A Drop of Color

Seventeen-year-old Gabrielle has always lived between worlds: at school, she is expected to be the “Token Black Girl” at her predominantly white prep school; at home, the dutiful Nigerian daughter. With senior year underway, she is focused on preserving the carefully curated version of “normal” she has designed for herself. But when a racist incident erupts within her social circle, Gabrielle refuses to stay silent—shattering Oakmont Academy’s unspoken code and turning from social butterfly into social pariah.

Armed with a bucket list and a plan for reinvention, Gabrielle sets out to salvage her senior year, but life on the margins gets complicated fast—especially when sparks ignite with two very different boys: a football player she never thought she’d trust and her childhood crush, newly returned from Nigeria. As secrets surface and loyalties fracture, Gabrielle must decide whether to fight her way back into the life she had or confront the parts of herself she thought she had to suppress: her Blackness, her Nigerian identity, and the complicated zone where those identities meet.