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You’re
a 1966 blue Volkswagen van with a low tire.”
    “Mustang,” hollered someone else.
    “Yeah, cool, a Mustang. With a dent in the driver’s
door. What kind of animal?”
    “Lion.”
    “Racehorse.”
    “Cat.”
    “Cat, my ass. Polecat is more like it.”
    They were playing “What kind of”—what kind of car would
you be if you were a car, what kind of animal.
    “Town!” yelled Phil.
    “Paris,” someone said.
    “Yeah, the sewers of Paris. That’s you. The sewers of
Paris.” Phil finally turned around to face me, waiting for me to say what town
I’d be.
    I’d be the Nevada desert, the stone building facades
standing up with nothing behind them, the mountains looking out through the
windows. “Rhyolite,” I tried.
    “Where’s that?”
    “Nevada.”
    “What’s there?”
    “I don’t know. Desert. It’s a ghost town.”
    “Rye-oh-LITE!” shouted Phil. Much louder than before—people
were looking. “The capital of Nerdland!”
    Someone snickered. A narrow smile flickered on Phil’s
lips.
    “I’m getting out of here,” he said. “I don’t want the
nerds to catch up with me. Whole hordes of them are on their way from Rhyolite,
even as we speak.”
    He pushed back his chair and walked away. The others
flocked behind him, laughing. I opened my mouth to say good-bye, see you later,
in a flip, offhand way, but nothing came out. He was only kidding, the way
he teased his friends. No he wasn’t.
    This is high school all over again. College was
supposed to be different. Do we ever start being grown-ups?
    Right in the middle of my misery, I imagined a business
lunch. Bankers or lawyers or something, all in suits, getting into a food
fight like little kids. One banker gets hit between the eyes with a glob of
mashed potatoes. As they plop down onto his pin-striped vest, I see he looks a
lot like Phil.
    I stifled a laugh—if I let it start, I’d end up crying.
I pulled myself together and looked around. Curious faces turned hastily away. Well,
that was one way to get an empty table. Too bad I’m not hungry anymore.
    I went on to my next class. Psychology 101 was a survey—a
one-size-fits-nobody kind of course. I was an art major, but the university
made all the freshmen take a social science class, and this was the one I’d
picked. I was already wondering why I’d thought it might interest me. A
graduate assistant gave the lectures in a big hall, almost an auditorium. After
the first day, I always sat in the back, trying to take notes but mostly
doodling. I usually slipped in as class started, or even late. That day, I was
early.
    The lecture room was empty when I got there, but another
student came in almost on my heels. I’d noticed him before, mostly because he
was the only black guy in the class. He sat across the aisle from me and read a
book, looking up a couple of times. Smiles, here, gone, private. Here again. I
imagined thoughts tumbling around his mind like a rock polisher.
    I sketched his face in my Psych notebook, but the expression
wasn’t right. I tried again—closer. He’s so alive. He’s different—not just
because he’s black. Except why do we say “black?” He’s some shade of brown.
Sienna, maybe? Just not “café au lait” or some polite little phrase like a lot
of people use. Rude-polite—a person isn’t a piece of food. I’m the color of
cheap bread, but no one ever says so.
    The room had filled up while I was drawing. The teacher
came in and opened her notes on the lectern. The class quieted obediently, and
she started the lecture, droning away like she always did. “In 1937, Lorenz
established the pioneering research on imprinting in young animals,” she said.
“Imprinting is the process by which animals learn their species identity. By
substituting himself for the animals’ mother during the critical period, Lorenz
induced them to imprint on him.”
    The guy I’d noticed before class raised his hand. The
teacher stopped, with a slightly put-upon