Ellory shuddered. What was goingon?
The more distance she put between herself and that moment, the more her thoughts raced. She took a long sip of her watered-down latte in the fruitless hope of a brain freeze that would calm her mind.
For a moment, it had seemed like she had…
But that would be ridiculous. It was more likely that thewindhadstopped that ball in its tracks. As for the path…she’d probably been too distracted to notice that dead patch. No one else had mentioned its sudden appearance, so maybe it had already been there. That was plausible. And plausible was better than the alternative. The alternative made it sound like she was hallucinating again, and Warren was the kind of place that would pull the Godwin Scholarship if she started claiming she could…what, stop a speeding soccer ball with hermindand crack thevery earth itselfin the process? Ridiculous.
But for a moment, it had seemed like…
No.Ridiculous.
Ellory threw her empty cup in the recycling bin, tossing her uneasiness out with it.
3
“Sometimes, you make me so sad,” said Taiwo Daniels from her throne on the bed.
Her entire single was like a palace: one bed with sheets the rich blue of the Jamaican ocean; posters that advertised ’90s anime likeCowboy BebopandGhost in the Shell, as well as the poetry of Wole Soyinka; a desk that doubled as a bookshelf featuring the works of Murasaki Shikibu, Chinua Achebe, Grant Morrison, and Agatha Christie; and framed family photos, the largest of which showed Tai beaming with an arm thrown around her sister, Kehinde, the two of them wedged between the more reserved Daniels parents. As the resident assistant of the sixth floor of Moneta Hall, Tai got a single roomanda stipend. In exchange, she said, her residents gave her headaches.
Ellory, one such resident, glanced up from her textbook and blinked until Supreme Court cases stopped floating in front of her eyes. “Hm?”
She was stretched out on the plush geometric rug that added another pop of personality to the room. Her constitutional lawtextbook was open in front of her, the page bookmarked by her quiz. A big red98was circled in the top right, a matching slash by the one question she’d gotten wrong.
“You got a ninety-eight,” Tai pointed out. “Why are you acting like you got an eighteen?”
“Hudson got a perfect score.”
“So? You’re not in high school anymore. You’re not competing for valedictorian.”
“Iknowthat. This is personal.”
Like Hudson Graves, Tai Daniels was a senior. Unlike Hudson Graves, Tai Daniels wasn’t an asshole. They had met during Ellory’s first night on campus, when Tai had called a floor meeting to introduce herself to all the residents. Ellory, quite frankly, thought Tai was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen. Tai wore a braided mohawk that met in a thick black-and-purple pony that fell to her mid-back, a gold septum piercing, and a cropped crochet tank top through which her gold bra peeked through. Reading from a speech written on papers she’d smoothed out on her slate-gray cargo pants, she told them the Moneta Hall rules, her hours, how best to contact her, and what would happen if they were caught drinking or smoking in the freshman dorms.
Two days later, Ellory worked up the courage to knock on Tai’s door only to find Cody Flores lounging beneath her sheets, playing a handheld game, completely undressed and completely unconcerned about it. Tai shifted to block Cody from view, and Ellory stammered something about orientation, but before she could run back to her room and die from embarrassment, Tai invited her to go out to lunch with them. By the end of a meal at Lucky’s, a café off campus, Tai and Cody had become Ellory’s friends. Tai was a business major from an upper-class family, Cody was an art historymajor whose parents worked for the FBI, and both of them agreed that Ellory needed to maketwo awesome friends her own age.
In many ways, that awkward moment had been a blessing. Thanks to her instant attraction to Tai, Ellory was able to get something better than a girlfriend: a best friend.
But it had been only four weeks. There were things Tai still didn’t understand, and Ellory’s rivalry with Hudson Graves was one of the biggest. Tai’s Nigerian American parents ran their own pharma company, which she was poised to take over, so, in her opinion, anything that happened in these four years didn’t matter as long as she didn’t get arrested.I like to live my life with the confidence of a mediocre white man, she often joked.But I’m not a complete fucking idiot.
Meanwhile, Ellory still struggled to explain her wildly different upbringing, where her future was not guaranteed and part of her was relieved when her parents’ calls from Jamaica had slowed down because she didn’t want to be a disappointment. Their precious baby, sent abroad for a better life, excelling only up until America put a snowballing price tag on excellence. She struggled to explain how low Hudson Graves had made her feel in only a few sharp words, how he saw her and dismissed her like her struggles, her hard work, and herexistencedidn’t matter. How it was about Hudson Graves, but it wasn’t about Hudson Graves, not really—it was about how there were a million men like Hudson Graves everywhere, who took one look at her skin or her gender or her address or her accent, still present in the way she pronounced certain words she’d only ever read, and assumed she was nothing. That she was lazy or angry or sassy or emotional or aproblem.
And Hudson Graves might have had light-skin privilege, but he was just as Black as she was, so his contempt hurt in a differentway. Like missing a step on a familiar staircase at night, that brief moment of shocked betrayal that something you’d thought would be there had rejected you instead.
She refused to lose against someone like that. Her desire to beat him was like an addiction, and instead of detoxing when they didn’t have class together, she would do this: Study. Obsess. Prep for the next round.
Tai looked like she wanted to say something else, but there was a knock on the door. A student Ellory faintly recognized from one of the rooms at the end of the hall—maybe the one with the Halloween decorations up even though it was mid-September—stood on Tai’s welcome mat, mumbling about smelling weed through the vents. Tai stepped outside to continue the conversation, leaving Ellory alone with her textbook and resentment. The crimson 98 continued to mock her, but she rolled onto her back to stare at the ceiling instead. There was a crack near the light bulb that kind of looked like a centipede—at least, she hoped it was a crack. If it moved, she would run.
Bzzt. Bzzt.
Ellory found her phone; AUNTIE flashed across the screen along with a picture of Carol posing with a head of lettuce as if it were a crystal ball. “Waa gwaan?”
“Mi deh yah,” Carol responded brightly. She always got a kick out of Ellory reaching for the little patois she could still speak without sounding like she wasfrom foreign. “How’s school?”
“How’s your heart?”
It was an unspoken fact that half the reason they were so often strapped for cash was because of Carol’s frequent trips to the hospital. The congenital heart defect she’d been born with had evolved into hypertension and cardiovascular disease, and thoughher aunt hadn’t had a stroke in months, Ellory had read far too many articles about heart disease being the biggest killer of Black women in America to truly rest easily. She would workfourjobs without complaint if it meant they had enough money for Carol to get the care she needed when she needed it, without having to wonder if this stroke was “bad enough” to risk the deductible.
“Mi gud, mi gud,” said Carol before switching back to English. “You worry too much, Lor. Tell me about school.”
