Lies We Tell Ourselves: Shortlisted for the 2016 Carnegie Medal. Robin Talley

just because she was a Negro. She couldn’t help her color.

      She could help being an agitator, though. She shouldn’t have been stirring up trouble at our school. What happened to her was her own fault. I’m too softhearted for my own good.

      What bad luck, that I had to run into her older sister right after. I glare at the girl. She glares back at me and shakes her head.

      “I’ve read your father’s editorials,” the girl says. “Looks as though you both like to tell everybody else what to do. Especially us Negroes.”

      “Nobody’s telling you what to do,” I say. “Your people are the ones telling us what to do. If you’d just let things be, we’d all be better off, your people and mine both. Your sister wouldn’t have gotten in trouble in the hall today and needed my help.”

      I try to emphasize that last word, help, so this girl will know she should be thanking me, not arguing, but she doesn’t look especially thankful. When she speaks again, her words are still slow and deliberate.

      “All my sister and I are trying to do is go to school,” she says. “We should be able to do that without having to worry about people coming at us in the halls.”

      “You already had a school to go to,” I point out. “A school that’s been open all year long. Your prom didn’t get canceled. I bet you’re happy to have ruined it all for the rest of us, though.”