by Angie Thomas
I look back at my house. “It definitely does.”
The moment I take my seat on the bus, I fish through my backpack for my notebook. I either need to write a new song or find a song that I’ve already written. One that’s so dope, the record execs will lose their minds. I could go with “Unarmed and Dangerous” this time around, the song I wrote after that kid was killed. Or maybe I need another hype—high-energy song. Even in a different context, I refuse to use the word “hype” again.
I’m so busy flipping through pages that when somebody goes, “Hey,” I jump.
Curtis smirks in the seat behind me. “What’s got you all jittery, Princess?”
“Nothing. Just didn’t notice you back there.” That came out wrong. “Not that I wouldn’t notice you. I just didn’t notice you this time.”
“I know what you meant.” He’s got this almost sly look in his eyes, like he gets whenever he tells one of his little jokes. This time, it’s an inside joke between us. “So . . . how you been?”
“I’m fine.”
I don’t know what else to say. This is the part of relationships that I fail at. Okay, I don’t even know if we have a relationship. I’ve actually never been in one. But it’s like, what do you do after the kiss? What do you say? That’s the part that trips me up.
Curtis moves to the spot beside me. “I’ve been thinking ’bout you. Been thinking ’bout that kiss, too.”
“Oh.” I glance down at my notebook. I should be searching for a song right now.
“I know, it’s probably been all on your mind since it happened, huh?” he says. “I tend to have that effect.”
I look up. “What?”
“Ay, I’m just saying, my kissing game? One hundred.”
I bust out laughing. “You’re so full of it.”
“I got your attention though, and I got you smiling.” He gently pokes one of my dimples. “That’s a win to me. What’s up with you this morning, Princess?”
“I’ve got some stuff going on with this rap thing,” I say. “You heard my Hype interview, right?”
“Everybody heard your Hype interview. You really went in on dude.”
I rest my head back. “Yeah. For somebody who was once invisible, I’m definitely making up for it now.”
He frowns. “Invisible?”
“Curtis, you know damn well nobody at school noticed me until I got a little fame as a rapper.”
He looks me up and down and licks his lips. “I can’t speak for anyone else, but I definitely noticed you. Fact is, I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a minute, Princess. But you seemed so caught up in your boy Malik that I didn’t think I had a shot.”
“Wait, what?”
“I thought y’all were together,” he says. “You acted like you couldn’t hang out with anybody but him and Sonny.”
“That’s not true!”
“Yeah, it is. Name somebody else you hang out with.”
Okay, there’s nobody else. “I always figured nobody else wanted to hang out with me, to be honest,” I admit.
“And I always figured you didn’t wanna hang out with anybody else, to be honest.”
Damn.
I mean, I don’t know. I’m always weird about new people, I guess. The more people in your life, the more people who can leave your life, you know? I’ve lost enough as it is.
But right now, Curtis makes me wonder if I’ve been missing out.
“You know what? Fuck it,” he says. “You wanna go out with me tomorrow afternoon for Valentine’s Day?”
Oh, damn. I forgot that’s tomorrow. Honestly, Valentine’s Day is never on my radar. “Like out on a date?” I ask.
“Yeah. A date. You and me. We can do some romantic Valentine’s shit.”
“Um, wow. Well, one, I can’t do tomorrow. I’m going to see my aunt. Two, I’m sure it will be really romantic considering how you just asked me out.”
“What’s wrong with how I asked you out?”
“Boy, you literally said ‘fuck it.’”
“Goddamn, Princess? Can I get a break?”
“Um, no. Not if you’re asking me out.”
“What? You want me to make it a big deal?” he asks. “Because I can make it a big deal.”
The bus stops in front of Sonny’s and Malik’s houses. They climb on board just as Curtis climbs onto our seat. Seriously, he stands on the seat.
“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.
Supreme squeezes my shoulders. “You done made it, Li’l Law. This the big time!”
He’s more chill as he tells the receptionist who we are and who we’re here to see. I look around at the plaques. Legendary songs and albums have been recorded at this place. Aunt Pooh would lose her mind if she saw some of these.
It doesn’t feel right, being here without her.
There’s also the fact that I lied to my mom. I texted her and said I was staying after school to do some additional ACT prep. I’ll tell her the truth soon as I go home. Because if this meeting goes like I hope it goes, I’m about to change our lives.
The receptionist leads us to a studio in the back. The whole way, I tug at my hoodie strings and wipe my palms along my jeans. They’re sweaty as hell. My lunch churns in my stomach, too. I don’t know if I wanna puke or run into that studio.
“Be cool,” Supreme says to me under his breath. “Record the song like you’d normally do and everything will be fine, all right? Just follow my lead on the other stuff.”
Other stuff? “What other stuff?”
He simply pats my back with a smile.
The receptionist opens the last door in the hallway, and I swear, I stop breathing. She opened the door to heaven.
Okay, that’s a giant overstatement, but this is the closest I’ve ever been to those pearly gates. It’s a studio. Not a nice setup in somebody’s shed, but an actual, professional studio. There’s a soundboard that has hundreds of buttons, gigantic speakers in the walls, a large window that reveals a recording booth on the other side. Not a mic in a corner, but a real recording booth with a real microphone.
An older white man in a polo shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap meets Supreme at the doorway with a handshake. “Clarence! It’s been a while!”
Clarence? Who the hell is Clarence?
“Hella long, James,” Supreme says.
“Indeed,” says the man who must be James. He turns to me and clasps my hand with both of his. “The superstar! James Irving, CEO of Vine Records. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Bri.”
Oh, shit. “I’ve heard of you.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulder, pointing me out to this tatted Latino guy who sits at the soundboard and a white woman with a ponytail. “See? I like this one already. She’s heard of me.”
He chuckles. It’s not until he does that Supreme and the other two laugh as well.
James makes himself comfortable on a leather sofa across the room. “This is my head of A&R, Liz.” He points at the woman, who nods at me. “I gotta tell you, Bri. I’m so glad you agreed to let me see this studio session. So, so glad. You can learn a shit ton about an artist by watching how they work, you know? I’ve seen some goddamn geniuses in my day. Blows me away every fucking time, I swear.”
He talks super fast. It’s almost hard to keep up with him.
Supreme seems to keep up just fine. “Dawg, I’m telling you, you ’bout to witness some dope shit. Phenomenal even.”
I look at him. Why is he talking like that?
“Oh, I believe it. We heard your interview, Bri,” James goes on. “I already loved the song, but that? It sealed the goddamn deal for us, no bullshit. Only thing I like more than good rappers are good rappers who get people talking.”
“Fa’sho,” Supreme says for me. “We knew Hype was gon’ push shorty’s buttons from jump. I told her if she lost her shit, everybody would be talking, ya know?”
James chugs back some of his drink. “That’s why you’re a goddamn genius, Clarence. I still remember what you did with Lawless. God, that guy could’ve gone far. Such a tragedy, you know? I always tell folks, rap about that street shit but leave it in the streets. You can act like a fucking hoodlum and not be one.”
Every inch of me has tensed up. “My dad wasn’t a hoodlum.”
The words come out so tight and cold that they silence the room.
Supreme tries to laugh again, but it’s forced. He grabs my shoulder and squeezes it a little too hard. “Grief lingers, nah’mean?” he explains me to James.
I move my shoulder away. I don’t need him to explain. I meant what I said.
But James takes his words as truth. “Understandably. Jesus, I can’t imagine. Some of the bullshit you inner-city kids gotta deal with.”
Or I’m just a daughter who doesn’t let people disrespect her dad. What the hell?
There’s a knock at the door, and the receptionist peeks in. “Mr. Irving, the other guest has arrived.”
“Let him in!” James says, motioning her to do so. She opens the door all the way, and Dee-Nice steps into the studio.
He slaps palms with Supreme. He shakes James’s hand. He shuffles a folder from under one arm to the other so that he can half-hug me. “Whaddup, baby girl? You ready to do this song?”
“Oh, yeah, she is,” Supreme says.
Dee-Nice holds up the folder. “I got these bars ready.”
So we’re doing a song together. Okay, cool. “Damn, I’m slacking,” I say. “I haven’t decided what song I wanna do from my notebook. If y’all just give me about twenty minutes, I can write—”
Supreme laughs, and once again it brings on a chorus of laughter. “Nah, baby girl. Dee wrote your song for you.”
Time out. Time. Out. “What?”
“I already heard the beat,” Dee-Nice says. “Wrote it last night. Got your verses, the hook, everything.”
“He let me hear it earlier,” says Supreme. “I’m telling you, shit’s straight fire.”
James gives an excited clap. “Hell yes!”
Hold up, pause, back up, slow down, all of that. “I write my own stuff though.”
“Nah,” Supreme says, like I asked if he was cold or something. “Dee got you.”
Did he not hear what I said? “But I got me.”
Supreme laughs again, though this time it doesn’t sound like he’s amused. He seems to look around at everyone from behind those shades. “You hear this? She got her.” He turns to me, and the laughter is gone. “Like I said, Dee got you.”
Dee hands me the folder.
I open it. Instead of wildly scribbled rhymes all over a piece of notebook paper like I’d usually have, Dee has typed up an entire song. There are verses, a hook, and a bridge. He even wrote a damn intro, like I can’t get in there and spontaneously say something.
What the hell?
But the lyri
cs? The lyrics are what really get me.
“‘I pack gats the size of rats, and give fiends what they need,’” I mutter, and can’t believe I’m saying this my own self. “‘In the hood they call me PMS, I make chicks . . . bleed’?”
This has gotta be a joke.
“Fire, right?” Supreme says.
Like hell. For some reason, I think about those kids at Maple Grove. When they repeated “On the Come Up” back to me, I felt some kinda way. I knew what I meant with that song, but I don’t know if they did.
The idea of those six-year-olds repeating that I make chicks bleed . . . it makes me feel sick. “I can’t rap this.”
Supreme gives another one of those unamused chuckles, and it leads to more chuckles.
“I told you, James, shorty got a mouth on her,” he says.
“Aw, you know me, I love that sassy black-girl shit,” says James.
The fuck? That word sassy has always rubbed me the wrong way for some reason, like articulate. “Sassy black girl” is ten times worse. “What the hell did you—”
“Y’all, give us a few minutes,” says Supreme. He takes me by my shoulder and guides me out into the hall. The second we’re out there though, I shake him off.
“Look, you can say what you want,” I tell him straight up. “But I’m not about to rap something I didn’t write, and I’m damn sure not about to rap something that’s not me. I already got people thinking I’m a hood rat and a hoodlum. That song won’t help!”
Slowly, Supreme lifts his sunglasses, and I can’t lie, I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never seen him without them. I’ve always wondered if he was scarred or had lost an eye or something. But deep-set brown eyes look back at me.
“Didn’t I tell your ass to follow my lead?” he growls.
I step back. “But—”
He advances. “You’re trying to ruin this shit before we get it?”
I may have backed up but I’m not backing down. “I can write a song myself. I don’t need Dee to write shit for me. Hype already clowned me, saying I had a ghostwriter. I can’t go and actually have one. That’s phony as hell.”
Supreme clenches his hands at his sides. “Baby girl”—he says each word slowly, as if to make sure I hear him—“you’re in the music business now. Keyword, business. This is about making money. That man in there”—he points toward the studio door—“got more cash at his disposal than he knows what to do with. We’re about to damn near commit robbery and take as much of it as we can. You just gotta do this song.”