First Semester Read Online Free

down there, or who you’ll be doing it with. I’m cool.”
    â€œ You’re cool? What’s that s’posed to mean?”
    â€œIt means I’m not trying to hold you back. And I’m not trying to be hurt in the end. So you do your thing out there, I’ll do my thing out here at Oakland State and if it’s meant for us to be together, then I guess we’ll see. But for now, I think it’s best we just go our separate ways.”

    Keisha didn’t come with me to the airport. In fact, I hadn’t talked to her since she broke up with me three days ago. After calling her and leaving messages for two days straight, I finally just gave up. Once it sank in that I would be moving to Atlanta and she would be going to Oakland State University, closer to home, she thought I would be moving on with my life—without her.
    No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t understand how she could possibly break up with me just because I decided to do something positive with my life. But the more Todd told me about all of the fine-ass girls he’d seen on campus when he went on the Black College Tour, the better being single in Atlanta sounded. Still, I wish I could’ve seen her before I left.
    It’s hard to explain the emotions going through my head as I boarded the airplane to Atlanta. I knew that I wanted to get away from Oakland to see what the rest of the world had to offer, but a part of me wanted to stay.
    Aside from thinking about whether or not Keisha would find someone else and move on with her life, I thought about living without Todd for the first time. We’d gone to school together since second grade. When I needed to cheat on a test, he slid me his notes. When I needed the low-down dirty scoop on a chick I’d met, he was the first one I’d call. He even helped me make our high school football team by intentionally missing a pass in tryouts, just so I could look good making an interception. He was the closest thing I had to a brother, and I’d never gone more than a few weeks without kicking it with him. Starting college without him would be weird.
    I thought about T-Spoon’s baby mama screaming at the grave site, when they lowered his casket into the ground. I thought about how his son would grow up fatherless, like I did. I thought about staying, and getting revenge.
    I thought about the look on my little sister Robyn’s face when the airport security guard told her she couldn’t escort our mom and me all the way to the gate. My cheeks were still wet from all the tears that poured down her face as she kissed me goodbye. She was only sixteen, but she was beautiful. Her caramel complexion, pretty smile and shoulder-length hair were enough to spark any high schooler’s hormones. But to make matters worse, she had the body of a grown woman. The guys in my hood couldn’t care less if she was still in high school—they were scavengers. Who would look out for her now? Would some of my so-called homies try her now that they knew I was away at school?
    My mind told me to return my ticket and get my money back, but my legs wouldn’t correspond. Plus, my ticket was nonrefundable. The one-way, standby ticket I copped from AirTran was only fifty-five dollars. As I stood in line behind a white guy who was wearing a pair of slacks, a dress shirt and a pair of loafers, holding a book entitled Rich Dad, Poor Dad in one hand, and his laptop shoulder bag with Georgia Tech embroidered on the side with the other, I thought that maybe I was in a little over my head. The guy couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than me, but I figured if he was a college student, there was no way I belonged on a campus anywhere in the vicinity. I just wouldn’t fit in. For the first time since I’d applied to college, I questioned my motives. I wondered whether I was really cut out for college life.
    I thought about just charging the ticket to