We were 13, maybe 12. In history class learning about the Vietnam War. Our teacher was an old white man in his 60s at least, with a white beard and pot-bellied gut. He was on the verge of tears, voice cracking as he spoke about the friends he lost to the war. He had won the lottery. As his friends marched off one by one, he stayed. His number was never called.

We were young and melanated. Distracted by our changing bodies, by an emergent hunger to see and to taste skin. Through the window, the hot sun cast striped shadows of the blinds across our baby faces.

He had been pestering me all semester. That scrappy boy. Sole black boy in a white class. Default clown just trying to survive. He’d flick my right shoulder and kick my desk. Use my own hair to tickle my neck. Whisper in my ear to get me to look up from my notes. Remind me I was a nerd and make slimy suggestions that I could be something more. That I had potential.

That day, he patted his lean, dark knee:

Hey, sugar lips. Babe.
Come sit here on Santa's lap—
The sun set too soon.