The Black Girls Left Standing by Juliana Goodman

Author:Juliana Goodman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

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Anybody on the street might see me dressed in all black with a hoodie on and think I’m up to something criminal. On most days, they’d be wrong, but tonight, they’d be right.

When I call Sonnet after she gets out of school, I tell her about my suspension and Principal Marcos looking down his nose at me like I was a thug. She’s mad. She’s even madder than I am.

I think I’ve turned her into a rebel, because she’s the one who comes up with the idea to wreck the mural. My original plan was to just storm back into school despite my suspension and hold a one-person protest, but Sonnet’s idea is more exciting.

“If they’re going to deny you your right to an education over ripping up a picture and telling some stupid girl off, then you may as well do something worth a one-week suspension!” she yells after she picks me up from my house in her mom’s Fiat. For once, she doesn’t have anything glittery or colorful in her afro. She’s braided it into two long pigtails that hang by her ears. She’s even dressed the part, wearing black sweats and a black hoodie.

“How’d you get your mom to let you borrow her car?” I ask as I buckle myself in the front seat. Sonnet’s mom only has the car for emergencies, and she’s never let Sonnet even sit in it before, let alone drive it. I’m pretty sure Sonnet doesn’t even have a driver’s license either but I don’t bother to ask since we’re about to do some hoodrat shit anyway.

“She doesn’t know and as long as I have it back before she wakes up, everything should be fine.”

We drive straight to the twenty-four-hour Walmart and pick up three big cans of baby-blue paint. We were going to do red at first, but that seems like blood, like we’re mocking Dr. King. We want to destroy the mural because Madison went behind my back to steal the mural from me, not because we have a problem with Dr. King.

At half past midnight, Sonnet parks the coupe a few blocks away from Millennium Magnet, and we creep with our buckets of paint to the back of the gymnasium. We move quickly so we have less chance of getting caught, although if I’m being honest, I don’t even care anymore. If they want to arrest me for doing the right thing, then so be it. I ain’t scared.

When we get to the wall of the mural, it’s only halfway done. They’ve only gotten as far as painting Dr. King’s shoulders and chin, but all that work was for nothing.

I pop the lid off a can of paint and hurl it at the wall.

“Yes! It’ll take them forever to paint over all this!” Sonnet pops open her can and douses the wall with it.

We splash blue paint everywhere until you can barely see the mural underneath anymore. Just several thick coats of Katia’s favorite color. I’ve snuck out late at night to hit up parties with Deja, but this is better.

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