I mean, seriously, aspiring to be neutral? Like, you’re in a box of crayons and aim for tan. Aspiring to the color people use for sand or ethnicities they can’t place when you could be cerulean or purple mountains majesty. (Yes, that’s a color. #38. Look it up.)

“Do you have … who are your friends?” I almost hold my breath.

He sounds surprised. “I get along with everyone. No one hates me.” He says the two things as if they are equal, and I’m not about to disabuse him of the notion, but it’s tragic. A real friend is not like passively okay about your presence; they’re actively interested. Nix and I have been tight since back in the day when their folks still called them by their dead name, and they say I’m the only one who’s known who they are all along. We’ve compared notes on cute boys, raged against injustices like juniors not being allowed to have their own prom, seen each other through bad breakups (though, seriously, Nix always dates the wrong person and can’t see it till it’s too late), and have in-jokes by the mile. (Reading Nix’s signature in my yearbooks is like deciphering hieroglyphics.) Maybe even more than Cheng, Nix has made my years at ASA. Ernie needs a Nix.

It won’t be me. You can’t fake a real friendship, but I can make him feel at home in his own (Brut-scented) room. He asks if I want to make a radio handle and try out his CB. I can’t possibly feign enough interest in the world to make that happen, but I tell him I’ll just listen when he’s on.

There’s a sharp rap at the door, and Gordo opens it without waiting. “Dorm mail in ten, jackoffs.” Then he’s gone.

“What the hell was that?” Ernie Gale blushes, and I remember this is still a religious school. But I don’t apologize because, by me, that is mild swearing.

“Dorm mail. We can send letters over to the girls’ dorm. We write notes, and the RAs take them over at break and then bring back theirs. Cool, huh?”

By “break,” he means 9 p.m., when the required nightly “study hall” takes place. You have to be in your own room for two hours first, and only then, after you have been sufficiently trapped into doing homework, do you get a break. After that, you can be in any other room in the dorm until lights out at ten. Apparently, I’m in a medium-security prison for youth who committed the crime of being alive in the ’80s.

Ernie shows me the note he has written. “JJ—Good work on the biography. I liked it. I didn’t know who Gertrude Stain even was! Haha. Ernz.”