Payton
“A promise is a promise, so let me tell you how all of this madness started. Want to join the crew? We’ll meet at the usual spot. The beauty of our friendship is that we are just as different as we are the same, and we love each equally. If you had asked me a few years ago if you thought our crew would be at the nexus of world-changing events, I would’ve said, “what’s a nexus?” and then I would hav etold you no way; we are too chill to be at the heart of all of this. But here we are.” – Huey
“Well, I believe it is up to me to tell you about Mr. Payton. Typically, if he’s here, you will find him riding his dirt bike out back on the trails or inside playing NBA 2K with Sage across the room. It is not much of a game.”
“Damn!” Sage glares.
“Sage, you know it’s true. No insult to you, but Payton is one of the best in the world. He scores at will but never rubs it in. He just focuses on improving his own game. He’s a brilliant man. If you held a Hattori Hanzō sword to my head and made me say it, then I would have to say he is the smartest of all of us.”
“Hey man, that’s nice,” Payton acknowledges with a wink.
“Payton is a middle school teacher, and he loves it. would not do anything else.”
Payton stays still, speaking from his reclined position on the couch. “They aren’t just mindlessly following what they are told like elementary kids and have not had their creativity beaten out of them by the system, like most high schoolers. They are an open book of thinkers on which anything can still be written.”
Schwab ignores him and keeps on going. “Payton’s a child prodigy. Graduated high school at 12, college at 14, then on to med school. For reasons no one knows, and no one asks, he drops out one month before graduation.” He turns to Payton. “Any possibility you want to tell us now, while we are sharing our personal stories after all?”
“Nah man, I’m cool.”
Schwab doesn’t wait. “Here is what we do know: he was going to be the summa cum laude and already had his residency set up with Johns Hopkins. Because he was in school on an NAACP scholarship, he would have graduated debt-free and lived the rich doctor’s life in no time. Instead, he drops out, gets a job that pays teacher-level wages, lives in squalor, and spends every cent he makes paying back the scholarship. Like I said, none of us knows why he dropped out, but you can’t complain about the way he handled it afterward.”
‘’That teacher was nasty and wrong. For the sake of peace, I probably would have let it go. Then he goes and humiliates the very next kid with an impossible question. I remember looking at that kid with hurt in his eyes, and I knew I just couldn’t let it slide. I raise my hand. He calls on me happily. He’s gonna wish he hadn’t.’’
