And, of course Leo was there, with his sister, Angela, who’d taken it upon herself to fill in socially for Leo, now that his ex-girlfriend was a Martian. Angela was a year younger than us, but most people took her and Leo to be twins, since she always hung out with an older crowd. I cannot deny that she was hot. I might have asked her out, but that would have been problematic on several levels. First of all, you don’t want to date your best friend’s sister because it never ends well on any front. Secondly, although I’m ashamed to admit it, dating a Black girl would have given my grandpa a second heart attack. I wouldn’t call my grandfather racist. Okay, well, actually I would call him racist, just not to his face.

“It’s a generational thing,” my mom always said, too embarrassed by it to address it in any meaningful way. Grandpa didn’t have a problem with Leo, but I did once catch him hitting the lock button on his car when Leo came over. It’s not like he thought Leo would steal it, but seeing a Black kid reminded him to lock it. Old people, right? Leo never made a big deal of it, so it never occurred to me that maybe it bothered him more than he let on.

I got into a fight with Leo only once about race—over two years back, when I made an asinine comment about affirmative action in social studies. I pointed out that Leo had better grades than just about anyone in class—and definitely better than anyone on the football team, which, to the simple sophomore I was at the time, was proof that no one needs to get preferential treatment because of race. Then he smacked me down with talk about all the kids who weren’t as lucky as he’d been—who didn’t have the opportunities he’d had, and found all the doors shut before they got there. “When you gotta spend all your time just kicking down the door, you’re already exhausted, and miles behind the ones who get to prance right through,” he had said. “Do you really think that’s fair?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, so I apologized and told him I didn’t mean anything by it, but I guess you can’t backpedal when you say something stupid that you hadn’t really thought out. Definitely not one of my shining moments. But at least I’m not Norris.

“This country is filled with the well-intentioned ignorant,” Leo told me. “It’s a freaking plague, and you’re a carrier.”