Alice was just thinking about this, about how people really don’t need to have sex, and that really is what’s at stake here, when she sees the black girl, the one we’ve never been allowed to know. She’s at the door to the class, the one that’s usually only open for boys and adults. She looks at the board where Alice is working. She’s wearing a T-shirt with an alien character and the phrase “So it goes.” Alice wonders if the alien is crying or laughing, and then she starts to cry too.

Alice knows that the girl’s name is “Missy.” And she knows that she’s not allowed in the class. But the girl opens the door, walks over to her desk, and sits down. There’s a chair for her, Alice thinks to herself.

Alice stops writing. She looks down at her desk. She’s wearing a T-shirt with a skull on it. It’s not the skull that she bought in the store, with the word “Love” above it. She wishes she could say that the skull was crying, or that it was laughing. But she’s pretty sure it was laughing.

A: So there’s a lot of humor in your novel: the T-shirts, the alien, “so it