Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Tonight’s event is a fireside chat in the Solace Garden with Ralston being interviewed by CNN’s Abby Phillip. It’s expected to be the highest-attended event of Ralston Week, and the campus is filled with people anxiously waiting for it to start.
On my way back to the dorm after lunch, they were expanding the rows of folding chairs to extend far outside the garden.
People want to see Ralston in a more comfortable setting—as if she’s at home, as if she’s their friend. They either don’t know or don’t care that she’s simply cosplaying someone normal. Someone who isn’t the devil incarnate.
I’m sitting on the bed, my laptop open on my lap.
Technically, I’m supposed to be reworking a few scenes in the novel I’m drafting, but I know it’s a lost cause.
Instead, I’m going through my cloud, searching desperately for a draft of the blog post Dani quoted today.
If for no other reason than to prove to myself it existed once.
My cloud is a jumbled mess of years’ worth of drafts labeled things like FINAL, FINAL_2, FINALFINAL, FINALFORREALTHISTIME, LASTFINAL, REALFINAL, and FINALFINISHED(USETHISONE), which makes the task harder than it should be.
I sort it by date, which helps, though I can’t remember exactly when I wrote the blog post.
Eventually, though, I spot a title that hits something deep in my chest.
Why Aren’t We Louder?
I click on it, downloading it from the cloud. Then—there it is. The words wash over me all at once, a confirmation.
Feminism that doesn’t destroy societal norms is just etiquette.
It’s courtesy in the face of violence. It’s refusing to ask why someone assumes “Dr.” automatically means “Mr.” It’s letting our sons say someone runs like a girl and not questioning what he means and where he learned it.
It’s not questioning and working to fix our own internal biases.
We can read the books and learn the lessons and believe with all our beings that we are equal, but it’s not enough.
Believing we can change anything by moving within the already set confines laid before us is just a fairytale.
True feminism is a call for radical change.
Disruption. Explosion and implosion. It requires you to force the change yourself, even if you stand alone.
I read and reread the blog post, my vision blurring at the edges.
I wasn’t wrong. Dani’s work took so much from mine, it’s nearly a word-for-word copy.
Ralston must’ve saved it from her speech tearing me to shreds.
I still wonder if she gave it to Dani knowing I might hear it, that I might find out, or if this is something she does often.
Either way, I have my proof now, along with the date it was saved to my cloud. I just have to hope it’ll be enough to make Dani listen to me.
As the sun sets, the draw to attend Ralston’s fireside chat, even just to linger in the background and hear her speak, becomes almost unbearable, like she’s the bug zapper on my childhood porch, shining bright, and I’m merely a moth.
If I keep sitting here, I won’t be able to talk myself out of it. There’s nothing to do in this room except focus on my writing, which I can’t do while I’m in this place.
I send a text to my mom to check in. We don’t often go more than a few days without speaking, but I lied to her about where I am this week, and she’s trying to respect my fictional deadline. I don’t know why I didn’t just tell her the truth, but then, I haven’t told her the truth about any of this.
Ralston.
My writing.
The rejections.
It’s painful and embarrassing for one, but it also feels unfinished. It hurt too much to talk about it back then, and now I can’t talk about it—about any of it—until I know how it resolves. Until I know whether this will have a happy ending or be labeled as one of my life’s biggest tragedies.
While I wait for her to answer, I pull my suitcase out and dress in athletic wear. A hoodie that hasn’t been washed and my ratty sweatpants.
I wouldn’t be caught dead at the fireside chat wearing this. By leaving the dorm now, dressed in this, I’m ensuring I can’t attend. I just need to stay gone until the event has started, until there’s no way to arrive without being seen.
When I was little and my mom was on whatever diet she was trying that month, I remember watching as she dumped all of the “bad” foods into the trash and doused them with Windex so she wouldn’t be tempted to drag them out and eat them anyway.
This is the same thing.
I leave the dorm, locking my door and shoving the key into my hoodie pocket.
Outside, I run. Past the housing office and the empty benches.
My feet hit the sidewalk with sharp, satisfying thuds.
I haven’t run in years, though during my time at Havenport, I started each day with a run around campus to keep my health in check—mentally and physically.
After Ralston, I guess I started to feel like there was no point.
It’s strange, looking back over the last fifteen years. Without realizing it, without ever making the conscious decision, it’s as if I’ve put everything on hold, waiting to see her pay. To see the truth come to light.
Now, I fear I never will unless I’m the one to force it.
I think about my stolen words. True feminism is a call for radical change. Disruption. Explosion and implosion. It requires you to force the change yourself, even if you stand alone.
Once, those words were used to shame me, but now? Maybe they’ll be what liberates me. Maybe I’ll be the one who liberates us all, even if I stand alone.
Each breath in the cool night air cuts like glass, but I can’t slow down. I need to get as far away from my dorm, from the possibility of changing clothes and finding myself at Ralston’s event as possible.
I refuse to sit there, nodding along to her curated wisdom and rehearsed lines while everyone melts with admiration.
Screw that.
Screw her.
That is not why I’m here.
She made me feel small, stupid. All while plagiarizing my work—rearranging it, softening some edges, and shoving it into her books and TED Talks, selling theft to the world as empowerment. And now she’s being honored—again—in the biggest way thus far, for ideas that were never entirely hers.
Then the thought hits me: If she stole mine, and so many others, were any of her ideas ever hers? Or was it all just a lie? A package she put together and sold.
Was she just a marketer all along? Someone who stole our ideas and profited off of them while we were left with nothing? Who built a platform and a thriving business, credibility we will never have, off our voices?
I cut across the lawn behind the history department, chest heaving, and freeze when I hear her voice. Crisp. Measured. Coated in warmth like honey.
“Well, the first revolution is always internal, isn’t it? You can’t upend the world if you’re not willing to first upend yourself.”
Her voice is everywhere—blaring from speakers on the corners of the ivy-covered buildings as if she were a god. I take a step, then two, my throat tightening. Instinctively, my hands go to my ears, trying and failing to block her out.
It’s a good line, and I hate that I have to admit that.
But of course, it is. That’s what makes her so dangerous. Her words sound genuine. You want to believe her. She covers her lies in velvet and gift wrap.
I veer toward the Solace Garden before I can talk myself out of it. Every chair is filled. It’s standing room only, and most of the people gathered around don’t even have a view of Ralston. They can only hear her.
I tell myself it’s okay if I linger, if I listen, as long as she never knows I was here. From where I stand, blanketed by the darkness of the night, no one sees or notices me. They’re all facing forward, transfixed by her words as if they’re a siren song.
She speaks as if she personally discovered the secret to happiness and is slowly doling it out.
“Well, the institution isn’t fully broken,” she says in answer to a question I barely heard. “It’s wounded. And wounds need tending, not criticism and abandonment. Growing up without much money, I learned to fix what I could, rather than throw the whole thing out.”
The crowd applauds. Several people cheer.
Heat climbs up my neck—a mix of anger and humiliation.
Because that isn’t her story. Not much is known about Ralston’s past or where she came from, mostly because she doesn’t talk about it.
She’s private, but one thing I know from being in her inner circle is that she grew up in private schools.
Summering in the Hamptons. She had two nannies.
Growing up in poverty isn’t her story to tell. It’s mine. Perhaps someone else’s, too. But it doesn’t belong to her.
Among her long list of crimes, this one probably shouldn’t matter that much to me. She’s done much worse.
But it does. It all matters.
Someone behind me places a hand on my shoulder, and at first, I assume it’s someone trying to slip past, but then I hear my name, whispered loudly enough a few people turn to look my way.
“Lila.”
I freeze.
Dean Carlyle steps to my side, lowering his hand. His face is masked in shadows, expression painted with firmness over regret. “We should talk.”
My chest tightens. What on earth could he want?
I follow him away from the crowd.
“I’ve had complaints,” he says, still walking, hands in the pockets of his slacks. “About you.” As if that weren’t obvious. “People say you’re creating quite a disturbance.”
I shake my head. My breathing still hasn’t steadied. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Who talked to him? Not Naya, surely. Bell? The documentary production crew? Dani? Ralston herself?
He doesn’t look my way. “I’m hearing you’ve been confrontational since you arrived. Borderline obsessive.”
The laugh that escapes my throat is sharp. “Are you serious?”
“You and Professor Ralston always seemed so close during your time here. I thought you’d be happy to come back, to celebrate someone who meant so much to you. Who did so much for you.”
I swallow. It’s the lie I worked so hard to prove back then—that Ralston and I were close. That I was the chosen one. How can I refute it now without appearing jealous? Bitter.
“If this continues,” he says, his voice lower now. He comes to a stop, turning to face me with a sigh. “I’ll have no choice but to ask you to leave before the ceremony.”
And just like that, my throat closes. Because I don’t think he’s bluffing. Forcing me to leave Havenport would be the easiest solution to keep the peace. And it would be the one way to assure I don’t succeed, that she doesn’t get taken down.
Ralston’s voice echoes behind us. Another brilliant quote. Another lie. I’m barely listening.
Dean Carlyle’s stance softens, along with his voice, as if he wants to help me, as if he regrets his words before they’ve left his mouth. “Don’t make enemies, Lila. This is your home, too.”
I nod because I have no other choice. And with that, he’s gone.