Even after three years, Alex was still blown away at the brazenness of the group’s relationship with drugs: how they did them, how they talked about them, how openly they brandished them in public. It was as if they were protected by an invisible electric fence of economic privilege. If they wanted to have a little shroom night in the park, maybe some molly at a concert, a line of coke here or there—none of it was a problem. None of it was something to worry about. They often teased Alex for being a relative prude when it came to drugs, and she didn’t know how to tell them: it wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy their effects, it was that for her, they were very much illegal in a way they weren’t for her friends.

When no one volunteered, Guy spoke again. “You guys are truly fucking useless. Dan”—he turned to him down the table—“you have to know someone.”

“I don’t, actually.” He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with his napkin as he replied, voice calm and unreadable. “And I’m not here this afternoon, anyway. I’m taking my parents to the Statue of Liberty.”

“Please stop making the rest of us look bad,” Dev joked.

Alex flushed with a familiar jealousy at his steadiness. He was a scholarship kid, too, but he managed to seem unburdened by it. He never faltered in front of the rich kids the way she did.

While Alex was just another kid from Rochester, Danial was fate incarnate, the human manifestation of his parents’ desire to build something beautiful in Los Angeles. They had both fled Iran during the revolution, starting over from zero without a word of English in America—a country with fresh memories of the hostage crisis. Their only child, Danial arrived six years to the day after their first meeting, and his brilliance became the star around which the family solar system turned. Schedules were modified to accommodate his chess competitions; endless nights and weekends were sacrificed to fund his already heavily discounted tuition at Harvard Westlake—the prep school that left him literally scarred after a particularly brutal hazing ritual. But the occasional cruelty of his ultra-privileged peers never deterred him. His industriousness became a security blanket, insulating him from a future in which he was dependent on other people’s kindness.

“What are you wearing tonight?” Paul asked, leaning into Alex and removing a rogue hair from the sleeve of her dress. The rest of the group chattered around them, Sophie and Bee gossiping pointedly about a classmate Alex thought was perfectly nice.

“I don’t know, actually,” she replied, distracted. From the corner of her eye, she watched Danial, who was now discussing the latest tech news with Dev.

“What about that slutty black dress you wore to my birthday dinner?”

“Slutty?” She snapped back to attention, slightly offended.