On the Come Up

by Angie Thomas

  “But it didn’t beep!” I say.

  “I don’t care,” Long says. “I told you to go back through.”

  Fine. I go through the metal detector again. No beep.

  “Hand over the bag,” Long says.

  Oh, shit. My candy stash. If they find it, I could get suspended for selling on campus. Considering how much I’ve been suspended over other stuff, shit, I may get expelled.

  “Hand. Over. The. Bag,” Long says.

  I swallow. “I don’t have to—”

  “Oh, you got something to hide?” Long says.

  “No!”

  “Put that camera away!” Tate tells Malik.

  He’s got it out and pointed at us. “I can record if I want!”

  “Hand over the bag!” Long tells me.

  “No!”

  “You know what—”

  He reaches for my backpack strap, but I snatch it away. By the look that flashes across his eyes, I shouldn’t have done that.

  He grabs my arm. “Give me that backpack!”

  I yank away. “Get your hands off me!”

  Everything happens in a blur.

  He grabs my arm again and pulls it behind me. The other one goes behind me too. I try to yank and tug away, which only makes his grip tighter. Before I know it, my chest hits the ground first, then my face is pressed against the cold floor. Long’s knee goes onto my back as Tate removes my backpack.

  “Yo! What the fuck!” Sonny shouts.

  “Get off of her!” Malik says, camera pointed at us.

  “You brought something in here, huh?” Long says. He wraps plastic around my wrists and pulls it tight. “That’s why you didn’t want us to see it, huh? You li’l hoodlum! Where’s all that mouth you had yesterday?”

  I can’t say a word.

  He’s not a cop.

  He doesn’t have a gun.

  But I don’t wanna end up like that boy.

  I want my mom.

  I want my dad.

  I wanna go home.

  Five

  I end up in Principal Rhodes’s office.

  My arms are tied behind me. Long dragged me in here and made me sit down a few minutes ago. He’s in Dr. Rhodes’s office now. She told her secretary, Ms. Clark, to call my mom and keep an eye on me, like I’m the one who needs to be watched.

  Ms. Clark looks through my files on her computer for Jay’s work number. Surprised she doesn’t know it by heart by now.

  I stare straight ahead. The office has inspirational posters on every wall. One is a complete lie: “You can’t control what other people do. You can only control the way that you react.”

  No, you can’t. Not when your arm is jerked behind you, or you’re lying on the floor with a knee in your back. You can’t control shit then.

  Ms. Clark picks up her phone and dials. After a couple of seconds, she goes, “Hi, this is Midtown School of the Arts. May I speak to Mrs. Jayda Jackson, please?”

  Jay answers the phones at Christ Temple, so I expect Ms. Clark to go right into explaining the situation to her. But she frowns. “Oh. I see. Thank you.”

  She hangs up.

  Weird. “What did my mom say?”

  “I was told that your mother doesn’t work there anymore. Is there another way to reach her?”

  I sit up as best as I can. “What?”

  “Should I try her cell phone or her home phone?”

  “Are you sure you called Christ Temple Church?”

  “Positive,” Ms. Clark says. “Cell phone or home phone?”

  My heart stops.

  The Popkenchurch.

  Jay only gets it when something bad happens.

  Did she . . . did she lose her job?

  She couldn’t have. Ms. Clark’s got it wrong somehow. She probably called the wrong place and just doesn’t realize it.

  Yeah. That’s it.

  I tell Ms. Clark to try Jay’s cell phone. About fifteen minutes later, the office door flies open, and Jay storms in. She’s in her work clothes, so she must’ve left the church.

  “Brianna, what in the world happened?”

  She kneels in front of me and looks me over, almost like she did when she came back from rehab. Her eyes couldn’t get enough of me. Now they examine every inch of me . . . except my hands. She whirls around on the secretary. “Why the hell is my daughter handcuffed?”

  Dr. Rhodes appears in her doorway. Her glasses take up most of her face, and her curly red hair is in a bun. She was the principal back when Trey went here, too. I met her at his Freshman Welcome Night. She gave me this sugary-sweet smile and said, “Hopefully in a few years, you’ll join us too.”

  She didn’t say there would be a security guard ranting in her office about “those kids” bringing “that stuff” into “this school.” The door was closed, but I heard him.

  Those kids. This school. Like one doesn’t belong with the other.

  “Mrs. Jackson,” Dr. Rhodes says, “may we please have a word in my office?”

  “Not until my daughter is released.”

  Dr. Rhodes looks back over her shoulder. “Mr. Long, would you please release Brianna?”

  He lumbers out and removes the little scissors hanging from a clip on his waist. He grumbles, “Stand up.”

  I do, and with one little snip my hands are uncuffed.

  Jay immediately cups my cheeks. “Are you okay, baby?”

  “Mrs. Jackson, my office, please?” Dr. Rhodes says. “You too, Brianna.”

  We follow her in. The look she gives Long tells him to stay outside.

  My backpack sits on top of her desk. It’s unzipped, revealing every pack of candy I had.

  Dr. Rhodes points at the two chairs in front of her. “Please, have a seat.”

  We do. “Are you going to tell me why my daughter was handcuffed?” Jay asks.

  “There was an incident—”

  “Obviously.”

  “I will be the first to admit that the guards used excessive force. They put Brianna on the floor.”

  “Threw,” I mumble. “They threw me on the floor.”

  Jay’s eyes widen. “Excuse me?”

  “We’ve had issues with students bringing illegal drugs—”

  “That doesn’t explain why they manhandled my child!” says Jay.

  “Brianna was not cooperative at first.”

  “It still doesn’t explain it!” Jay says.

  Dr. Rhodes takes a deep breath. “It will not happen again, Mrs. Jackson. I assure you that there will be an investigation and disciplinary action will take place if the administration sees fit. However, Brianna may have to face disciplinary action as well.” She turns to me. “Brianna, have you been selling candy on campus?”

  I fold my arms. I’m not answering that shit. And let her turn this around on me? Hell no.

  “Answer her,” Jay tells me.

  “It’s only candy,” I mumble.

  “Maybe so,” says Dr. Rhodes, “but it’s against school policy to sell contraband on campus.”

  Contraband? “The only reason y’all found out about it is because Long and Tate like to go after the black and Latinx kids!”

  “Brianna,” Jay says. It’s not a warning. It’s an “I got this.” She turns to Rhodes. “Since when is candy contraband? Why did they come after my daughter in the first place?”

  “The security guards have the right to conduct random searches. I can assure you that Brianna was not ‘targeted.’”

  “Bullshit!” I don’t even bite my tongue. “They always harass us.”

  “It may seem that way—”

  “It is that way!”

  “Brianna,” Jay says. That’s a warning. She turns to the principal. “Dr. Rhodes, my son told me that the guards picked on certain kids more than others when he was here. I don’t think my children are making this up. I’d hate to think you’re saying that.”

  “There will be an investigation,” Dr. Rhodes says so calmly, it pisses me off. “But I stand by what I sai
d, Mrs. Jackson. The guards treat all of the students the same.”

  “Oh,” says Jay. “They throw them all on the floor, huh?”

  Silence.

  Dr. Rhodes clears her throat. “Again, Brianna was not cooperative. I was told she was argumentative and aggressive. This is not the first time we’ve had behavioral issues with her.”

  Here we go.

  “What are you trying to say?” Jay asks.

  “Today’s behavior follows a pattern—”

  “Yes, a pattern of my daughter being targeted—”

  “Again, no one is targeting—”

  “Do the white girls who make slick comments get sent to your office every other week too?” Jay asks.

  “Mrs. Jackson, Brianna is frequently aggressive—”

  Aggressive. One word, three syllables. Rhymes with excessive.

  I’m so excessive,

  that I’m aggressive.

  “Aggressive” is used to describe me a lot. It’s supposed to mean threatening, but I’ve never threatened anybody. I just say stuff that my teachers don’t like. All of them except Mrs. Murray, who happens to be my only black teacher. There was the time in history class during Black History Month. I asked Mr. Kincaid why we don’t ever talk about black people before slavery. His pale cheeks reddened.

  “Because we’re following a lesson plan, Brianna,” he said.

  “Yeah, but don’t you come up with the lesson plans?” I asked.

  “I will not tolerate outbursts in class.”

  “I’m just saying, don’t act like black people didn’t exist before—”

  He told me to go to the office. Wrote me up as being “aggressive.”

  Fiction class. Mrs. Burns was talking about the literary canon, and I rolled my eyes because all the books sounded boring as shit. She asked if there was a problem, and I told her exactly that, just without saying “as shit.” She sent me to the office. I mumbled something under my breath on the way out, and she wrote me up for aggressive behavior.

  Can’t forget the incident in my theater elective. We’d done the same scene one hundred times. Mr. Ito told us to start from the top yet again. I sucked my teeth and went, “Oh my God,” throwing my hands at my sides. My script flew from my grasp and hit him. He swore I intentionally threw it. That got me a two-day suspension.

  That’s all from this year. Freshman year and sophomore year were full of incidents, too. Now I’ve got another under my belt.

  “Per school policy, Brianna will have to serve a three-day suspension for selling banned items on school property without permission,” Dr. Rhodes says. She zips up my backpack and hands it to me.

  We go into the hallway just as the bell for second period rings. Classroom doors open, and it seems like everybody and their momma pour into the halls. I get second glances I’ve never gotten before, and stares and whispers.

  I’m no longer invisible, but now I wish I was.

  I’m quiet on the ride home.

  Hoodlum. One word, two syllables. Can be made to rhyme with a lot of things. Synonyms: thug, delinquent, hooligan, lowlife, gangster, and, according to Long, Brianna.

  Can’t no good come,

  From this hoodlum.

  Nah. Fuck that word.

  Fuck that school.

  Fuck all of this.

  I stare at what’s left of the Garden. We’re on Clover Street, which used to be one of the busiest streets in Garden Heights, but ever since the riots, there’s a bunch of charred rubble and boarded-up buildings. The Mega Dollar Store was one of the first to get hit. Cellular Express got looted first and then burned down. Shop ’n Save burned down to the frame, and now we have to go to the Walmart on the edge of the Garden or the little store over on the west if we wanna get groceries.

  I’m a hoodlum from a bunch of nothing.

  “Doubt they’ll ever fix this mess,” Jay says. “It’s like they want us to remember what happens when we step out of line.” She glances over at me. “You okay, Bookie?”

  According to my granddaddy, Jacksons don’t cry—we suck it up and deal with it. Doesn’t matter how much my eyes burn. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Jay says. “You had every right to keep your backpack. But Bri . . . Promise me, if that ever happens again, you’ll do what they tell you to do.”

  “What?”

  “Bad things can happen, baby. People like that sometimes abuse their power.”

  “So I don’t have any power?”

  “You have more than you know. But in moments like that, I—” She swallows. “I need you to act as if you don’t have any. Once you’re safely out of the situation, then we’ll handle it. But I need you safely out of the situation. Okay?”

  This is like that talk she gave me about the cops. Do whatever they tell you to do, she said. Don’t make them think you’re a threat. Basically, weaken myself and take whatever’s thrown at me so I can survive that moment.

  I’m starting to think it doesn’t matter what I do. I’ll still be whatever people think I am. “They’re always on my case at that school.”

  “I know,” Jay says. “And it’s not fair. But you only have to get through two more years, baby. All these incidents . . . we can’t risk you getting expelled, Bri. If that means keeping your mouth shut, I need you to do it.”

  “I can’t speak up for myself?”

  “You pick your battles,” she says. “Not everything deserves a comment or an eye roll or an attitude—”

  “I’m not the only one who does that stuff!”

  “No, but girls like you are the only ones getting hits on their permanent record!”

  The car goes quiet.

  Jay sighs out of her nose. “Sometimes the rules are different for black folks, baby,” she says. “Hell, sometimes they’re playing checkers while we’re in a complicated-ass chess game. It’s an awful fact of life, but it’s a fact. Midtown is unfortunately one of those places where you not only gotta play chess, but you gotta play it by a different set of rules.”

  I hate this shit. “I don’t wanna go back there.”

  “I understand, but we don’t have any other options.”

  “Why can’t I go to Garden High?”

  “Because your daddy and I swore that you and Trey would never step foot in that school,” she says. “You think the guards are bad at Midtown? They have actual cops at Garden High, Bri. The damn school is treated like a prison. They don’t set anybody up to succeed. Say what you want about Midtown, but you’ve got a better chance there.”

  “A better chance at what? Getting tossed around like a rag doll?”

  “A better chance at making it!” She’s louder than me. She takes a deep breath. “You’re gonna face a whole lot of Longs and Tates in your life, baby. More than I’d like. But you never let their actions determine what you do. The moment you do, you’ve given them the power. You hear me?”

  Yeah, but does she hear me? Neither of us speaks for the longest.

  “I wish . . . I wish I could give you more options, baby. I do. We don’t have any. Especially right now.”

  Especially right now. I look over at her. “Did something happen?”

  She shifts in her seat a little. “Why you say that?”

  “Ms. Clark called the church. They said you don’t work there anymore.”

  “Brianna, let’s not talk about—”

  Oh, God. “You lost your job?”

  “This is temporary, okay?”

  “You lost your job?”

  She swallows. “Yes, I did.”

  Oh no.

  No.

  No.

  No.

  “The church daycare got damaged during the riots, and the insurance company isn’t covering the damages,” she says. “Pastor and the elders board had to adjust the budget in order to pay for repairs, so they let me go.”

  Shit.

  I’m not stupid. Jay tries to act like everything’s all good, but we’re struggling. We already do
n’t have gas. Last month, we got an eviction notice. Jay used most of her check to cover the rent, and we ate sandwiches until her next payday.

  But if she lost her job, she won’t have a payday.

  If she doesn’t have a payday, we might not ever have gas again.

  Or food.

  Or a house.

  What if—

  “Don’t worry, Bri,” Jay says. “God’s got us, baby.”

  The same God who let her get laid off from a church?

  “I’ve been going on interviews,” she says. “Left one to pick you up, actually. Plus, I’ve already filed for unemployment. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.”

  She’s already filed? “How long have you been away from the church?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it’s not,” she says. “Trey and I are taking care of things.”

  “Trey knew?”

  She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times. “Yes.”

  Figures. When the gas got cut off, Trey knew it was gonna happen. I found out when I woke up in a cold house. The eviction notice? Trey knew. I found out when I overheard them talking about it. I wish it didn’t bother me, but it does. It’s like Jay doesn’t trust me enough to tell me the important stuff. Like she thinks I’m too young to handle it.

  I handled her being gone for years. I can handle more than she thinks.

  She parks in our driveway behind Trey’s old Honda Civic, then turns toward me, but I look out my window.

  Okay, maybe I am a little bit immature. Whatever.

  “I know you’re worried,” she says. “Things have been tough for a while. But it’s gonna get better. Somehow, someway. We gotta believe that, baby.”

  She reaches for my cheek.

  I move away and open my door. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Jay grabs my arm. “Brianna, wait.”

  I’m shaking. Here I am, worried about real problems, and she wants me to “believe”? “Please, let me go.”

  “No. I’m not letting you run instead of talk to me. Today’s been a lot, baby.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She runs her thumb along my arm, like she’s trying to coax the tears out of me. “No, you’re not. It’s okay if you’re not. You do know you don’t have to be strong all the time, right?”

  Maybe not all the time, but I have to be right now. I tug away from her. “I’m fine.”