Jane hadn’t mentioned Stephen was coming over with her, and it hurt Ayanna’s feelings a little. It made what Felix had said to her about Jane feel less like a kindness he was trying to do for her, and maybe more like the result of the three of them gossiping about her. Did they all think she was another one of Jane’s intermural soccer WAGs, eager for two weeks of good sex and six weeks of hurt feelings? There was the possibility, Ayanna thought while pulling out art supplies and putting her nice, expensive pens into neat rows, that what she’d thought were new friendships were nothing. She was an anecdote to those people. Someone whom they would call Anna or Anya Who Played Soccer with Jane for a Fall Semester. Stephen was telling a story about going to the Alpha Phi Alpha step show the night before and watching them dance against some Korean B-boys.

“Why didn’t you text me?” Jane kept saying.

He showed them a video of two guys doing what he called “an airflare.”

“The human body is incredible,” Ayanna said. As always, seeing someone accomplish something physical and beautiful relaxed her. Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, she watched footage on YouTube of synchronized swimmers or elaborate gymnastics routines.

Ayanna waited for one of them to pull out the edibles or the acre, but instead Stephen pulled out a Ziploc bag filled with what was clearly tea. She waited for him to explain that it was drugs of some kind but instead he busied himself exactly measuring out three cups and going down the hall for water to put in Ayanna’s kettle.

“There was this artist, Lucille Hayden, who said this was part of her process of speaking to the divine,” Jane said. She winced when saying the words the divine. It was another thing Ayanna liked about her, the way Jane’s facial expressions couldn’t help but betray how she really felt. She’d been reading on the internet that if you drank this tea, meditated, then approached a canvas or a piece of a paper, it would help you channel spirits or God or the universe’s knowledge—whatever your flavor—while creating. Automatic writing or drawing, feelings of transcendence or of being a part of something bigger, it could all happen. It wouldn’t be a fake glow like MDMA or shrooms.

“What is God?” Jane asked them when Stephen had returned.

“I’m an atheist,” Stephen said.

All this drama over tea, Ayanna thought.

“Black people aren’t atheists,” Jane said. “Even when we say we are, we’re still spiritual.”

“No.” Stephen shook his head. “I don’t fuck with that. No angel bullshit. No deep force that Black people connect to. None of that.”

Jane shrugged. “You should have to go through time and tell your ancestors this. I bet they would beat your ass.”