Diamonds and Pearl by K'wan Read Free Book Online Page B

dealer was not something she saw in her future. Pearl had bigger plans for her life.
    At the front of the class her teacher, Mr. Gaines, continued to talk. He was going on and on about the trouble down South as a result of the hurricane and the government’s mishandling of the aftermath. The storm and the havoc it wreaked were more than three years old by then, but Mr. Gaines continued to speak about the events as if they had just happened. He was new to New York, originally from Baton Rouge. When Katrina had hit, he’d gotten to witness her fury firsthand. When he spoke about the people and things that he’d lost, it was in a tone so passionate that there wasn’t a dry eye in the room, except Pearl’s. Her mind was elsewhere.
    To Pearl, school was a necessary evil that she endured for the sole purpose of appeasing her father. Pearl was by no means a bad student. In fact, she was in the top tenth percentile of her school and had made the honor roll every year since the seventh grade. She was good in school, just not very motivated by it. Other than math and reading, you never used the things you learned, so she figured if she just focused on those two areas, the rest would be a breeze. Pearl had learned to add, subtract, and multiply before she got to kindergarten, and those were the only life skills she would ever need as far as she was concerned. The only reason she was so hell-bent on graduating was because her dad had promised to buy her a Mercedes. Daddy always knew how to motivate her.
    Her father was somewhat of a local celebrity, which made Pearl famous in her own right. Wherever she went, people treated her with respect. That was one of the perks of being the daughter of one of the most feared men in the city. Having a father who was a boss is what often got Pearl noticed, but it was her beauty that kept all eyes on her. She stood at a statuesque five nine with a body that curved in all the right places. In addition to being physically beautiful, she exuded a confidence that you couldn’t help but notice when she walked into a room. With money, looks, and charisma … Pearl had it all but still wanted more.
    The bell finally rang, signaling the end of the class and the beginning of social hour, as she liked to call it. It was lunch, which meant it was time to meet up with her girls. They mostly congregated in the lunch room, where they played cards and exchanged gossip, but every so often they would sneak off school grounds and walk the five blocks to the pizza shop near Bowman High. Bowman was an alternative school that catered mostly to teenage parents and knuckleheads who’d gotten booted from other schools and were on their last chances. But there were also students who were victims of various circumstances that wouldn’t allow them to attended regular high schools, and they were determined to finish their educations. Most of the girls at St. Francis shied away from the hard-nosed guys at Bowman, but Pearl and her crew embraced them. They loved dancing on the razor’s edge.
    When Pearl stepped out of Mr. Gaines’s class, she was met by her friend Marisa. Marisa was a Cuban girl with rich chocolate skin, pink lips, and thick black hair that she sometimes wore in a puffy Afro. At first glance most people assumed Marisa was Black, but when she got to rattling off in Spanish, her true colors came out. She was pretty fly and down for whatever, same as Pearl. The two of them were as thick as thieves.
    â€œWhat’s popping, mommy?” Marisa greeted Pearl with a high-five.
    â€œChilling, glad to finally be outta that boring class. Who gives a fuck what’s going on in Louisiana when we live all the way up in New York? That shit ain’t got nothing to do with us,” Pearl said, dismissing the tragedy.
    Marisa shook her head. “It would be a coldhearted bitch to say something like that. You know a lot of people lost their lives and their homes in that