Erased

Chapter 7 #2

A long, painful silence settles between us. Then she speaks. “And if I say I do believe you?”

My voice is soft, shaky. “Do you?”

“Yes.” Her gaze holds mine. There’s no hesitation in her answer.

Tears well in my eyes. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear anyone say that out loud.”

“I’m probably the only one dumb enough to say it,” she says with a sigh, looking toward the window.

“Because you know what she is.”

“She’s not hard to see through. If you’re not too busy being dazzled to pay attention.”

Except for Jade’s warning, I’m realizing this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone say anything remotely disparaging about Ralston.

I’m not alone.

“Why are we the only ones who pay attention? Why does everyone act like she’s so special?”

“Because she is,” she says simply. “We’d be fools to pretend otherwise. Althea is everything she’s meant to be. Everything we’re all meant to be. Funny. Wickedly smart. Witty. Beautiful. And with an enviable shoe collection. She’s everything the world wants in a perfect feminist.”

Her words sting. I sit up straighter. “So, then, what do we do?”

She presses her lips together but gives no answer.

“Nothing?”

Bell leans forward, hands folded on her desk. “What do you want to do, Lila?”

“I don’t know. Something. Tell people what she’s done. Make someone listen. The world. Havenport. Anyone.”

“They might listen, but they won’t care.”

I think back to my conversation with the documentary crew this morning. She’s not wrong. Her words, the truth of them, burn somewhere down deep inside me.

“They’ll say you’re jealous. Or bitter. Or unstable.”

Ralston’s words echo in my ear. You’re not well.

Bell continues, “They’ll ask why you waited so long to come forward. Why you didn’t speak up sooner. They’ll pick apart you and your motives until you no longer recognize them yourself.”

For a moment, I can only blink. I’m angry, but not at her. Still, she’s the only one I can take my anger out on. “So, you’re saying do nothing. That I shouldn’t even try. You won’t help me.”

“I think I am helping you by not.”

“You’re a coward.” The words taste bitter on my tongue. I hate them, hate myself for saying them, but I can’t take them back.

Bell doesn’t flinch. “You don’t understand what you would be walking into. You tried it before, like you just told me. You saw where it got you. This time it won’t be any better. If anything, it’ll be worse. She’s more powerful now. And too much time has passed.”

My jaw locks, brows knitting together. How can she say that? How can she stand to believe it? “No. No. That can’t be it. I need to trust that villains lose in the end. That good wins. I need to believe there’s a point to all of this, a lesson.”

“It’s a nice thing to believe,” she says. Her words aren’t unkind, they just sound tired. As tired as she looks.

“She took everything from me. I haven’t written anything worth reading in years.

I can’t get published. I don’t trust myself, or my judgment.

Everything I write just sounds like her.

I hear her criticism in my head, feel her betrayal.

She ruined my life. She doesn’t just…she doesn’t just get to get away with it. ”

Bell’s face softens. Barely. “She has that effect.”

I search her face. “It’s happened since I left, hasn’t it? There’ve been others.”

“There have been and will always be others.”

A muscle twitches in her jaw, and I think I understand something she hasn’t said. “You’ve seen it happen?”

“And lived it.”

Her words drop like a stone between us.

“She stole from you.” It’s not a question, it’s a confirmation. From the moment I saw her, I recognized something in her. Now I realize it’s the same hurt I’ve carried for over a decade.

“Havenport was my first and only choice after I graduated. This place means something to me. It gave me purpose. Althea and I are the same age. She started a few years after I did. I saw in her back then what everyone sees in her. She is shiny. Ambitious. She always says the right thing. We weren’t friends, but colleagues in the same department can often look the part.

It didn’t take long before I saw her for what she was.

It wasn’t just the work she took, though she took plenty of that too.

She took credit for things I had done. Initiatives, student projects, things I suggested.

She claimed space, stepped in as soon as things were getting off the ground and took hold of the narrative. ”

I stare at her, confused. “But that was before she was who she is now. Althea Ralston. Why didn’t you say anything?” She could’ve stopped the monster before she grew legs and a second head.

“I did. Quietly. Professionally. The way I was told to handle things. I brought it to James’s—Dean Carlyle’s—attention. It went nowhere.”

“Why not?”

“Because, at the end of the day, it didn’t matter.

Credit for this club or that. A name on a banquet or behind a symposium.

It was silly and not worth anyone’s time.

” She rubs her temple. “Eventually, you get tired of being the squeaky wheel. People only see what they want to see—and what they want to see, what they’ve always wanted to see, is someone like Althea.

Charismatic. Bold. Young enough. Pretty enough.

The kind of icon that doesn’t challenge their worldviews too much.

Who fits neatly into their containers. She represents a brand of feminism they can accept, and that’s enough for them to look the other way over most things. ”

“But…you stayed.” I can’t make sense of this. “Why would you stay? You still work with her. You…Jesus, you sit on panels with her. Like none of it happened. You go along with it all. Let her pretend. Let her lie.”

She leans back slowly—as if she’s been here before. As if she’s wrestled with these same questions, the accusations in them.

Someone has to stop this, so why not her? Why isn’t she trying?

“I stay for the students. For the ones who come through this place needing someone to see them. Someone to believe them, even if they don’t say the thing out loud. Even if they’re just hanging on. We do important work here. Ralston’s shadow doesn’t cast every good thing into darkness.”

“So, you just let her harm students? Ruin lives? Because you’re here, holed up in your office with a cookie and a smile? It’s not enough.”

She looks at me as if the answer, her explanation, is more complicated than words allow.

“You chose not to fight, and I paid the price.” It’s not fair, but it feels true.

She presses her lips together, adjusting in her seat. The wooden chair squeaks underneath her. “Would my fight have mattered? You were warned, you said. By another girl. She did the job you expected me to do. In the end, was it worth it for her? You chose to believe Althea.”

“By that time Ralston was massive. When you both started, she didn’t carry the weight. You could’ve done something. You could’ve stopped her from becoming what she is. You could’ve stopped her before she was someone people trust. Someone I trusted.”

“Maybe,” she admits. “But people like Althea don’t have to work for their power. They walk into every room like they already have it. And if you believe it enough, sometimes that’s all it takes. She may not have been what she is now back then, but she was never small. Never quiet.”

Something in my chest cracks open. She’s right. I should’ve listened to Jade. I will always regret that I didn’t. But I can’t just wait. I’ve waited fifteen years, and she’s still doing the same damage she was.

Over and over again. The same pattern. New victims. New women.

If I’m right, Dani will be next.

“If you won’t help me, I’ll do this myself. Someone has to fight. I can’t let her keep getting away with this. I have nothing else to lose.”

Her eyes fill with something soft, like pity. “You think that. But if you go after her directly, you’ll lose whatever version of yourself is left. You’ll get pulled into her gravity, and it’ll cost you. She isn’t worth the fight, Lila.”

“Don’t people deserve to know the truth about her?”

“Sure they do. Deserve to, sure. But the reality is that truth doesn’t always matter.

Power does. And the story people prefer to believe—the one that’s easier for them to swallow—will outlast the one you’re trying to tell.

Truth is just what enough people choose to believe.

They don’t want to believe they could’ve been lied to, duped.

And who are you to convince them otherwise?

People don’t care about the truth. They care about who gives them the best story, and Althea is selling a story they can believe in.

People will come along and try to bring her down—you, maybe.

Me, once. Others. In the end, we’ll be footnotes no one pays attention to.

They’ll whisper and retell our stories until the edges blur, and no one remembers who claimed she was stolen from, who said she was silenced, or who tried to simply survive.

We’ll be specks of dust in the view of Althea’s bright, shining star. ”

I nod slowly. There’s an ache deep at the base of my skull, throbbing. “So I should just give up? Like you have?”

“I haven’t given up,” she argues, leaning back and lifting her coffee to her lips.

She takes a sip, letting me sit with her words.

“I fight my own way, through the students I help, the conferences I lead. I show folks there’s another way, should they want it.

I tell people it’s okay to be small. Quiet.

You have to find the life that works for you.

Your dream isn’t over just because Althea Ralston says it is.

” I like the way she says both of her names, because it’s not filled with the usual admiration.

It’s filled with disgust. She says it like a curse.

“You can still write. She can’t take that away unless you let her.

You write, not for revenge or to prove anything to her, but to prove something to yourself.

You’ll find your voice again, even if it takes a while.

That’s the part of you she couldn’t kill.

” She smiles a bit, lips closed. “I’ll bet that drives her mad. ”

I sit with that. I don’t know if I believe her—that the writer I once was still exists within me—but I want to.

Bell stands and steps around her desk. She doesn’t move any closer to me, just leans against the bookshelf behind her. She’s watching me as if I’m some unpredictable creature she doesn’t want to spook.

“You’re not alone, if that helps at all.

I know it feels like everyone loves her, but there are more of us who know the truth than you think.

Not enough to matter, but more.” She folds her arms across her chest. “You just have to decide if your story is worth the pain that comes with telling it. Even if no one believes you. Especially if no one believes you.”

“It has to be. Truth has to matter.”

“Then tell it,” she says finally, with a drawn-out breath. “Just don’t expect the world to appreciate you for it.”

I stand. I didn’t get what I came here for—help, solidarity—but I did get something that matters almost as much. Belief. When one person says they believe you, it’s easier to feel brave. To feel less like you’re on an island alone.

I have to fight, not just for me, but for Professor Bell too. For Jade. For Dani.

I turn away from her with a small smile and walk toward the door. I stop for just a moment, hand on the knob. “You think I’m making a mistake.”

Again, her smile is sad. Distant. “I think you’re very brave. And very hurt. You just have to decide which one is driving you forward. There are things you can’t come back from.” Her voice is quiet. Raw. She looks worried as she meets my eyes. “She isn’t worth losing everything for.”

I nod, packing her words of warning into my mind as if it were an outfit into a suitcase.

Then, I walk out of the office a little less alone.

A little less afraid.