up for him. Jek’s dealt with idiots like this his whole life and he’s figured out a way to handle them that works for him, which basically means letting these guys believe whatever the hell they want. It drives me nuts, but I’m beginning to understand that the alternative can be worse. But I just can’t stand the self-satisfied way these boys are so sure they know everything and deserve everything, and are blind to everyone who isn’t them.
After a moment’s silence, Steve lets out a sour laugh. “What are you even talking about?”
I look up from my lab notebook. “You know, Jek?” I nod toward Steve’s phone. “That’s his real name. Jayesh Emerson Kapoor. His initials are J.E.K.”
“The black kid?” says Mark, his tone incredulous.
I grip my pencil to steady my nerves, but I can feel my heart rate rising. Such an innocuous comment, but there’s so much behind it. I don’t know whether I’m angrier at the assumption that these two can read everyone’s race and ethnicity perfectly just from looking, or at their surprise that a black person could kick their ass at a science competition, but I can’t point out either one, since they didn’t actually say any of that.
“His mother’s Indian.” I keep my voice calm and steady. “His father is black.”
“Oh,” they say in tandem, as if that explains it all. “Indian.”
Let it go, Lulu. It’s not your fight. Jek can handle his own battles. Not that he does. He’s happy to fly below the radar and avoid drawing attention to himself. That kind of attention, anyway. It’s been this way since middle school, when he first abandoned his real name and told people—even teachers—to start calling him Jek. I asked him about it once, and he admitted that he was sick of people assuming he was nerdy and uncool because he was Indian. Presenting himself as the only black kid in our grade made him seem a lot more exciting—even if it came with other baggage, like people assuming he’s no good at science, or automatically blaming him whenever there’s any trouble.
Now, only his close friends know that he’s biracial, and that he’s secretly still obsessed with science. For everyone else, he just plays into their expectations: doesn’t advertise his grades, doesn’t talk much in class and when he gets called on, acts like he’s as surprised as anyone when he gets the right answers. And so he gets to be everyone’s cool friend instead of a threat. I wish he could find a way to embrace both sides of his identity and challenge people’s dumb stereotypes, but Jek’s made it clear he’s not interested in being a crusader.
“Does his mom work at London Chem?” Steve asks.
I nod.
He smacks his hand on the lab bench. “I should have known. The guy’s a ringer. His mom probably did the whole project for him.”
It’s the most absurd thing he could possibly say. If that’s his objection, it could be true for almost everyone in the science track at this school. If anything, Jek is the least guilty of this crime, given that his mom sometimes comes to him to consult on metabolic processes or different drug absorption mechanisms. I am this close, this close, to blowing up in this asshole’s face and telling him all about how Donnelly Pharmaceuticals has patents on three processes that Jek initially conceived in previous Gene-ius Award entries, but I’m saved by the return of Danny, who knows me well enough to read the dangerous expression on my face.
“Lulu,” he says gently. “Would you mind checking the storeroom for extra pipettes? If we wait till we reach that step, everyone else will have grabbed them all.”
I’m seething silently as I tug open the door to the supply room. I find the pipettes and grab a handful of them, still preoccupied enough to nearly mow down Maia Diaz on her way into the supply room. Somehow I manage not to drop glass everywhere, and I mumble an apology on my way out when she stops me with a light hand on my arm.
“Lulu,” she says softly when I turn around. “You’re friends with Jek, right?”
I raise my eyebrows, wondering why everyone is so interested in my best friend this morning. “Yeah.”
“Right,” she says, nodding to herself a little. “Can I ask you something?”
I shrug and gesture for her to go ahead. She glances around the room nervously, then grips my arm and tugs me back into the supply room. I’m so caught off guard that I don’t even try to resist. I know I should really get back to Danny, but I have to admit I’m curious about what Maia has to say.
She flicks on the light and pulls the door shut. In the shadowy depths of the supply closet, I see the wall of boxes behind her, all different sizes, and all identically marked with a leafy vine creeping through a double helix—the company logo of London Chem, and our sports team, the Helices. They look like the bewitched brambles of fairy tales, and for a strange moment they almost seem to be closing in on us. I nod for Maia to get on with it before claustrophobia gets to me.
“Matt Klein’s kegger,” she says. “A couple of weeks back. Did you hear what happened to Natalie?”
I hesitate. I hate to admit I had anything to do with that kind of mindless gossip, but playing dumb won’t help. “I heard something about it, yeah,” I say with a nod.
“Look, this is kind of a big secret and I know Natalie wouldn’t want me talking to anyone about it, but there’s something weird going on and I think...I think someone should know.” She pauses. “I think Jek should know. I’m just trying to do the right thing.”
“I don’t understand. Jek wasn’t even at that party. What’s it got to do with him?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” she says. “The thing is, I never knew Jek’s real name before, but when Steve said it just now it sounded familiar. And I realized, I remembered it from Klein’s party. Natalie was really upset that night, so I took her outside to talk. I wanted her to tell me what happened, and if we needed to call the cops or go to the hospital and get a rape kit. But that guy, Hyde, he followed us out.” She shudders at the memory. “I didn’t even know what had happened between them, but he gave me a bad vibe. Creepy-looking, you know? I don’t know why she’d want to mess around with someone like that. Anyway, he called after Natalie, telling her to be reasonable, to let it drop. I told him to fuck off, but he ignored me. He just looked at Natalie and said, ‘Name your price.’”
“What?” I say, genuinely shocked. I still have no idea what this has to do with Jek, but I’m starting to have very bad feelings toward this guy Hyde. “He just...just like that? He offered to buy her off?”
“I couldn’t believe it, either. I started to tell him exactly where he could put his dirty money, but Natalie stopped me.” Maia looks down at her shoes, then glances up again. “It sounds bad,” she says. “I know. I didn’t want to believe Natalie would accept cash over something like this, but she has a point. Who’s going to believe a brown girl over a white boy when it comes to rape? You know how it goes—everyone’ll say, oh, that poor boy made one mistake and now she’s ruining his life.”
“A white boy?” I think back to Camila’s description of Hyde. “I heard he was Asian or something.”
Maia shrugs. “Looked white to me. Anyway, Natalie’s father’s been sick a lot, and her uncle, too, from the pesticides they work with. So they haven’t been able to work lately and they have all kinds of medical bills...”
“It’s okay,” I assure her, thinking of similar situations
