On the Come Up(89)

“Brianna Middle-Name-Here-’Cause-I-Don’t-Know-It Jackson,” he says, loud enough for the whole bus to hear.

“Boy, get down from there!” Mr. Watson calls.

Curtis waves him off. “Bri, even though you busy tomorrow, will you go out with me on a date at some point so we can do some romantic shit?”

My face is so hot. Every eye on the bus watches us. Sonny wiggles his eyebrows. Malik’s mouth is slightly open. Deon takes out his phone, talking about, “Do it for the ’Gram, Curtis!”

Oh my God. “Curtis, get down,” I say through my teeth.

“C’mon, girl. Please?”

“Yes, now get down!”

“Ayyyy, she said yes!” he just has to announce, and a couple of people actually clap. Including Sonny. Curtis plops down next to me, grinning. “See? I told you I can do it big.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re so extra.”

“You’re still going out with me though.”

Yes, I grin, too. No, I can’t help it. No, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me.

And I think I’m okay with that.

The bus pulls up at Midtown. Curtis gets off with Deon, who’s immediately like, “Bruh, teach me your ways!”

Ridiculous.

I slip my headphones on my ears and turn Cardi all the way up. I still gotta figure out what I’m doing at the studio. Plus, the music will keep me from Sonny’s interrogation, because I can’t answer him if I can’t hear him. But as I hop off the bus, he’s not waiting for me at the bottom of the steps. Shana is.

There’s a clipboard tucked under her arm. Her mouth moves, but I can’t hear her at first.

I turn my music down. “What?”

“Can we talk?” she asks, louder than she should.

“I can hear you now.”

“Oh. You got a minute?”

A few feet away, Malik focuses on his phone a little too hard. He glances in our direction, but when our eyes meet, he quickly looks at his phone again.

He’s still not talking to me. I’m really not in the mood for his girlfriend trying to patch things up between us. “What is it?” I ask her.

“The superintendent agreed to meet with the coalition today, after school,” Shana says. “We hoped you would join us. He’s meeting with us because of you, after all.”

I slide my headphones down around my neck. “What makes you think that?”

“He said he talked to you.”

“Oh.” But he can’t call my mom about a job.

“Yeah. And he said he saw your music video too, and it shed new light on the situation with Long and Tate. It looks like it’s helping our cause. So, thank you.”

Awkward silence rolls in. Fact is, one of the last conversations we had, I came this close to smacking Shana. Hard to forget that.

She clears her throat and holds up the clipboard. “We’re taking this petition to the meeting, too. It asks him to remove the armed police officers as security. If we get enough signatures, hopefully he’ll listen.”

“Hopefully.”

“Yeah,” she says. “The meeting starts at four in the band—”

“I have other plans.”

“Bri, look, if this is about me and you, let’s squash whatever it is,” Shana says. “We could really use you at this meeting. You have a voice that they’ll listen to.”

“I really do have something else planned.”

“Oh.”

The silence returns.

I take my pencil from behind my ear and motion to her clipboard. She holds it out, and I scribble my name on an available line. “Good luck with the meeting.”

I lift my headphones over my ears and start for the steps.

“Hype is an asshole,” Shana calls.

I turn back. “What?”

“He shouldn’t have done you like that during your interview. A lot of people support you, too. I saw some pretty big names talking about it on Twitter.”

I haven’t looked at social media since all of this went down. There’s only so much you can take being described as somebody you’re not. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” she says. “We have your back, Bri.”

We. That includes Malik. There was a time he would’ve told me that himself. He doesn’t have my back that much if his girlfriend has to tell me for him.

I think I’ve lost him for good.

“Thank you,” I mutter to Shana.

I turn around and hurry up the stairs before she or Malik can see how glossy my eyes get.

Doesn’t matter that I may have gained Curtis or that I may be hours away from getting everything I want. I’m still losing Malik, and it still hurts.





Thirty


The studio Supreme takes me to makes the one I first went to look like a dump.

It’s in an old warehouse in Midtown-the-neighborhood. Not too far from my school, actually. A wrought-iron fence surrounds the parking lot, and Supreme has to let security know who we are before they let us through the gate.

Platinum and gold plaques line the walls of the reception area. All of the light fixtures look like real gold, and they’ve got one of the biggest fish tanks I’ve ever seen in my life, with tropical fish swimming around.