I sidestepped the question. “They don’t go here,” I told him. But they used to, I wanted to say.

Lynnell Wilson . . .

Keagan Fry . . .

It was my friends and classmates of color from my original world. I had to believe they were still here, just like Leo was. Maybe he knew them.

Mateo Zuñiga . . .

Roberto Guzman . . .

Luz Delgado . . .

While I might find the Black kids across town, there was little hope of finding the Latinx ones. They had other lives in other places, denied “the American Dream” in a very different way.

Paul didn’t ask any more questions or comment further on my list. He wasn’t being all that talkative today. At the time I figured he was just listening to the main conversation.

Everyone was put in charge of something. I volunteered to spread the word in the Black community, hoping that Leo might help me. It all felt like play-acting, though, because if the world reset, none of it would happen. Paul was put in charge of finances. Again, he seemed distracted and muted when he accepted the position. Again, I thought nothing of it. But later that day I was blindsided by something that I should have seen coming.

“Ash, can we talk?”

Paul caught me at my locker at the end of the day.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, “what about?”

“About us.”

I looked around to see if anyone was listening. It was a reflex. There were plenty of others in the hallway. They all seemed to be into their own business, but still . . .

“You want to talk about that here?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do.”

And before I could ask him to save it for a more private time and place, he went on. “Yesterday when you said all that about being ‘home,’ I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

“Me neither,” I told him.

“But home isn’t where the heart is, Ash. It’s where you choose to be. How can you ever be home, if you’re pretending you’re somewhere else?”

“I know what I felt,” I said, as quietly as I could. “I know what I feel.”

He sighed. “Ash, here’s the thing . . .”

And that’s when I knew. I knew everything he was about to say. Because no matter who you are, or who you’re dating—no matter who you might be in love with—“Here’s the thing . . .” is a phrase that has only one outcome.

“Ash, your life is all laid out for you. A big football college like your father, an NFL team like your father—and even if you don’t get that far, your life is going in a direction that mine isn’t.”

“Wh . . . What are you talking about?” I stammered. “You get good grades. Whatever you do, you’re gonna be successful.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about . . .”

And then it hit me what he meant. I had no comeback line for it.