Singing Through Siren Sounds

Singing Through Siren Sounds Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It all started at the end of August. He’s driving. His car is hot because the air’s broken, but the only thing that’s hotter is him. He was this dark-skinned smooth brother whose skin matched mine. I’d never dated a man as black as me. As we’re sitting there I press my arms next to his and there’s no way of telling his skin from mine. Brown, smooth, chocolate skin.

I slide my hand a little further up his leg and palm him through his shorts, nipping his ear between my teeth once again.

He twitches under my hand, thudding his head back against the headrest with a sigh that turns into a moan as I apply a touch more pressure, stroking along his length, trailing my lips down to leave open-mouthed kisses down his neck. The car drifts just slightly towards the center before he corrects. He links his fingers with mine and moves my hand away from his lap, squeezing it and bringing it to his lips for a kiss.

He chuckles, "You want to crash? That's how you get a crash." He isn't cross; his eyebrows quirk but his eyes are soft, and I want him so badly I ache.

"Nope, I want you to pull over," I grin.

He shakes his head with a laugh and squeezes my hand again, "We've only got ten minutes to go," he pulls me into him to kiss the top of my head. "Then we'll be home, and I'll take you to bed and fuck the shit out of you."

And the perfect song comes on and I find myself singing along, holding his hand. It was at this moment that I felt like I knew what heaven was.

“Every time I see your lips, it makes me think of honey-coated chocolate

Your kisses are worth more than gold to me

I'll be your almond joy, you'll be my sugar daddy

Brown skin, you know I love your brown skin

I can't tell where yours begins, I can't tell where mine ends…”

He turns to me as I’m singing. When I first met him I thought he looked like a young Idris Elba. The moments he looks at me with these focused eyes I almost think he’ll lose control of his wheel and crash but he doesn’t. The wheel remains so smoothly held.

“That’s how you feel baby?” he asks me.

“Yeah.”

“Keep going.”

“Brown skin, up against my brown skin

Need some every now and then, oh hey

Every time you come around, something magnetic pulls me and I can't get out

Disoriented, I can't tell my up from down

All I know is that I want to lay you down…”

That’s when he pulls over on the side of the road.

“Watchu doin’, Coin?” I ask, “Thought you weren’t gonna pull over.”

Cory ‘Coin’ Washington was his name. Despite his smooth complexion, he had a cool solemn handsomeness about him. He wasn’t some model or anything but had a cooler level of sexiness about him. The kind of guy that said “nigga” a million times a day and never meant anything by it. The kind of guy who sagged his pants a little bit knew every new hot rapper and almost smelled like a lick of weed. His voice was raspy even now because he smoked so much but I loved every bit of it.

“Shawty, I can’t drive n shit when you blowin’ like that. You know that shit turns me on when you sing for me.”

I blush a little bit. It’s been 5 years and he’s still able to do that to me. He’s still able to make me straight up blush. It was the end of the summer and a lot of things were changing but there were those things that stayed the same. Coin and Dijon.

“Bruh, you got the voice of an angel,” he tells me, “Nah, scratch that nigga. You got the voice of a whole Siren.”

“Siren?” I ask.

He laughs, “You know. Like Greek Mythology and shit.”

“I know what a Siren is Coin,” I tell him, “Let me find out you been reading a book.”

He laughs. It’s this deep wholesome laugh. He always laughed straight from his chest. It’s this deep hoarse that lets me know he really does enjoy my company.

“I’m trying to get into that school of yours. That rich white college. That way we could be around each other 24/7…”

“You want that?”

“Hell yeah. I was serious with what I said before yo,” he grinds his teeth a little bit, takes a deep breath, and finishes his sentence with a heaviness, “Like real talk. I am gonna tell my folks about me. Tell ‘em. Tell ‘em…”

“Tell them you’re gay?”

“Yeah, that.”

I smile. It’s been hard for him. It’s been hard for both of us. You see on Netflix all these gay couples out and open. Coming out for me was nothing. My parents were these ultra-liberal middle class It wasn’t like that for him...a black man who lived in one of the worst hoods in America.

I lean over to press my lips to his cheek, his stubble rough on my bottom lip, the skin smooth under my top one. He smiles and I kiss him again just above where his lips tug upwards. I wiggle sideways in my seat, tucking my bottom leg underneath me and leaning my arm on the back of the seat so I can watch his face as I run my fingers through his hair, idly twisting the short ends and occasionally scratching my nails lightly over his scalp. His eyes flutter and he huffs out a soft exhalation. I feel a fluttering at the bottom of my throat at his sigh and lean forward again, balancing myself with a hand on his thigh, to nibble his earlobe, soothing it with tender sucks and kisses. His mouth drops into a silent 'oh', eyes blinking rapidly.

Somehow my pants are off.

I put my leg up on the dashboard. He knows exactly what he’s doing as he guides his fingers slowly towards the opening of my ass crack. His bedroom eyes are set on me. He pulls his hand away with an obscene wet noise as his finger slides free and my asshole tries to clench around it.

“Oh fuck,” his eyes are dark and a faint flush colors his cheeks. Without looking away from the road, he brings his hand to my mouth and I suck my fingers between my lips.

It seems all one movement when he slams the handbrake on and pushes his seatback. I barely have my seat belt undone as he's dragging me into his lap, breathing fast as he crashes his lips to mine, kissing me deep and filthy, squeezing my ass hard as I grip his hair and grind down on him.

That’s when we hear it.

The sirens.

“Shit…” he states, “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

I’ll never forget how flushed his face was when he realizes it’s the police.

“Relax...it’s just the police. It’s just sirens…”

See... in Greek Mythology Sirens were dangerous creatures, who lured nearby innocent sailors with their enchanting music and singing voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. I always wondered why.

~

It never occurred to me that in the modern-day there were still Sirens until I had to lower Coin’s body into the grave. They might have not been these mythical creatures but our sirens led innocent people to their deaths as well. The only difference is the sailors sailing through the night just all happened to be very specific skin color. They targeted that brown skin.

I arrive at my dorm room. It’s been almost a week since the car. I should have started school a week ago but everything had happened and shit had hit the fan. The world had come crashing down all around me and I didn’t know what happened.

I get stares as soon as I get out of my car.

People were definitely staring as I walk towards the dorm room. I wonder if I’m imagining it. I wonder if I’m imagining the sea of white people seeming to look at me. I was born in the hood and my good grades had gotten me out of the hood. But now I was wondering what that meant.

It all culminated in me outside of the room that I knew would be mine.

And a sign was hung on my door.

“WHITE COP KILLS A DINDU NUFFIN…”

All I see is red.

I walk in the room and that’s where I see someone completely naked in my bedroom. He was lean and muscled, with light icy blonde hair. He had a patch of hair on his chest between his pecs. He had a trail of hair that led from his navel down to his cock. A thatch of straight brown hair framed a dick that hung limp about 7 inches down over two egg-sized nuts. His hair was wet and it was clear that he’d just got out of the shower or something like that.

“You put this on my motherfuckin’ door!” I bark running up to him.

I hadn’t waited for him to respond. At that point, he was the white cop who killed Coin. He was the dozens of people who DM’D me all these racist messages because I was the one who dared to file a police report against a beloved defender of justice.

And all I feel is hate.

I don’t know how it happens when I tackle him onto the bed. All this emotion is coming out of me. I didn’t even know who this man was but I hated him. I hated everything about him. I hated how blonde his hair was or how pink his lips were. I hated the fact that his eyes were this icy blue color.

I swing at him several times. He turns around and grabs my arm. He cranks up my arm. I am forced to stand on my toes to reduce the pain. He then shoves me forward. When I turn around the white boy is just standing there as if he's waiting for me to recover.

“What the----” he starts saying.

He’s saying as though he doesn’t know what is going on. God, that pisses me off. I rush toward him. At the last moment, he sidestepped and wrapped his meaty arms around my belly. He roars and lifts me off the ground. I'm shocked by the display of strength as he continues to bring me over his head and slamming me back first onto one of the two bunk beds in the room. We roll over onto the ground somehow and there is this muscular naked man on top of me twisting at my legs.

He has me in submission.

“If I let you go----you better calm the fuck down,” he states.

The way he tells me what I better do drives me nuts. It’s just like a white boy to tell a black boy what he better do.

I mutter out a quick, “Yeah.”

He must have realized he's not getting a submission out of me. He releases my legs, giving me a moment of reprieve. He grabs my hand in an attempt to pull me up. I take this opportunity to land a couple of strikes at his midsection.

“OOF!” I hear the white boy bellow.

I pushed myself off the ground and tackle him right on his gut. He lands with a thud and I am now on top of him. I stand up and spread his legs apart. That's when I notice that the white boy has a hard-on.

I look over at his dick and he looks over at his dick. Our eyes turn and I hear him say, “Don’t----”, but he's too slow to prevent my foot from landing on his unguarded crotch.

“Fuck!” he yells.

He pushes me off of him. He’s beyond fast when he jerks up behind me and puts me in a headlock. I notice his dick is still semi-hard even as he tightens the headlock.

“Let me go…” I tell him.

“No fuck that. You just came into my fucking room and attacked me.”

“This is my fuckin room.”

“You’re my roommate…” he states, “You Dijon Henry? I’m Wren. I don’t know what you’re mad about but I didn’t do anything. I didn’t put that sign up on that door…”

“Let me go.”

“If I let you go, promise not to hit me….”

“I ain’t promising shit…”

I push my ass towards him. I couldn’t beat this Wren guy in a fight but I knew how to make him uncomfortable. He had this muscular body like he played sports. I was sure he was involved in something. Maybe football or something of that nature. Either way straight guys hated when you challenged their sexuality and pushing back on his dick definitely was something that he wasn’t expecting nor wanting.

He lets me go.

I think about going after him again but honestly, the guy was just too fucking strong. So I end up on the other side of the room and decide to verbally attack him instead.

“If you didn’t put it on the door why the fuck did you keep it up there...you racist piece of shit?”

He picks up the letter, “I don’t know what the fuck this meant or where it came from. I have no idea what the hell a Dindu nuffin is.”

“Bullshit.”

He takes a few deep breaths. Clearly, I had worn him out a little bit from all the restraining of me he had been doing. But that’s when he looks up at me and says it again.

“I swear to God. I don’t know what that means…” he states.

“Dindu Nuffin is a derogatory term to mock and criticize black people who speak out against police violence…”

“Listen I had no idea…” he states.

He was pleading the whole white ignorance thing. The wild thing about it is that he was kind of believable too. That’s when I think about how ignorant I was back then. How I thought that white cop walking up to the car didn’t mean any harm either. How I thought everything was chill. How I thought everything was cool.

How wrong had I been back then?

“Whatever man…”

“Seriously I…”

“Listen I don’t need to hear it,” I cut him off.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this aggressive towards someone in my life. I don’t think I’d ever been so angry with anyone in my life. I’d had little fights in school but nothing as a grown man. Nothing that was as intense as what I had just gone through with him.

He doesn’t speak the rest of the night, after going to get dressed. He looks at me a few times while I am unpacking my things in the room through the corner of his eyes looking as though he wants to spark up a conversation to break the uneasiness, but I don’t let him. Every time I see his mouth linger a little too long, I turn on music or pick up the phone to call my mother. Thankfully he gives up sooner or later.

~

The next morning he seems to still be at it. Immediately I realize the most annoying thing about Wren besides how ignorant he was is that he is kind of attractive. He was on the phone with a white girl who I’m sure is his girlfriend. She’s blonde as well. They look like Ken and Barbie while they are on the phone but when he realizes that I’m up he hangs up the phone.

He seems to watch me as I start getting dressed, wearing black head to toe.

“You headed to a funeral?”

“Not wearing all black for my health man.”

Wren looks over at me. You would think by now he would have gotten the clue. You would have thought he would have realized I wanted nothing to do with him especially since he let that sign hanging up on the door for as long as it did. Maybe he wasn’t the one who wrote that note. Maybe he was. There was no telling nowadays. You couldn’t trust anyone.

“I can drop you off...if you want.”

“I got a car.”

I leave the dorm without saying another word. It isn’t until I get to my car that I realize just how fucked up everything is.

Someone has flattened my tires…

~

The car ride is awkward. He had a nice car. It was a brand new Benz. It looked clean too like he had just gotten it. The last time I was in someone else’s car was Coins. Coin’s car looked nothing like this. We are silent for the most part during the ride. It was awkward going back in there and telling him that I had a flat. I didn’t even ask for a ride. My pride wouldn’t let me do it, but Wren seemed to know what I needed and got his keys for me anyway.

I had to admit in a way I was jealous. I was jealous that his car was so clean, I was jealous that his girlfriend was so pretty and I was jealous that his life was so perfect. He could drive around in the city without worrying about what would happen if he got pulled over. He never had to be afraid of those things.

I wonder if that’s what he’s thinking because out of nowhere he says, “I’m sorry about what happened to your tires.”

“Y'all trying to scare me out of that school. It’s not going to work.”

“Whose y'all?” he asks, “I have nothing to do with that. Not all white people are the same.”

I roll my eyes, “Yeah OK…”

“Listen,” he states, “We started off on the wrong foot. I know you are getting a lot of attention for raising such a stink about the death of your friend.”

“The murder of my friend,” I correct him.

He nods, “Listen. I just want you to know that not everyone’s against you. That’s all.”

For a moment I think he’s sincere, but just for this short moment in time. It passes so quickly when I realize we are leaving the burbs and entering an area called the Bottom. The Bottom was full of black projects that were left up so white people could feel better about their privilege. For some reason, I’ve never been so aware of my blackness until now. I notice Wren sit up a little bit as he takes notice of the sea of black faces protesting what happened to Coins up and down the streets of the Bottom as we roll up on a street not too far away from where his funeral was going to be. They’d probably been out there all night. They probably would be out there a lot longer. Wren’s hands tighten up on the steering wheel when he sees the graffiti-written walls and the sounds of local gangsters bumping music from low riding Camaros. I can tell he’s nervous but I wonder if he’s scared. I wonder if it’s fear he sees. I’d never been aware of how they looked at me. Did society see me as some sort of victim who was so unaware of everything that

He pulls over when we arrive at the funeral. He sweeps his hand through his icy blonde hair as he stands there looking around a few times as though wondering if this is the right spot. Maybe he expected a higher-end funeral or something.

“You gonna be good here?” he asks.

“What you gonna come with me?” I ask in return.

His mouth hangs open as though he wasn’t expecting the question. He seems nervous again. He’d be the only white face in a crowd of black folk at a time when race relations weren’t exactly at its height.

“I----”

“Relax, white boy,” I tell him, “I was just fuckin’ with you.”

“I woulda came…”

I roll my eyes again. Somehow I didn’t believe it, “Yeah ok…”

~

I leave Wren and I admit maybe he’s trying to prove how brave he is or something but he sits in that car until I’m out of sight before pulling off. Arriving at this sight ain’t no better. You would think I was amongst my people so maybe the stares would ease a little bit. That’s not the case when tragedy strikes. When tragedy strikes everyone is looking at you weird.

The funeral is an awkward mess. There’s nothing worse than wanting to break down and ugly cry but holding it all in. The reason I hold it all in is that if I cried the way that I wanted to cry people would know just how much he meant to me. So instead of getting too close, I stay far away. I am barely there. I think of anything. Flying dogs. Flying cats. Flying babies. Anything that could fly. I just wanted to fly away from all of this. And the whole thing isn’t over fast enough.

By the end of it, I find myself walking up to his mother because that’s what you’re supposed to do right? You give your condolences.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell his mother.

“It’s you. You were with him that night,” she states recognizing me through the tears.

I’m standing at Coin’s wake. There is a flood of black bodies that have come out to support him. It’s strange because I wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t used to being around so many black people in general. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood. I was used to being the token black boy. That wasn’t the case at Coin’s funeral. It was so different and for some reason, it made me even sadder.

“I was.”

She squints at me and she asks, “How’d you know him?”

I’m not sure what it was. I wonder if it’s because she knows I’m gay. I’ve never been the most masculine man in the world. If it wasn’t my lisp, it was my walk and if it wasn’t my walk it was something else.

“We were just friends,” I state.

“I never heard of you,” she states, “I know Kesean. I know Pompey. I really don’t know you nigga…”

Nigga. She was definitely Coin’s mom. She had a raw feel about her from the fact that she had a gold tooth in her mouth to the gang of folks around her looking at me.

“Good question, he ain’t never mention you to none of us,” another man says.

“We had just met,” I respond.

It was the only thing I could think of. It was the only thing I could think of and it was a goddamn lie. I knew more about Coin than anyone else breathing. That wasn't just talk. That was a fact. We’d spent so much time together, but here I was having to pretend like we were strangers.

It hurt.

“Well, what were y'all doing on that side of town?”

It was a good question. Brothas like Coin didn’t go to the Burbs. Not never. My palms are sweating. The more she talked to me, the more attention I was getting. Folks were all surrounding me nodding as she answered the question. I’d met her only once before in passing during a news interview at a memorial for him. His whole neighborhood came out.

“I was supposed to start school, but he was just dropping me off at my new dorm.”

“So why were you all parked?”

More people surrounded me. 10. 15. 20. They were all listening to my own story and I guess I shouldn’t have blamed them. I guess it should all make sense. I guess they all loved Coin in their own way and all wanted to know all the details behind how he died. I hadn’t said much to the cops about what was happening beforehand. I wanted to protect his privacy. It looked suspicious not only to the cops but to the community.

What the hell was I supposed to do? It was easy to lie to the cops. It wasn’t so easy to lie to a mourning mother about the circumstances that led to her son’s death.

“Well we were...we were…” I start off.

I feel faint. I feel like I’m about to fold under the scrutiny. I liked to believe I was tougher than I really was. Maybe that’s why I dated this hard ass guy from the hood. I wanted to be from the hood. I was as black as anyone else, but I was what my mother called a ‘black intellect’. I studied black culture more than I lived it. I’d marched for civil rights. I’d protested innocent black men being killed.

I’d never thought I’d be one of them. I’d never thought an entire community would be looking down at me for answers and I’d have nothing to say.

“Now at the time…” a voice states.

I turn and see this boy standing there. He’s brown, caramel complexion. He looked my age. He had these long box braids that were on the top of his head and below that there was a bit of a fade. He is tall, really tall. When he comes over he seems to demand all this attention from the crowd. I could tell it was someone that was respected.

“I just want to know what happened to my son,” Coin’s mother argues, “Pompey…”

“We’ll find out what happened to him. Till then we gonna protest until that mothafuckin cop gets arrested,” he explains.

“That’s right!” a voice says through the crowd, “No justice. No peace.”

A boy breaks through and stands next to Pompey. He was a pretty boy. He had this light-skinned complexion and these green eyes. He had a fade where the temple area on both sides and the nape area at the back of the head are faded out to a grade below that on the sides. He had pink lips and this bright white smile. There was this level of energy to him that seemed to be picked up by the rest of the people in the crowd.

I don’t know how he’s able to do it but he breaks up the little crowd that has encircled me. The pressure is off me for now but sweat is still formulating in all sorts of places. My mother warned me not to go to the funeral. She said it was too early for me to have to relive what happened that night but how could I not attend?

I loved Coin too.

“You good bruh?” Pompey asks me.

For the most part, I’m now just surrounded by three men. Tall Pompey, the pretty boy with the temple fade and a rather heavy set dark guy who had been next to Coin’s mother the entire time seemingly consoling her.

“Yeah.”

The pretty boy with the temple fade gives me a cross-eyed look, “So you must be him…”

The way he says it leads me to believe that the pretty boy had a level of awareness that his mother didn’t. It could have all been pushing smoke up my ass or maybe it was just his personality. He had this really charismatic personality that just seemed

he looks on everyone’s faces were looks they’d give to a stranger. Looks they’d give to an outsider

Maybe it was because I was well-spoken, but I honestly just think it came down to the fact that they just didn’t know me. What were y'all doing on that side of town

“What’s that mean?” I ask.

“He told us. He told us the morning that he left to pick you up,” the pretty boy stated, “I’m Taz. That is Pompey and Kesean.”

Taz confirming that Coin ‘told them’ at first didn’t mean much but then I see the awkward look on Kesean’s face and I know exactly what it is that Coin told them. He told them about me. I recognized the names of the boys. Pompey, Taz, and Kesean. Coin talked about these boys all the time. Pompey was supposedly his very best friend. He was the level headed one. Taz was the womanizer who Coin used to pick up chick’s with back before he met me and then there was Kesean who was basically Coin’s cousin.

This was Coin’s crew. They were his best friends. They meant the world to him and here they were admitting that they had found out just the morning of his death that their boy was gay.

And now they were meeting the guy who turned him out.

“Still can’t believe my nigga got down like that,” Kesean shakes his head with this disgruntled look on his face that just seemed to turn me off.

I stay quiet though. Partially out of respect because we were at a funeral but partially because I’d just gotten my ass beat by one white boy the day before. I didn’t want to add to that by getting jumped by three black ones.

“He liked what he liked,” Taz shrugs, “Why the fuck you care nigga?”

“I don’t. Just that was big cuz. My big cuz---a fag?”

“Yo chill,” Pompey states, turning to me and quickly adding, “Ignore this uncouth ass lame ass nigga, Dijon. It’s just a lotta niggas don’t get down like that round here. You understand.”

“I get it,” I state.

“We all black,” Taz shrugs, “However you get down. They still treat you like you the fuckin enemy…”

“Man Taz, chill with the Malcolm X shit tonight,” Pompey states, “Let’s just grieve.”

Taz has this look in his eyes. It’s pure fire. He grunts a, “Yeah aight.” But I know he doesn’t mean it. That is when I can tell the whole pretty boy thing was just his face. He couldn’t help how pretty he was. The truth was he has a fire in him. He was pissed off. He was angry. And the truth is I understood exactly how he feels.

“No justice. No peace,” I say, specifically to Taz.

It’s something small but I see him turn around and smile at me.

“I see why my boy liked you,” he smiles.

“Nigga you sound gay,” Kesean says shaking his head.

“But that’s how you sound everyday bruh, so I’m finna just be more like you,” Taz barks back.

Pompey interrupts, “Both y'all shut the fuck up. Yo Dijon. Real talk. I was going to ask you to go up there and say a few words.”

He points.

That’s when I see it. Cameras. The same cameras that got people in my inbox when they realized I was the survivor of the shooting. I had recorded it all on my phone until the cop took the phone out of my hand and bashed my head up against the concrete.

“I’m good…I’m not really good with words.”

“He said that you were a singer…” Pompey states.

I don’t know why I don’t just walk away. I don’t know why I just don’t get out of there. It’s not that I feel pressure from Pompey or the other guys. The pressure isn’t the problem. Perhaps it’s because I hadn’t really expressed myself.

I needed to express myself.

And so I walk up there. I see his mother looking at me again, probably wondering why the fuck this boy keeps popping up at her son’s funeral. She raises up as though she is going to say something when I approach the microphone but Pompey blocks her. He holds a hand up to her to stop her.

And he leaves me at the podium.

All these eyes are all on me. It’s not just the eyes though. It’s the news. This death was high profile so many news channels were covering it.

And that’s when I start singing without any music, without any beat. I’m full acapella.

“How do I say goodbye to what we had?

The good times that made us laugh

Outweigh the bad

I thought we'd get to see forever

But forever's gone away

It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday”

Halfway through I hear the sound of beats. It’s Pompey, Kesean, and Taz. Pompey and Kesean are both using their hands to create a beat on tables, chairs, and whatever they can find. Taz is making a beat with his mouth. Somehow it actually sounds really good. It really does sound like Boyz II Men.

And for some reason, I see all these lights in my face and I sing even louder.

“I don't know where this road

Is going to lead

All I know is where we've been

And what we've been through

And if we get to see tomorrow…”

I’m not sure how it happens. Coin’s mother at my side. She’s barely able to stand on her own. I reach my arm over and assist her. She’s flushed with emotion. Tears are rolling down her eyes. Whatever barrier that she had was completely taken down.

She isn’t the only one crying. She isn’t the only one with tears in her eyes. I notice everyone is crying. Everyone including Kesean. It’s this moment. This epic moment where I am so taken away by everyone’s reaction that I can’t even finish the song but the entire community is out and the entire community’s voice lifts up with one.

They all join with me to help me finish singing to Coin. They join me to feel that emotion and together we finish the lyrics.

“And I'll take with me the memories

To be my sunshine after the rain

It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday”

~

“That was dope of you for doing what you did…”

It’s Pompey, Taz, and Kesean that drop me off at my school. It was a big moment me singing at that funeral. The fact is I barely sung in public. I tried not to. It’s not that I didn’t know I could sing. But it was because my singing was something that Coin and I shared. It was something private between us.

And now it wasn’t private anymore.

Taz adds in, “You went viral…”

He passes me his phone. The video was on all these different social media outlets. One page had over 100k views and it has only been an hour or two since I’d sung the song. Comments were talking about people coming to the city to protest.

“You don’t think it was too much?”

“Nah bruh you started a movement,” Taz states from the backseat of the car, leaning over and pressing his hand on my shoulder, “You the shit man.”

“Yo jump off his dick,” Kesean calls him out.

“Man stop hating. You know you were at that funeral crying too,” Taz calls him out, “I saw you nigga. Your grandma handed you a tissue.”

We break out laughing in the car. I felt a little bit at ease with these guys after the funeral. Maybe it’s because we’d all spent time talking and they shared some stories about him. Stories that I loved hearing.

“It was aight,” Kesean shrugs.

Taz keeps his hand on my shoulder, “Dijon. This was exactly what we needed man. We needed to bring some real emotion to this shit. You were there when he died. You singing meant something.”

“Then why do I feel exposed?” I ask, “You guys got to remember I go to an all-white school in a small neighborhood where that cop is from. They probably all KNOW that cop that killed Coin.”

“They ain’t bout shit,” Taz states laughing, “You good. Even if it’s singing. It’s something. It’s time someone did something. It’s time we all DO SOMETHING.”

It’s almost poetic when we pull up to my dorm and Taz has to eat his words. It’s me who sees it at first. I see it and then I see the fire rising out of the sky. The fire truck is called and a bunch of white kids is standing outside with their camera phones on. They are all watching what is happening.

“What’s burning?” Pompey asks.

“My car…” I respond.

I get out of my car and that’s when I see words spray-painted in front of my car. The words are spray-painted in red.

Big huge words. It was clear that I had become a target.

Taz stated that it was time we did something.

But I remember when Coin was arguing with that cop. I remember how scared he looked. I remembered how he was trying to make sense of what the cop was saying. I remember as I look at the words marked out by the racist white kids at my school.

I didn’t do anything.

DINDU NUFFIN

To read the next chapter in advane go to www.crushedcrown.com