All Chapters of Jet's Set: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Sylvester missed his coffee shop friends. Jock life was early morning practices, studying the playbooks when not studying his other subjects, weight training, and drills. He barely had time to hang out with anyone that was not a teammate, coach or trainer. You can't talk to your classmates when class is in session, and girls? Don't even ask, when in training it was no fats, no sweets, no pussy. They even signed an abstinence pledge. All work and no play made Sylvester a dull boy. Isolation meant that he caught up on  news via rumor or eavesdropping. He caught up with Cass and Hill in the locker room after gym but that was about it.

The last day of the fall semester, The day was easy, no more notebooks, no more lessons. Delivery Men from the Thai place, the pizzeria, and the Chinese takeout back and forth with party sized deliveries  all day. Esquilin announced that teachers should still continue with lessons and instruction, but that was taken with a snowflake of logic. It was overcast but cold. December twenty-third was always cold and rainy for no real reason. It's rare for snow to fall on Christmas Day in New York City but this was no different. 

Christmas. New Years. Then back to school January third. Nothing happened. The world didn't blow up, Jesus didn't come back, the computers didn't go haywire, the planes didn't fall. So if those that wanted to lose their virginity before the century did it for nothing. In New York, you're back in school for two more weeks and then comes Regents Week. The Regents exams were state tests that we had to worry about. The RCT Regents Competency Test was supposed to prep you for the actual Regents. A 55 was passing for the RCT and the Regents was 65. I had the Intro RCT. It was snowy and cold that morning. I was late

Selena  Benitez couldn't move five feet at Humanities without a guy hitting on her. She played coy, of course, but her grandmother had strict rules for dating. No boys until she was seventeen years old. And even then, it'd be under scrutiny. The only way she could date earlier as her grandmother said would be for her to be out of school and out of her house. Since her mother died Selena missed having a motherly figure that understood just what was happening in the world.She and Helena bonded over among other things like Shakira. Selena was training to dance to "Ojos Asi" for the Night of One Thousand Hea

I grabbed a few minutes for a smoke break. I stared at my cigarette wondering if I was addicted. I could go days, weeks without smoking. It wasn't a habit I'd ever thought I'd pick up. Mom and Dad are chain smokers. Back at Taft during daily choir rehearsals the girls in my section constantly complained that I reeked of smoke. Whenever I begged Mom to stop, reasoning the girls were complaining, Mom had the same retort.