Tai took her to the kitchen, where they found two unopened Coronas in a cooler on the kitchen island. The fridge was stainless steel, sitting alongside white cupboards and black marble-top counters. Half-full bowls of colorful snacks were everywhere: tortilla chips and spinach dip, pretzels and dried fruit, popcorn and carrot sticks. Tai rooted through the cupboards until she found a clipped bag of barbecue potato chips. “What?” she asked in the wake of Ellory’s judgmental stare. “I don’t know where all these grubby hands have been, and that dip already looks funky.”
Ellory grabbed a fistful of chips. The spinachdidlook funky.
They ended up in the backyard, a wide expanse of flattened grass protected from the other buildings and houses by trees on three corners and a listless chain-link fence on the fourth. The party had spilled out here, too, but it felt more intentional. Fairy lights were threaded through the tree branches. Someone was fiddling with a keg. Folding tables were set up, and flip cup and beer pong were in full swing. A Bluetooth speaker duct-taped to the side of the house made sure the music was still an invisible guest.
Tai was immediately sucked into a game of flip cup; Ellorywouldn’t cross her mind again until she’d made everyone else at the table cry. Ellory wandered over to a small circle of people playing hacky sack and watched them kick the glow-in-the-dark footbag back and forth. It looked like a confused meteor, an ever-moving orb of phosphorescent light in the dimness of the yard.
One of the players caught sight of her and, after knocking the footbag across the circle, broke rank to come over. She had never seen him before, but he was catalog-model handsome, the kind of white man who looked like he answered to the nameTripporDigby. His carefully coiffed chestnut hair swooped back from his broad foreheadjust so, his clean-shaven square jaw gave him an approachably masculine appearance, and his thick biceps screamedcrew teamortennis clubor both. He was over six feet tall, wearing a black-and-white-striped polo, loose blue jeans, and black plimsolls—a type of shoe Ellory had had no reason to know the name of before she’d come to Warren. Now she didn’t dare confuse them with loafers or oxfords.
“Hey,” said Possibly Tripp, pushing a hand through his hair. His smile was relaxed, open, and practiced. Not toothy or overstretched, but a tool that only enhanced his natural good looks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”
“I’ve never been to one of these before,” Ellory confirmed. “My friend brought me.”
She pointed over at Tai, then saw the light of recognition in his chocolate-brown eyes. Which was no surprise. Tai definitely knew the Tripps and Digbys of the world—or at least all the ones in New England. “Well, if you came with Tai, then you must be good people! Can I get you anything to drink?”
“I’m still working on this.”
“The Corona? It’s empty.”
“Because I’m working on it.” His pencil-thin eyebrows knitted together. Ellory decided to have mercy on him. “I could maybe use some more chips.”
The smile returned, this one like the spill of morning sunshine through a window. He left Ellory standing there blinking, wondering what exactly she’d done to earn a smile like that. Shame flared within her at how quickly she’d judged him, cutting him down to stereotypes that justified her sarcasm. That feeling only increased when he returned less than five minutes later with a plate of individual snack packs of several different kinds.
“I didn’t know what you like,” he explained, “so I got the basics.”
The basics turned out to be potato chips, cheese puffs, pretzels, onion rings, cheesy tortilla chips, and graham crackers. Guilt softened her tone. “Thanks. This is great. I’m Ellory, by the way. Ellory Morgan.”
“Liam Blackwood,” he said, plucking the graham crackers from the plate with a wink. “Delivery fee.” The wink must have been practiced, too. It turned him from handsome to devastating. There was no way he didn’t know it. “So, Ellory Morgan, what’s your story? I would remember if I’d seen you around campus before now.”
“I’m a freshman,” she began. Then, at the flash of alarm on his face, she quickly added, “I’m twenty-one. I started late.”
“Ah. Godwin Scholarship?”
“The school has other scholarships,” Ellory said, her grip tightening on the plate. “But yeah.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it…however you’re taking it. I know plenty of Godwin Scholars. Come here a sec.”
Liam’s large hand pressed against her shoulder blades and steered her back into the house. Tai was still at the flip-cup table, knockingback a plastic cup of beer and then positioning it at the edge of the table. She flicked the base, which sent it tumbling through the air before it landed upside down in the center of the table. Cheers erupted from her team. Her opponents looked pained but not yet defeated. Ellory felt sorry for them already. Tai’s scorched-earth, kiss-the-ring, bend-the-knee approach to every drinking game would crush their spirits one way or another.
To the left of the living room was a staircase with white balustrades. An actual velvet rope was attached to one, barring the way upstairs in a way that made the second story of the house seem like some exclusive nightclub and thus would stop absolutely no one. Liam led her to a group of four loitering in front of the stairs, most of them people of color, most of them women. A pale redhead with glittering pastel-pink lip gloss. A russet-skinned woman in a sour-apple-green hair wrap. A spiky-haired man with golden skin, wearing a Manchester United T-shirt. A freckled woman with her hair drawn up into a frizzy bun and a black cherry White Claw in her hand.
They all stared at her, making Ellory feel like a kindergartener on the first day of school. All she needed was a Bluey lunch box to clutch to her chest or maybe a box of Crayola crayons—the good shit, the sixty-four pack with the built-in sharpener—to trade in exchange for friendship.
Liam’s hand slithered to her shoulder. “I found another one. This is Ellory. She’s new.”
“Hey,” the man said first. “I’m David Chang Vargas.” His smile, when he turned it on Liam, stopped shy of friendly. “Blackwood’s been collecting as many of us as he can find tonight. Have you checked off your bingo card yet?”
Liam laughed obliviously. “Not yet, but I’ll keep you posted.”
Everyone else made their introductions. The Black woman was Imani Khalif. The redhead was Addison Sullivan, “but you can call meRed.” The final woman was Ximena Moreno, an introduction she followed up by offering Ellory a White Claw from her oversize purse. Imani and David were nineteen-year-old poli-sci majors, while twenty-one-year-old Ximena was suffering through biochem, and Red, twenty, was here for electrical engineering. All of them apologized when Ellory said she was majoring in poli-sci, too.
“We’re still mostly doing core classes,” said David, assuming, like everyone did, that Ellory was a senior. “But even those are soul crushing. Something about the atmosphere here is so…”
“Serious,” Red finished, “in a super-pretentious way. Like, we get it, you’re a future hedge fund manager with an inheritance you can’t wait to snort your way through. There’s no need to wear a fucking suit to the student center.”
“That wasone time,” Liam said. “And I had a networking event.”
“It was twice,” said Imani. “And you wore different suits each time.”
