Hawthorne Heights

thirteen [edited]

   Milo huffed loudly, "I can't keep doing this! I have so many questions about this movie and I've been trying to bottle them up until the end but I'm extremely confused!"

   Khari laughed quietly, "About what?"

     "The movie doesn't even have words, Khari! Can we just watch Blackish instead?"

   Khari watched Milo's expression change from confusion to excitement in less than three seconds. He then realized that he knew virtually nothing about the girl that constantly found her way into his apartment. Yeah, she was pretty, gorgeous even. She claimed to be a hopeless romantic and loved basketball, but everyone suffers from their inner demons and Khari wanted to know what made Milo's heart twist.

   He proposed, "Let's just play twenty-one questions instead. I want to know more about the girl that talks trash about my films."

      "Okay." she pulled her bottom lip in between her teeth. "What's your favorite color?"

      "Black. I thought it was pretty obvious. Who's your idol?"

   Milo began to twist her hair while thinking of who could be her idol. She didn't look up to most people; especially not her parents.

   She answered, "Probably Missy Elliott. When I was little I was kinda big-boned, so seeing a girl who was embracing her sexuality while proving that she could still be thick and respected meant a lot to me. I listened to 'Work It' probably every day when I learned how to work the computer like a few years later."

"Mine is between Frida Kahlo and Huey Newton. They both said things that I could relate to growing up. I appreciated Kahlo's art and Huey Newton's ideology," Khari explained. "I couldn't tell my classmates that my idol was a woman in the fourth grade so I told them Michael Jordan."

Milo regarded him with a warm smile, saying, "If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be and why?"

Khari answered quickly, "A lion. They get seen as mean too much in the media but nobody will ever know until they learn to speak.

"So, you compare yourself to them because they're misunderstood? If that's the case then I wanna be an ant. Not because they're misunderstood but because I wanna see the inside of an anthill. I feel like it's—"

"Okay, next question!" Khari interrupted, "What do you wanna be when you grow up? It's a cliche question but you never told me."

Milo thought back to the night when her father claimed that she couldn't go to an HBCU. All of her hopes and dreams evaporated into the thin air considering she believed that her life would truly start after college.
She grew up being taught that the chances being happy and successful without a college degree would be slim to none. She fantasized going to school, playing basketball professionally, but nothing after that. She didn't want to get married, she didn't want kids, and she most definitely didn't want a home with a white picket fence.

She mumbled, "All I know is that I want to play my sports. I haven't really thought about life outside of my education. My dad said I can't go to the college of my choice and my mom wholeheartedly agreed with him. I wish my grandma was still alive so she'd tell them to stop being ignorant."

"Just cause they say you can't doesn't mean that you can't. People said that I wouldn't amount to nothing in life, but—wait, no, that's not a good example. Look at Whoopie Goldberg! She ain't finish school and she's successful," Khari encouraged her. "You can still play basketball without college experience. Go overseas or something."

"Next question: what's your favorite food? Mine is Golden Grahams cereal."

Khari scolded, "Milo, you can't just deflect the conversation topic with a new question, but I'm not gonna press the issue if it makes you uncomfortable. My favorite food is garlic bread. What's your favorite song?"