“Ash,” he said, “my own son taking a vocal stance right now on such a hot-button issue as segregation is going to make it very difficult for me to run a campaign.”

“Well, then,” I said, “maybe you need to redirect that energy.”

“I heard the whole thing,” Hunter said when I passed his room upstairs, a few minutes later. “I want you to know that I think it’s pretty cool what you’re doing. Even if it does screw things up for Dad.”

“Thanks, Hunter.”

He took a moment to think about it. “I . . . I’d probably feel a little awkward going to school with black kids at first,” he said. “But just because it makes me uncomfortable doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, right? I mean, if we just did things that made us feel comfortable, we’d never leave the couch. Maybe I’ll do something to fight segregation, too.”

“Start by sitting in the integrated section at the Towne Centre, and other places,” I suggested. “See which friends join you, and which ones don’t. Then maybe make some new friends.”

He grinned. “That easy, huh?”

It reminded me of something else Hunter had said should be easy. And so I made a pact with him. “If you do it, I’ll stop selling drugs for good.”

He considered that. “Even to me?”

“Especially to you.”

He weighed that and nodded. “I can live with that,” he said.

I had another sit-down dinner the following night—but thankfully not at my house, and not with my parents. Leo asked me over for dinner.

“Don’t make a big deal of it,” he told me. “I told my mom we tossed a ball together, and she wouldn’t get out of my face until I invited you over. I think she thought I was making it up, and she called my bluff.”

I said yes, but I was almost afraid to go. I didn’t want to see how he was forced to live in this world. Turns out he lived in the same place as before, but the house—as well as the neighborhood around it—was different. Homes that had once been well kept were in disrepair. Sagging overhangs, peeling paint, yards gone to seed. Someone passing by on their proverbial high horse might turn up their nose and say these people just didn’t care—but I knew that couldn’t be further from the truth. Of course they cared—but how can you pay for a new roof when you’re struggling to put food on the table? How do you paint your house when you’re already working two jobs? True in my original world as well, but that didn’t mean my privileged ass ever thought about it before today.