Friends and Strangers - J. Courtney Sullivan Page 0,30

a lot of international students too.

Sam considered saying, “My friend Shannon is black and my friend Lexi is Korean and my friend Rosa is from the Philippines. Her dad’s a diplomat.”

But she knew that somehow the fact of her providing these examples would only prove Gaby’s point.

Instead, she told Gaby how Shannon was part of an elite program for African American scholars, and though it was an honor, Shannon said she sometimes felt tokenized on campus. She had been asked to participate in last year’s admissions brochure. When Sam said, “That’s so cool that they picked you,” Shannon just looked at her and said, “Gee, I wonder why.”

There was also the fact that the college celebrated diversity, but no one ever mentioned the women, mostly women of color, doing the work to prepare the food, to make the place beautiful, so the students could grow and learn and thrive. The housekeeping staff was almost entirely black, while black students made up just four percent of the student body. They studied historic inequality in their classes, they read about racial and economic injustice, and still they were expected to ignore this uncomfortable truth, to live with it.

One night in November, Gaby invited Sam to a party off campus. It was the first time she’d ever been to the home of someone not connected to the college, other than babysitting. The house was a small ranch on a cul-de-sac. There were a dozen cars parked out front.

They danced and took a lot of shots. Sam flirted with an extremely good-looking firefighter named Trevor, an acquaintance of Gaby’s from high school. At the end of the night, Sam made out with someone she thought was him, until Gaby told her Trevor had left half an hour ago.

“Who was that then?” Sam said, gesturing toward the guy whose tongue had been in her mouth moments earlier.

Gaby shrugged. She shook her head and laughed.

Sam went home for Christmas, and the whole time, she dreaded the return to school. Winters in this part of the world were particularly dreary. Especially without Isabella there to make them ramen in the hot pot, without Lexi’s hot chocolate spiked with cinnamon and rum. It felt like she was just running the clock until her friends returned.

A tiny ball of resentment formed in her. Why had it been so easy for the rest of them to go?

At the end of January, Isabella told Sam over Skype, “My parents said I can have a ticket to anywhere in the world for my birthday.”

“That’s so great,” Sam said.

She hoped her expression disguised her true feelings. She wished Isabella had told her in a text.

“I chose London,” Isabella said.

“You live in London,” Sam said.

“I know. It’s for you.”

“What? No way,” Sam said. “That’s too much.”

“You’ll come for ten days, over spring break. Which also happens to be my birthday week. You’ll stay with me.”

Sam’s mother told her to accept.

“You’ve been so miserable,” she said.

“No, I haven’t,” Sam said.

But the fact that she had the blessing of her mother, who had instructed her never to be indebted, especially to friends, was the push Sam needed.

On the plane, she asked for a gin and tonic just to see what would happen. The flight attendant brought her one without batting an eye. Sam had two more after that. She watched a romantic comedy and stared out the window at the clouds, vowing that she would never become the kind of person who found this anything less than astounding.

Isabella picked her up at Heathrow in a chauffeured car. She had developed a slight British accent and had begun using words like snog and cheers in casual conversation.

For the next two days, Isabella showed her London. She had spent so much time there with her parents over the years that the bellmen at the Four Seasons knew her by name. They went to tea at Brown’s. They toured Buckingham Palace and were certain they saw Kate Middleton going up a staircase, even as they knew it was probably not her. They walked through the Harrods Food Halls and looked at clothes neither of them would ever actually wear. They bought jeans at Top Shop. They went to a bar with bottle service. Isabella put down her American Express before the bill had even arrived.

On Isabella’s birthday, Shannon came from Paris for the party. She looked thin. She told them the college provided all the students on her program a daily food allowance but that she skipped