As Taylor straightens out her dress and hastily collects the little things that have fallen out of her purse, I try to ward the guard off, but of course that only makes him more aggressive. As I’m being accosted by an industrial-size man, I get one last glance at Taylor and I’m quickly reminded of our respective places in society. Hers, to be protected. Mine, to be protected from. Because no one goes after her. No one goes after the girl who attacked me. They only come for me when she was clearly the one who put her hands on me first. Once again, her whiteness is so unbearable, so palpable, it’s blinding. I want to scream.

And then I faintly hear her voice, gravelly against the noise in my head, rising above every other sound in the room, though it’s so low, it’s almost a whisper. “I did win. I got the money, bitch.”

And then I almost do.

I almost scream.

Just as this guard starts to reach for me like I’m some fucking criminal, I see an ancient-looking cell phone lying on the ground where Taylor attacked me. The realization is immediate and profound, because this is an old, pay-as-you-go flip phone, a device that may have been a revolutionary shimmer of modern convenience less than my lifetime ago, but nothing anyone attending this fancy-ass event would be carrying. It’s not an amalgamation of metal and plastic. It’s gold. Pure gold. A burner phone.

Taylor’s burner phone.

“Miss.”

I nearly jump at the bark, at this guard’s hand on my arm.

He’s black, at least six-five and bald. I quickly scan the room and see another pair of guards who are on crowd control, ushering away people who had started recording the spectacle. We’re practically isolated now.

I have to think fast.

I snatch my earring out of my ear, careful to disguise the motion, and look back at him. “My earring.”

He sighs and looks as if he is stifling the urge to roll his eyes before dropping them to the carpet.

“They’re my grandmother’s,” I say. “I have to find it.”

He sighs again, but this time something clicks inside him, and there is a small moment of solidarity between us just before he lets go of my arm and sweeps his eyes around the area.

He puts his back to me, and I almost blow out a sigh of relief. While he’s down in a squat, I pretend like I’m also looking for my missing earring and slip the cell phone deep inside my cleavage.