"I love you all more than I love myself."

Jahseh as Jahseh

"Aye nigga that's fruity as fuck...but can you do that again?"

Stokeley as Stokeley

"On devil, bitch on devil...on devil."

Symere as Symere

"70 nigguh."

Gazzy as Gazzy

"I have drugs. All the drugs in the world you MIGHT need."

Kimetrius as Kimetrius

"I sold my soul to the devil because I want unlimited poptarts..don't judge me."

Jared as Jared

"Kimetrius?"

"Here."

"Omar?"

"Present."

"Jared?"

"Here."

"Gazzy?"

"Eskeetiit."

"Symere?"

.....

"Symere? Symere Woods?"

"I'm here, bruh damn...on devil this teacher annoying as hell."

"Stokeley?"

"I'm here."

The teacher goes through more names and everyone seems to be present, except for one.

"X?..."

.....

"Aye it's that one nigga.. the new kid?" Omar leans over to me whispering. "He's new? I didn't know there was a new kid." Omar nods "He got face tatts, black hair. He's one short, petite ass nigga." He says twisting his hair and leaning back over to his desk. "When did he get here?" "Rumors spread he was in jail, and that he would've been transferring here about a week ago." Omar says pulling out his phone and headphones. "Guess the nigga got caught with the feds again, or.. he don't wanna come." He puts his headphones in and puts his head down.

"I guess there isn't an 'X' today...is X even his real name.." As soon as the teacher said that, the door opened. Making it go quiet. It was..X. I knew because that's how Omar described him. He looked beat up and had a bunch of scratches on his face. He had a black jacket with a black shirt and some black shorts. He had one scratch near his face tattoo: Numb.

"Edgy ass nigga." I said to myself eyeing him.

"You must be X! It's good to see you." Our teacher says happily. This will be your homeroom, you can go sit wherever you want to..since it's your first day here, can you say a few things about yourself?"

Jesus. This nigga always wanna know shit about people. He made me do this shit when I first came up in here. He made ALL of us do this shit.

"No..I cannot." X says. He has a low raspy tone to his voice. He adjusts his backpack which is really out of shape. "Come on! You just got here. We'd love to hear something about you." Mr. Tesfaye says again in a happy tone. Jahseh sighs and turns to the class.. looking over everyone for a second, then looking me; which gave me chills.

"Hello, I'm X. I'd rather be referred to as X and nothing else.."

He says looking down. I could tell some people were zoning out, or playing on their phone. Omar was listening to music and most likely sleeping like he always does.

"Tell us more! Like your favorite color, or your age, or what you want to be when you're older!"

Is this fucking kindergarten, Tesfaye? This man really should just teach an elementary class other than a sophomore class.

X looks annoyed but he has a straight face the whole time. He sighs and continues.

"My favorite color is..black. I'm 15 years old." He says. "What do you want to be when you're older?"

"Free." X says walking to the back of the room. "Yo man..on devil if this dude come at me with all that.." Symere says chuckling. He passed by my desk, his scent trailing behind him. He smelled really nice and well taken cared of. He went and sat in the back of the room, put his hood over his head and put his head down.

I usually sit with Omar and Gazzy, sometimes with Symere and Kim but then niggas be on some weird shit. Kimetrius be selling drugs after school because his dads a drug dealer and he makes runs for him when he can't, and Symere...is just..Symere. On that devil shit. I don't know how I've been friends with those dudes for all these years. I always warn Kim that's he's gonna get hurt or caught selling drugs like crack and heroin. He does it himself too, but he always says that he'll be fine and the needle is "clean." He tried to make me do it once and it was chaos. Kim is a good man but lives by bad habits. Symere needs to go to church. Jared is a goodie two shoes and he tutors niggas during lunch.

At lunch with Gazzy and he's ranting to Omar about how 3rd period is ass, and how much work he's given..Gazzy failed his classes and is redoing everything..he doesn't try. Or he's just a dumb or something. I can already tell college will not be an option for Gazzy.

I look over to see someone sitting alone. It's X or whatever. What does that mean anyway?

He's sitting alone. He has no lunch or notebook or anything. He has his headphones in and is just staring into space.

"He looks lonely." I say; Gazzy and Omar looking into the direction I am looking. "Aye nigga go get you some." Omar teases, Gazzy laughing along with him. I roll my eyes and get up, "I'm not with all that fruitiness." I hesitate a little and look back. "Are y'all coming?" I ask. "I'll come with you, Stoke." Gazzy says getting up and getting his food. Omar rolls his eyes and does the same. We walk over to the table slowly. I was low key scared because what if he makes a scene and there's a fight? Or yells at us? Or he kills us? Yeah I'm crazy for thinking that.

We make it and go to sit in front of him. He seems startled a little when he looks up at us. He takes his headphones out, confused. "Hey, uh..X was it?" I say nervously. He has long eyelashes and honey brown eyes. They were high key cute as hell and I ain't never seen a girl with cuter eyes...no homo.

He nods yes and looks down. "I'm Stokeley..that's Omar and Gazzy." I introduced, and them waving at him. X smiles a little bit, taking his headphones all the way off. "You aren't eating?" Gazzy asks. X shakes his head no, "Nah..." he says. Gazzy takes his sandwich that had been cut in half, put it in a napkin and placing it in front of X. "We're here for like 100 hours, you gotta eat something." He says in a happy suggestive tone. Gazzy has always been the one to be helpful and kind to people. He is a small dude but has a big heart, that's one of the reasons I'm friends with that kid.

"No, you don't have to-" "Nah, man. It's all good." Omar cuts in giving up his carton of milk. Since they were going that, I gave him my whole tray. I wasn't going to eat this bullshit food anyway but I didn't want to waste it. "T-thank you guys." X says quietly.

Over the past few weeks X was there, Symere and Kim got to meet him. We took him into our little fucked up group because he deserves to have someone to go through this hell hole with, as to why we have Symere as our friend. Saying X all the time was kind of weird but I called him it anyway, I wanted to ask him his real name but I was too scared to. Jared met him on his own. We planned on introducing him but it's good that he got to that himself.

X's attendance started getting better and grades. He started to smile more and talk more and crack jokes. He's actually a pretty cool dude, and is pretty nice and all the rumors about him going to jail; I am starting to doubt hard. I wanted to ask him, but I don't know if he really wanted to touch on that. We grew really close over the next couple months.

End of the sophomore, into junior year.. Gazzy SOMEHOW made it. Symere, Omar, Kim...Jared of course....But X.

X, I never saw again. Not in the beginning, middle or near the end. All of us wondered if he moved but dismissed it because he would've told us.

I Kinda did miss X. He was a good kid, and I'm glad that I had the idea of going over to him and talking to him. Senior year came by and we forgot about X. Some things reminded us about him but we just convinced ourselves that he moved on short notice.

—————————————————————-

What y'all think about this chapter? Leave it or keep it. I wanna hear feedback! ❤️