“Your coats?” Ms. Flores says. I shake my head at her, and she looks me over with a raised eyebrow, taking in my ragged winter coat, and glances at my friends, still in their parkas. She leaves us there to take a seat on the other side of the table.

The dean isn’t here, but we haven’t heard the clock tower strike nine.

Katherine swallows and squeezes my hand before she drops it. We pull the chairs in front of us out, but push them aside, so that we can step up to stand at the table and wait for the tower to chime. All five members of the honor board stare at the three of us, but none of us says anything for the longest thirty seconds ever, before the clock tolls.

There it is, and there he is, coming through the door at the far end of the room, a dark leather folder under his arm, the door snapping shut behind him. Katherine flinches. My breath stops. Nevaeh catches my eye. I hear her say it—by all that you hold dear on this good earth, et cetera.

Guess what I hold dear on this good earth, Dean Pembrooke?

He strides down the length of the table, flicks open the button of his suit coat, and shakes out his sleeves as he takes the empty chair next to Ms. Flores. He looks us over, still standing there in our coats.

“Now, then,” he says, his forehead wrinkling as he takes us all in. “Would you like to take off your coats and join us, Ms. Grant, Ms. James, Ms. Thompson?”

“We had hoped to keep them on for now,” Katherine says politely. Her voice is rock steady, her chin up.

“Take them off,” the dean orders. “And sit down.”

A beat. A collective indrawn breath. As if we’re onstage, a troupe with flawless precision and timing, we each unzip our coats and let them slip off our shoulders to crumple to the floor at our feet. Several people gasp, and the dean is saying something loudly, and Mr. Banerjee is answering him, and I am just trying to stay upright.

They see us with our hair pulled up high off our necks, wearing our costumes for the dance-program performance. Spaghetti strap leotards that almost but not quite match Katherine’s and my winter-pale skin tones and don’t match Nevaeh’s very dark skin at all. They’re cut low at the neck and high at the hips, and they’re aggressively rhinestoned.