Say something funny. But my brain was too stuck on the other things.

“But here is where I’m at.” He spread his arms wide. “This is . . . mind-blowing. All of this, coming here, studying at Amberley, with your dad. It’s like some fairy tale. I can’t believe my luck. But . . .” He faltered, searching for words. “No, that’s it. I can’t believe my luck, so I’m concerned about, ah, messing with it. By pushing it.”

I recrossed my legs to face him. “How would you be pushing your luck?”

“I didn’t expect to meet you this summer.” Oscar’s eyes met mine. “I mean, I expected to meet Ruby Chertok, Martin Chertok’s daughter. I . . . didn’t expect to meet someone like you.”

Someone like me.

“Well. Likewise.”

“Exactly! And you have things to do that I’m distracting you from, right? You have a whole life here.”

Half a life. The start of one—a weird blend of exercise and D-list clubs and high-couture high-mindedness—but he wasn’t wrong.

“And, if I’m being honest, which is the purpose of this exercise . . .” Oscar sighed. “Okay, so back home, I’m this anomaly, right? I make my music, everybody kind of stares at me, ‘there goes Oscar again with his composition thing,’ and it’s this neat trick I do. No big deal. But here, it matters. And at the same time, I’m not that unusual, you know? I’m sitting in class with literal geniuses, most of whom worked a hell of a lot harder than I did to get here. But I’m still an anomaly.”

I wasn’t sure if it was my place to prompt him. He seemed to want me to. “Because you’re black.”

“Listen, I knew there wouldn’t be many black kids at Amberley. I didn’t realize there would be zero.” He made an O with his fingers.

“There are a few in the university programs. But I totally get it.”

I totally get it could have gone on our list of Things White People Say. I only understood how he felt on an intellectual level.

He still looked relieved. “Like I said—I am used to being the odd one out. This is just a special kind of odd.”

“You don’t seem odd to me.” I squinted. “You’re so . . . confident.”

“See, but that’s the thing, you get really good at that over a lifetime of ‘what’s up with that kid.’”

“At school?”

“Not so much school. Everybody’s good-weird at my school.” He scratched his face. “I mean . . . at home? My dad—super supportive, same as Mom—but he doesn’t really get composition. He’s always teasing me about classics versus classical, like it’s some debate we’re gonna settle. Classics being Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, Billy Stewart, Etta James . . .”

I smiled. “That’s what he listens to?”