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groups to choose from, I wasn’t a natural constituent of any particular one. I obviously wasn’t
Indian or Chinese. The colored kids would shit on me all the time for being too black. So I
wasn’t welcome there. As always, I was adept enough with white kids not to get bullied by
them, but the white kids were always going shopping, going to the movies, going on trips—
things that required money. We didn’t have any money, so I was out of the mix there, too.
The group I felt the most affinity for was the poor black kids. I hung out with them and got
along with them, but most of them took minibuses to school from way out in the townships,
from Soweto, from Tembisa, from Alexandra. They rode to school as friends and went home
as friends. They had their own groups. Weekends and school holidays, they were hanging out
with one another and I couldn’t visit. Soweto was a forty-minute drive from my house. We
didn’t have money for petrol. After school I was on my own. Weekends I was on my own.
Ever the outsider, I created my own strange little world. I did it out of necessity. I needed a
way to fit in. I also needed money, a way to buy the same snacks and do the things that the
other kids were doing. Which is how I became the tuck-shop guy.
Thanks to my long walk to school, I was late every single day. I’d have to stop off in the
prefect’s office to write my name down for detention. I was the patron saint of detention.
Already late, I’d run to join my morning classes—math, English, biology, whatever. The last
period before break was assembly. The pupils would come together in the assembly hall, each
grade seated row by row, and the teachers and the prefects would get up onstage and go over
the business of what was happening in the school—announcements, awards, that sort of
thing. The names of the kids with detention were announced at every assembly, and I was
always one of them. Always. Every single day. It was a running joke. The prefect would say,
“Detentions for today…” and I would stand up automatically. It was like the Oscars and I was
Meryl Streep. There was one time I stood up and then the prefect named the five people and I
wasn’t one of them. Everyone burst out laughing. Somebody yelled out, “Where’s Trevor?!”
The prefect looked at the paper and shook his head. “Nope.” The entire hall erupted with
cheers and applause. “Yay!!!!”
Then, immediately after assembly, there would be a race to the tuck shop because the
queue to buy food was so long. Every minute you spent in the queue was working against
your break time. The sooner you got your food, the longer you had to eat, play a game of
soccer, or hang out. Also, if you got there late, the best food was gone.
Two things were true about me at that age. One, I was still the fastest kid in school. And
two, I had no pride. The second we were dismissed from assembly I would run like a bat out
of hell to the tuck shop so I could be the first one there. I was always first in line. I became
notorious for being that guy, so much so that people started coming up to me in line. “Hey,
can you buy this for me?” Which would piss off the kids behind me because it was basically
cutting the line. So people started approaching me during assembly. They’d say, “Hey, I’ve got
ten rand. If you buy my food for me, I’ll give you two.” That’s when I learned: time is money.
I realized people would pay me to buy their food because I was willing to run for it. I started
telling everyone at assembly, “Place your orders. Give me a list of what you want, give me a
percentage of what you’re going to spend, and I’ll buy your food for you.”
I was an overnight success. Fat guys were my number-one customers. They loved food,
but couldn’t run. I had all these rich, fat white kids who were like, “This is fantastic! My
parents spoil me, I’ve got money, and now I’ve got a way I can get food without having to