The knife rested comfortably in the kangaroo pouch of my borrowed Polo Hi-tech. It was 1994 and much like everything I wore back then, none of it was mine—mostly because my body betrayed me.
By the time I was in 12th grade, I’d reached my full adult height, 6-foot-2, but I only weighed 150 pounds. My father used to say that if a feather coughed on me I’d fall over. Baggy clothes were in style, but my clothes were super baggy whether I wanted them to be or not. In fact, I was so thin that even when my pants were buckled and my belt was pulled tight I could slip them on and off like sweatpants.
And nothing I owned fit. So I started borrowing clothes because high school was tough, and no matter how much I hunched my shoulders, I couldn’t disappear. In ninth grade, right around the time I’d memorize my locker combination, I watched a white kid get jumped by three bigger guys. They locked him in a classroom and beat him bloody. That same year, Thracy, one of my closest friends, got jumped. They got him at lunch. Everyone got suspended. My lunch was after his and a friend caught me in the stairwell…