Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Back on the site, my next post is a call to action.
I wish I had the words to say how much your stories have meant to me, how much your bravery has changed me.
Thank you to everyone who has spoken out and spoken up.
Thank you for reminding us that we aren’t alone.
I hope that we can use this site to bring much-needed change to the world of academia, and I’d like to take the next step toward slaying my own personal dragon.
If Professor Althea Ralston ever used your words in her work—without credit, without permission—or if she harmed you in some other way, I’m collecting evidence.
If you’re ready, send it to me. It doesn’t need to be definitive.
It doesn’t need to make you look perfect.
Documents. Text messages. Emails. Something scrawled in a notebook.
I understand you may be scared—I am too—but the truth is that our voices are strongest together.
I want to show the world the shape of what has been taken from us.
I want to destroy her mask. If you want to help, please email anything you have to [email protected].
I post it, watching as it is quickly swallowed up by the new posts. Maybe no one will see it. Maybe no one is spending time reading these anyway. Maybe most people just want to get their own truths off their chest.
If anything, I’m hoping to hear from a few brave souls. One or two, even. Five would be a dream. Ten feels impossible. I still haven’t gotten a response from the women I emailed, and when I check their social media pages, none of them have shared it, so I don’t dare email them again.
I’m not sure I need them, if I can get others involved.
This step feels quieter than the first, lacking the roar and fever of uploading my story for the first time, but it’s the logical next step. Ralston was right. The site isn’t proof enough. I need evidence.
The recording is a start, plus my documents, but there has to be more.
An hour later, I have five pieces of evidence in my email.
By noon, there are twenty.
By two, nearly thirty.
They come in every form imaginable—scans of conference and event posters, screenshots of emails, Word docs dated five and ten years ago, some a decade older, annotated PDFs with margin notes in Ralston’s handwriting.
All with attached matching speeches, paragraphs, articles, and excerpts from books published under Ralston’s name.
The evidence—the truth—is everywhere. In books. In lectures. Interviews. Speeches that once brought me to tears.
She quotes us verbatim—lines once scratched in the margins of a student’s thesis or a paper submitted in her class showing up in a speech she gave six months later, a book she published three years later.
We trusted her, and she took our words, our thoughts and ideas, then stood beneath the spotlight and on stages and claimed to be the sun, demanding all eyes on her. All without any fear of repercussions.
I don’t remember what events are going on the rest of the day, but they’ve officially been canceled for me.
I’m not going anywhere.
As the sun passes across the sky, moving the light and shadows around my room, I examine her publications—digital copies of essays, articles, excerpts from her books, and archived keynote transcriptions—next to the drafts I’ve been sent.
One after another, the match is unmistakable. Too close and too often to be explained away. These aren’t just similar phrases or thoughts—they’re exact. The structure, arguments, metaphors.
In many instances, there’s no revision evident at all, just curation.
She listened and read for the parts of us she wanted and then she took them without permission, without regard for any of us.
That’s what stings the most, I guess. That we were good enough to be copied, stolen from, and people will never know our names.
Even if we come forward now—even when we did, she made sure no one believed us, because why would they?
Her name is a shadow that lingers. She remains, and we disappear into the darkness.
I write those words at the top of a page, saving it for something, though I’m not sure what. They stay with me as I build my case document by document, highlighting matches in red. I catalog each theft like evidence in a trial, my hope growing as it becomes undeniable.
I work into the night, paying no attention as the time passes. It’s worth it. This is sacred work that requires precision, silence. I’ve been entrusted with these stories, and it feels important. Perhaps the most important thing I’ll ever do.
Something to tell my parents about, my kids someday.
Something to be proud of.
Each of us was a wick, and she was the flame. And when she was done with us, she blew us out.
But now…as the case builds, I feel the light returning. For the first time in years, I feel the hope I’ve longed for. It’s not the raw, desperate kind, but something measured, rooted, and real.
I’m deep in my work, contacts dry, no idea what time it is when I hear the knock on my door. I look up, snapped back to reality at once. The room is eerily silent as I stare at the door, my heart pounding as if I’ve been caught red-handed.
It wasn’t a friendly knock, but deliberate. Official. My mind races to Dean Carlyle, but when I tap my phone screen, I see it’s after ten. I can’t imagine he’d come to my room so late, no matter what Ralston has told him.
I stand from the bed and close my laptop, brushing my hands across my pants to dry the sweat. Slowly, I cross the room and open the door a few inches, my foot propped behind it.
It’s not Dean Carlyle, nor is it Ralston. Instead, I stare at a man dressed in a gray suit in the hallway. He’s squat, round, and has a bald head and graying facial hair.
“Lila Parks?” His expression is dull and disinterested, but it still terrifies me.
“Um. Yes.”
He uncrosses his arms, and I realize he’s holding an envelope as he holds it out to me. I take it without thinking and immediately regret it. “You’ve been served.”
My vision goes fuzzy, and heat floods my cheeks as I grip the envelope, wanting to drop it as if it’s on fire. The man turns and walks off before I can ask a single question, forge a single thought.
I step back and close the door, turning the envelope over in my hand. My name is the only thing written on the outside. I tear it open.
The letterhead is simple and crisp. A law firm I recognize from her book acknowledgments. I don’t have to read a word to know who this is from and what it’s about.
CEASE AND DESIST NOTICE
Re: The unauthorized publication and distribution of defamatory content through the website titled HEAR US ROAR.
Dear Ms. Parks,
You are hereby instructed to remove all existing posts referencing Dr. Althea Ralston from said platform and to cease all solicitation of materials relating to her academic and professional career.
This includes, but is not limited to:
-Allegations of plagiarism
-Unsubstantiated claims of professional misconduct
-Any reference to Dr. Ralston by name or implication
Failure to do so within 24 hours will result in immediate legal action.
I drop the letter onto my bed, my eyes still locked on the page. Even at this late hour, my phone is still buzzing. Notifications keep coming in from the website, along with emails. More stories, more evidence. More people who thought no one cared enough to listen.
Because that’s exactly what she wants.
She wants us to believe no one cares.
And now this. She wants to silence the site. Silence us.
Of course she does. She couldn’t make me disappear on her own, couldn’t offer a price high enough to buy my silence, so now she’s calling in the machine.
The university will press on with their weaponized silence disguised as pragmatism while Ralston throws everything she has at me—warnings dressed in suits and legal paper. Clean. White. Cold.
That worked on me once. Veiled threats wore masks of civility, hinting gently at expulsion from Havenport or the erosion of a career that always shimmered just out of reach, like a mirage. A happy, successful future that, in the end, never came.
But I am not twenty-two anymore. And I’m not alone.
I pick up the letter again, smoothing the corner.
She wants it all gone. The posts, the stories, the names. She thinks because it’s what she wants, she should get it. As easy as that.
I won’t let her win.
I open the website, wait for it to load, and begin to type.