The song was following her. She'd never even heard it before she drove up to UNWG two days ago, and since then she must've heard it two dozen times. WGUN, the campus radio station, seemed to be playing it at least once an hour. And now here it was starting up again at Hallowed Grounds; there wasn't a speaker outside, but they kept the windows open for ventilation, and it floated outside intermingled with the smells of coffee and sugar and clean August sweat.

She's the one that keeps the dream alive. That pretty much described Lata's sister. Asha was the younger by two years, but she was the favorite, the golden child. It was like her parents had held their breath for those two years, and then exhaled in relief when Asha was born. If you were an outsider looking in, you might not have even realized. There was nothing so obviously superior about Asha. Maybe she was a touch more beautiful. Maybe. But if she was, it was all smoke and mirrors, and Lata had better ways to spend her time and money. Maybe Asha had a little more charisma, more je ne sais quoi. She'd been the star of all the plays in high school, and Mom and Dad had sure loved that. They were freaks for movies, constantly getting tapes and CDs shipped in from cousins in Mumbai. They'd named their daughters after real-life sisters, two famous Bollywood singers. But you just had to listen to that song playing from the coffeehouse speakers to understand: Lata got a mention, somewhere toward the middle, but Asha was in the title.

Malcolm – or maybe it was Neal, she wasn't entirely sure which one was which – sipped at his latte and swiveled his head around like a radar dish. "Das Kapital," he announced, to no one in particular. Lata had known guys like that back in high school, and had hoped she'd be able to leave them behind after graduation. The smart kids at Pasley High tended to self-select into one of two groups: the debate team and the academic team. Neal and Malcolm were academic-team kids all the way. Smart, no one was saying they weren't, but it was all just information. They were good at recognizing and remembering things, and that was about it. They didn't have any opinions, or at least none about anything other than Star Wars, and they couldn't argue a position for more than thirty seconds. They had gotten bullied, mercilessly, Lata had no doubt, but they hadn't come out of that crucible harder and stronger, but even softer, even more vulnerable. They were the kinds of kids that well-meaning teachers and guidance counselors took aside and said "Look, I know high school is tough. But when you get to college, things are going to change. You're smart. You can do anything you want. You're going to see the world and do amazing things, and people are going to appreciate you for who you are." Blah blah blah – bullshit. Their 4.0s, their 1600s on the SAT, their valedictorian certificates – they might as well be letter jackets and championship rings. They peaked in high school, just like those jocks who called them gay and shoved them into bathroom walls. They just didn't know it yet, which was even sadder.

"I think that's The Communist Manifesto," said Neal, if that was in fact Neal. It was actually one of Marx's articles on the Civil War; whoever was doing the impromptu reading clearly had some "Best of Marx" volume and was just choosing at random. Or maybe not? Maybe this was some kind of protest, and not just some dorks getting chuckles from shouting Marx at confused townies and sorority girls. His Civil War stuff had been among the big pile of reading Lata did when her family first moved to Pasley, in an effort to understand just why the hell everyone there seemed so hung up on it. Half the kids in her high school had a Confederate flag displayed in some fashion on their pickups, and at least one had a "Don't blame me – I voted for Jeff Davis" bumper sticker. She still didn't quite get it – that is, she understood the reasoning behind the "it's heritage, not hate" talking point the flag-decal types always trotted out as justification, she just didn't understand why it was that specific part of their heritage they were fixated on preserving. You know, the part where you were a bunch of racist traitors who lost a war? She never managed to say that part out loud in the PHS parking lot.

Of course here she was, the direct beneficiary of an honest-to-god slave fortune. Mom and Dad had been shocked when she won a Suttledge Scholarship to UNWG (though blame that on Asha's vast shadow too, because they shouldn't have been – 4.0, 1590, salutatorian: she wasn't some academic-team nerd, but she was putting numbers on the board); it was about as prestigious as it got if you were staying in state, and it had been made extremely clear that if either of the Khan girls were going out of state, it was Asha. But one thing the fancy brochure didn't tell you was that Alonzo, the O.G. Suttledge and the guy who'd basically bankrolled the college for most of the 19th century, made his money the old-fashioned way: by not paying a couple hundred people to pick cotton. His great-grandson Dale didn't exactly mention that in his little welcome letter in the brochure, but Lata knew who she'd really have to thank for next summer's study-abroad trip to Florence.

"Lata? Hello?" It looked like Neal/Malcolm had been trying to get her attention for a while now. She'd gotten lost in her own head, like she always did. "Writing your own obituary" is what Asha called it. Maybe that's why Asha was the star. She was always so present. She was like those three that had come tearing out of the Purple Room, the two girls and that guy who looked like a homeless vampire. When he'd approached the table, she saw the tattoo on his right forearm, blue razor wire coiling around the paper-white skin and twisting together to form a name: "Xander." His name, his boyfriend's name, she didn't know. She wouldn't mind finding out. Whatever was happening between him and that tall blond girl who had come lurching past, pitched forward so precariously Lata thought she was falling and catching herself with every step, they were alive in the moment. Asha wouldn't have just pointed them toward campus, she would have joined the chase. Let somebody else write your history, Asha had told her once, a piece of advice counter to everything Lata truly believed.

"Earth to Lata!" She'd done it again. She tried to smile at him. Fifty-fifty chance...

"Sorry, Neal."

"Malcolm," said Malcolm.

"Sorry, Malcolm. I was just still thinking about that girl who ran past. What was going on there?"

"It looked like she was on drugs."

"It looked like they were all on drugs," said Neal. Lata would bet all the money she had, all the money she could imagine, that neither one of these guys had ever seen an actual person on actual drugs.

"Did you see this bullshit?" Caroline came outside with her coffee, waving a copy of The Ambassador, the campus newspaper. She was a Suttledge Scholar too, from somewhere in Alabama, and about as different from Neal and Malcolm as they were similar to each other. Her hair was almost sarcastically blond, especially in contrast to her thick, dark eyebrows, and it was piled precariously on her head in curls and ringlets that didn't seem structurally sound at all. Her dress was somehow purple and pink and silver at the same time, the seams almost audibly straining against her curves. She looked like a hologram. She looked like she was going to prom on the moon.

The paper's front page headline was some real breaking news: "WELCOME BACK AMBASSADORS."

"You don't feel welcomed?"

"Not that." Caroline flopped down in the seat next to Lata. She flung open the paper to the middle and folded it back with a THWAP. "Right there."

Caroline's glittery, day-glo purple fingernail was pointed at an Op-Ed column: "CHIVALRY SLAIN BY PC CULTURE," by someone named, of all things, Taddlington Taft. The picture next to the byline showed a broad, smirking white face, under the shapeless mop of brown hair she had seen atop smirking white faces all day, sometimes half-hidden under a frayed khaki UNWG baseball cap. Thirty years ago that hair would have marked you as a freak flag-waving member of the counterculture; now it meant you were a Young Republican, rushing KA just like your stepbro Skeeter.

"The hell is a Taddlington Taft?" said Lata.

"Some dickhead thinks he's Rush Limbaugh. He's all 'feminazis won't let me be the proper southern gentleman I was raised to be but they still expect me to pay for dinner.' Jesus Christ. Grow up." Lata had been fascinated by Caroline since they'd both interviewed for the Scholarship back in the spring. At the time she'd been prepping for the Miss Teen Alabama pageant, which she'd since placed second in: a "total crock" and "fucking highway robbery," according to a deeply-researched rant Caroline had delivered on the social, professional and marital ties between prominent Montgomery families, members of which made up most of the judging panel and more than a few of the contestants. Lata could listen to pageant stories for days – they made about as much sense to her as Confederate flag-worship – and all Interview Weekend she kept finding herself stealing glances at Caroline, marveling at her gravity-defying hair, the bold, almost abstract artistry of her makeup, and what must have been some serious architecture in her bra. And she was so smart, intimidatingly so; the rumor among the other prospective Scholars that weekend was that the selection committee had offered Caroline a Scholarship right there in the interview room, a shocking breach of all kinds of tradition and protocol.

Caroline snatched the newspaper off the table before Lata could read past the first paragraph, balled it up and dumped it in a nearby trash can. "No point in letting this asshole ruin my night. Right, kids?" she directed at Neal and Malcolm, who could only smile weakly and nod. She peered in her coffee cup with mock dismay. "Aw, I forgot the sugar. Could you be a sweetheart and run get me some?" Neal and Malcolm nearly knocked each other over as they leapt out of their seats and ran into Hallowed Grounds.

"That was cruel," said Lata, admiringly. Caroline gave a dismissive wave with her sparkly purple fingertips: Whatever.

"Please tell me you have a better idea for tonight than hanging out with Tweedledee and Tweedledork."

"Not really."

"Didn't Ashish say there was an Indian party over at the Riverside apartments?"

"It's not like we all hang out together."

Caroline instantly raised her hands in surrender. The glitter on her nails caught the Christmas lights strung around Hallowed Grounds' window, popping in Lata's eyes like fireworks. "Sorry! Am I the whitest girl alive? That's what Ashish called it, an 'Indian party."

"We prefer the term 'Native American.'" It was her standard defensive retort, couched in thick, buttery layers of irony, the kind of thing that sounded clever but wasn't. But Caroline let out a guffaw, a huge joyful bark that drew stares even from inside the coffee house. It was a beautiful sound.

The truth was, outside of a trip to see the Mumbai cousins ten years ago, Lata had never seen as many Indian people gathered in one place as she had that afternoon when the new Suttledge Scholars got together for a welcome lunch. Fully eight of the 21 freshmen Scholars were Indian, plus a Pakistani guy for good measure. Lata and Asha had been the sole South Asian faces at Pasley High, and so they were spared the more overt racism of the "I voted for Jeff Davis" crowd. They had been treated with more of a respectful curiosity, like exotic flowers that you aren't quite sure are safe to touch. Or at least Lata had, anyway; most of the guys at PHS had lusted after Asha, and had zero compunction about sharing that fact with Lata. So when confronted with eight other brown faces over spinach salads with raspberry vinaigrette, Lata had felt both joy and an unwelcome tinge of disappointment: I'm not the only one.

"PC culture, baby. I heard it's the scourge of campus." Neal and Malcolm ran back up, clutching fistfuls of Equal, Sweet 'n Low, and plain old Dixie sugar. Caroline pouted again. "Aw, sweeties. They didn't have any Sugar in the Raw?"

"No," said...Malcolm?

"They might have some at the diner," said the other one.

"Well..." said Caroline, with a hopeful smile. They dropped the sweeteners on the table and ran off again. "Look, that might have bought us five minutes. What are we doing?"

"Excuse me," said a low, dusty voice from behind Lata. "Do either of you have a light?" Lata turned to find a pale, slender girl in black jeans and a wifebeater, with thick black hair and a tattooed tendril snaking around her throat. She looked like a frame from a black and white movie, somehow cut out and pasted over the real world.

"What?" said Lata.

The girl held up an unlit cigarette. "A light?" Her voice sounded like an oboe playing through a busted speaker.

Lata had nothing. Caroline dug in her purse and found a matchbook. She stood and struck one, and the girl bent to the flame. She took a drag and breathed it out, like a dragon. "Thanks," she said.

"No problem," said Caroline. "Caroline."

"Renee." Renee took another drag and fixed her gray eyes on Lata. "How about you?"

Lata felt naked. She felt like Renee already knew the answer, but just wanted to hear her say it. "Lata."

"Lata. Caroline." Another drag. "My plans for the evening have changed, unexpectedly, and I find myself in need of some company. Some friends are having a party, not too far away. Would you care to join me?"

"Well who could say no to such a weird formal invitation from a stranger? That definitely works out a hundred percent of the time in vampire movies," said Caroline.

Renee just smiled. "I'm harmless," she said, breathing smoke. Vampires – Renee looked like the female version of the guy with the "Xander" tattoo. Maybe that's why her plans changed.

"No you're not," said Caroline, but she was smiling too. "This isn't a frat party, is it?" Renee and Caroline were like polar opposites – a sliver of moonlight versus a bursting, fizzing rainbow. Sitting directly between them, Lata felt an energy buzzing around her, like she was caught between two powerful magnets.

"No. No, I don't go to frat parties."

Caroline leaned in behind Lata, her lips close to her ear. "What do you say?" Lata could feel Caroline's chest touching her shoulders, and she fought the urge to lean back. Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow. Caroline was almost more than Lata could take in, like sitting in the front row at the movie theatre. But she wasn't writing her own obituary – it would probably just say "Fuck you, you can't kill me" anyway.

"I'm in," Lata said. Let's go make some history, she thought, and let somebody else write it.

Tim takes a walk and has a fateful meeting