None of my football buds asked for a ride home that night. Maybe they sensed that there was something different about me from the Ash they knew, or maybe they didn’t want to step into the “alternative” section. Not even Norris, who always asked for a ride, came near me. I’m sure he was trying to distance himself from me, considering how I disrespected Layton, our all-American golden boy. Did you know that “all-American” is often a code word for “white”? Leo had told me that. I didn’t believe it at the time; I thought it was just Leo being Leo—but I was now giving everything he had ever told me a whole lot more credibility. “Your ignorance is like a layer of stupid-ass sunscreen I gotta scrape off just to expose you to the light,” Leo had once told me. So where the hell was he?

I drove home alone, relieved to be in a protective steel shell. I didn’t want to know anything more about this place—but mostly I didn’t want to know who I was in this world.

“Tough game,” Hunter said when I got home. “You played okay, though; you took down the quarterback so hard, I didn’t think he’d get back up.”

Then, from the family room, I heard my father say, “Shoulda made sure he didn’t get back up. Then maybe you might have won.”

At first I thought he was joking, but then I realized he wasn’t. Not something my real dad would say. Cruelty must have come holding hands with racism.

At least I was able to take some comfort from the fact that my relationship with Hunter was still a good one.

He challenged me to a game of pool before bed. But halfway through, I dared to ask a question I dreaded having to ask.

“Hunter,” I said, “do we know Leo and Angela Johnson?”

He thought about it, and, just like when I showed Katie that bad drawing of Tsammy Tsunami, there was a moment of hesitation, recognition maybe, but the spark of that recognition quickly went out. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Why?”

“They’re Black,” I prompted.

“Oh,” he said. “Who do they work for?”

I gritted my teeth, trying not to be angry with him. This version of Hunter is a product of this world, I told myself.

“They don’t work for anybody,” I told him. “They’re friends.”

He raised an eyebrow. Not in any sort of disapproval, but out of surprise. “I didn’t know you had any black friends.”

“Do you have any?” I asked.

“Not lately.” But then he considered it. I realized that he was questioning himself about it, once more sensing that something was wrong, but not being able to put his finger on it.