On the Come Up(64)

I can’t help it, but I click her profile. I wanna lay eyes on this idiot.

She has several highlight pictures that are supposed to reveal more about her. One is of her, her husband, and her son. A dead deer hangs behind them, and the three of them wear camouflage and hold rifles. And yeah, they’re white.

What really gets me though? The title of her article before this one.

Why You Won’t Take My Guns: Gun Control Has No Place Here But it’s different when I rap about guns?

I wonder why.

It’s like that crap at Midtown, I swear. White girls don’t get sent to the office for making snide remarks. Hell, I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. They get a warning. But anytime I open my mouth and say something my teachers don’t like, to the office I go.

Apparently words are different when they come out of my mouth. They somehow sound more aggressive, more threatening.

Well, you know what? I’ve got plenty of words for Emily.

I close my door, pull up Instagram on my phone, and immediately go live. Usually only Sonny and Malik will show up. Tonight, about a hundred people are watching me in seconds.

“What’s up, y’all? It’s Bri.”

The comments start immediately.

Your song is

Fuck what they say!

You my new favorite rapper

“Thanks for the support,” I tell them, and a hundred more people are suddenly watching. “As you may know, there’s a petition to get my song taken off Dat Cloud. Besides the fact it’s censorship, it’s stupid as hell.”

Hell yeah, somebody writes.

Fuck censorship!

“That’s right, fuck censorship,” I say, to three hundred viewers. “They don’t get it because it ain’t for them to get. Besides, if I am strapped like backpacks, maybe it’s ’cause I gotta be, bitch. Ain’t my fault if it makes you uncomfortable. I’m uncomfortable every goddamn day of my life.”

Four hundred viewers. People respond with or high-five emojis.

“But check this,” I say. “I got something for everybody who wanna come at me ’bout my song.”

I lift my middle finger without hesitation.

Five hundred viewers. More comments.

Preach!

Fuck em all!

We with you, Bri!

“So, Ms. Reporter,” I say, “and anybody else who wanna call ‘On the Come Up’ this, that, or whatever the hell else. Do it. Hell, get the song taken down if you want. But you’ll never silence me. I got too goddamn much to say.”





Twenty


I’ve only been drunk once in my life. The summer before sophomore year, Sonny, Malik, and I decided to try the Hennessy Sonny’s dad keeps in his cabinet to see what the big deal was. Biggest. Mistake. Of. My. Life. The next morning, I severely regretted touching that bottle. I also regretted it once Jay released her wrath.

I think I have an Instagram hangover. I went to bed pissed at Emily and all the Emilys of the world. But when I woke up, I was like, “Oh, shit. Did I say that?”

Too late to do anything. I may not have saved it on my page, but somebody saved it and now it’s spreading. I’m praying that my “you better stay low and not respond to anything” mom doesn’t see it.

I’m not sure she’d care, though, considering how she’s acting today.

She came to my room as I was getting ready for church. But Jay told me, “You can go back to bed, baby. We’re staying home.”

Any other day, I would’ve ironically shouted, “Hallelujah!” It’s nothing against Jesus. It’s his people I’ve got a problem with. But I couldn’t celebrate—Jay gave me this smile that couldn’t really be called one because it was so sad. She went to her room and hasn’t come out since.

I couldn’t go back to bed. Too worried about her. Trey couldn’t either, so we’ve been watching Netflix for a couple of hours now. We got rid of cable a while back. It was either that or our phones, and Jay and Trey both need those for potential jobs. I prop my feet on the back of the couch, inches from my brother’s head.

He pushes them away. “Move them ol’ stanky, crusty feet out of my face, girl.”

“Trey, stop!” I whine, and put them back up. I always have to have my feet up high on the couch.

He throws back some dry knockoff Cheerios. Trey rarely eats cereal with milk. “Ol’ Bruce Banner Hulk–looking feet.”

Just for that, I stick my big toe in his ear. He hops up so fast, his cereal bowl almost falls from his lap, but he manages to catch it. I die laughing.

Trey points at me. “You play too much!”

He sits down and I’m still cracking up. I rub my foot all on his cheek. “Aww, I’m sorry, big bro.”

Trey moves his face away. “All right, keep playing.”

The floorboards in the hall creak, and I peek around the doorway. It’s not Jay though. Granddaddy says that houses this old sometimes tend to stretch. That’s why they make sounds on their own. “You think she’s okay?”

“Who? Ma?” Trey says. “Yeah, she’s fine. Just needs a day away from all the church gossip.”

I get it. Church is full of people with plenty to say and nothing to do. You’d think some of them would help us instead of talk about us, but I guess it’s easy to say you love Jesus and harder to act like him.