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Jamaican accent? That week, I musta got put out about forty or fifty times cause I couldn’t stop making fun of that motherfucker when he was up there trying to teach us that Catcher in the Rye shit. Now that I’m locked up, I kind of wish I woulda listened to him a lot more.
    I didn’t want to tell nobody, but I really did like that book, The Catcher in the Rye. Yeah yeah yeah, I know I told you I didn’t read it and I made you write that damn narrative essay or whatever the hell it was for me. But I did read it, matter of fact I read it twice. I was really feeling all that Man vs. Society and Man vs. Self shit that Mr. Cook was telling us Holden was going through. Like I was really identifying with the part when he fell down the steps and slipped on them peanuts or cashews or whatever the hell it was, cause I thought that meant that it was easy for you to kind of walk into stuff in life that could make you fall, that could trip you up just when you thought you couldn’t get any lower. That’s what I used to think before this shit, but now I’m like Holden Caulfield slipping on peanuts. Shit only got worse for me. I’m gonna tell you a
little secret that you can’t tell nobody and you better not show nobody this letter cause then they’ll know. But remember that part in the very end of the book, when Holden sister, I think her name was Phoebe, was on that carousel and he couldn’t stop looking at her and he started crying because he thought she looked so pretty? And then it started to rain, and he couldn’t even move because he was just so happy looking at her? I had started crying on that part, cause I was thinking about this one time that my mother had took me and Trevon all the way to Coney Island to walk on the boardwalk and ride the Ferris wheel. I had stood down at the bottom cause you could only ride two at a time and Trevon wouldn’t ride with nobody but Ma. But she looked pretty like that, with her bright red lipstick on and them big doorknocker earrings and her baseball cap. She looked like mad young and I had looked at her in a different way that day, like I could see why my daddy fell in love with her. I had wanted to write about that for my narrative essay or response or whatever that shit was called, but I guess I didn’t want to worry about the fellas laughing at me.
    Yeah, I miss that place, never thought I’d say that shit but it’s true. Most of all, I miss looking at your fine ass every day, passing notes and shit, sneaking feels in the stairway. I can’t wait to get back. I’m gonna be a different person. I mean that Natasha. If I get out of this shit, Michael Antonio Lawrence II is gonna be a new man. I made a promise to God that if he let me out then I’m gonna be the person that him and my mother would want me to be.
I promise I’m gonna do all my homework, I’m not gonna make the subs cry, I ain’t gonna crack on nobody in class, I ain’t gonna cheat off my boys work. Matter of fact, I’m gonna make them start studying. Imagine that, me and Black and some of our other cats in the library or at the crib with a book open and the TV off. I can’t wait to see that one. But I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna make it happen. I’m gonna change, cause if me and you gonna do this man and wife shit, then I gotta get my shit together. That’s on the real. I gotta go to college, get a good job, make sumthin out of myself so I can do right by you and the kids. I ain’t gonna fuck up like my daddy did. I ain’t gonna have my kids living in no projects, wearing hand-me-down shit and lying to folks over the phone cause I can’t pay my bills. I ain’t gonna drink myself silly and beat my wife and my kids cause I ain’t a man and I can’t pay my bills. I ain’t gonna fuck no young tricks in my wife bed cause I don’t have respect for her. I ain’t gonna do none of that.