"Dad, I think that you need to see a therapist or someone who can help you out," Miracle urged. "I don't like seeing you like this."
Her dad rolled over in bed with a five o'clock shadow sprouting upon his lower face. Brown alcohol stained his white beater, causing for Miracle's stomach to lurch violently.
He assured her, "I don't need to see no shrink, Mir. All they want is money, they can't tell me nothin' that I can't tell myself."
"Then why won't you stop drinking? I have a dance recital coming up soon and I don't want my dad showing up smelling like alcohol and funk," she complained.
Growing up, both of her parents always showed up for any little event that their daughter participated in. They wholeheartedly showered Miracle with love and attention since the moment her mother brought her into the world. Miracle slowed down on the science fairs, beauty pageants, and never took home the parent-teacher conference form after her mom died. She realized that he wasn't in his right frame of mind to show up in public with the weight of his wife's death bearing down on his shoulders.
He had chronic depression; the long-term type which breeds hopeless thoughts and insomnia.
She reassured, "The appointments are down by the church near Lee's and they're completely free!"
"Miracle." he rolled over so that she was facing his back. "I'm not letting a white person mess around in my head. I just need to start back getting active."
"Alright."
Milo feigned interest while watching the movie that he hadn't had the desire to watch.
Khari didn't write in his journal that day. He was tired of writing down all of the things wrong with his life because then they'd be a permanent reminder of his sadness. At first, when he got out of the detention center, he didn't want to write in the journal at all. He was too afraid that his mom would find it and say that his feelings weren't valid or real.
The one thing he hated with everything in him was when people thought that they had the power to validate his emotions and identity without knowing him.
Writing in the journal became a part of his daily routine that made him wonder if his identity would remain the same if his sadness and anger weren't obsessed with him.
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?"
"What type of question is that? I can't answer that! I have too many," Milo retrieved her phone from the pocket of her cow snuggie, scrolling down the screen. "I'm going through my playlists, wayment. Ima say 'Ain't No Sunshine' by Bill Withers. I want them to play it at my funeral."
Khari glanced up from her phone with an amused expression on his face. His eyebrows lifted in surprise as Milo pocketed her phone.
He said, "You don't think that's a little morbid? You honestly have a song picked out for your funeral?"
"Uh, no, it's not morbid. And yeah I thought about it when I was like nine cause I started crying in the car when it played. It seemed pretty fitting at the time cause I wanted people to cry when I died," Milo laughed awkwardly. "That is kinda weird, isn't it?"
"Very. My favorite song is 'Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer' by Stevie Wonder. I heard it when I was watching Poetic Justice with my mom so I wrote it down. Last book you read?"
Milo laughed, "Don't laugh at me when I tell you but the last thing I read was The Kissing Hand. I used to love reading it so I keep a copy under my pillow at night."
"I'm starting to not wanna play this game anymore, Milo," Khari chuckled. "Mine is Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man. Aunt Cleo left it out on the kitchen counter so I got curious."
"Ooh, so you gon be prepared when you go on a date? I see you, Khari. Very smart. Umm, what's your biggest fear?"
Khari stopped smiling as the image of Omar's dead body appeared behind his closed eyelids. Blood pooled from his lower abdomen and stained his Atlanta Braves Jersey.
His fingers began to twitch, catching Milo's attention.
She stammered, "Y-you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. We can just watch Blackish instead."
Khari over-examined the situation before him, internally panicking at the thought of Milo telling everyone his secret. He wanted her to trust him, but what was trust in exchange for sanity?
He mumbled, "I don't really like the idea of not being happy sometime in my future. My main goal is to be happy so if that doesn't work then I'll be stuck."
Milo agreed, "Yeah, same. I used to be afraid of not making my parents proud, but the more I grew up the more I stopped caring about their opinion on me as an adult. Don't get me wrong, I love 'em to death, but they're irritating."
"I can agree with that. I don't even know what number we're on by the way so I hope you're counting. Uh, what do you look for in a future partner?"
Milo smirked at Khari's uncomfortable posture. He rubbed the back of his neck and kept his eyes lowered to the black computer screen.
Milo recalled, "When I was little I wanted to marry Nelly but I realized that would never happen. I guess I wouldn't mind being with someone who's intelligent and funny. They have to have good music taste and put up with my random rambling."
"I noticed that you said 'they.' You're not straight?"
Milo thought about her sexuality for several years after everyone started to come out of the closet during middle school. She wondered if it would eventually happen to her and wasn't quite sure if it had.
She answered truthfully, "I said they out of uncertainty. I'm not even attracted to most people so I wouldn't know until it happens."
"Hm. My ideal partner is probably somebody who won't throw my past in my face since that's all that my family does. They gotta be the polar opposite of me because I don't know if I can put up with someone's attitude that's similar to mine. And same about the music," Khari answered, fully oblivious to the fact that he described Milo.
Milo nodded her head in agreement while typing in Blackish in on ABC while asking, "Okay, last question: what's something you're guilty of?"
"Uh," Khari scratched his neck. "I block people out so they won't like me because I'm too afraid of them getting to know me and not liking the real me. I don't know if I phrased it correctly, but I'm sure you get the point."
Milo agreed, "Mine is kinda like that. I'm too obsessed with people liking me. I'll do and say stuff to fit in with others and then end up regretting it months later. I'm afraid of being by myself because I tend to overthink everything when I'm alone."
"I've been there before."
Warren watched his father pack his belongings with rolled sleeves and a tense back.
Isaiah ended up choosing to leave Hawthorne Heights after realizing that he messed up and the building wouldn't do anything but remind him of his faults. His mind became plagued with success and fortune that he forgot his own Christian morals.
Warren implored, "Hey, dad. I can still visit you after you leave, right?"
Isaiah placed several dress shirts into his luggage before turning around to face his son.
Grief suffocated his actions as he said, "Of course, Warren. I'm not moving out of St. Louis since my business is here. I'll call you once I get my stuff settled in my new apartment. You can maybe stay with me for the summer before you go off to Morehouse."
Warren's chest lifted immeasurably at his father's words. After his mother forcefully outed him at the dinner table the other night, Warren expected for his father to scorn him and vanish without a valid reason.
He grew up hearing about so many stories of kids and even adults coming out to their parents with no success. They'd kill themselves, run away, be kicked out of the house, and even forced to do conversion therapy. Yet the bad always made headlines so how was he supposed to feel when his mother told his dad?
Not only that but the fact that his father blatantly stated homophobic things in the past that made Warren cringe inside.
His dad apologized, "I know that since I'm an adult I cannot have an excuse for the things I've said before. I claimed to not be homophobic unless my child was homosexual and I realized that it's still homophobia. I don't have a backstory and even if I did it wouldn't condone my actions. I'm sorry, son."
Warren nodded thankfully, now being able to focus on things that didn't involve his sexuality. He was tired of his sexuality being the topic of every single discussion when he had so much more to offer.
And from that moment on, Warren would finally be able to express himself without the weight of his fears on his shoulders.
Avery;)— okay but what about jaws? like the movie?
WJ— what happened to sushi?
Avery;)— that's morbid for a fish name and I'd feel bad for calling him that. 😩
WJ— how about we just get two fish? 🤔
Avery;)— okay fine but you can't have a favorite cause that's unfair to Sushi and Bentley 💯
WJ— why tf did you bring Bentley back??
Avery;)— I figured you wouldn't have a problem considering you'll have Sushi 🙄
WJ— okay but he's still my son 😒
Avery;)— okay so Bentley and Sushi it is 🌚
☽
«fireside chat: okay so now that I've addressed homophobia in the black community, Warren will have even more chapters about things other than his sexuality.»
debate question of the chapter: is this book good 🤔 i wanna make sure before i continue with the plot