It’s 1988. I’m seven-years-old. I’m not giving a damn about my bad reputation.

 A new sound has overcome the room in my grandma’s house that mom and I share. Joan Jett blares, day and night, in the room. Its mom’s favorite new cassette tape and we’re jamming out to the hard rockin’-kick assin’-scream mania that is The Jett, with piles of clothes splayed out on the bed as we fold my Captain Planet tighty-whities.

Mom flips her jet black hair to the beat.

I pretend to flip my curly afro along with her.

“I don’t care what the people say,” Joan Jett’s raspy voice blares from the speaker. “They don’t matter anyways.”

“I don’t care about my damn reputation,” mom and I shout, flinging tighty-whities across the bed. “No. No. Not me.”

Mom’s dyed her hair again. I don’t like it all that much, too black. But I don’t say much because it makes her look more like Joan and I’m absolutely infatuated with the woman. I don’t even mind too much when mom tries to hug me and her metal studded leather jacket pokes me in the face. She promises to buy me one of my own from the flea market in Lubbock – can’t wait. 

The next day at school, the memory of jamming out to Joan Jett floats into my head as Mrs. Hartsfield hands out sheets with humming birds printed on them to color. Kristina Moore, of course, will win the coloring contest that’s about to commence.

She always wins the coloring contest Mrs. Hartsfield hosts every afternoon. I don’t care though because the prize is to have your coloring hung behind Mrs. Hartsfield’s desk - Big Whoop - I would much rather win a leather studded metal jacket or, at the very least, a Tootsie Roll.

Kristina grates my nerves like shredded cheese. Can’t stand the girl.

She’s as tall as a flag post and as skinny as a lamp post – no lie. Her curly blond hair, which Mrs. Hartsfield thinks is adorable, along with every other thing Kristina does or says, is more of the ratty look than adorable if you ask me.

I don’t give one good damn about Kristina Moore.

I am ashamed to write what I did to Kristina’s creation that day, but you have to understand my annoyance of her museum of colorful flowers, birds, trees, houses and gingerbread men that surrounded Mrs. Hartsfield’s desk. 

There she is, miss thang, sitting behind me, her hair bouncing up and down frantically as if her talented coloring ability was kept in her curls. She was creating another one of those masterpieces, shortening the Kelly Green Crayola with each stroke.

As we finish our Crayola creations, mine not nearly as bright and shiny as Kristina’s of course, we passed them down the rolls of little desks we’re chained to during the day. When Kristina’s sheet fell into my hands, I had to do it. The black crayon burned my hand and soon I was scribbling black wax across a teal humming bird. Kristina’s perfect little picture was no more.

A scream comes from two seats back. It’s the same scream I remembered from the playground two days ago when Kristina fell from one of her perfectly executed cartwheels. “What is James doing?” Before I know it, Kristina is snatching her sheet from my hands and wailing at the top of her lungs as though I killed one of her damn puppies she’s always going on and on about.

Off to the principals office, again.

… And, once again, I don’t give a good damn.