User:AHTriggs/sandbox

The film tells the story of a momentous few days in the lives of Leroy "Preach" Jackson (Glynn Turman) and his best friend Richard "Cochise" Morris (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs), two black high school students at Edwin G. Cooley Vocational High School in Chicago, Illinois, during the early 1960s. Preach is an aspiring writer who reads poetry and history books for fun, and secretly composes his own poems, but is disinterested in school and thus does poorly. Cochise is a basketball star who hopes to go to college on an athletic scholarship. The boys and their friends live in a poor urban neighborhood, where Preach's mother works three jobs to support him and his two younger sisters, and Cochise lives with his extended family in a crowded apartment. The handsome and athletic Cochise is popular and sought after by girls, while the skinnier and shorter Preach often gets rejected.

One Friday, Preach and Cochise decide to cut class and go to the zoo with their friends Pooter and Tyrone, despite the fact that Preach has missed an entire week of school, much to the chagrin of his history teacher, Mr. Mason (Garrett Morris). Afterwards they end up back at their local teen hangout, a diner named Martha's, where their friend Dorothy invites them to a "quarter party" (admission to the party costs a quarter) that night. She further informs them that Mr. Mason moved the history test up to next Monday, meaning that the boys will need to study over the weekend, since they must pass the test in order to pass history. Inside the diner, Preach's clandestine gambling game with Stone and Robert in the back of the diner is interrupted by Brenda, a haughty and beautiful girl who is annoyed that they are blocking the entrance to the restroom. Preach is attracted to her but she coldly rejects him and tells Martha he is gambling, causing Martha to throw Preach out at the point of her meat cleaver. Preach bets Cochise a dollar that he, Preach, can get Brenda to sleep with him. Preach and Cochise then make out with their girlfriends in a hallway and Preach becomes frustrated that his girlfriend Sandra keeps pushing him away while Cochise's girl is much more willing. Cochise later returns home to find that he got a basketball scholarship to college.