I don’t think Ming even has time to take in the rest of the apartment before he indiscriminately begins to forage our fridge. He fills me in on how much of the school rumor mill I’ve powered since yesterday, and it turns out to be a shockingly small amount. A few dreary spins at the most. It makes sense. The upside of a school that traffics in rumors is that it takes a lot for consensus to hit critical mass. People want receipts these days. Although too many people saw my exit for it to go completely unnoticed.

“Wait. They think I got into a fight with Mr. Vu?”

“Well, you were hugging people left and right, went into his office, and you came out looking like a ghost, apparently,” Ming says, rattling the Tupperware of orange cake slices at me for permission before diving in. I barely have to nod, and he’s already in.

“Teacher-student affair was also a contender for a little while, but that was just Betsy Scavo. That girl sees the entire world in slash fan fiction and— Holy crap is this good!” Ming says, shoving a massive slice of cake into his mouth.

It’s a typical reaction. Your standard Black household desserts will give you a full coronary by age thirty-seven, but there’s no denying the addictive factor. Aunt Terry is not the first to capitalize on it. Ming continues to stroll around the apartment at his own pace. There’s not much use for a tour for anyone with peripheral vision.

“The Haltiwanger Lair . . . Am I racist if I say that all your male relatives look alike?” he comments, stopping at the wall of crooked photos.

“No. I mean, yes, kind of, but it’s allegedly a thing. Haltiwanger genes. I don’t see it but—”

“Dude!” Ming exclaims next, catching a glimpse of my bedroom and darting right in, mouth full of more orange cake. There’s no unripping the Band-Aid now.

“Yes, we’re poor,” I say, instinctively picking up a stray T-shirt and folding it as if the simple act will boost our household income. “The exit is that way, and on Monday we can both pretend this never happened.”

It’s both an attempt at a joke and the furthest thing from it, but Ming doesn’t appear to be hearing me at the moment.

“I’m . . . I’m hurt.” Ming points to the autographed Givenchy 1998 collection poster pinned above my desk and then to my rack of sneakers. Six well-kept pairs, detailed whenever I need to clear my mind after a long day. “You’ve been holding out on me, asshole!”

“Ming, you own way more sneakers than I do.” I lean against the doorway and watch him bounce from pair to pair with the spiritual energy of a raccoon.