“I call them the dream team,” Earnell says about the roster of tutors and study groups he uses. “Helping negroes advance since America decided nothing will ever be truly just and equal. I’m not ashamed in the least and you shouldn’t be either. The system that failed us created this situation. Do you really think we’d be behind if we had grown up next door to Becky and Ken?” Earnell shakes his head in disapproval. “I think you should call Baker Tower Jim Crow instead of Matthew McConaughey. It’s a better fit,” he says. Earnell’s focus on race is next level. He is deeply suspicious of white people after having grown up in a racist town in the South and he lets it be known now that he’s in the “free North.”

“And another thing,” Earnell continues, “I really think you should liberate yourself from the toxic myth of minority exceptionalism. We are only an endangered species, as you say, because of extraordinary oppression. Not because there aren’t literally thousands of people just like us out there in the trenches unable to excel due to systematic obstacles. Sorry to break it to you, but you ain’t that special, dear, and you shouldn’t turn away from all the resources at our disposal here. It’s foolish.”

Earnell doesn’t want to see me fail, so he is always hard on me. He and Keli are less stubborn about asking for help. Maybe they don’t have a Mr. Walsh they are trying to prove wrong. Maybe their egos aren’t easily bruised like mine. I don’t know why, but they see our predicaments much differently than me. I’m too embarrassed to get a tutor, but Earnell and Keli have completely thrown the lid off the “do it yourself” mentality that got us here, while my pride keeps me suffering in isolation.

“Earnell’s a straight-up fool,” Keli says, “but he’s right. This shit is not a game. I’m headed to meet my tutor now. Tryin’ to get these grades locked down. We’re not in Compton anymore. You can’t soar here without their help.”

“But you’re from Chicago,” Earnell interjects. “And we’re”—pointing dramatically to him and me—“not from Cali either so do better with your idioms. Again, we can’t all be—”

“Shut up, fool,” Keli responds. “You know what I meant. I gotta run. I’ll catch y’all on the flipside.” Keli sprints off, leaving me to reconsider my entire approach since I’m definitely not soaring in Matthew McConaughey’s paradise.