“Shitty,” I say, though that’s the understatement of the year. Shitty is the word I’d use when I blew a test or had bad cramps. Surely, there must be a better way to describe how I feel. What’s the word for shitty on steroids? What’s the word for realizing even your own mom and dad think you are too stupid to function? What’s the word for wondering if you deserve to live? I should ask Linda to make “synonyms for ‘shitty on steroids’ ” flash cards.

“My parents wouldn’t let me call or text or come over. They don’t know I’m here,” she says. “It’s funny—I mean, not funny ha-ha, but ironic—because they used to be so excited that we were friends. These are the kind of people you should be mingling with.” Shola drops her voice low and does her best Nigerian accent, the one she always uses when she’s imitating her father, and I feel a pang of hurt. Even Mr. Balogun, who stuffs me silly with jollof rice when I go to Shola’s apartment and sent me a virtual congratulations card with dancing hedgehogs when I got into SCC, has abandoned me.

I get it, sort of. My exile. We are judged by the company we keep. Their job is to protect Shola, just as my parents’ job is to protect me. But it’s not a zero-sum game, parenthood. That’s what we keep forgetting.

“They’re not the only ones who don’t want me around. Mrs. Oh doesn’t want me to come back to school. She gave me a packet of work to finish at home so I can graduate.”

“Lucky,” Shola whines, half joking. “School has been…weird without you.”

“Yeah?” I ask, not fishing exactly, but I need acknowledgment that our friendship was real, that I have not made up the last six years. Maybe I was never as important to Shola as she was to me; maybe I was simply a placeholder at school until she got to go home to her real friends. Shola shakes her head, like she doesn’t want to talk about it, or maybe to say, That’s not why I’m here. She’s harder to read suddenly, or maybe it’s that I suddenly trust myself—or us—less.

“I can’t stop thinking about the fact that all I used to want was to switch families with you. In seventh grade I’d have this recurring dream that you and I Freaky Friday’d. No Sunday church. No having to watch out for the Littles. No doing my homework before I could turn on a screen. In the dream, I’d walk into your mother’s closet and borrow everything, and I’d be the one who got to ride horses. I mean, you had a literal pony! Do you remember that? Who has a pony?”