Part 1

In part 1 are the 3 main characters AJ, a black, very successful football player, Erika , a light skinned aggressive girl, who is together with AJ and at least Ruthie , a black, very intelligent girl, presented. Part 1 shows the relationship between the 3 characters and their social standing.
AJ lives in poor conditions: his mum is dead and he lives with his dad, his little brother Anthony and his older, drug dependent brother Franco. AJ loves his little brother pretty much and tries to keep him away from Franco. Besides his family AJ spends time with his friends, they all play football with him, who are with AJ the gang "The Fellas". He is together with Erika, but she often gets on his nerves.
Erika lives alone with her mum, who is ashamed because her daughter is light skinned. Erika spends her time only with light skinned girls and think that all other coloured girls are dirt. She loves AJ pretty much and she is very jealous every time AJ spends attention to other girls. She isn´t scared in confrontations with other girls, on the contrary she is often fighting and is very aggressiv.
Ruthie lives in a well situated, black family and is pretty good in school. She has mostly white friends and the whole school thinks, that she is a wannabe, because she doesn´t look and speak like a black girl. She for herself has really a problem with her identity, because she doesn´t feel like a real black girl, and she doesn´t know what it means to be a real black person.

AJ and Erika are the coolest pair in the whole school and Erika is really jealous when she hears that AJ drove away from school with a girl named Ruthie. She wants to give that Ruthie girl a lesson, because AJ is her boyfriend. In reality AJ hasn´t flirted with Ruthie, but Ruthie has an accident because of AJ and he had to drive her home. Erika is angry with AJ and so she wants to get him jealous on her and flirts with an other boy on a party and AJ does the same. Ruthie isn´t interested in these things and doesn´t see a point to talk too much with AJ. But when Erika says to AJ that she is in love with him, he can´t say the same thing. Because of something he asks Ruthie ´when you know that you are in love with somebody´. So they talk and she offers to him that she can teach him in some chemestry things. But when she went to AJ´s home, he has forgot his books in school and has friends at home. She meets his brother Anthony and thinks that he is a great boy, but AJ and she can´t learn so she went home. She is happy to get home, because she is very shocked about the neighbourhood of AJ´s home.