PHOEBE
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“That’s what we’re doing now?” Syior asked as he parked at the bottom of the hill leading to my parents’ home.
My tongue ran across my lips as I smirked. “Please. You know the rules. Now let me go,” I mumbled.
He moved his face closer and then pecked my nose. He released my shirt as he stared at me. “Man, don’t get on that campus showing your ass.”
I got out of the car and didn’t even bother to look at him until he called my name. “Ayo, Phoebe!” he shouted.
I turned to look at him. “What are you trying to do to me? Hood niggas don’t fall first,” he said as he ran his hand down the front of his head.
“Maybe they don’t; maybe they do,” I said as I turned back around to continue walking up the hill toward my parents’ home.
Their massive luxury farmhouse was perfection.
My father always sought the best of everything, while my mother took it all in.
My parents made sure I had a good life, and in return, I was, to an extent, the perfect daughter.
While around them, I was sweet Phoebe. The girl who won endless trophies by playing Polo.
I was the horse whisperer who knew how to tame horses with just my presence, even the wildest ones.
I held good grades and kept trouble away from my parents for the most part.
However, beneath all that, I was different, and that was what Syior couldn’t understand, no matter how hard he tried.
Although Syior and I did have sex on occasion, he was more like a friend.
I considered him number one. I met him the first night I decided to sneak out in my junior year of high school.
I heard so many stories about what happened on the East End of town that I wanted to see for myself.
I went to a private school on the opposite side, where the more affluent people lived in Covana.
The handful of Black kids who went there were just like me: searching for the side we should have been on all along. However, we were different. Our music was different, the way we talked, and how we carried ourselves.
This was until I went to the other side.
Small things about me started to change, like the use of the word Nigga, or how I articulated my sentences.
It was like another world, and I enjoyed it for the most part.
Syior turned me on to a lot, but the one thing he tried to change was my image, or at least the one I portrayed outside of my parents’ presence.
He was the epitome of what most would call a hood nigga.
He ran the East End. His boys ran the projects while he sat back and collected.
He and I weren’t a couple, so he fucked with other girls when I wasn’t around, and I understood, but when we were together, it was just that—us.
With me, he showed a soft side and didn’t hold back with his words, and that was what I liked about him.
What was understood didn’t need to be explained.
The sex was damn near perfection, and I couldn’t complain.
However, there were things about me that he still didn’t know even three years later.
Even though I didn’t owe him an explanation, I knew at some point I would have to lay all my cards on the table because he wasn’t my only one.
I was like a fucked-up piece of art. There were parts of me that made sense and other parts that didn’t even seem like they belonged.
Syior thought he knew me so well, like he could read me like a book.
In his eyes, I was some girl who looked Black on the outside but was trying to be something I wasn’t.
It was as if I couldn’t be myself in a space with people who looked like me.
Okay, so I liked a little rock music and wore dark colors, but it didn’t make me any less Black.
I was simply finding my place and where I belonged, and that was why I chose Toussaint State University.
It was a place where I felt I could flourish among my people.
However, I was mistaken, because all they did was judge me.
I could have easily transferred to a different school, but I figured that since I made it through my freshman year, I could push for the next three years.