On the Come Up

by Angie Thomas

  “On the Come Up” Should Come Down: Local Teen Rapper’s Violent Song Leads to Violence

  “What the—” I mutter.

  It’s an entire page of some chick named Emily Taylor complaining about my song. Her thirteen-year-old son loves it, she says, but according to her, I “spend the entire track rapping about things that would make any parent hit the Stop button immediately, including boasts about guns and antipolice sentiment.”

  The hell is she talking about? There’s not shit in that song that says anything against police. Just ’cause I’m tired of them patrolling my neighborhood like we’re all criminals, I’m in the wrong?

  In the middle of the article, she embedded a video from the incident in the Ring parking lot. Emily uses it to describe me as a “gang-affiliated, unruly teen who was recently kicked out of a local establishment.”

  Give me five seconds with her and I’ll show her unruly.

  She goes on to mention the uprising at Midtown and actually says, “It only makes sense that a song that encourages violence encouraged them to act violently.”

  But the end though. The end of the article is the real kicker, because that’s when Emily earns a permanent spot on my shit list.

  “I respectfully ask the website Dat Cloud to remove ‘On the Come Up’ from their catalog. It has already caused damage. We cannot allow it to continue. You can add your voice by signing the petition at the link below. We must do more to protect our children.”

  Protect our children. I’m definitely not included in that.

  Fuck Emily. Yeah, I said it. Fuck her. She doesn’t know a thing about me, yet she wants to use one song to make me into the big bad villain who is influencing her precious son. God forbid he hear about what people like me have to deal with on the daily. It must be nice to panic over some goddamn words, because that’s all they are. Words.

  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.

  Anyway.

  “Soooo . . . ,” Trey says as I get some of his cereal. “You no longer give a fuck, huh?”

  I come this close to choking on a knockoff Cheerio. This close. I cough to clear my throat. “Hold up. You have an Instagram?”

  He laughs. “Wooow. You online, showing your ass, and the first thing you wanna know is if I got an Instagram profile?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “You need to get your priorities straight. For the record, Kayla convinced me to get one.”

  There go the dimples. They appear whenever he talks about her. “Is she gonna be my future sister-in-law?”

  He pushes the side of my head. “Don’t worry about me, worry about yourself. What’s going on with you, Bri? For real. Because that? That video was not my little sister.”

&
nbsp; I pick at a thread on the couch. “I was mad.”

  “And? How many times I gotta tell you—the internet is forever. You want a future employer seeing that?”

  I’m not as worried about them as I am a certain person. “Are you gonna tell Jay?”

  “No, I’m not gonna tell Ma.” He always corrects me when I call her by her name. “She’s got enough on her as it is. You gotta learn to ignore people, Bri. Not everything deserves your energy.”

  “I know,” I mumble.

  He pinches my cheek. “Then act like it.”

  “Wait. That’s it?”

  “What?” he asks.

  “You’re not gonna go off on me?”

  He throws back some cereal. “Nope. I’ll let Ma do that when she finds out, because believe me, she’s gonna find out. I’ll have my popcorn ready too.”

  I hit his face with a pillow.

  The doorbell rings. Trey pulls back the window curtain to look out. “It’s the other parts of the Unholy Trinity.”

  I roll my eyes. “Tell them I’m not here.”

  Trey answers the door, and of course he says, “Hey, y’all. Bri’s right here.”

  He looks back at me with a trollish grin that doesn’t show his teeth. Jerk.

  Trey gives them dap as they come in. “Haven’t seen y’all in a minute. How’s it going?”

  Malik tells him everything is fine, but you’d think he was telling me since he’s staring at me. I purposely watch the TV.

  “ACT and SAT prep are kicking my butt,” Sonny says. I’m so proud of him. He actually managed to get words out to Trey. There was a time he could only stutter around my brother, that’s how big of a crush he had. Sometimes I think he’s still got a crush on Trey. Trey’s always known that Sonny likes him. He just laughs it off. Back when Sonny and I were in fifth grade though, one of Trey’s friends said something about Sonny, using a word I refuse to repeat. After that he was no longer Trey’s friend. At sixteen, my brother was calling toxic masculinity “one hell of a drug.” He’s dope like that.

  Trey sits on the arm of the couch. “Ah, don’t sweat it too much, Son’. You can take the tests more than once.”

  “Yeah, but it looks good if I nail it the first time.”

  “Nah. It looks good if you nail it, period,” says Trey. “Smart as you are, you’ll be all right.”

  Sonny’s cheeks get a rosy tint to them. He is so not over his crush.

  The TV does all of the talking for a while. The Get Down, to be exact. I watch it, but I can feel Sonny, Malik, and Trey watching me.

  “Well?” Trey says. “You’re gonna act like they’re not here?”

  I throw back some cereal. “Yep.”

  Trey snatches the bowl out of my hands. Then he has the audacity, the audacity, to pull my legs off the couch and make me sit up.

  “Um, excuse you?” I say.

  “You’re excused. Your friends are here to talk to you, not me.”

  “We wanted to hang out with you today,” Malik says. “You know, play video games, chill out.”

  “Yeah, like we used to do,” Sonny adds.

  I crunch extra hard on my cereal.

  “C’mon, Bri, really?” Malik says. “Will you at least talk to us?”

  Cruuunch.

  “Sorry, fellas,” Trey says. “Looks like she’s made up her mind.”

  My brother is evil. Why do I say that? Because he starts to sit next to me, and while his butt is midair, he lets out the loudest, hardest fart I’ve ever heard in my life. Near. My. Face.

  “Oh my God!” I scream, and hop up. “I’m going, damn!”

  Trey gives an evil laugh and throws his legs across the couch. “That’s what you get for putting them crusty feet in my face.”

  Just because I leave with Sonny and Malik doesn’t mean I have to talk to them. We make our way down the sidewalk. There’s silence between us, except for the thump of my dad’s chain knocking against my sweatshirt.

  Malik tugs at the strings of his hoodie. “Nice Timbs.”

  First time I’ve worn them. Jay was still in her room when I left, and Trey doesn’t pay enough attention to stuff like that to notice. I mean, he’s worn the same Nikes for seven years and counting. “Thanks,” I mumble.

  “Where’d you get them?” Malik asks.

  “How’d you get them?” says Sonny.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was your business.”

  “Bri, c’mon,” Sonny says. “You know we didn’t mean anything by the other day, right?”

  “Wooow. That is a half-assed attempt at an apology.”

  “We’re sorry,” Malik says. “Better?”

  “Depends. Sorry for what?”

  “For not having your back,” Sonny says.

  “And for things being so different,” Malik adds.

  “Different how?” Oh, I absolutely know how, but I wanna hear it from them.

  “We don’t hang out as much lately,” Malik admits. “But don’t act like this is all on us. You’ve changed on folks, too.”

  I stop. Mrs. Carson passes us in her beat-up Cadillac that’s older than my grandparents. She blows her horn and throws her hand up. We wave back. Typical for the Garden.

  “How have I changed up on y’all?” I ask.

  “This whole rap persona of yours? I don’t know that person,” Malik says. “Especially not the one who said that stuff on Instagram.”

  Oh. “Y’all saw that?”

  Sonny nods. “Yep. Along with half the internet. I can’t lie, I probably would’ve been pissed too. So . . .” He shrugs.

  “Pissed is one thing, that was another,” says Malik. “Then at school—”

  “Hold up, I haven’t changed at school,” I say. “Y’all are the ones with little time for me because you’ve got other people. For the record, I’m okay with that, but I won’t act like it doesn’t sting. Plus, y’all been hanging out together without me, researching Rapid.”

  “I figured you had too much other shit going on to worry about that,” says Sonny. “We know your family’s struggling right now.”

  “Is that all? Or do—” I can’t believe I’m actually about to say this. “Or do y’all not wanna be associated with me?”

  Fuck, my eyes sting. See, there’s this teeny, tiny voice that’s made my thoughts its home for a while now. It says that Sonny and Malik are too brilliant at Midtown to be linked to somebody who’s not. They’re going places, so why should they hang out with somebody who’s only going to the principal’s office?

  It’s believable. In fact, it’s so believable that it could be true.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Sonny says loudly. “Bri, you’re my sis, okay? I knew you when you were afraid of Big Bird.”

  “Oh my God, it is not logical for a bird to be that big! Why can’t y’all get that?”

  “We knew Malik when he wore the same denim jacket for a year straight.”

  “That jacket was comfortable as hell though,” Malik points out.

  “And y’all knew me when I was a Justin Bieber fanboy,” Sonny adds.

  Whew, that was a phase. He’s recently switched over to Shawn Mendes. “If you ever play ‘Baby’ again, I’ll murder you,” I say.

  “See? We’ve been through the worst together,” Sonny says. “We even survived the great Killmonger debate.”

  I bite my lip. The three of us exchange looks.

  “He. Was. Not. An. Antivillain,” I clap with each word. “He was a straight-up villain!”

  “Wow, really?” Malik says. “He wanted to liberate black people!”

  “Nakia did too! You didn’t see her killing women to do it!” I say.

  “How can you watch that flashback scene and not feel something for his fine ass though?” says Sonny. “C’mon!”

  I kiss my teeth. “I feel more for the Dora Milaje whose throat he slit.”

  “My point is,” Sonny says over me, “screw all that other stuff. Nothing can change what we’ve got.” />
  He holds his fist to me and Malik. We knock ours against it, give each other dap, and chunk the deuces like we used to do in middle school.

  “Bam!” we say.

  Just like that, we’re good.

  Temporarily. You see, one day, I’ll be an old, gray-haired woman (without wrinkles because black don’t crack), and my grandchildren will ask me about my best friends. I’ll tell them how Sonny, Malik, and I were cool since womb days, that they were my ride-or-dies, my brothers from other mothers.

  I’ll also tell them how a simple game of Mario Kart ended our friendship, because I’m about to chuck this damn controller across Malik’s living room.

  “You did not throw a shell at me!” I screech.

  Malik laughs as his Mario speeds by my Toad. Sonny’s Yoshi is ahead of both of us. This is our third race. I won the first one, and Sonny won the second, hence why Malik’s salty butt is resorting to dirty tactics.

  Okay, yes, he’s using the shells like they’re supposed to be used, but this is me, dammit. Hit that ol’ trick known as CPU Bowser if you wanna throw a shell.

  “Hey, you were in my way,” Malik says. “Mario’s gotta do what Mario’s gotta do.”

  “All right, bet.” I’m gonna get him back, watch. Not just on the game either. He’s gonna need something from me. Could be tomorrow, could be ten years from now, and I’m gonna be like, “Remember that time you threw a shell at me in Mario Kart?”

  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.”