All This Want (and I Can’t Get None)There’s cereal at my mom’s, but the milk is expired, and I’m already late for school, so I don’t have time to scramble eggs (which we don’t have) or mix Bisquick (which we also don’t have) anyway. If I didn’t sleep through two alarms, I could’ve stopped by the bodega for a butter roll and a Sunkist and been on my merry way down Fifth Ave to the bus stop. Instead I got nothing but a growling stomach coated in lukewarm water from the few sips from the water fountain outside Ms. Carter’s class. In elementary school, I used to always be jealous of white kids with moms who put lunch in a bag and wrote their name on it in marker. My mom never had time for that—that’s why when she found out I was hanging around Tevin’s place with some of the kids from school, she was like, “At least he got food there,” and didn’t say another word about it. Plus, I’m thirteen now, which to her might as well be a grown-ass woman.
But Tevin is mad at me, and therefore I’m not eating up all his food like usual, so I’m just here, hungry, wondering why they don’t start school at a reasonable time so a bitch can get a snack. It’s not even nine o’clock, and they think we’re supposed to be alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic.
“Pick your head up, D’asia!” Ms. Carter screeches because she’s a shrew. I pick it up slow, rolling my eyes. I almost say,
For what? but if I get in trouble again, I’ll get ISS. It’s dumb, though, because it’s Homeroom and all we do is pass notes and text each other while she writes out her lesson plan for the next period. But my head is now up, and I see the sun blasting onto the soccer field outside, and I wish I could just lie out there and eat the grass instead of sitting at this dumb desk feeling hungry and tired and stupid.
Kay sits in front of me and she turns around to pass me a Gushers like she can read my mind.
When we’re at Tevin’s, he orders us pizza, Chinese, anything you could think of, and his fridge is stocked with sandwich meat, frozen dinners, Coke, Sprite, everything. He has a PlayStation and gets new games like every week that we all take turns playing, but whenever
I want to play, he makes everyone else let me. I’m kind of a brat about it, honestly, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Everyone knows I’m Tevin’s best friend out of all the kids from school, so they just deal with it.
I knew Tevin as security at school and from the ISS room, of course, but we became cool when I was the only person in there one day and he talked to me like I was a regular person, not a delinquent or a dumb kid. I told him about my mom and how she gets mad and how she don’t notice or care if I’m sad, happy, hungry. She’s a social butterfly and a single mom and not very nice at all. Later that same week, he gave me a ride home after school and took me to Stop & Shop and we got a bunch of Swanson dinners and some frozen vegetables and a bottle of Coke. “Share it with your mom,” he said, and when we hugged in front of the apartment, I tried hard not to cry. I didn’t want him to think I was sad when I was actually happier than I’d been in probably years.
When my mom asked where all the food came from and I told her the school gave it away because the cafeteria ladies ordered too much, she raised her eyebrow like she knew I was lying but didn’t say anything else.
I don’t care about Earth Science and neither does Mr. Plummer, so we’re watching
October Sky again. I could probably recite this shit by heart.
Kay slips me a note when she could’ve just whispered, but whatever.
Do you want to go to Tevin’s after lunch, it says.
Kay knows Tevin gave me a key to his apartment for emergencies, not for us to play
Madden and eat Doritos. School is trash and I would love to leave, but I can’t get ISS again or else I’m
really suspended. Plus, Tevin said it’s best if I don’t go back to his house for a while.
I don’t have time or energy to explain all this to Kay, so I whisper, “For what?”
I can’t explain rite now, she writes back.
My stomach burns with the Gushers—its exploded liquid in my insides is not enough to resemble real food. I could definitely use some Doritos and some pizza or a sandwich. We could probably be really careful with our mess and make it back in time for English, and maybe nobody would even know.
“I gotta make it back for sixth,” I whisper.
“Ladies!” Mr. Plummer says, louder than the TV. “I’m sure you two don’t wanna get in-school suspensions?”
In a different world, I yell,
That’s exactly what the f*** I’m sayin’!In this world, I keep my mouth shut.
We’re making a cake in Home and Careers today. Well, not actually—we’re watching a cooking show where somebody else makes a cake.
I can’t wait to have a baby so I can make her a cake like this for her birthday. And I’ll make her eggs for breakfast, a turkey sandwich for lunch, whatever she wants for dinner. I’ll give her a
D name like me.
I like this class, even though it’s bootleg, because it teaches me stuff my mom never learned. My mom is always too busy to listen to my problems, or she doesn’t care, or she’s too mad to get where I’m coming from. At least it’s not like it used to be, when I was little and she would beat my ass or hit me with whatever was lying around. Now she’s just quick to pop me on the back of the head or slap me across the face. I don’t fight her back even though I do know how to fight by now. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I’ve beaten an ass or two after school, but I feel like when I finally fight my mom, something’s gonna change. If she wins, it’s a wrap for me.
I want to be a mom really bad. I know girls who get pregnant young, and I feel jealous of the life they get to have. They get to have something warm and heavy on their chest at night, someone waiting up for them, someone who can give them everything they need. I’d drop out of school and get my GED, work all day and night for my baby. Struggle. Never hit her.
When Tevin found out what my mom was really like, he started letting me sleep on his couch. We’d stay up late eating popcorn and watching TV until I fell asleep, and I’d wake up to him touching me on my shoulder, telling me it’s time to get ready for school. He’d make me bacon sometimes, and pancakes, too, and he sometimes used to give me five dollars so I could get a Premium lunch, which includes a twenty-ounce Fruitopia. After a couple of times of sleeping over, he said I should bring some clothes to his house. I keep some stuff in his hall closet, in a cubby he cleared just for me.
“There go Dante,” Kay says, pointing across the bleachers in gym. There do go Dante.
Me and Dante are not friends anymore. He told everybody we were hooking up, and we were, but he didn’t ask me if he could tell everybody, and now the whole school thinks I’m some kind of dick-sucking knob-goblin and boys who never even talked to me before blow kisses at me from across the room and laugh with their friends like my whole shit is some big joke.
The day I found out he told, I slowly walked past ISS crying, and when Tevin saw me, he left the room and walked with me over to the stairwell by the courtyard nobody used. He hugged me like a baby and told me to be very careful who I give my gifts to. High school boys aren’t gonna respect you, he promised.
We sat on the steps till I was done crying. He said he understood my hormones are going crazy, of course they are. He laughed and said his do too still, even at his age. It’s part of growing up that never goes away. But there’s a lot attached to sex. So wait or do it with someone you’re
sure got love for you. I told him me and Dante didn’t really
do it, and he looked relieved and said, “Good.”
The next day he pulled me out of Home and Careers, which security does all the time because the intercom systems don’t work, so they escort kids to the office or bring them messages and stuff. We went to the stairwell, and he gave me a plain cardboard box with a little bow on it.
My birthday wasn’t for three months, and it was nowhere near Christmas. It’s not like people give me gifts left and right, so I was shocked.
“Open it,” he said. He was basically whispering even though we were alone.
Inside the box it was a small pink rod the size of a tampon.
“What is it?” I asked, like a dummy.
“It’s for you,” he said. “It’s a little toy. It’s to hold you over until you find a boy that deserves you. One that’ll treat you good.”
Tevin did a lot of things I knew I was supposed to keep secret—letting us chill at his house, letting us snack in the stairwell instead of staying in class. But this time, he said it out loud: “Don’t tell anybody.”
Copyright © 2026 by T Clark. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
