INT. HOT COOKIE — DAY

Delicious baked cookies lie in rows in front of NIKKI, 23, female, wearing a black beanie with a beautiful smile. Deep house music thumps in the background while customers move in and out of her life.

NIKKI

I have a smartphone but I don’t keep up with it. The Funny Jokes app is the reason that I won’t get an iPhone. Hilarious! It’s like everybody can put jokes that they want on there. But that’s the app.

(pause)

I came out when I was fourteen. I told my godmother. It was on a Sunday. I remember we were getting ready for church. She came out the bathroom and I was getting ready. Then I told her, Auntie, I’m gay. She just stood there, for twenty minutes. Did not move, did not blink, nothing. Just stood there. And she started crying, and I’m like, oh my god, if this is what it’s going to be like, I don’t even know if I should tell anybody. For a month before I told her, I was writing…we had this dry erase board in the house and I wrote “Nikki has an announcement.” So my auntie left, she got out the room. And she came back and was like, everybody’s asking about me about your announcement. They wanna know what it is and they know that I know.

I was like, “I’m not gonna tell them, we’re on our way to church! I can’t do that. That’s not gonna work.” But after church, I guess everybody kept asking what it was. Finally, I came out. And I was just like, “Ok, I’m gay”.

I remember at the time, I was acting out, I was getting locked up, going to juvenile, getting expelled from school. Like just, hella stuff was going on. And once it happened, I felt like there was just a burden lifted off my shoulders. Two months before I came out, I realized what it was. I realized, like, “Ok, you’re gay, you like women.” I was just like, I dunno. I was acting up for no reason. But my family was really cool about it, nobody was like “oh no.” I mean my grandmother was like, “I wish you would have told us you’re pregnant,” but I was just like, damn, this could be a phase. I could get over it. If I was somebody’s mom for life at fourteen…

My family was really cool about it. My mom, she’s very supportive of the gay thing. She’s like, “We can’t go to Chick-Fil-A; they don’t support gay people. We can’t go to Target.” Like, it kinda brought my family closer now. As soon as I said it, my mom told me my shoulders relaxed, my body relaxed and everything just stopped. I stopped getting in trouble. I dunno…I felt like I didn’t have to lie anymore.