The Best at It

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of anti-gay bias, racism, bullying, and mental illness.

The main character and protagonist, Rahul, is a seventh grader at Greenville Middle School. The external conflict and plot follow Rahul’s attempts to become the “best” at something: football, acting, and Mathletes. However, the true heart of the novel revolves around Rahul’s internal conflict, particularly his attempts to navigate the intersections of three identities: his sexuality, his mental health, and his relationship to his culture and heritage.

Rahul struggles with Figuring Out and Accepting One’s Identity when it comes to his race and sexuality. This is worsened by Brent’s continuous bullying about Rahul’s sexuality and Indian heritage. Rahul sees Justin’s features as “perfect” and wishes that he could look more like him. Though Rahul doesn’t realize he is doing it, he is positioning whiteness as normative and ostracizing his own features as non-normative. Despite Chelsea’s attempts to get Rahul to be himself, he pursues this idealized version of whiteness to his own detriment. He edits his headshots until he is unrecognizable, making his skin “so light it looks like a bridge paint sample” and his nose smaller (135).