“I—I was . . . just . . . going.” I tried to stop this forward momentum I’d been caught up in, like a riptide carrying me away.

“Party!” the one shouted enthusiastically, still pulling me. Pulling me all the way down the driveway and into the house. But as soon as I was there, the arms disappeared and so did the guys, and I was left standing all alone in a sea of mostly strangers.

I scanned the room for a friendly face. But they were few and far between. Very few and so far between. I felt far between. Between worlds and places and standing somewhere so unfamiliar and feeling like I didn’t belong here, only apparently, I did? It seemed that everyone knew who I was, not by name, but that I was the girl who caught the fucking ball, and apparently that made me a someone. So much so that Vuyo was showing me the video of my catch on TikTok.

“It’s already got ten thousand likes,” he said, and this made me so uncomfortable I wanted to turn and run.

And then Thembi and the Ts started walking toward me. They should be a girl band. I looked to my left. Amber was approaching too. Looked to my right, the Ts. Left, Amber. Right, Ts, left Amber until . . . perfect timing. Like two swells crashing against each other, they were all upon me at once.

“Hiya,” I said lamely.

“Hey,” Thembi spoke. She seemed to be the leader of the Ts. I wasn’t sure where Amber fit into the mix. She seemed to be a part of two different groups. The Ts and what I’d come to refer to in my head as the Goldilocks gang. What was weird about BWH was that it had cliques all right, but they all seemed to be of a similar ilk. Slight variations here and there, but all cut from the same cloth—probably Egyptian cotton, thread count off the charts. But there didn’t seem to be the usual school extremes here. These groups were only slight variations of the same theme.

“Is that a Huda matte lipstick?” Thembi asked, looking at my matte red lips.

I raised my hand to my mouth and covered it slightly. Damn, I shouldn’t have worn the lipstick. What was she going to say now? It didn’t suit me. What was a girl like me doing wearing lipstick like this? “I think so,” I muttered.