Pete’s been writing Tenacious’ papers for about half a decade. It started with a final paper freshman year on Teddy Roosevelt’s role in the Caribbean. Pete owed him for a lifetime of Popcorn Fridays. Her sources were hyperlinked, but it got the grade. Use ‘thus’ more than twice in high school academia and the margins get crowded with pluses.
For a while they worked on a system of favors—one pagers for a Frosty, five pagers for a pre-rolled spliff. Ten pagers Tenacious tried to trade for sexual favors. “I even toss salads,” he said. They settled on Tenacious acknowledging her in the hallway in front of his friends.
It was Pete who wrote “Adopted Identity: Finding Myself in a White World” at the end of junior year. Tenacious called it the kind of self-discovery-crap only a white person could write. The essay won three contests and a scholarship. That still didn’t convince Tenacious to read it.
Tenacious took a year off after high school, which is how a trust fund says traveling. Three people went with him in a bus they re-tooled to run on veggie oil, and none of those three were Pete. He described it as a guys’ trip. He came back tan and cultured. “Get this,” Tenacious said, “New York doesn’t do the Shamrock Shake.”
