Sonny

Sonny is Brianna Jackson’s close friend and a source of humor, steadiness, and emotional candor in a story shaped by public conflict and private uncertainty. His relationship with Rapid brings his central personal struggle into focus: he wants connection, but fear of losing focus and risking his future makes him withdraw. With Brianna and Malik beside him, he gradually chooses to meet Miles and hear what that connection might become.

Identity and Place in Brianna’s Life

Sonny belongs to Brianna’s closest circle, alongside Malik. Their friendship is comfortable enough for teasing and frank talk: Brianna jokes about Sonny and Rapid choosing ridiculous names for their future children, and Sonny can admit that he has let fear shape his decisions. His humor does not make him emotionally careless; when the subject turns to Rapid, the banter gives way to an honest account of what he thinks he could lose.

Sonny is also a brother who loves his three younger sisters—Kennedy, Paris, and Skye—even while joking that babysitting them is another matter. Brianna calls them adorable, while Sonny describes them as gremlins. The contrast captures his familiar comic manner without diminishing the affection beneath it, and situates him in a family life that extends beyond his friendship with Brianna.

Friendship and Support

Sonny’s loyalty to Brianna appears in a moment when she is restrained by Officer Long and Officer Tate at Midtown. Sonny shouts for them to stop, while Malik points a camera at the scene and demands that they let her go. Sonny’s reaction places him among the friends who refuse to treat the incident as an ordinary disciplinary exchange: he responds immediately when Brianna is being held, even as the situation is unfolding around him.

Their friendship also gives Sonny room to be vulnerable without being left alone in it. When he is preparing to meet Miles, Malik reassures him that the meeting can still be worthwhile even if Miles is not who Sonny hopes. Malik adjusts Sonny’s collar, and Brianna fixes his curls; the small gestures turn the meeting into a shared undertaking rather than a test Sonny must face by himself. Malik makes clear that they will remain with Sonny whatever happens.

Rapid and the Decision to Meet

Sonny first brings Brianna a message from Rapid: a text, sent that morning, asking whether Sonny wants to meet. The short invitation has large emotional stakes for him, and Brianna’s surprise reflects how significant it is that Rapid has reached out. Sonny does not treat the question as a simple plan; it opens the possibility of a relationship he has been trying to manage by keeping his distance.

Later, Sonny admits that he has ghosted Rapid. He explains that he took an SAT practice test and could not concentrate because he was thinking about him. The admission makes the conflict concrete: Sonny is not withdrawing because Rapid means little, but because his feelings feel powerful enough to threaten his sense of control over school and the future. He says he cannot afford to mess things up, revealing how caution can become a way of jeopardizing the very connection he wants to protect.

Malik encourages Sonny to explain his disappearance rather than leave Rapid without an answer. Sonny takes that advice: by the time he is preparing to meet Miles, he has spoken to Rapid on the phone. The movement from ghosting to explanation does not erase Sonny’s anxiety, but it marks a change in how he handles it. Instead of letting silence decide the relationship for him, he allows himself to respond.

Meeting Miles

Sonny waits with Malik near the restrooms beside the park’s empty community pool. The setting is familiar and public, but Sonny’s nerves are visible in his repeated pacing; Brianna notices a small swirl of dust rising around his feet. Malik tries to reassure him, and Brianna joins the effort with teasing that briefly lightens the mood. Sonny’s friends do not pretend that the meeting is certain to go well. They focus instead on what Sonny can control: showing up and knowing they will be there afterward.

When Miles arrives, Sonny introduces him to Malik and Brianna. The two young men are close enough that their hands brush, a tentative gesture that accompanies a much more direct disclosure. Miles says that he has wanted to meet the person who keeps him up talking and makes him smile, and Sonny blushes at the confession. Miles also tells him that he is gay, prefers photography to rapping, and has been hiding those truths; he has come because he has decided, for once, to do what he wants rather than live as his father expects. Sonny’s choice to meet him thus coincides with Miles’s choice to stop performing an imposed identity. Their encounter brings Sonny’s private hope into the open while presenting honesty as a risk both young men are willing to take.

Narrative Significance

Sonny’s storyline offers a quieter but meaningful variation on the novel’s recurring tension between a person’s actual self and the role other people demand. Brianna is repeatedly urged to perform a marketable image, while Miles has felt compelled to meet his father’s expectations. Sonny’s arc is not framed as a public campaign or an argument about music; it unfolds through a text, a period of avoidance, a friend’s advice, and the decision to show up. Those small actions give emotional weight to the question of whether fear will dictate how a person presents himself to someone he cares about.

His response to Brianna’s treatment at Midtown further connects that private arc to the novel’s wider insistence on solidarity. Sonny is not only a confidant receiving support from others: when Brianna is in trouble, he speaks up for her. In turn, when Sonny faces the uncertainty of meeting Miles, Brianna and Malik stand beside him. The exchange of care is reciprocal, and the novel presents friendship not as a cure for the risks its young characters face, but as the support that helps them take a step they might otherwise avoid.