Listen: I am not ungrateful. I have always known I am the luckiest girl on earth. I was born in America, for starters, in the belly of the empire instead of its jaws—and I was even born at all. Right after she had me, my mother started having fertility problems, which means I am her only baby, only hope. (I feel the pressure like a life jacket sucked around my ribs. Sometimes I wish she could kill and reincarnate me again, just for a second try to get things right.)
It helps, of course, that I was born in a century when women can read, earn money, take pills for depression, and feasibly become just as powerful and evil as men, if we are motivated enough. If I had been born just a century earlier, I would be illiterate, married with kids by eighteen. A century later and the world will be choked up with greenhouse gas. But I get to attend college for the main purposes of reading books and kissing girls. Women used to get burned at the stake for that shit! My timing couldn’t have been better.
Most of my good fortune is thanks to my parents. They, too, were lucky, graduating from college at just the right time to win the lottery of immigration, finding well-paying IT jobs abroad. They were part of a sea of brown people rolling the dice in America—and they nearly lost it all. When I was eight months old, my dad had a conference in New York. Due to flight delays, he didn’t reach the Twin Towers on time. That day, both buildings went down in flames, blown up by another, unrelated group of violent attackers. My dad should’ve died, but he didn’t. (Later, my friend Kavya jokes that some people have plot armor: convenient unkillability because the story can’t happen without them.) So I know a thing or two about beating the odds.
I am thinking a lot about these things—luck and providence, parents and dying, the year I start college. It is my idiot year, my plague year, my pizza-crust year of odd ends and beginnings, and I remember it only more clearly as time passes. It is a year that asks questions, to quote my favorite novel. I am still waiting on some of those answers.
On move-in day, my parents and I fly across the country and then drive to Stanford University. It looks less like a school and more like a luxury retreat. We crane our necks at the rows of palm trees flanking the roads. They loom large and feel almost militaristic. Somewhere, I read that those palm trees aren’t native to Palo Alto; they were transplanted for aesthetics, like me. Mom takes selfies outside the mission-style church, and Dad tries to pluck fruit from the bushes. I wish they’d ease up on their immigrant bravado.
Reading my mind, Mom smiles. Didn’t I tell you, Rishi? she says. When I first came to America, I lived in Palo Alto. On weekends, I’d wander the campus and dream I was a student here. And now here I am with you. God is good, no?
God’s a real one, I agree. I’ll do my best to live your dream.
That is a lie, of course. I’ll say it straight: I’m not trying to live my mother’s dream. Some days I wonder if I even want to be here at all. Not in a self-hating, suicidal sense—I’m not that kind of fragile. I mean that at eighteen I’ve already concluded that most of what life offered me—high school activism, hard work, the entire American Dream my parents chased—is a massive sham, and I want nothing to do with it. Yet I still harbor hope that there’s a more artful and generous way to live.
On the flight this morning, I told my parents I planned to become a writer in college, both to manage their expectations and to try it on for size. The small problem is that until recently—just a few months ago—I was still legally a child. I haven’t fallen in love or dabbled in hard drugs yet, two pivotal experiences I suspect Real Writers have. In college, I intend to have my heart broken, in literature and in real life. I’ll be torn apart, mended, and rebuilt. All of this will happen, and I will understand it as it unfolds.
Outside my dorm is a balloon arch and a welcome committee of RAs who swoop in to help with my luggage. To make the freshmen feel seen, the RAs have memorized almost all of our names—or so I think, until Jeff, the cheerful senior handing me a welcome packet, greets me with a booming, “Welcome, Roshini!”
My heart gives a small leap of recognition. I accept the packet, and my new identity, without a second thought. But then Mom leans in and corrects me: That’s the wrong name. Her name is Rishika.
Oh snap, Jeff says. I mean, my bad. I’m still learning people’s names! He swaps out the packets. I understand I haven’t slipped into a parallel universe, I’ve just been misidentified as a fellow freshman. I suddenly fear the real Roshini will somehow appear and confront me. I hurry after my parents into the dorm lounge. The centerpiece is a giant world map with push-pinned photos marking everyone’s hometowns. My own face sits prominently on the Floridian side. I look away.
What can be said about my hometown, really? In Okeechobee, I often felt, to borrow my mother’s words, like a big fish in a tiny pond—though the pond was really a swamp, full of racist alligators. The kindest thing I can admit is that it bred in me a hunger for revenge. (I suspect revenge is what fuels any queer kid from the suburbs.) In Florida, the social elites dated tans and football boyfriends, far removed from the intellectual pedigrees and inherited fortunes that mark Stanford’s upper crust. If high school was a little league, college feels like the real game of ball.
My double lives right across from the communal bathroom. Mom says, People will be passing this way all the time, so you’ll have no trouble making friends.
Mom is buzzing about the idea of me befriending Stanford students—robust, ambitious types who might rub off on me, perhaps by osmosis, a drive or a STEM education. On the plane, when I told her I was here Mostly For The Plot, she hissed back: You’ll write your story later, Rishi, she teased with a smug flourish. Right now, you need to find some ambition. And a job.
We step inside and that’s when I first meet Georgia Becker. Destiny, via a Stanford algorithm, has paired me with her as my random roommate. Her parents are bespectacled epidemiologists at the CDC, both Stanford graduates as well. My dad, like me, distrusts most white people, but I think he approves that they’re doctors. The adults drift off to chat, leaving me with Georgia.
You’ve got to teach me how to do my brows like yours, Georgia says. She has orange hair, oversized teeth, and a camp-counselor energy that’s a bit cute at first but I fear it may overwhelm me. I promise I’ll show you. I don’t want to give her any reason to plot against me in my sleep.
The welcome packet includes little placards for us to fill out and pin on the door. According to Georgia’s placard, she’s from Bangor, Maine, an environmental engineering major, and a Taurus. The last bit is a conversation starter: Ask me about …! Georgia’s list is long: Infrastructure. Trains. Vegan tacos. The great state of Maine. Nature. The Green New Deal. Women’s soccer. White allyship. Sustainability. I suspect we were matched because we share an interest in, or fear of, climate catastrophe.
Georgia wants me to fill out mine too, but I’m stymied about what to write that might grab attention while I’m headed to the communal bathroom. In the end I keep it short and sincere: I enjoy stories in every form—novels, films, confessions at 2 a.m. I write. Should I have said books instead of novels? Too late; I’ve used a Sharpie. I add Bubble tea addict to seem human. Then Georgia hangs it before I can overthink it.
The Beckers offer to help us unpack—since they’ve already got the lay of the land. Georgia helps the dads haul things up the stairs. I’m always impressed by girls who can hold their own with grown men. Meanwhile, Mom and I butt heads. It turns out Mom has brought a handful of Hindu figurines from our home shrine, and she wants me to put them on my desk, next to my birth control pills. She’s waited until the last minute to spring this on me.
You know I’m not religious, I say.
Do it for Amma, she insists. Mom speaks in the third person when she’s guilting me. Pattu, I had them blessed by a priest.
People will think I’m Hindu nationalist if I display them, I say. I won’t make any friends like that.
If you don’t make friends, it’s because of your attitude, Mom retorts. As a concession, I agree to keep only one figurine on my desk.
Which one’s this? I ask, pointing to the one that seems to have breasts. Mom explains it’s Annapurna, goddess of food. Could be worse; I could display Annapurna in a feminist way. Maybe people will ask me about her when they come by to hook up.
I want her, I say.
Suspicion crosses Mom’s face. You only chose her because she’s a girl, right, Rishi?
That’s not true, I lie. Are you saying I can only worship men? Fortunate for us, Georgia interrupts, interrupting the argument. It’s time for the parent send-off. We descend to the vast lounge. It’s my first sight of the entire dorm population assembled. It’s strange to contemplate that once the parents go, we’ll be on our own, like a cast of island survivors. I scan the room, trying to predict who will crack first under the new independence.
My parents study the crowd, too. I know exactly who they’re looking for: fellow brown students. According to the admissions brochure, twenty-point-five percent of freshmen are Asian. There are about a hundred of us in my wing, so the math implies roughly twenty and a half of us are Asian. I’m tempted to count aloud but decide against it. I try not to dwell on what a “half” might imply.
You should go say hello to her, Mom says, gesturing toward a tall Indian girl near the pool table. She wears horn-rimmed glasses—a bold choice. I ditched my own glasses in favor of contact lenses after some jerk called me Mia Khalifa in seventh grade.
The Indian girl catches my eye and gives a smile. Irrationally, my insides knot. In a movie, she’d be my preordained nemesis—my foil—and one of us would be doomed to a dramatic showdown by year’s end.
Do you know her, Rishi? Georgia asks brightly, startling me. I’d forgotten she existed.
Nope, I say. Silence settles between us, and I predict Georgia will break it first.
Well, I don’t know anyone either. Except you, of course. She grins. Should we sit? I think the presentation’s starting.
We locate seats and listen as the RAs deliver a hybrid info session and stand-up routine about the next phase of our lives. Your freshmen are in safe hands, they declare. We won’t let them do hard drugs … alone! The parents laugh at the jokes, an easy audience. One RA mentions there’s a counselor for homesick freshmen. Mom presses her hand to her heart, tears shimmering in her eyes. Perhaps she secretly hopes I’ll be one of the students who needs counseling. To her, that would prove I love her so much. She’s the person who taught me to love that deeply, to a fault.
Afterward, markers are distributed so parents can write farewell messages on the whiteboard for their children. I mingle with my future hallmates while Mom scrawls. There’s a pretty half-Asian boy named Kevin who lives on my floor. (Found you, I think.) So, what sorts of things are you into? I ask. The placards are starting to reveal their meaning.
You want to know what I did to get into Stanford? Kevin says. Before I can answer, he answers for me. I discovered an asteroid, he says. It bears my name. I’ll continue my work in the astrophysics department.
Wow, I reply. Later Georgia and I will laugh about Kevin, and about many a guy who thinks he’s the center of the universe. (There are countless asteroids in space, she’ll say. He should find a planet first. And I’ll joke—maybe he can’t even locate a woman’s clitoris. And so on … )
And you? Kevin asks.
I know what he’s fishing for. I used to be a well-known young climate activist. A D-list celebrity, to be precise—not like that Swedish girl you’re probably thinking of, whom I met briefly at a conference, amid her security detail. Last year, she sailed to America on a low-emissions boat to help save us; meanwhile I flew here by plane to study, as I’ve said, to chase the spotlight. Still, I’ve built a sizable online following, since I spent high school marching, organizing, and penning op-eds until it became clear that nothing we did would stop corporations—and that maybe it was almost childish to expect that adults would stand by and let us try.
I think I just got lucky, I say, though I know better than to reveal that aloud. I glance at my parents, who are getting ready to depart.
When the moment to part arrives comes, it’s quick and tearful. I want to shake off my parents quickly, pretend I’ve carved out a life that’s mine alone. College should be about me, not them. Predictably, Mom weeps, and Dad struggles to hold it together, and soon he’s crying too. I try to stay composed, but after everyone leaves, I dash to the whiteboard to read the note Mom left me.
Dear Rishi, she wrote. We are thrilled for you to experience all that college has to offer. I know things weren’t always easy at home, but we hope you find strength in where you came from. Love, Amma and Appa.
She’s written our names in Tamil for privacy, perhaps overestimating my bilingualism, but I can’t help it—I start to cry. Of course I do! I’m not heartless.
*
That night marks our first dinner as a dormitory cohort. Clutching my tray, I feel a primal anxiety about where to sit. My high school cafeteria enforced rigid seating hierarchies; this dining hall, by contrast, seems delightfully anarchic, the oddly shaped tables still unclaimed. Could this be a place where I could actually become popular, even loved? To my relief, Georgia stays by my side; we find seats at a large round table where everyone takes turns introducing themselves in a dizzying whirl of names. We’re required to wear name tags, which helps. There’s Pietro Lopez, a charmingly effervescent twink, and his roommate Imraan Ali, who uses they/them pronouns, making them the first queer brown person I’ve ever met aside from myself. I’m immediately impressed by Imraan—how fluid they are, how readily they laugh at everyone’s jokes.
Next to Imraan is Esme Bloom, a Brooklyn-born artist. My alter ego, Roshini Pandya, turns out to be a computer scientist. We look nothing alike, but I sit far from her to avoid any more mix-ups. Then Jordan Harris, a Black studies major, who looks strangely familiar until Roshini recognizes him as the year’s Teen Jeopardy! champion. Despite his embarrassment, we coax Pietro to pull up the YouTube clip of Jordan’s winning clue. (The answer was War and Peace.) Then Georgia Becker, who jokes about the ridiculous luck of following a Jeopardy! champion, and finally me.
I declare I’m a writer, at least for the time being. In my diary, for now. But I hope for something more substantial someday.
Everyone finds this funny. I glance at my phone and see I already have three missed calls from my mother.
The main conversation dissolves into smaller groups. I end up chatting with Georgia, plus our next-door neighbors Imraan and Pietro. I can’t take my eyes off them. I haven’t had many queer friends before. (I know Georgia is queer because she’s hung Pride photos on her wall—either she’s actually queer or a fierce ally, which is often the same thing.) No one was out in Okeechobee, of course. Yet somehow there are four of us talking at once.
So, Imraan says with a mock formality, where is everyone from? We trade brutal stories about our hometowns. I tell them Okeechobee is going underwater, slowly but surely, and maybe that’s a good thing. I learn that Imraan’s family taxi business in Queens once faced a hate crime. Pietro had his sexual awakening after sleeping with his SAT tutor in Albuquerque. What I learn about hanging out with queer kids: there’s nothing off-limits. In Okeechobee I learned to bite my tongue; here, with them, I realize I can be sharp and fearless. We trade sharp jokes that would make others gasp, but among us they’re just funny.
At the dessert station I run into the girl with those porn-star glasses Mom waved at earlier. The assumption annoys me—that I’d befriend any girl just because she’s Indian, but the immigrant mind works in strange ways.
“I’m Kavya,” she says. Kavya Varma, her name badge proclaims. She’s taller than I expected for a brown girl, and her short-cropped hair gives her a kind of boyish edge. And you’re Rishika?
Immediately, I notice Kavya is from India, unlike me. I haven’t met many Indians my age besides a few cousins in Chennai who constantly mock my American accent. Kavya’s accent is polished and global. She’s probably wealthy, and Mom resents families like hers—she thinks they’re lazier immigrants.
My friends call me Rishi, I say, and then regret it. What if she thinks we’re friends?
“I’ve followed you on Twitter for years,” Kavya says unabashedly.
“I watched your die-ins go viral,” she adds, referring to my biggest moment publicly. It was once incredibly inspiring to many, I suppose.
I respond with a shrug: I don’t always see those moments as inspiring now. I feel more embarrassed than anything for those teenage protests, for putting them on display rather than living them quietly.
To shift the subject, I ask Kavya if I’ve met my roommate yet. I point out Georgia across the room, who is pouring salsa on another batch of vegan nachos. I feel a rush of warmth for girls who eat with gusto.
“Not yet,” Kavya replies, but she’s not unfriendly; she’s simply waiting for the right moment. She notes she’s studying physics—an isolating field—and she’s glad to meet someone else who seems interesting. And now I’m beginning to suspect Kavya wants to be friends with me. The compliments, the self-doubt—these are games I know well. But when I look into Kavya’s wide eyes, a twinge of unease surfaces. I wonder if she was sent here to haunt me. Did Mom set this up?
Luckily, Georgia slides in beside me. “We should finish unpacking,” I say. But Kavya’s offer to swap numbers remains on the table, and I pretend not to hear.
“Do you think that girl seemed gay?” I ask Georgia as we head upstairs. “Maybe it’s the hair?”
Georgia pauses, then says she didn’t study her long enough to tell.
Inside our room we finish emptying the suitcase. Our double has become a warm nest; we’ve covered the standard furniture with rugs and posters. As a final flourish, Georgia places a large glass jar on her desk. It’s going to hold all the waste she produces this term. She believes the burden of climate justice shouldn’t fall on individual consumers, but for her it’s a test of discipline and an alignment with her own ideals. My heart softens a little seeing that.
What about you? she asks. Do you have a personal goal you’re pursuing?
I show her my new journals and explain that for now I simply want to observe and record everything I see.
I feel a bit pretentious, but I push on: I admire writers like Virginia Woolf and Alison Bechdel for keeping journals, and I’d like to do the same—leave breadcrumbs for myself in case college turns me into someone with something to say and I need to find my way back to who I am.
“You take your plans very seriously,” says Georgia.
“So do you.” I glance at the jar; Georgia doesn’t seem to judge. She puts on Spotify and lights a joint. Her taste is a little more folky than mine, but I warm to it. It reminds me of who I might be if I could repair my relationship with my mother. Then Georgia looks at me again.
“Sorry,” she says softly. “I should have asked first. Do you want some?”
“Why not,” I reply. “My parents aren’t here.”
“No parents!” Georgia cheers. “Are you a smoker?”
“I tried once and felt nothing,” I admit, and Georgia says, “I can teach you now, if you want.” Oh no. I’m becoming a bad influence, aren’t I? You’ll tell Jeff, right?
“Forget Jeff,” I answer, and Georgia laughs. She coaches me to draw in the smoke and hold it, and I cough horribly as she pats my back. We smoke in silence for a while, and then Georgia declares, “I think we are destined to become best friends.”
*
The days that follow are a messy inundation of orientation—a slow, sprawling exposition dump. We tour the campus, endure awkward icebreakers where everyone reveals a fun fact, and somehow the forced bonding speeds up the pace of friendships—one, then two new faces a day. Georgia keeps our door open to increase our odds of meeting people, but mostly we’re talking to each other. I thought she meant what she said when she promised we would become best friends, and I realize now that we share something deeper: the ability to talk for hours, with no awkward silences. She keeps me sharp.
That weekend we attend a sex education event. They herd the whole freshman class into a large auditorium, the future movers and shakers of the world imagined in a single room. The rhetoric suggests a single bomb could rewrite history if detonated here. It’s a dark thought, but looking at Georgia I’m sure she’d agree with the sacrifice if it served the cause.
My faith in the collective potential of freshmen wanes as the program runs on. They screen videos where responsible young men decline to have sex with intoxicated women—or anyone else who’s drunk or nonbinary. The guys watch with eye rolls; I watch with a mix of contempt and disbelief. I’d bet a vital organ that some of them are already rapists in training. If not, they’ll be soon—especially those confined to pursuing computer science. I’ve learned not to trust men easily. I can survive without them, sure, but I’d rather not.
The sex educator on stage has a PhD in adolescent sexuality. She tells us we’re about to embark on thrilling journeys of pleasure. As long as everything is consensual, our desires are valid. We’re animals, all of us hungry for touch. We’ve all got skin hunger.
I imagine hungry tongues sprouting from my palms. It’s a ridiculous image, and some people snicker. The educator remains firm: lean back, wrap your arms around yourselves. Feed yourselves! Doesn’t that feel good?
Beside me, Pietro crosses his arms, pretending to lie in state. I don’t want to think about my own sexual appetite, so I scan the row to guess who is still a virgin. I know Georgia is, and probably Kavya as well. I lost my own virginity rather quickly this summer during Climate Rising, a youth activist summit in DC. It’s a memory I savor at night, cataloging past moments and convincing myself I’m still compelling.
The boy I chose for that task—less smooth than I’d hoped—was Trevor Yates, a climate activist with a British accent. He was internet-famous too—son of a fossil-fuel executive who seemed to promote giving away his inheritance on a viral video. Our first conversation occurred at a fundraiser at the Natural History Museum. I thought his accent was fake, so I tried to trip him up by making him read words like “Anthropocene” and “emu,” but he didn’t slip, which is what sparked my plan to kiss him.
I hadn’t kissed anyone before Trevor. Looking back, I was a bit heavy-handed. I began with a firm handshake and noticed his hands were big. After a lobbying session, I invited him to my sponsored hotel room to watch that night’s presidential debate. As we climbed the stairs in silence, I worried we might actually watch the debate. I disliked all the candidates. But when I opened my laptop, Trevor spoke: “What do you want, Rishi?” He asked in that British tone, and I didn’t answer right away.
“Don’t make me say it,” I finally whispered, because I was too shy to voice the truth out loud.
I wasn’t sure what would happen next. I had run out of moves. Yet I needn’t have worried: as the hype music of the Democratic campaign blared, Trevor touched my breast, and I climbed on top of him. That moment became my first kiss. It was the first time I felt like I was writing my own story in real time. That power, more than his awkwardness, sent electricity through me.
That all happened over the summer. Trevor has since returned for his junior year at Brown, and we interact only through the internet and our imagination now. That’s fine with me. Another girl might wait to lose it to someone she loves, but I’m realistic: I’ll take what I can get.
Midway through the program, my hallmate Esme Bloom taps my shoulder. It takes me a moment to recognize her because she refuses to wear a name tag. With patched jeans and a vibe that reads as the anti-popular white girl who somehow possesses everything needed to blend in—nice teeth, expensive clothes, and a slim frame—she still doesn’t quite fit. (I don’t trust girls like that, because if you’re white and marginalized at once, you probably have something rotten inside, just like when you see a white man jailed for a crime—you know he did it.) Esme whispers in my ear, Wanna get out of here and smoke?
I hesitate, then agree. How can I turn down a chance to do something forbidden? Esme grins, and I follow her out of the auditorium, right in the middle of the session. White girls are fearless like that. It would never have occurred to me to simply walk out before.
Esme passes the joint back and forth with me in the warm afternoon air. She smokes with surprising gusto, as if she’s glugging a juice box rather than puffing.
“So, Rishi. Sex?” Esme asks, her voice lilting around the word in a worldly way. “I like your directness. Consent is key, right? Or so I’ve heard.”
Esme notices me fumbling for the lighter and helps me light up, burning her thumb a bit in the process. I mind the germs more than she does and wipe my lips with a ChapStick.
“Have you been having sex with anyone here yet?” she asks. “Are people already getting it on?”
Esme rolls her eyes. “My roommate, Celia, kicked me out last night because her boyfriend—who’s a sophomore here—came by. It was brutal; I wandered around campus for hours after that. But I now know where all the dining halls are located.”
My limbs loosen as the high settles in. I’m still new to feeling high, but I like it. I ask Esme if she’s slept with anyone here, and she says she had a casual boyfriend in high school in New York.
What about you, she asks. I’m thrilled by her forwardness, charmed by the assumption that I’ve slept with someone. People in Okeechobee never talked about sex, at least not openly.
“I hooked up with a British guy this summer,” I admit. “And I chose him in a subversive way. He mostly just pleased me. In a sense, the whole thing felt like a colonial debt repaid.”
Esme laughs. We’re not exactly passing the Bechdel test, but I don’t care.
College, it seems, is off to a wild start.
“Honestly, I hate men,” I admit. “I’m not having sex with anyone here. Yet.”
“I’m looking to branch out,” Esme says. “To girls, I mean. I’m bi. You know the vibes, right?”
“How did you find me—echolocation?” I joke, a little flustered.
I’ve begun to suspect I might be a lesbian, I say, crafting the sentence to keep plausible deniability intact.
And what about the British guy?
Esme challenges me, and I know this is banter; she’s taken an interest. I hesitate only briefly before telling Esme that my first time with Trevor counted as lesbian sex because the partner was a woman, and that woman was me.
Now Esme bursts into louder laughter, perhaps louder than she would be if she were sober. “You’re hilarious, Rishi,” she says. “You should start a podcast or something.”
I tuck this away in a mental pocket and plan to debrief with Georgia later; any sign of romantic interest in me is something I like to analyze.
*
The first day of classes arrives bright and crisp. I rise early to craft the perfect outfit. My most anticipated course is Asian American Autofiction, taught by Easha Parwani, a young Indian American novelist I worship because she’s the reason I applied to Stanford in the first place. Parwani wrote a novel about Leela, a millennial brown woman who mostly naps and beds white men, but who is also a literary darling, so Leela became a bestseller. This is the only class that required an application to enroll, but since it’s taught by Easha, I don’t mind.
When I reach Asian American Autofiction, the room feels crowded, and I worry I’ve misread the room. I luck out and grab a seat in the back, near some serious poetry students. Latecomers trickle in, scanning for seats. But the moment Easha Parwani stands, the room falls silent. I’ve never seen people quiet themselves out of respect for an Indian woman before. In college, it seems, miracles still happen.
“Thank you for carving out time for our first session of Asian American Autofiction,” she says. “I regret I’ll have to ask most of you to leave. This class was by application only. Who among you were accepted?”
I raise my hand and am stunned to find no one else does the same. Only eight people in total are admitted, and one of them, Kavya Varma, sits there smiling at me. I hadn’t known she was a writer, let alone among the top eight in our circle.
“Excellent,” says Easha. “The eight of you will come to the front. Please make room for them.” She hesitates a moment, then adds, “I can still admit two more …”
She surveys the group, her patience stretched as the tension grows. Then a student blurts, “We’re seniors! This is our last chance to take your class.”
“Very well, you’re in,” she says. “I’ll offer this class again in the future—please reapply!”
I shift to a new seat up front. Kavya sits beside me by choice, her presence very deliberate, and I feel her gaze sweep over me like an X-ray from brown eyes.
Easha’s lecture begins by distinguishing autofiction from memoir. She says autofiction grants the author freedom to reimagine their life, to explore alternate endings, to amplify experiences to the extreme. Through autofiction, she suggests, we can reconstruct our lives anew. And she invites us to challenge those assumptions.
Kavya is the first to raise a hand. “Isn’t there a risk of the author twisting facts for self-flattery, especially if truth isn’t guaranteed?”
Kavya’s question would have surprised me a year ago. I rarely consider whether people appear “good.” It’s almost impossible to keep your hands clean in this world.
Easha shrugs, and a chill passes through me. Her ears are pierced but currently uncovered—my mom once said it’s rude to leave without earrings.
“I don’t know, Kavya,” says Easha. “What would you write if you knew you could get away with it?”
“What about the danger of being self-indulgent?” asks a senior named Michael Truong. “Like navel-gazing?”
I raise my hand. “There are probably worse crimes on earth,” I say. It seems to me that many people write with the reader in mind—what they think the reader would want. But this is a class for writers. Should we perhaps worry what’s good for us as well? I don’t mean to sound combative, but the remark slides out with a spark. Kavya raises an eyebrow, and Easha’s gaze lands on me. It’s like two candle wicks touching; I feel a spark inside me ignite.
“Interesting perspective,” she says. “The assumption of a hostile reader is a notable preoccupation for writers who are marginalized. What do we owe them? And what do we owe ourselves?”
The syllabus is handed out: over the term, each of us will draft two pieces for workshop, plus meet one-on-one with Easha. I linger after class hoping to thank her, but she vanishes. I know I must write something to impress her. I need to live my life.
*
The invitation to live presents itself quickly, because that very weekend marks the first frat party of the year. Consent education vanishes in the night as bodies press together and skin hunger is satisfied in ways I’ve never witnessed. The parties seem to function as pretexts for hookups, and I decide to download a dating app to survey the field. It’s the curse of my generation to see all possible lovers on a screen. Still, I’m drawn to it—online shopping is irresistible.
The first woman who appears on my feed is Kavya Varma. She has Superliked me—a bold, perhaps even cheeky move. Her profile is mostly hiking photos, with a caption reading, Masc lesbian (endangered species, I know.) Let’s go to a bookshop 🙂. I swipe left in a hurry. Then, as if she’s watching, Mom calls again.
Mom rang eleven times that morning while I slept. Eleven! I assumed something dreadful had happened—but she’s only called once or twice a day until now. When I answer, she tells me she just wanted to hear my voice. She had a dream that I wasn’t eating well and my teeth were falling out of my mouth.
That mental image makes my gums ache. I tell her about today’s classes, playing up that I have an Indian professor. Then Dad chimes in and I must start over. He asks if it’s too late to add a CS course. “Send a photo of your coat,” Mom orders. “I’ll see if it’s warm enough. Winter will arrive before you know it.”
And that’s that. My parents vanish with a click, and I’m back on the app. Tonight I decide I want to drink.
“How often does your family call you?” I ask Georgia later as we get ready for the party, applying makeup and rolling joints. In this way, we’re self-sufficient.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I feel like I call them more—about twice this week. And my brother, Jasper, pretends I don’t exist, but he’s a teenage boy, so whatever. How about you?”
“My mom and I speak every day,” I admit, feeling shy.
“That’s sweet,” Georgia says. “Can you do my lips, please? I’m terrible at it.”
“Pucker up,” I answer, leaning in with a glossed smile. “Are we about to kiss?”
“Honey, we’ve only just met,” I remind her playfully.
By then we’re riding a glittering wave of hormones. I study my reflection: thick lashes, bold brows, and full lips, the features that make me feel both proud and suspiciously accomplished because they’re part of my ambiguous heritage that some men of all colors still leer at. I know beauty is a social construct—one I’d happily abolish—yet if disaster comes and I need protection, I know I could reel in a partner. In a primal sense, my body feels like a success story all on its own.
We head to the party like a glittering tide: me, Georgia, Pietro, and Imraan. I’d hoped Esme Bloom would come too, but she’s not around. Imraan is still waiting for a fake ID from a cousin in Pakistan, so Georgia scans Snapchat for alcohol opportunities.
“Jason Ryan has tequila shots,” she notes, so we drift toward a popular lacrosse player’s room. Our entrance shatters the ceiling of the room’s social hierarchy, since Georgia and I are the only girls present. Jason’s athlete friends greet us warmly, and we help ourselves to their tequila because they’re too drunk to care. It smells like nail polish remover, and I gag a little.
“Do you have chasers?” Imraan asks. “I can’t drink this stuff neat.”
“Nah, that’s for the weak,” Jason Ryan answers, and Georgia and I exchange a look. Imraan shrugs and elbows open a path to the rest of the drinks. Then a familiar voice shouts, “Rishi? Girl, is that you?”
I pivot and see my old friend Clara Green waving. CLARA! I’m wild about Clara Green. We’ve been Twitter mutuals for two years after meeting at a climate march in DC. I organized the Florida delegation, and Clara led Colorado’s. All summer we DMed about college life. Even though we’ve only met once, I feel a kinship with climate-minded teens like Clara. We share a world-worn sense of humor, nearly veterans of the same cause.
I introduce Clara to my friends. Georgia’s eyes widen. “Sorry if I’m prying,” she says. “But are you Marcy Green’s daughter?” Clara nods modestly. Clara’s family has long been involved in politics, and her mother ran a high-profile Senate campaign last year. If elected, Marcy Green would have become the first Black woman to represent the state.
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From Unprecedented Times: a novel by Malavika Kannan. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2026 by Malavika Kannan. All rights reserved.
