute to mouth off one more time. “I seen your parents. That’s why I know what you ain’t , no matter what you say you is .”
    Kids are standing around laughing. Me and Ja’nae stick up for Mai, letting cabbage head Kevin know that he ain’t God, and he ain’t got the right to say who’s what.
    Mai is picking up her stuff, holding back tears. Kevin is about to start up again. But Ja’nae says something that ends the whole thing. “Kevin, wasn’t the police at your house last week ’cause your mom and dad was fighting on the porch again?” she says, grabbing hold of Mai’s arm and pushing her up the hall.
    Everybody starts laughing good now. Kevin’s trying to say she’s lying, making stuff up, which she is. But Mai is our girl. And we ain’t gonna let him keep roughing her up with his words.
    “You three dingdongs think you smart,” Kevin says, acting like he wants to come mess with us some more.
    “We know we smart,” I yell, turning around and making a face at him.
    “Hey, Kevin, here’s something for your stinking feet,” Ja’nae says, throwing one of her cotton balls at him. Then we start running, and we don’t stop, even when the principal yells after us to walk like we got good sense.
    The four of us ain’t in every class together. Just a few. Today Miss Brittle, our math teacher, has to tell us three times to be quiet. We’re trying to tell Zora what happened with Kevin. Every time we try, one of us busts out laughing. “Ja’nae, you shut him down good, girl. Shut him down,” I say, leaning over to give her five. Mai gives me this funny, fake smile. She knows, like we know, that Kevin’s gonna come back saying something else ’bout her. And even if he don’t, other kids will. They always