The Bomb Threat

Substack High

Blaring, deafening loud, alarms jolted the students and administration throughout the entire structure. 

Substack High cleared its students and staff to follow the exact procedures outlined in their terms of service.

Half of the body was annoyed at the disruption; the other half was ecstatic for a break in the normal school day’s drudgery. None took the threat that serious.  

Attendees of this private high school came from diverse backgrounds. The administration needed enough variety in the palette of its recruitment ads to keep a certain Manhattan millionaire milieu excited to donate funds that propped up the school’s prestige. 

They had no qualms admitting they were selling success at Substack High. The founders were capitalists, but even Western aristocrats had African violinists for entertainment. 

Sandolore Sykes was relieved to be outside. 

The classroom had been stifling despite her brave face. Clock purse on top of her desk like a gun, she chewed bubble gum relentlessly. Her lips curled in defiance at the boys behind her hurling jokes about Tammy beating her up that afternoon for no other reason than she had had enough of what she called Sandolore Sykes’ fake humble personality – always stumbling around, looking joyful and vaguely goofy. 

Their school was high priced but violent. The stakes for a false step was abject humiliation. 

Civics, taught by Prince Kudu’Ra, was her favorite class. He was popular with sophomores because he clearly did not give a shit about hierarchies. The former South African anti-apartheid revolutionary had seen bloodshed in the rural areas during the weeks after Freedom Day, and those memories of violence combined with the years of misery he witnessed in shanty towns, infused his nightmares. 

Prince Kudu’Ra retreated to a world of study under his mentor, a great philosopher and economist, whose death led him to transport those teachings into his own creative writing, while he lectured spoiled social climbers sitting comfy on the carousel to success for money. 

Safe for now outside, Sandolore Sykes eyed hopeless on sundays and ALUKAH standing behind a parked yellow school bus sharing a joint. Both were dressed in rap punk gear like in early Lana Del Ray videos, breathing hard between pulls, having an intense conversation. 

Sandolore Sykes wondered what they were discussing. She decided to figure out how to be friends with them, right after she transformed the weeks of boxing lessons her father had been giving her into beating Tammy to a pulp. 

---

The Ignorant Ninja was on the train back to Long Island by the time the bomb alarm went off. 

Earlier in the day, the speaker system had cleared its throat and rang The Ignorant Ninja’s name once, twice, three times, then hung up. 

He had stood up, not surprised. His brother had warned him pops needed help with the second truck at the moving company, November being popular for a reason he never understood in his Long Island hometown. 

The Ignorant Ninja had thrown half of himself into his backpack. His jeans were a bit tighter than comfortable because he hadn’t gone shopping in longer than he could remember. His younger sister’s sickness had forced their family into putting most of what they had, if not all, into her care. Little else got considered.

He noticed a girl he had liked for a while looking at his ass as he left class. What the hell! Was his mind playing tricks on him? Was she really checking him out? No way! For once, he walked the hall not worried about the tiny steps holding heavy furniture and boxes with his sweaty and pained fingertips that were sure to be his next few hours.  

The Ignorant Ninja even smiled at the school superstar he usually made a point to ignore, Andrew Boryga, Substack High’s biggest jock, walking the hall with his backpack around the front of his body, texting one of his many shorties.

Andrew Boryga returned the smile like an investment, because shit, when you the biggest athlete at the school, you gotta expect people to know you that you don’t know. 

Andrew Boryga was wearing his Substack High letterman. The school’s colors were orange and white. The bright reddish hued orange was like a Florida fruit, the juicy type you could unsheathe and plunge your fangs into. The school’s moniker was The TypeWriters. 

These other Substack High students didn’t understand the weight Andrew Boryga carried, he thought as he avoided returning to class. Writers at other schools like their rival, Dalton, up the street, went to sleep thinking about taking his top spot. 

People didn’t appreciate the sheer amount of shit he had to read to keep up with the contemporary literary fiction scene, not to mention past works, or critical theory, book podcasts and lectures he had to listen to or even attend; the dynamics of linguistics he had to master, the classics, epistemologies, romantic and Slavic languages, weird bureaucratic speak, and nerd computer sub-languages. All to convince the elitist TypeWriting Judges he was the dominant TypeWriter of their division in this season and beyond – meaning he was likely one of the best in the nation. 

When in trouble, knowing Latin helped, but it also made him a bigger target. 

Andrew Boryga passed the poster on the hallway wall for Jacquie Verbal running for Substack High Student Body President on a Black Reparations agenda. 

The campaign season of the past few months had seen her making radical promise after radical promise, threatening the foundations of the school’s agenda, quoting from spiritual ancestral rap scriptures and doing open community healing practices during the lunchroom breaks.

Ancient principalities, ancestral coverage, and the protection of a rogue guard of students named BlackStack kept her from the usual means of punishment at the administration’s disposal. 

Jacquie Verbal, according to the most recent polls, was posed to win the election in a landslide. Her campaign slogan was, “Cause I said so.” Her Middle Finger was her logo. 

---

Toure had calmly organized his students out of his

Culture Fries by Touré

American History class, but he was uncertain the bomb threat was an empty one. 

He had been teaching his students about LBJ and the war funding that had distracted that president’s administration from its anti-poverty agenda – ultimately breaking the Democratic party unity then and later years over subsequent wars. 

Toure had gotten into an argument with one of his favorite but most obnoxious students about whether the war was the main cause for the disunity, or whether it was the left’s failure to deliver on economic issues like housing for the Black part of their coalition. 

Toure was muttering to himself he should have told the kid to shut the fuck up and stop talking over his lesson plans. 

Magnetic stomped past Toure wearing a MF Doom mask and carrying a boom box speaker playing Kodak Black’s Signs, “Ain’t no love if you broke, cause if you broke they treat you like a bad joke, they don’t even wanna laugh with you.”

Magnetic charted his plan as he charged forward. The first thing he needed was enough money not to have to worry about money, he said to himself in his Camron voice. Then he would be able to commit to focused meditation and execution, pulling off a heist many had never imagined possible, erase his nightmares of violence.  

Magnetic knew he had Kobe Bryant’s focus. Any moment he had his back against any wall, he could mamba mentality himself to victory. Someone would one day trade for the Shaq he needed to throw alley hoops for dunks that started championship runs. 

Everyone was getting antsy standing outside. 

Truthfully, interior and exterior, with-in, with-out; tangible and abstract – place and form were funny concepts at Substack High. 

Emily Sundberg had three freshmen following her like they were on Gossip Girl’s pilot episode. She looked fresh and fashionable in an Instagram photo-ready fit. 

The young girls around her were snitching about the other girls talking shit about Emily Sundberg, hiding their hands behind their backs after throwing envy rocks. They published clout chasing posts, claiming to feel ashamed about the very feelings of envy the posts were indulging.  

Emily Sundberg just snort-laughed, still looking down at her phone, thinking envy was the most basic shit cause them chicks had no idea the people she had to deal with above her who did not give a shit about her latest post on

Feed Me

. 

The news coverage kept getting more and more absurd. No one in mainstream media had a clue what to do, and it was starting to look pretty fucking obvious to Emily Sundberg that she may have to turn into the Tom Brokaw of modern indie news if the mainstream media did not get its shit together. 

The other side of the school entrance, sitting on lime green benches,

Brock Eldon

and Peter Shull debated which of them had a better chance at getting Emily Sundberg to go out with them. They dissected different approaches and styles. 

They lamented the change in romantic times, wishing for a past when you could show up to a house in a fancy suit, present yourself, and a whole little performance would appear to celebrate your courtship. 

Romance had turned into a remorseless loser arguing on social media about dysfunctional reality TV dating shows watched while hate swiping through dead dating apps. (Not Me)

Not for Substack High’s Rap Star, Dan Kema, either, standing next to his wife Taylor K. Shaw-Omachonu, telling her the story of the crazy shit he saw in the TypeWriter locker-rooms next to the Writing Courts. 

This kid named John Exum was getting jumped and spat on and cursed at by hopeless on sundays and ALUKAH next to the showers. He was begging for mercy and saying he didn’t mean it, he had only been pretending to hate Black people; it was just locker-room talk. Cry snot and bloody mucus was all over his face, including puke and urine – he had urinated on himself twice. 

ALUKAH - 2Pac eyes - pulled a razor blade from inside their tongue and held it to John Exum’s throat, whispering between bear trap tight teeth. 

“Free all motherfucking oppressed people, right now!!!!!!!” 

hopeless on sundays stared into her bestie’s eyes and knew the lies had become too much. She had to protect both of them from the rage. 

“And run them folks they money! ALUKAH, we gotta split.” The two ran from the locker-rooms. 

Dan Kema finished the story and Taylor K. Shaw-Omachonu slapped her fingers together like she was rubbing in hand lotion. 

“I’m sure he got what he deserved. I’m done caring what they got going on, Dan. Let them sort it out among themselves for once.” 

Toure stood next to Prince Kudu’Ra, hiding from the children. Apparently, there might be a real bomb in a locker.

A student found a manifesto claiming so, the oil spill of words appeared to be another screed about the hatred of women. More angry INCEL whining. 

Toure and Prince Kudu’Ra agreed they hated the school’s principal and he smelled super musky. 

Most of the other teachers at the school were Black women. 

Bomb worry free, Alex B wore her ROTC outfit, standing with John Noire underneath the shade of a large tree. 

The two friends shared stories from church service back from their childhood. Both had known each other in choir, where they had first learned to love music. 

John Noire appreciated Alex B’s paintings almost more than anything else in the world. He was especially excited about the one she was painting now, a recreation of Detroit’s Black Madonna, which she had discovered last time she had visited home. 

John Noire had recently had his heart broken by a disloyal TypeWriter groupie. He thought of lyrics from a Nas song. “I shoulda knew she wasn’t true, she came to me when her man caught a sentence.” 

John Noire felt like his pen was his samurai sword against any foe. He could see the words floating out in front of him and he would slice through centuries of lies, dismissals and erasure of Black creativity and wisdom, and replace that great wall of fraud with discovery and wonder and magic at the impulse to create – to cry out into the darkness, the courage to survive. 

Alex B was the most talented student in the school – Lauryn Hill levels – but she was so shy she had yet to release her full talent onto any one project, fearful what it would mean for her spirit.

Spirits spat out from her in her sleep, and she knew not how much she knew, but knew enough to know to paint what she could. 

She wondered if the friendship thing with John Noire could ever be more. He had wondered the same. 

Sandolore Sykes, still standing alone, Polaroid camera around her neck, bracing herself in her dark purple windbreaker, thought of turning herself into a TypeWriter emoji where all the keys were floating up in the air and drawing the forms of migrating birds.