“Terrific. Go to it.”

“Just one more sec.”

Aspeth disappeared, and the door clicked shut. A minute later, Darden flung it open and strode through, Aspeth behind him gripping his waist like in a conga line, and Dede behind Aspeth. Darden wore a fedora set at an angle, a pair of oversized sunglasses, several gold and silver and pearl necklaces, and a long shiny red raincoat, tight across his shoulders, which I recognized as belonging to Dede. In his right hand, he carried a cane. Dede herself had on a cream-colored knee-length silk slip, and Aspeth was wearing a striped bikini top (the stripes were pink, mint green, and pale blue) and a tennis skirt; on their feet, both girls wore high heels.

“Choo-choo!” Darden cried. He thrust his fist into the air and rolled it forward a few times, then tipped his head back toward Aspeth and Dede. “Ain’t that the finest-looking ho train you folks ever seen?” From various parts of the table, I heard snorts of laughter, and someone-it might have been Oliver-called out, “Uh-huh, brother!” As if in response, Aspeth and Dede held their chins in the air, moved their heads all around, batted their eyelashes.

The three of them slithered and wiggled the length of the chalkboard, until they were between the far end of the table and the windows. Darden leaned over and stuck his cheek down toward Jenny Carter. “You give Big Daddy Tom some love, sugar.”

Jenny had a look on her face that was both startled and amused. Her gaze jumped to Ms. Moray, and when I looked, too, Ms. Moray was squinting as if confused. This was a confusion I shared. I literally did not understand what Darden and Aspeth and Dede were doing, what the unifying principle was behind their weird clothes, their gestures, Darden’s lingo. I sensed that most of my classmates did understand. Jenny puckered her lips and kissed Darden.

“Thanks, baby,” Darden said. He took a step back, and Aspeth and Dede rearranged themselves so they were on either side of him, their arms linked through his, gazing up at him, stroking his shoulder or his forehead. “My ho’s, you know why we’re here tonight,” Darden said. “And Daddy might go away, but you know he always gonna be looking out for you. It ain’t easy when Master Shelby-”

“Stop it,” Ms. Moray said, and her voice was loud and sharp. It was strange to hear a normal voice. “That’s enough. All three of you, sit down. But first change out of those clothes.”

Darden and Aspeth and Dede regarded her silently. Their posture was already different-Aspeth’s arms were folded, she wasn’t touching Darden at all-and none of them were smiling.

“We were just-” Dede began.

“Right now,” Ms. Moray said. “Hurry.”

They walked quickly past us, back into the hall. In their absence, the rest of us looked at one another, looked away, looked back; Chris Graves put his head down on the table. When Darden, Aspeth, and Dede returned, they sat without speaking.

“Would someone like to explain what that was about?” Ms. Moray said.

No one said anything. I couldn’t tell if she was asking all of us or just them, and I also couldn’t tell if she was really asking for an explanation-if, like me, she hadn’t understood-or if she was asking for more of a justification.

“Really,” Ms. Moray said. “I’m curious-curious about what could possibly make the three of you think it’s either relevant or appropriate to portray Uncle Tom as a pimp and the other slaves as prostitutes.”

Of course. I was an idiot.

“Uncle Tom is a Christ figure,” Ms. Moray said. “He’s a hero.”

Darden was looking down, and Aspeth was looking across the room, her face blank, her arms crossed again. To watch Aspeth be scolded was odd and not, as I might have imagined, enjoyable. I would have felt sorry for her, actually, except that she seemed unaffected by Ms. Moray’s comments; she seemed mostly bored. Of the three of them, only Dede was looking at Ms. Moray. “We were being creative,” Dede said.

Ms. Moray smiled unpleasantly. “Creative how?”

“By, like, we were-well, with a modern-day parallel-we just thought it would be fun.”

“I’ll tell you something,” Ms. Moray said. “And this is a lesson that could serve all of you well on that day not so far in the future when you find yourselves out in the real world. The next time you’re being creative, the next time you’re having fun, you might want to stop and think about how your behavior looks to other people. Because I’ll tell you, what this seems like to me is nothing but racism.”

Everyone looked at her then, even Darden and Aspeth. Racism didn’t exist at Ault. Or it did, of course it did, but not like that. Kids came from all sorts of cultural backgrounds, with parents who had emigrated from Pakistan, Thailand, Colombia, and some kids had families that still lived far away-in my dorm alone, there were girls from Zimbabwe and Latvia. And no one ever made slurs, it wasn’t like you got ostracized if you weren’t white. Racism seemed to me like a holdover from my parents’ generation, something that was not entirely gone but had fallen out of favor-like girdles, say, or meatloaf.

“We weren’t being racist,” Aspeth said. Her voice contained none of Dede’s anxious eagerness, Dede’s earnest wish to set things straight. Aspeth knew she was right, and the only question was whether it was worth demonstrating this to an inferior mind like Ms. Moray’s. “How could we be?” Aspeth said. “Darden is black.”

This was a bold and possibly inappropriate thing to say-Darden’s blackness, in our post-racist environment, was not a thing you remarked on.

“That’s your defense?” Ms. Moray said. “That Darden is-?” Even she seemed unable to say that he was black, which affirmed Aspeth’s power. But then Ms. Moray appeared to regain control. “Listen,” she said. “Internalized racism is still racism. Self-hatred is not an excuse.”

I glanced at Darden, who was looking down again. He inhaled, puffed out his cheeks, exhaled, and shook his head. I didn’t think he was self-hating, and I certainly didn’t want him to be-I was self-hating, and wasn’t that enough? Did there need to be so many of us?

“There’s also the issue-” Ms. Moray said, but Darden interrupted her.

“We made a mistake,” he said. “How about we leave it at that?” He was looking up at Ms. Moray, his mouth set in a firm line. He seemed to me in this moment like an adult-his deep voice and his physical size and his reasonableness, how it appeared he wanted the situation resolved more than he wanted himself exonerated. I wished that I were friends with him so that I could tell him after class I’d been impressed by his behavior and it wouldn’t just seem like I was trying to get on his good side.

Ms. Moray hesitated. It had seemed before that she was just warming up, but this was a relatively easy way out. “Fine,” she said at last. “But I’ll make one more point. And that’s that this wasn’t only offensive in terms of the racial stereotypes you guys were playing off. I’m also deeply, deeply troubled by the sexism here. And, no, the fact that you’re women doesn’t make it okay for you to objectify yourselves. Our culture teaches women that our primary worth is our appearance, but we don’t have to accept that idea. We can flaunt our bodies, or we can choose to have integrity and self-respect.” Ms. Moray’s voice had turned high, she sounded a little too impassioned, and I saw Aspeth roll her eyes at Dede. She shouldn’t have been using the word women, I thought. All of us in the room, except for Ms. Moray herself, were girls.

Later that day-news of what had happened in class spread quickly, and even Martha pressed me for details-I was in the locker room when I heard Aspeth talking about it yet again. “Rah, rah, rah,” she said. “Let’s go burn our bras.”

The next day, while we waited before class for the bell to ring, Ms. Moray said, “Who’s psyched to learn?” Then she pretended to be a cheerleader, waving her hands in the air, shouting, “E-N-G-L-I-S-H-what’s that spell? English!” We didn’t have cheerleaders at Ault, and she was making the joke to show that she forgave us; she didn’t seem to realize that she herself had not been forgiven.