“I swear, you’re so stiff, girl,” she says. “You need to learn how to relax. College is meant to be fun. All you do is study and lurk around. Look, I got this bottle of Tanqueray for the weekend.” She smiles wickedly and shakes the alcohol enticingly in front of me. “Snoop Dogg’s ‘Gin and Juice.’ ‘I got my mind on my money and my money on my mind.’ God, he’s so hard-core. A bunch of us are gonna hang out at Trevor’s place on Saturday. You can totally join if you want.” I smile unenthusiastically and watch as she throws a few items in her bookbag before prancing back out of the room. “Smoocha later. K, byeee.” It’s late so I have no idea where she’s going, but she comes and goes so frequently, I’m used to her disappearing.

I stare blankly at the ceiling for several seconds trying to process the night’s events: the frozen people, the disconnecting sound cloud, the demonic laughter, Hypnotist Jerry’s spinning eyes, the Polaroids, and the portal to another dimension oozing out of my wall.

“I don’t know what the heck is going on here,” I say to myself, “but I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Affinity Week—the quintessential first-semester college extravaganza showcasing various clubs, frats, sororities, and shared-interest housing—arrives with a blast of unusually cold arctic air. It’s twenty below the normal fifty-five degrees it should be this time of year. Seniors have noted the strange weather patterns since summer ended. Lightning storms, violent winds, and sideways rain.

“It’s the Gods of White Supremacy punishing the college for admitting the most ‘diverse’ class in the school’s history,” Earnell says sarcastically. “Calm your fury, Zeus. We’ll be gone soon enough,” he purrs, nostalgic for a future that hasn’t happened yet.

Now it’s the last week of September, but already feels like December. The week starts with a bang of controversy. First, the Party for Reparations—a political activist group made up of students from different racial backgrounds that tries to raise awareness about why Black people deserve restitution from the United States government—sponsors a pop-up slave play in the cafeteria. Every single person in Collis Cafe watches in stunned awe as Black students pick cotton balls off the floor while wearing dingy cloth attire and gloomily singing “Wade in the Water,” as several white overseers stand by with long black whips. Actual whips. When one student accidentally drops her basket, spilling her day’s harvest on the floor, one of the white masters walks over and says, “We cain’t have these kind’a mistakes, Carol Ann. You know what comes next. Assume the position!”