Priceless Inspirations Read Online Free PDF Page B

could have gotten bored with me and left me there, stranded. He could have gotten mad at me and dumped me somewhere with no money and no way to get home.
    At the time, I wasn’t worried. Dream always took care of me, and he had promised to pay for everything. He was proving himself to be everything I’d ever wanted in a man-kind and caring, charming and sweet, thoughtful and loving, ambitious and outgoing. He was young, only 15, but so was I. I believed in my heart he was the one for me. I believed that at last, I’d met a real man. I believed it so completely that I didn’t care that when I got back from Houston, my aunt had called the police on me.
    She found out when she caught me in a lie. I had told her that I was spending the night at my cousin Demetria’s house, but then she called over there and Demetria’s mom told her that we were in Houston. She didn’t know I’d told my aunt that lie. Demetria’s mom really thought my aunt knew where I was.
    When I got home I was busted. The whole neighborhood was standing in front of my house, along with the police. Aunt Lisa had called them to get them tell me not to ever leave town without my guardian’s permission again.
    It was a big mess. I was angry with Aunt Lisa. I didn’t feel like all that was necessary, but now I understand. If my daughter did that to me, I’d be sick with worry.
    I didn’t see it that way when I did it. All that mattered to me was being with Dream. We were young and we both changed as we grew older. Now, we’re just good, good friends. The sweetness, the gentleness and the kindness that Dream showed me gave me a new model for what I wanted and needed from a man.
    Toya’s Priceless Gem: A real man can be any age. He’s the one who listens to you, encourages you and doesn’t pressure you .
    The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
    Because of who Dream was and how fast his career caught fire, there were lots of girls-girls who liked him, girls he liked back, girls who wanted to have sex with him, girls who he had sex with. In high school, I used to get into fights over this, sometimes really serious ones.
    It was a mistake.
    I can’t say you should never fight. You can’t let people punk you, and sometimes fighting is the only way to defend yourself. If someone puts their hands on you, then you have to defend yourself. My attitude made it worse. Instead of avoiding battles with these girls, unless someone actually put their hands on me, my attitude was the opposite. If some girl starting talking about fighting me, I’d be like, “Okay, bring it.”
    I entertained those girls, and of course, that was all the encouragement they needed.
    Once, I got suspended from high school for a whole year after a fight with a girl who was nearly a foot taller than me and at least fifty pounds heavier.
    It started over some words this girl had written about me in the restroom--“whore” and “dick sucker” and other really nasty stuff. I knew she’d done it because I heard her talking about what she’d written while I was in the stall. When I came out of the bathroom to where Dream and Keith were waiting for me in the hallway, I said something about her and what she’d written. Loud. Loud enough for the girl to hear.
    “What did you say?” the girl said.
    I repeated myself, with attitude. I knew where this was going to lead, but I wasn’t backing down.
    I said, “I don’t appreciate you and your girl writing that stuff about me!” She rolled her neck at me. “And what you going to do about it?”
    I hit her.
    Her girl jumped in it, then my friend got in it, then my cousin joined in. It turned into a brawl right there in the hallway before the teachers and the security people at the school broke it up. I came out of it with a black eye, welts and scratches all over my face.
    Keith and Dream just stood there. Neither one of them tried to break it up. They didn’t try to stop it from happening. Why should they? They thought it was funny.