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Summary
Chapter Twenty-Five
Aunt Pooh finally texts and tells Bri to meet her at Maple Grove after school. On her way, Bri runs into Curtis, who also lives in Maple Grove. Curtis says he went to visit his mom in jail because Bri convinced him to go. While they are talking, a group of young kids notices Bri. They ask for her autograph and start singing the lyrics to her song. Bri finds it disturbing to hear such young kids rapping about violence and guns because of her.
Aunt Pooh and Bri talk. Aunt Pooh won’t tell her what happened with the Crowns but says she didn’t get Lawless’s chain back. Aunt Pooh reveals that the reason that she joined the Garden Disciples in the first place was to avenge Lawless’s murder. Then, Bri finally tells Aunt Pooh about Supreme and lets her know that she wants Supreme to manage her. Aunt Pooh takes the news well and Bri names Aunt Pooh “Head Aunty in Charge.”
As they are talking, Aunt Pooh urges Bri to promise she’ll leave the Garden. An armed SWAT team descends on the neighborhood.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aunt Pooh and Curtis make Bri leave and she hides in Curtis’s apartment to stay safe. From inside, she watches as the officers find drugs on Aunt Pooh and arrest her. Bri begins to cry, and Curtis comforts her. When he notices that the heel of her Not-Timbs is missing, he takes off his own shoes, kneels down, and puts them on Bri’s feet. Bri notices Curtis is wearing the same Spiderman socks she has. Curtis and Bri start to kiss.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Curtis’s grandmother catches Bri and Curtis kissing, and Curtis drives Bri home. Bri tells Jay that Aunt Pooh got arrested. Jay calls Trey and Lena, who is Aunt Pooh’s girlfriend, before going to her room to cry all night. Jay stays in her room for a few days, inconsolable.
Supreme takes Bri to see DJ Hype for an on-air interview. DJ Hype has a huge audience, but he is notorious for goading his guests into making outrageous statements that will go viral. Supreme warns Bri that DJ Hype may try to push her buttons, but he tells her to try to be herself and say what she feels. Bri isn’t sure that anyone wants to hear what she really feels. She is still upset about Aunt Pooh.
On the radio show, DJ Hype asks Bri if her lyrics encouraged violence, accusing her of threatening to kill the cops. She defends herself. Then he asks who wrote her songs for her, and Bri gets furious. DJ Hype continues to prod Bri, joking that she must have PMS. Enraged, Bri has to be held back from attacking DJ Hype, and she storms out of the live interview. Afterward, Supreme calls her a genius for playing the role of a “ratchet hood rat” so well. But Bri realizes she wasn’t playing a role. She knows she has changed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Upset, Bri goes to visit Trey at work, but he has heard the interview already and is angry at her for the way she has been acting. Bri begins to cry and Trey comforts her, telling her she’s a gift and that everything will be okay. She says he sounds like Yoda. Bri realizes that no matter what, her brother will always support her.
Analysis
These chapters are dominated by a series of losses that parallel Bri’s gradual realization that she has lost her true self. Aunt Pooh finally resurfaces, but only to tell Bri that she failed to get Lawless’s lost chain back. Then Aunt Pooh herself is lost when the police arrest her and take her away. During the raid, Bri loses her Not-Timbs, which break as she is running away. And she loses what is left of her dignity in the embarrassing interview with DJ Hype.
By this point in the novel, Bri has come to terms with the loss of Lawless’s chain, but Aunt Pooh has not. Throughout the novel, the chain has symbolized Lawless’s legacy and loss. Aunt Pooh confesses that she has been looking for an excuse to avenge Lawless’s death ever since he was killed. Aunt Pooh considered Lawless her “Yoda,” and joining the Garden Disciples was her way of replacing her family, which fell apart in the wake of his death. For Aunt Pooh, taking the chain back from the Crowns is a way to avenge Lawless’s death. But for Bri, the loss of the chain pales in comparison to the potential loss of her aunt. She tries to convince Aunt Pooh to leave gang life behind and come home to her real family, but when the SWAT team arrives it is clearly too late.
The breaking of Bri’s Not-Timbs seems to represent a breaking point for Bri. Bri wears her knock-off Not-Timbs much in the same way she wears the persona of a rapper she is not. Her lyrics in “On the Come Up” project a voice of power and aggression, but this message is born from Bri’s lived experiences of powerlessness, frustration, and abandonment. Like her Not-Timbs, her family has been hanging on by a thread, destitute and struggling for basic necessities. When Aunt Pooh is arrested and the Not-Timbs finally break, Bri also breaks down and cries, exposing her powerlessness to Curtis in a rare moment of vulnerability. Bri sees a new side of Curtis when he gives her his own shoes, revealing that he wears Spiderman socks—just like Bri. The Spiderman socks perhaps symbolize the deep connection between Bri and Curtis, who have bonded over their shared experience of losing a mother. Leaving the Not-Timbs behind, Bri takes refuge in Curtis’s shoes (and arms), her faux persona in tatters.
But the disastrous interview with DJ Hype makes it clear that Bri is still struggling to figure out who she is. Going into the interview, Bri is already distraught, with her aunt in jail and her mother locked in her room grieving. Hearing small children chant her violent lyrics has also made her begin wondering if her critics are right. DJ Hype seems to zero in on all of Bri’s insecurities, first accusing her of inciting violence and then questioning whether a girl like her could really write her own songs. Bri’s outburst illustrates that she has lost any vestige of self-control. Ironically, it is Supreme who helps Bri realize that she has grown into the “ratchet hood rat role” that he encourages her to play.
