“I get invited to parties, but there are a lot of parties I don’t get invited to, and I’ve only been asked out on dates twice. One of the boys who asked me was white, and everyone looked at us when we went into the movies, and someone threw popcorn at the back of our heads. I guess at the AMC 12, racial equality stops when the lights go down. And one time when I was playing soccer? Here I go, dribbling the ball up the sideline, got a clear shot, and this white dad in a golf shirt tells his daughter, ‘Guard that jig!’ I pretended I didn’t hear it. The girl kind of smirked. I wanted to knock her over, right there where he could see it, but I didn’t. I swallowed it. And once, when I was a freshman, I left my English book on the bleachers at lunch, and when I went back to get it, someone had put a note in it that said BUCKWHEAT’S GIRLFRIEND. I swallowed that, too. For days it can be good, weeks, even, and then there’s something to swallow. It’s the same with Mom and Dad, I know it is. Maybe it’s different for Jerome at Harvard, but I bet sometimes even he has to swallow it.”

Holly squeezes her hand, but says nothing.

“I’m not blackish, but the voice said I was, just because I didn’t grow up in a tenement with an abusive dad and a drug addict mom. Because I never ate a collard green, or even knew exactly what it was. Because I say pork chop instead of poke chop. Because they’re poor down there in the Low and we’re doing just fine on Teaberry Lane. I have my cash card, and my nice school, and Jere goes to Harvard, but . . . but, don’t you see . . . Holly, don’t you see that I never—”

“You never had a choice about those things,” Holly says. “You were born where you were and what you were, the same as me. The same as all of us, really. And at sixteen, you’ve never been asked to change anything but your clothes.”

“Yes! And I know I shouldn’t be ashamed, but the voice made me ashamed, it made me feel like a useless parasite, and it’s still not all gone. It’s like it left a trail of slime inside my head. Because I never had been in Lowtown before, and it’s horrible down there, and compared to them I really am blackish, and I’m afraid that voice may never go away and my life will be spoiled.”

“You have to strangle it.” Holly speaks with dry, detached certainty.

Barbara looks at her in surprise.