“Yeah.” After that Rashid did his hair in his room. He didn’t tell Gerald about the incident. He probably wouldn’t have been fazed.

That was the thing about Gerald. He wasn’t scared. He knew who Freud was. He was at ease at the dinner table. He liked Rashid, but he wasn’t like him. Like the other day. Gerald, Rashid, and Nate, another black guy who, like Gerald, had grown up in relative affluence, were all sitting together at dinner, groaning over how much homework they had to do; Gerald and Nate with the good-natured confidence that characterized most of their conversations; Rashid with some genuine panic that he tried his best to hide. Anyway, they were just talking, and Gary Duggan and Dave Steele, two white football jocks, came up and sat down with them. Without listening at all to the conversation that had been going on, Dave leaned over to Gerald and said, “Yo, my man, what is up with the Knicks this year? They suck.”

“I don’t know, my man” replied Gerald, a slight edge in his voice. “Soccer’s really my game. Listen, did you start any of the reading for European history yet?”

And thus the conversation segued smoothly back to what they’d been talking about in the first place. Rashid sat through the rest of the meal silent. Nate headed to the library after dinner, and Rashid finally spoke as he and Gerald walked through the approaching darkness to their dorm. “Gerald, man, don’t you feel like the brother from another planet around here sometimes? I mean, what was that guy doing? Trying to talk to you about basketball when we weren’t even on that. Does he think basketball is all we think about?”

Gerald laughed shortly. “Him? He’s just a jarhead. Thinks it gives him some kind of street cred to talk like that to an actual black person. You can’t let a guy like that get to you. Some of ’em’s cool. Some of ’em’s ain’t. Got to deal with all of ’em. You know?”

“I guess,” said Rashid.

Most of the time with Gerald, he was more open, more himself, but there were things he didn’t say. School had already been in session a month, and they’d had the requisite “Do you have brothers and sisters?” conversation, but when Gerald had asked him if he had siblings, Rashid had simply said, “No,” and busied himself straightening out a drawer.

“You’re lucky, man,” said Gerald. “My sister drives me just about out of my mind.”