On the Come Up(67)

I was born petty.

Toad’s a G though. Even though that knocked my little dude down for a bit, he gets up and gains on Sonny’s Yoshi.

“The superintendent is apparently meeting with parents at Midtown this coming Friday,” Sonny says.

I look at him. “For real?”

“Yes!” Sonny jumps up with his arms in the air. “In. Yo. Face!”

I turn to the screen. “What? Nooooooo!”

I took my eyes away for one second, and that was enough for Sonny’s Yoshi to cross the finish line first.

Malik falls across the couch, screaming laughing.

I can’t believe this. “You little asshole!”

Malik gives Sonny dap. “Perfect, bruh. Absolutely perfect.”

Sonny takes a bow. “Thank you, but seriously.” He sits next to me. “The superintendent really is holding a meeting.”

I scoot away from him, but no, that puts me closer to Malik. I move to the love seat instead. “I don’t wanna hear a word your cheating butt has to say.”

“Wow, Bri. All these flavors out here, and you choose to be salty,” Sonny says. “This is serious.”

Malik dusts cat hair off of his high-top fade. Aunt ’Chelle’s other baby, 2Paw, lurks around here somewhere. Malik named him that. “Yeah. The school is hiring cops to work as security at Midtown. My mom got an email about it and about the PTA meeting.”

I unfold my arms. “For real?”

Sonny disappears into the kitchen. “Yep! They want students, parents, and guardians to come to the meeting and voice their opinions.”

“It probably won’t change anything,” I say. “They’re gonna do what they want.”

“Unfortunately,” says Malik. “It’ll take something big to change their minds, and no, I don’t mean releasing that video of you, Bri.”

“You don’t?” I ask as Sonny returns with a bag of Doritos, a pack of Chips Ahoy! and Sprite cans.

“No. They probably would villainize you to justify it.” Malik bites his thumbnail. “Just wish we could use it some—Sonny, why are you eating up my food?”

Sonny stuffs an entire cookie in his mouth. “Sharing is caring.”

“I don’t care that much.”

“Aww, thanks, Malik,” Sonny says. “Why yes, yes I will go back and help myself to that Chunky Monkey in your freezer, too.”

I snort. Malik’s lips thin. Sonny goes back to the kitchen, grinning.

Malik scoots to the end of the couch. “Bri, let me ask you something. Promise not to fly off the handle, okay?”

“Fly off the handle? You act like I’m quick to—”

“You are,” he and Sonny say together. Sonny’s not even in here.

“Forget y’all. What is it?”

“If there was a way to release that video on your own terms, would you?” Malik asks.

“My own terms how?”

“You said you’ve talked about what Long and Tate did to you already, in your song. Well, what if we use your song to show people what happened?”

Sonny returns with the pint of ice cream and three spoons. I don’t have to hold my hand out for him to pass me one. “What? Like an artistic music video?” he asks.

Malik snaps his fingers. “That’s it. We could go through every line, right? Show people what you mean, using footage I’ve shot for my documentary. Then when you talk about getting pinned to the ground—”

“Show the video of when it happened,” I finish for him.

Holy shit. That may actually work.

“Exactly,” Malik says. “This way it explains the song to all of these idiots who come at you and it shows what happened at school.”

I could hug him. Seriously, I could. Without saying he understands the song, he’s saying he understands the song, and really, he’s saying he understands me. That’s all I wanted from him. Okay, that and some less-than-PG-13 things at one time, but that’s not the point.

Do I hug Malik? Ha! No. I punch him. “That’s for all the crap you said about my song!”

“Ow!” He grabs his arm. “Damn, woman! I understood the song all along. I just didn’t want people to make assumptions about you. I won’t say I told you so, but—nah, forget it, I’m saying I told you so!”

I tuck in my lips. Knew that was coming.

“After thinking about how everyone reacted to it at school though, I realized you were right,” he says. “You already spoke up for us, Breezy. Not your fault if other people don’t get it. So”—he shrugs—“why don’t we use the song to stir some shit up?”





Twenty-One


So, stir shit up we do. It takes several hours, but Malik, Sonny, and I put together a music video for “On the Come Up,” using footage that Malik recorded for his documentary. Like when I say, “Whole squad got more heat than a furnace,” it’s a video of guns on some GDs’ waists. Malik blurred their faces out.

“We don’t bust, yet they blame us for murder” brings on news clips from when that boy was killed last year.

“I approach, you watch close, I’m a threat,” I rap, and there’s Malik’s secret footage of the clerk who followed us around the Midtown comic shop a few months ago.