Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
When the time comes, I decide to skip the Welcome Gala. And the live episode taping of Ralston’s Who Gets the Mic Anyway? podcast. Ralston won’t notice. She probably thinks I minded her instructions, that I’m on a plane on my way back home already.
And if she doesn’t? Well, it gives me a certain type of pleasure to imagine her stressing over where I might be, what sort of trouble I might be causing when she’s momentarily incapable of stopping it.
With all eyes on her for the full hour of taping, it gives me a full hour to dig, and I know just where I want to go next.
I walk across campus in the cool evening light. The banners for Ralston Week are still up, though the students handing out flyers and tote bags as if we’re attending a concert have all disappeared, likely at the evening’s event already.
I pass a few random students and feel solidarity with them. They didn’t go to Ralston’s taping either. Whatever reason they may have for missing, it’s almost treasonous on this campus.
I like them.
Piper Hall feels forgotten. Or perhaps preserved. Everything is a little older than most buildings on campus, and not in the artificially antique way most places are. Piper is run down, but not on purpose.
The lights flicker a bit extra overhead, and the stairwell hums with almost deafening silence. I take the stairs to the third floor. Most of these older buildings only have one elevator, and unless you need to use it, the stairs are faster.
Room 330 waits at the end of the hall.
I swallow, looking around. She might not even be here. For all I know, I completely misread her. For all I know, she’ll be front row for the taping, sitting right next to Ralston for the gala dinner.
Next to her door, a gold plate reads: Dr. Simone Bell. (She/her)
There’s nothing else, no title or quotes, no flair. When I attended Havenport, Ralston’s office doorplate was constantly getting updated with some new award, some new achievement. It never occurred to me that most professors don’t get the same treatment.
I knock and hold my breath, listening.
Her voice is soft. Muted. “Come in.”
I push the door open and step inside. Her office is just what I expected—shelves upon shelves of books, a large wooden desk, a few photos in mismatched frames of her, a man, and two teenage daughters on vacation. Simple. Not flashy.
She’s at her desk, writing something in a notebook.
Her glasses sit low on her nose. The room smells faintly of coffee and dust. Old books.
It reminds me of the library. When she looks up, her face is lit by the desk lamp.
She eyes me from the shadows, looking tired, but sharp still. “Can I help you?”
There’s no warmth in her voice, but it’s not cold either. It’s cautious. A wall prepared to go up.
“Um, maybe. I’m Lila Parks. I was a student here, fifteen years ago.”
She lowers her glasses to look at me, and I feel strangely exposed. She’s really looking. Something flickers across her expression.
“Parks. I remember your name.” Her words are slow and thoughtful. “Did you write a piece for The Beacon?”
“A few times, yeah.”
“About?”
“Oh.” My cheeks warm. “Um. Stupid stuff, mostly. The lack of pockets in women’s clothing. The unequal division of domestic labor. Reproductive rights.”
“No.” She pauses, drawing her lips to the side in quiet thought. “There was one about how women have been erased throughout history.”
I swallow. Ralston had told me that wasn’t my best. That it read too much like a textbook and not enough like a radical piece of informative art, whatever that means. I stopped writing for The Beacon after that. It never meant that much to me anyway. “Oh. Yeah, that was mine.”
“It was good.”
My stomach flips. She’s just being polite. “Thanks.”
“Are you still writing?”
“Not professionally.” The admission stings.
Something settles over the room. It’s silence, yes, but it’s heavier. A quiet recognition of what I’m not saying. I know the truth, and I suspect she might too.
“I, um, I saw you on the panel this morning.” I take a few slow steps toward her desk.
She looks back down at whatever she’d been working on, scratching something onto the paper like she’s finishing a previous thought. “Well, I’m sure Professor Ralston will be glad you could make it.”
“You didn’t clap for her. Or laugh at her jokes. Didn’t fawn over her like the rest of them.”
She jerks her head back up. The smile on her lips doesn’t carry through to her voice. “That’s not really a crime.”
“No, but you may have been the only person in that room I could relate to. The only one who doesn’t buy what she’s selling.”
She exhales and leans back in her chair. Her eyes flick to the chair in front of her desk. “Sit down.”
I move forward and take the seat. For a moment, we just sit in silence, the desk lamp the only thing lighting the dim office. I fold my hands in my lap, waiting.
She could send me away. She could tell Ralston.
No one here would blame her. Or question her.
“What are you doing here, Ms. Parks?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“But you’re not here to celebrate her.”
I shake my head.
She’s quiet, watching me. Waiting for me to say more.
I pick at the skin next to my thumbnail, avoiding her eyes.
“I studied under Ralston nearly the entire time I attended Havenport. She was a mentor without ever giving it a name. She said my writing had potential. That I should bring it to her, and she would help me. I was… I mean, even back then…she was a god, you know? I grew up obsessed with her. To even think she wouldn’t be everything she’d promised to be…
it was unthinkable. She did help me. At first. Coached me, edited my work.
She’s the one who suggested I write for The Beacon, introduced me to the editor.
She brought me with her to lunch with her literary agent.
It was…like she had access to a world that had its door closed to me.
She was magic.” I stare into my lap. “Then, junior year, I’d gone home for my dad’s wedding to my stepmother.
Ralston was speaking at an event in the same city.
She didn’t know I planned to attend. I wanted to…
I don’t know—surprise her, maybe. Maybe I just wanted to see her in action again.
I considered her a friend. A mentor, but more than that. She was family.”
Bell watches me, her face unreadable.
“She quoted me in her speech. More than once. But…there was no credit. It wasn’t a quote.
She took my words, my ideas, and claimed credit for them.
I didn’t know what to think. I tried to convince myself they weren’t life-changing ideas, that I didn’t own them.
I didn’t even tell her I’d been there to hear it.
I couldn’t. I was afraid I’d hurt her. Lose her.
But then for the rest of the year and into my senior year, I started visiting more of her events away from Havenport, going to listen to her when she didn’t know I’d be there.
I started reading the things she was publishing.
And more and more, I saw myself. My words.
My thoughts. She stole…everything. My voice.
My framework. Language. Ideas. Sometimes word for word from the papers or chapters I’d been having her edit. ”
I shake my head, looking away. “When I finally confronted her, after months of seeing it, after months of failing to explain it away, she just…denied it. She had all these explanations. About how no idea is original and how we’d worked so closely together, it was hard to tell where one of our thoughts began and the other ended.
She made me question whether I’d actually drawn the ideas from her in the first place.
But immediately after that conversation, I stopped getting invitations to things.
All the invitations to meet visiting scholars, agents, editors, people I admired—they vanished.
One by one, doors closed. She stopped taking office hours with me.
Stopped responding to my emails. She cut me off in every way.
And then when I asked her why, she had me removed from her classes.
She told Dean Carlyle I was harassing her, and it was her word against mine. I never stood a chance.”
Bell says nothing. Her silence is too pointed to feel casual.
I’m not wrong about her. I can’t be.
When she doesn’t speak, I go on, “She turned people against me. Not just the dean. Other professors. Students. They stopped believing me. Stopped including me. People who had respected me, people I thought were my friends. They didn’t want to get on her bad side, and she made it clear that associating with me would be exactly that. ”
She’s still watching me, back so stiff it makes my skin itch. I feel like I’m under a microscope. Does she believe me?
“And the worst part is, there was a girl before me. She warned me about Ralston when I started spending time with her. She told me not to trust her. That she isn’t what she seems. She even told me that Ralston had hurt her.
Stolen from her. But I didn’t believe it.
I just wanted Ralston to be everything she promised.
” I drop my head, the truth of it weighing on me.
“I got what I deserved. I should’ve listened. ”
These are the words I say to myself so often, even now. But they’re words I’ve never said aloud.
“I know how she works,” I say eventually. “The curated chaos. The late-night calls. The promises, the ones she follows through with and the ones she doesn’t. The compliments. The comparisons to other students. The way she makes you feel brilliant, her chosen one. Until suddenly, you’re not.”
Still, nothing. I’m not even sure she’s blinked.
“I don’t know. I guess I thought… No one believes me. No one has ever believed me. I thought maybe you would.” My eyes find my hands again. “Because you didn’t clap.”
Hearing it out loud, it all just sounds stupid.