At Oak Park-River Forest High School, Julius is a poetry stud. When the Poetry Slam Club threw its annual competition his junior year, he took the stage just ahead of guest judge and performer Reg E. Gaines, and after he won, girls and even some guys told him he was as good as Reg.
While the reporter works with Julius on his essay he also helps a girl in the class write about a friend who died of a heroin overdose the previous summer. The girl is pretty and filled out in the hips, and Julius begins to wonder whether the reporter is exploiting him like he is the girl.
Julius tells his family–in the kitchen while his mother cooks and his little brother Willie sets the table–that he’s to have a poem published in the paper.
Julius tersely denies it. Willie, 12 years old and just beginning to chase girls in seventh grade, does a little hula dance and sways his head back and forth, singing “Oh Ayana, Oh Ayana,” giving her name singsong peaks and valleys. Tonight is the one night of the week their mother is home from work at the hospital for supper. Julius grabs a pen from a drawer below the kitchen counter and draws an X on the back of his hand. It’s to remind him to beat Willie for this tomorrow.
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In school his classmates hang over copies of the paper. Julius doesn’t know whether they’re reading his poem or the heroin girl’s story, but his friends and a few people he doesn’t know come up, pat his back, shake his hand, knock his fist. John asks if Ayana has seen it yet–everyone knows it’s about her–but Julius doesn’t know because it’s been five days since they’ve spoken. He saw her that morning reading the paper near the tennis courts, but moved stealthily away.
John goes back to work on a poem. The slam team he started with Julius–tentatively named Da Trax–will perform it at the school’s slam in three weeks. It’s a reaction to when a store owner asked him last week if he stole something. John reads part of it aloud. The end of the poem rhymes “angel’s wings” with “Dr. King.”
“Yeah, a few people said some things,” Julius says. He doesn’t know why but he wants to get out of the room as quickly as possible. The reporter wants to talk–though he says “shoot the shit” because the teacher is in the other room and he cares little about the school’s honor code. He asks Julius if he’s getting ready for the school slam. Julius, feeling thin and unlike himself around the reporter, says he’ll get ready when he’s ready.
