On the Come Up(34)

It’s harder to breathe.

Sonny touches my back. “You’re good.”

The woman motions me through the metal detector. It doesn’t beep, and I’m free to go on my way. Same with Sonny.

“Poetry’s your first class, right?” he asks, like I didn’t almost have a panic attack just now.

I swallow hard. “Yep. You got history?”

“Nah. Precalculus. Like I need to know that shit to—”

“Free Long and Tate!”

We both turn around. This red-haired white guy pumps his fist while looking at us. His friends crack up.

There’s always that one white boy who says stupid shit in the name of making his friends laugh. You can usually find them trolling on Twitter. We just spotted one in the wild.

“How ’bout you free these nuts for you and your klancestors?” Sonny asks, holding his crotch.

I grab his arm. “Ignore them.”

I drag him down the hall, toward our lockers. Malik stuffs his books into his already-full locker. He miraculously makes it work every time. He and Sonny slap palms and end with the Wakanda salute.

“Y’all good?” Malik asks, but he looks at me when he says it.

“We’re good,” I say.

“More than good,” says Sonny. “Bri let everybody on the bus hear her song. Shit. Is. Dope.”

“It’s all right,” I say.

“All right? Understatement,” says Sonny. “It’s way better than that ‘Swagerific’ garbage Milez has.”

I smirk. “That’s not saying much.”

Malik looks at me with bright eyes. “I’m not surprised.”

His smile . . . good Lord, it scrambles my brain all the way up.

But this is Malik.

This is Malik.

Goddammit, this is Malik. “Thanks.”

“When can I hear it?” he asks.

Around all these people who are already looking at me? Definitely not now. “Later.”

He tilts his head, eyebrows cocked. “How later?”

I tilt my head too. “Later-when-I-feel-like-it later.”

“Not specific enough. How about later at lunch?”

“Lunch?” I say.

“Yeah. Wanna hit up Sal’s?”

I think I have a couple of dollars to go in on a pizza. “Sure. Meet y’all here at twelve?”

“Not me,” Sonny says. “I’ve got SAT prep.”

“Yeah,” says Malik, like he already knew. “I thought we could hang out, Bri.”

Wait. Is this . . .

Is he asking me out?

Like out-on-a-date out?

“Um, yeah.” Don’t know how I managed to form a word. “Sure.”

“Cool, cool.” Malik smiles without showing his teeth. “Meet here at twelve?”

“Yep. At twelve.”

“All right, bet.”

The bell rings. Sonny gives us dap and goes off to the visual arts wing. Malik and I hug and go our separate ways. Halfway down the hall, he turns around.

“Oh, and for the record, Breezy?” he calls as he walks backward. “I’ve got no doubt that song is dope.”





Eleven


My head’s everywhere except where it needs to be.

Malik asked me out.

I think.

Okay, confession: According to Granddaddy, I “jump to conclusions faster than lice jump between white kids’ heads.” That’s something only my granddaddy would say, but he may have a point. The first time he said that I was nine, and he’d just told me and Trey that he had diabetes. I burst into tears and cried, “They’re gonna cut your legs off and you’re gonna die!”

I was a dramatic child. Plus, I’d just watched Soul Food for the first time. RIP Big Mama.

Anyway, I could be jumping to conclusions, but it felt like Malik was asking me out without asking me out, you know? That casual “Hey, we’re friends, it’s normal for friends to have lunch together, but I’m glad it’ll just be the two of us” kinda thing.

I think that’s a thing. Or I’m reaching. I’m gonna say it’s a thing. That way I can ignore the way people look at me in the hall.

There’s pity. There’s surprise, like I’m supposed to be in prison or something. Some look like they wanna speak to me, but they don’t know what to say so they stare instead. One or two whisper. Some idiot coughs to cover the “drug dealer” he says as I pass.

I don’t walk with my head high like my mom said. I actually wish I was invisible again.

When I walk into poetry, my classmates suddenly go silent. Five bucks says they were talking about me.

Mrs. Murray looks at me from over the top of a book at her desk. She closes it and sets it down with a smile that has so much sympathy it’s almost a frown. “Hey, Bri. Glad to see you back.”

“Thanks.”

Even she looks unsure of what to say next, and now I know this is a mess—Mrs. Murray always knows what to say.

Every eye in the room follows me to my desk.

I’m over this already.

At noon, I head straight for my locker.

I use my phone to check my hair. Monday I sat between Jay’s legs for hours as she braided my hair into fishbone cornrows that end in French braids. Are they cute? Yeah. Is it a process? Unfortunately. They’re so tight I can feel my thoughts.