Pool_2

loud on my break time. OK?" Mac offered to a resounding approval. He chose Shondra Smith, a very cagy and stunningly lithe beautiful 16 year old to read Jake's book. Shondra was the heart throb of half the boys, but was the special love of Lyle Woodrow. He promised to carry her to greatness on wings of love, to which she demanded, "Forget the wings, Lyle, an education and good job is what I want in a man." Lyle took her very seriously and was internally driven to become a scholar. Marcus recognized many of Lyle's readings as borrowed from Jake, who was clearly his model. Having Shondra read Jake's words seemed a smart move, all around. It turned out better than smart, because if she merely uttered "Whip out your dicks, they would all be waving hard ones," as Eunice Tyler remarked. Eunice had none of Shondra's grace nor classic beauty. Eunice made her way by being, in her words, 'easy on the boys' - in the water, under a towel, in the back grass, easy. Eunice liked Shondra, but knew she could never be her. "Justice described is justice denied," Shondra read loudly, to amens. "We came as slaves to a new land where the promise of freedom was greater and grander in bondage than our antiquity of inherited station and class. We were brought, embryonic, into this womb of freedom, this classless America, this place of promise to grow or die. Class by struggle, by power grasped, by opportunity seized." "He talkin about here?" Delvin whispered. He was just stretched skin and slim muscle in one wiry nine year old package of mischief. Shondra put her hand on his head, "He's saying that over there, you are what you're born. Maybe free, but never free of your class. Here, you may be delivered into a wretchedness of bleak hope,..." Mac was astounded by her ease in this matter, "...but you are not fixed in your station. You CAN rise above it."