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Summary
Chapter Four
Bri has a nightmare about an event that happened when she was five years old. Her mother, Jay, who was struggling with a drug addiction, left her and her brother Trey at their grandparents’ house and didn’t come back for three years. In her nightmare, Bri does exactly what she did in real life: she chases after her mother’s car, screaming for her to come back. Jay wakes Bri up from the nightmare. Bri doesn’t tell Jay about the dream because she doesn’t want to make her mother, who just regained full custody of Bri five years ago, feel guilty. Jay, concerned about an email from Mrs. Murray, insists that Bri return her focus to her schoolwork.
Bri dresses in a Darth Vader hoodie and boots that she calls her Not-Timbs, which are knock-off Timberlands that she got at a swap meet. She dreams of having real Timbs and is saving up the money she earns from secretly selling candy to other students. Aunt Pooh buys the candy for her, and Bri sells it at school, even though it’s against the rules to do so.
As Bri rides the school bus, she reflects that she and other students of color are bused into the Midtown School of the Arts so that the school can earn diversity grants. Bri goes to Midtown because Jay doesn’t think Garden High, the neighborhood school in Garden Heights, is safe. On the bus, other students start to congratulate Bri on her performance in the Ring, a video of which was released on YouTube. Curtis, a student Bri has gone to school with since they were little, teases her. Bri remembers that Curtis used to lie about his mom to cover up the fact that she is in prison.
Malik and Sonny also congratulate Bri for her performance. Bri has a crush on Malik, which makes her nervous because they’ve been friends for so long. Sonny is being secretive about who he's texting, and Bri suspects that he's flirting with a guy, remembering when Sonny came out to her and Malik years ago.
Though Bri relishes the praise from the other students being bused into Midtown, when she arrives at school, she feels like a nobody. Outside the school, she and her friends talk about the school security guards, Tate and Long, who have been targeting students of color with extra scrutiny. As they are about to enter the school, Tate and Long single out Bri, demanding to search her backpack. When Bri resists, Long and Tate throw her to the ground, cuff her, and take the backpack. Long calls Bri a hoodlum.
Chapter Five
Bri is taken to Principal Rhodes’s office and her mother is called. When Jay arrives, she demands that Bri be taken out of cuffs and released. Eventually, the principal complies. Bri tells the principal that the security guards target Black and Latinx students, which the principal denies. The principal references Bri’s record and calls her aggressive, a word that people often use to describe her. Bri recalls several times when white teachers threw her out of class or suspended her for speaking her mind; once, she was suspended for accidentally throwing a piece of paper at Mr. Ito.
The principal decides to suspend Bri again for selling candy, which the principal calls “contraband.” Jay tells Bri that even though she feels unfairly targeted at school, she must do her best to stay out of trouble so she can graduate. On the drive home, Bri looks out the car window at her neighborhood and observes the lingering destruction from the riots that took place the previous year after a police shooting. Jay reveals that she lost her job because of funding cuts at the church where she worked. When they get home, Bri leaves the house against Jay’s wishes, saying she feels like she’s drowning.
Analysis
These chapters explore how the traumas of the past, both personal and historical, affect characters in the present. Jay’s abandonment of Bri after her father died was so traumatic that Bri still has regular nightmares about it. Her mother’s drug use made her so foreign to Bri that Bri stopped calling her “mom” and started calling her Jay, a habit she is still unable to break even though her mother has been sober for eight years. These moments show that, though Bri tries to move forward, the traumas of her past still have a hold on her. Similarly, the burned-out buildings in Garden Heights illustrate the lingering psychological effects of the previous year’s riots. This is a reference to the events that took place in Thomas’ first novel, The Hate U Give, which chronicles the devastation in the wake of a police killing of an unarmed Black boy. A year after the riots, Bri and other residents of Garden Heights are still reeling with insecurity, instability, and mistrust of the police.
The incident at school, in which Bri is targeted by the racist security guards, illustrates the disempowering effects of systemic racism in the novel. Bri, feeling the inklings of her own power after being praised by her peers for her performance in the Ring, is immediately rendered powerless when Tate and Long violently assault her and confiscate her belongings. Moments before the attack, Bri is feeling like royalty, but when she finds herself under the knee of the security guard, she is mute, terrified, and aching for her parents. When Jay attempts to defend Bri by pointing out systemic inequities and arguing that Bri is regularly targeted at school because she is Black, the white principal denies that there are any racial motivations behind the guards’ actions. The principal goes on to accuse Bri of being “aggressive” and ignores Jay’s argument that white girls can behave the same way as Bri without suffering consequences. Instead of acknowledging a school-wide issue of racial bias, the principal vilifies and disempowers Bri, illustrating how white denial and blame reinforce racial inequities and stereotypes.
Bri’s suspension for selling candy represents a pattern of disproportionate punishment that Bri experiences at school. Although selling candy is technically against school rules, it is a relatively harmless offense that does not warrant the security guards’ violent takedown or a suspension from school. By characterizing the candy as “contraband,” the principal exaggerates the severity of Bri’s offense, essentially criminalizing her rather benign behavior. When Bri lists the incidents that the principal has punished and suspended her for in the past, they are similarly tame: a snarky aside, a tossed piece of paper. For the school’s white faculty, Bri’s relatively normal teen behavior is perceived as threatening and aggressive, worthy of extreme punishment. Her effort to make a little money selling candy arouses suspicion that she is a drug dealer. As a Black girl in a white system, Bri is denied the luxury of the childhood innocence that her white peers enjoy and is instead perceived as a threat.
