the Other Wes Moore (2010) by Wes Moore

invite some kids from the neighborhood to play a game of baseball with the kids from my school in a park near our house. I think he sensed my frustration at living in mutually exclusive worlds and thought a game of baseball would bring together my neighborhood friends and my wealthier Riverdale classmates and broaden the horizons of both. His intentions were good. I jumped at the idea. I invited ten friends from school to come and play against my friends from the neighborhood.
    In the first inning, my neighborhood friend Deshawn, who was playing first base, started trash-talking Randy, a lanky Riverdale kid with a mop haircut, after Randy hit a single. Innocent stuff--until Deshawn finally said one thing too many and Randy, the pride of super-affluent Scarsdale, playfully tipped the front bill of Deshawn's hat, knocking it off his head. It was as if he were a king and someone had knocked his crown into the dirt. Before we were even fifteen minutes into the game, a brawl had broken out. Three fights and four innings later, I conceded that the experiment wasn't working out. The game was called. Everyone retreated to their separate corners, to their separate worlds. Everyone except me, still caught in the middle.
    I was becoming too "rich" for the kids from the neighborhood and too "poor" for the kids at school. I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds. My confidence took a hit. Unlike Justin, whose maturity helped him handle this transition much better than I did, I began to let my grades slip. Disappointed with Ds, pleasantly satisfied with Cs, and celebratory about a B, I allowed my standards at school to become pathetic. In third grade I was reading at a second-grade reading level. Later in life I learned that the way many governors projected the numbers of beds they'd need for prison facilities was by examining the reading scores of third graders. Elected officials deduced that a strong percentage of kids reading below their grade level by third grade would be needing a secure place to stay when they got older. Considering my performance in the classroom thus far, I was well on my way to needing state-sponsored accommodations.
    When we finally got to the train station, Justin asked me a question.
    "Did you study yet for the English test for Wednesday?"
    "Nope," I replied.
    "You know they are going to put you on probation if you don't start doing better, man."
    I knew, but I broke it down for Justin: the problem wasn't what I knew or didn't know, the problem was that they didn't understand my situation. My long trip to and from school every day, my missing father, my overworked mother, the changing routes I took every day from the train just so no one with bad intentions could case my routine. I continued throwing excuses at Justin but started to wither under the heat of his glare. Justin had it worse than I did but was still one of the best-performing kids in the class. My litany of excuses trailed off.
    After a moment I broke the awkward silence by telling him my mother had begun to threaten me with military school if I didn't get my grades and discipline together.
    "For real?" he asked and laughed.
    My mother had even gotten her hands on a brochure that she'd haul out as a visual aid to her threats. But I knew there was no way my mother would allow her only son to be shipped off to military school. Regardless of the grades. Regardless of the suspensions. It was too remote, too permanent. Maybe she'd shift me to a school closer to home, maybe a public or Catholic school, but not a military school.
    My mother couldn't send me away. She needed a man in the house to look after Shani and Nikki, not to mention her, right? She had to be bluffing. Plus, in Caribbean households, boys were often indulged like little princes. Minor infractions were tolerated and "he's just being a boy" was an all-purpose excuse for anything short of a