Despite what he was wearing, Stephen didn’t look stupid. A beautiful jacket with a nice pair of black jeans, black Sambas, short black socks. Annoyingly, his chest looked like it was worth showing off, but Ayanna was trying not to give him the attention he so clearly wanted. He smelled good. If he were rich like some of the kids in her classes—heirs to different food- and Earth-killing businesses, and some celebrity’s kids—he would have smelled far worse. Every kid someone whispered to her about always smelled like they had taken a solemn vow to work out every morning for three hours, eat an everything bagel, then rub themselves with cumin and lemon. There was a hint of what perfumers called “musk,” maybe pepper? Pepper in a good way. Although, Ayanna realized, all those kids she knew were white. Black rich people might actually enjoy having money instead of pretending they didn’t.

She shrugged and handed Stephen her phone and fifty dollars.

“Okay, let me try again.” He kept his hand on the one he’d placed the pills into. “You have beautiful eyes.”

“A little generic, but still nice to hear.” Ayanna watched as he put his number into her phone, called his own. “I mean, I’m sure you could pull a lot of interest just by going around this party, leaning in and saying a little softly, ‘Your eyes are incredible.’ ”

“Is it really that easy?” a different man asked. His fingernails were painted a matte navy. He was wearing a T-shirt like the ones Jane usually wore, except it read: EVEN PROM KINGS ARE TYRANTS.

“I like your shirt,” Ayanna said. She assumed he was Jane’s boyfriend. The idea made her feel more comfortable chatting with him. There were so many people she knew who overlooked bad behavior in their romantic partners. Felt like it wasn’t their job to take up all the places where their parents had failed and educate them: “He wasn’t homophobic, he just didn’t know better”; “He called women ‘bitches’ because a girl had been mean to him in high school”; and “He was just kind of uncomfortable around Black people because his grandparents lived through the riots.” The excuses were baffling but seemed to be socially acceptable. Ayanna felt like she was often treated as if she were being childish and unreasonable when she scoffed at the excuses. He can drive, he can vote, but how dare he have to consider other people’s feelings? But Jane was somebody who had little patience for people’s thoughtlessness. On their first day of the postmodernism seminar, while looking over the syllabus, she had raised her hand and asked the professor, “Why is everyone on this syllabus white? Are there truly no postmodernists of color?”

When the professor had talked around the question, Jane had let her finish, then in an uncomfortably kind voice said, “It’s fine. We all mess up sometimes.”