to trace the information back to its source before I say something I have no right to know. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
I think back to the stack of library books on the coffee table upstairs. “Was it weird?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “Growing up here with white parents?”
“Huh.” Caden flops down in the back row and props his feet up on the seat in front of him. “What made you ask that?”
“It’s just, it’s not very diverse.” I gesture around the film room, but I mean all of Herron Mills. “Like you were saying the other night.”
At home in Brooklyn, my friends and I talk about race and class stuff a lot. Students of color make up well over half of our high school, and none of us are even close to rich. But this feels different from talking to my friends. Maybe because Caden and I aren’t much more than strangers. Maybe because of what he told me in the stable. Maybe because he’s a boy, and instead of flirting, getting him to buy me drinks, telling myself I don’t care when his hands rove like clumsy mitts across my skin, I actually want to get to know him.
“Well,” he says slowly, “in retrospect, yes. Now, I can’t not be constantly aware of the whiteness and privilege here. Even before Zoe disappeared, it could be suffocating. But when I was little, I didn’t understand a lot about being biracial.” I abandon the wall of movies and perch on a seat two rows up, back turned toward the screen so I can face him. “My birth mom’s white; she was seventeen when I was born. Birth dad’s black, but they didn’t stay together. So even though it was an open adoption, he’s not in my life.
“And Mom didn’t really know how to teach me about black culture. She was a great parent, don’t get me wrong. Her health wasn’t always like it is now. But yeah, it was weird. There was a lot I didn’t understand growing up about race, from either a personal or a cultural perspective. A lot of experiences I’m still putting into context.”
“Is it different at Yale?”
“Different, yeah. But Yale’s a weird place. New Haven is only thirty percent white and over sixty percent African American and Latino. But at Yale, under six percent of the students are black. When you’re black, you feel that tension.”
I nod slowly, remembering what his friend Tim Romer said on the podcast about police sniffing around black kids on campus. Then I think how weird it is that I know things about Caden’s life that he hasn’t told me, how invasive, and I keep my mouth shut.
“How are your parents taking it?” Caden asks, changing the subject. “You nannying out here for the summer?”
“My mom was pretty weird about it at first. Took her a bit, but she seems to be adjusting to her baby being away.” I grin. “Haven’t seen my dad since I was four, so I doubt he cares.”
“Mmm, No Dad Club.” Caden smiles thinly.
“Yeah, guess so.”
“Cut your mom some slack,” he says. “You her only?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugs, and I know he’s thinking about his own mother, his decision to spend the summer here, when I’m sure he could be off doing some amazing internship or studying abroad or whatever other Yalies do for the summer.
“Speaking of moms,” I say, reaching behind me to twist my hair into a thick rope down the center of my back, “I met yours last weekend.”
Caden raises his eyebrows. This is awkward, but if we’re going to be friends, I don’t want Mrs. Talbot lurking between us like an unpleasant secret. Might as well rip the Band-Aid off.
“During Tom’s birthday party, she stopped over to tell me to stay away from you.”
Caden clasps his hands behind his head and lets out a long sigh. “So she did see you that night,” he says. “When you brought the cookies. I thought I saw her looking out her window while we were walking up the drive.”
My mouth twists into a lopsided frown.
“It’s okay,” he says. “The thing you have to understand about my mother is, she loved Zoe. They were really, really close. And Mom has schizophrenia; she was diagnosed in her twenties. No one knows exactly how schizophrenia develops, but since there are likely genetic factors, my parents decided to adopt. Anyway, she has great doctors and she’s been on a treatment plan my whole life, but when Zoe