Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The next morning, I pack my bags in the hotel room, double-checking my flight information. I’m going home. Returning to a normal I no longer recognize, returning as a person I no longer recognize.
After dinner last night, Hayden came back to my hotel room and removed Ralston’s software from my laptop.
She triple-checked to make sure there are no traces of her left on my hard drive, but I’m still paranoid enough that I’ll be getting a new laptop as soon as I’m home.
I changed all my important passwords from my phone while she worked.
We also updated a few things on HEAR US ROAR while she was here.
The site is still up and steadily filling with new stories.
She fixed a few bugs in my security settings—or something like that—and updated the layout.
She added tags, so people can search for posts based on universities, professors’ names, and class years.
With just a few tweaks, it’s infinitely better, and I’m thankful for it. Especially as news stations and celebrities begin to talk about it more often. As more people use it to call out and take down their personal dragons.
Even if this was always about Ralston for me, it was about all of it for someone else. We’re not so different, Ralston and I. When it comes down to it, we both want to better the world. We just have different ideas about how to do that.
Scrolling through social media, you can’t miss the highlights from last night’s awards ceremony. Videos and photos, people talking about their experience while eating breakfast in their kitchens.
Hashtags trend on both sides. For every #JusticeforRalston, #CancelCultureWitchHunt, and #ThisIsWhyWomenDontSucceed, there’s a #IStandWithTheRalstonVictims, #YourStoriesMatter, or #BelieveWomen.
The voices are as divided as they ever were.
Some rally behind us. Others still root for Ralston.
People share stories, raise questions, and call for real accountability.
A few accounts post videos burning her books.
Others share her TED Talks pleading for people to listen and understand Ralston could never do the things she’s being accused of.
Many, many people call the anonymous women names, accuse us of being jealous, and blame the whole thing on internalized misogyny.
Dr. Ralston is brilliant. A freaking pioneer. Anyone who tries to tear her down is just jealous.
I’m so thankful I grew up in a world where Althea Ralston exists.
@AltheaRalston thank you for fighting for me even before I was born!
Girl, she made mistakes, sure. But she’s a woman in a man’s world. Cut her some slack.
Couldn’t care less what she’s accused of. I’m forever a Dr. Ralston girlie. She’s a victim of professional jealousy and gossip. Be so fucking for real right now. This ain’t high school.
This is officially an Althea Ralston stan account until further notice.
Shame on Havenport University! Reinstate Dr. Ralston or watch our daughters boycott your shitty school.
Unsurprisingly, Ralston’s defenders are loud and organized. By noon, there are half a dozen protests planned. There are social media groups. Her podcast reaches number one, and her books skyrocket on the charts.
Her detractors feel…scattered. Isolated. Even online, we’re silenced. The posts I see defending us have very few comments or likes, while the ones defending her seem to go viral in an instant.
The university’s statement is echoed everywhere, and it quickly becomes clear that most people won’t take anyone’s word for it but Ralston’s. If she never admits to wrongdoing, then no wrongdoing was done.
And Havenport? They’re still wishing her well.
That’s the part that stings. This isn’t justice—it isn’t because they believe us. Ralston wasn’t punished for what she’s done. She was removed because she became a liability.
Once my bags are packed, and I’ve checked out of the hotel, I have a few hours to kill before my Uber is scheduled to pick me up.
I leave my bags with the woman at the front desk and step outside, heading toward Havenport for what I know will be the last time.
Even if I had a reason to return, something tells me it will always be a little too painful, that the memories will always sting.
But still, I can’t resist saying goodbye.
Campus feels different without Ralston. Quiet. Smaller somehow.
The Ralston Week banners have all been removed, but her new plaque is still there on the Equity Walk and I notice a few random flyers from her protest yesterday dragging along the sidewalk in the breeze.
Even gone, she’s still here.
Campus security passes me without incident, though I don’t know if they’re actually allowing me to be here or if they’re just distracted.
As I pass groups of students, the usual hum of conversation is tinged with unease. I head to Liza Hall, looking for Ralston’s old office, wondering what’s left of it. Part of me expects to find her still there, working in secret behind a curtain as if she’s some Ozian wizard.
Instead, interns file silently out of the once-sacred office. The last one to leave flicks off the light. I watch, holding my breath.
When they’re gone, I can’t help myself. I move forward and peek inside. A few boxes sit stacked in the corner, trophies and photos jutting out of the top.
Everything has been boxed and sealed, the room a blank canvas like the last remnants of a life wiped away. Like she was never here at all.
A group of students walks past me, and a girl mutters under her breath, almost in warning, “That’s what you get for helping too many people, I guess.”
Her words sting my skin like a scrape. Is that what it was? Helping? Is that why she took from so many? To help even more?
Maybe I’ll never have the answer to that. Maybe most people will hate me for what I’ve done, for seeking to destroy a system that helps as much as it hurts.
I hear her voice before I see her, still as loud and demanding as ever. As if she’s unaware she’s supposed to be resigning in disgrace.
“And I’ll want those photos shipped. I’ve already told Peter,” she’s saying.
When I look up, she’s walking down the hallway, staring at her phone while she talks to the young woman standing next to her.
She’s wearing black today, though still her usual pantsuit.
I wonder if she threw out all her purple, or if she’s holding on to it, waiting for this to inevitably be overturned so she can return home.
Her smile is calm, and you’d never know she’s a woman in crisis from the look of her. She doesn’t even seem irritated. She’s almost completely unaffected. She’s also walking faster now.
My heart sinks—she’s coming straight toward me.
There’s no time to think, only to react.
I dart forward into her office and search for a place to hide.
I rush to the window as I hear her voice again.
Closer now. I look out the glass pane, searching for a patio or landing to step on, but there’s nothing.
We’re four floors up, so as tempting as a jump to safety might be, it isn’t possible.
When she’s so close I can hear her heels clicking against the floor, I pull the curtain aside and hide behind it. It’s foolish, like a child playing hide-and-seek, but the curtain is heavy enough, made of thick enough material, I think it’ll conceal me well should she come into the office.
Then, as if I’ve willed it to happen, as soon as the thought crosses my mind, the light in the room flicks on, and I hear her voice again. “Okay, so it’s just those few boxes left and the photos downstairs.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She lets out a soft humph. “That’s how easy it is for this place to erase you.”
“I’m sorry, Professor Ralston. For what it’s worth, I know it isn’t true. What they’re…saying about you.”
“Oh, no need to be sorry, dear. I’m a cat with nine lives. I’ll land on my feet. The world is my classroom, you know? It was never about these walls.” She’s trying to sound brave, but I know her well enough to know the truth. She’s devastated. She’s also pissed.
I hear a soft knock and then a new voice. “Could we talk?”
Dean Carlyle.
“Sure,” Ralston says in a clipped tone. “Jenny, will you give us just a moment before we worry about the boxes?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll just run down and check on a few things.”
There’s a pause, and then I hear the door close. My heart is thumping so loudly I worry they’ll hear it. And my nose is suddenly, inconveniently, itchy.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t the one to deliver the news last night. I’d planned for it to be me.”
Ralston’s voice is low, almost amused. “Yes, well, you were rather busy, weren’t you?
Conveniently. You think I haven’t already heard this was planned long before the interruption in my speech?
You forget I have friends here, James. Not just you.
You were going to fire me even without that little stunt. ”
My throat goes dry. Is that true?
His voice is heavy, dark. “It was out of my hands. All these years, all the scandals and the whispers—I was the one who protected you, don’t forget. But this time, it was too big. The board gave us no choice. The second that website went viral, it was over. You had to know that.”
She lets out a soft laugh. “And I suppose a little warning would’ve been too much to ask.”
“I considered it. I wanted you to enjoy your night. You earned it. I was told she’d wait until today to talk to you. But when everything happened at the ceremony, she saw her chance.”
“And wasted no time.” Ralston hums with disapproval. “It was always going to be me at the end of the day, wasn’t it?”
Dean Carlyle sighs. “Look, we both know if anyone should’ve been held accountable, it’s me.
But neither of us are foolish enough to pretend it’s that simple.
The university would never survive a scandal of that magnitude.
Not from the Carlyle line. You’ll be fine, Althea, you know that.
People aren’t going to take the word of some jealous women. ”
“Yes, that was what you taught me, wasn’t it?
In all your self-aggrandizement, you failed to mention that I’m the one who saved you in the beginning.
Remember that? That little plagiarism scandal could’ve sunk you, not to mention the sexual harassment.
If I hadn’t vouched for you and ruined that girl—”
“And haven’t I rewarded you for it?”
A cold wave of nausea crests in my stomach.
“Not enough. Not if I go down for what you taught me to do.”
“I stole one novel. You stole dozens,” he says.
“You slept with your students.”
I feel sick, dizzy. This is so much bigger than Ralston. Professor Bell was right. Dean Carlyle is…worse, somehow. Ralston shielded him. Learned from him. And he helped her grow into what she is today.
They protected each other.
Two vultures circling the carcasses they planned to ravage.
“Those allegations were never proven,” he says, matter-of-factly. “And they won’t be. Those girls are long gone, and they know better than to come back.”
“And what about mine? What about the skeletons that have escaped my closet?”
“You know as well as I do how to pick them,” he says, lowering his voice, as if this might be the worst thing he’s said. “You choose the ones they’ll never listen to.”
I have to wonder now if Ralston was always this person, or if the dean first taught her everything she knows. I wonder if she thought she’d always be protected—even as a sheep—so long as she walked among the leopards.
“You’ll be fine, Althea. Write a new book. Go on vacation. Let the voices quiet down when they realize they can’t reach you. You’ll be back out there before you know it.”
So that’s it. Like I suspected, she’s not even being punished for the theft, only for the fact that it became too public. The university doesn’t care about her crimes, only that they’ve become a crack in their shining vase. They’re patching over her with a smile as if she never existed.
I grip the wall behind me, trying not to scream. Years of fighting. Years of betrayals. And at the end of the day, it all folds into this brutal truth. The system protects itself, and those who expose its rot become the sacrificial lambs.
Friend or foe, if they need a scapegoat, they will always choose someone from the bottom rung.
We didn’t win. We just took out the person a step ahead of us.