Cee-Saw bobbed her head up and down, watching all the folks fill the room. “Some good stuff gonna be happenin’ this yeah,” she said to me. “Good stuff.”

      “Dat’s straight up, girl,” I answered back as we traded a slap-slap-bump high five on the down low. “Dat’s straight up.”

      My life is weird. It’s like I speak two languages. In my head I talk a normal kind of English, but when I chat with my friends or any of my peers I rap to them in this kind of ghetto slang. Its like I purposely mispronounce words and disobey all them rules of grammar. Like, I never say “with.” I say “wit’.” And I don’t say “that.” I say “dat.” And I sort of slur my “what’s up” too and turn into “wuzzup.” One of my favorite things to say to my friends is, “Wuzzup wit’ dat?” It makes me sound cool.

      Actually, it makes me fit in.

      And fittin’ in ‘round here is huge. Your clothes got to be fresh, your attitude

has to be stlyin’, and if you talk too proper, you might get jumped by a crew or four or five. That’s because people will think you’re trying to act white. They’ll take you down for that.

      We got all kinds of unspoken rules like this ‘round here and people who violate them end up paying the price. It may not make sense to an outsider, it may not be reasonable or rational, but it is what it is and only stupid people don’t play along.

      And I ain’t stupid. At least not like that I ain’t.

      A moment later the bell rang. School was back.