Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Reese
Dr. Okafor asks me to describe the dead animal one more time.
I’ve described it twice already. Once on the intake form, once in the first meeting. Now I’m in a conference room on the third floor of Whitaker Hall in front of an administrative panel of four, and she wants it again while Kinsley Adams sits six feet away with her parents’ lawyer.
“It was a squirrel,” I say. “Left outside my dorm room in a cardboard box with a note that said You’re mine and I won’t let anyone else touch you. Its neck was broken. It was fresh.”
The panel chair is a man from the Dean of Students office named Dr. Warren, and he writes something on a legal pad.
Beside him Okafor’s face gives away nothing.
The other two are a faculty representative I don’t know and Assistant Director Carmine from Athletics, who has been watching me with the same detachment she brought to every practice she observed this spring.
“And you attributed this to Ms. Adams?” Warren asks.
“The escalation was consistent. Kinsley went from verbal harassment to physical intimidation to surveillance to property damage. A dead animal is the next rung.”
“Allegedly,” the lawyer says. He’s silver-haired and expensive, the kind who bills in quarter-hours and doesn’t lose. “My client categorically denies involvement in the incident Ms. Callahan has described.”
I don’t look at Kinsley. I haven’t looked at her since I came in. I can feel her staring at me from across the room anyway.
“We’re not relitigating individual incidents,” Okafor says.
“We’re reviewing the findings of the investigation and determining a response.
For the record, given the ongoing retaliation, the athletics implications, and the proximity of national competition, this matter was moved to an expedited review. ”
She opens a folder. It’s thick. Tyler’s evidence plus everything her office turned up on its own, and I know what’s in it because he walked me through every page last night the way he walks through split times.
The second-account posts. Metadata putting the restaurant photos on Kinsley’s phone.
The records access, traced to an administrative assistant in the registrar’s office who happens to be Kinsley’s mother’s sorority sister.
Statements from three women on the rowing team who came forward on their own once the investigation opened.
And the video from the quad. Thirty angles of Kinsley publicly harassing me the morning after her post, which is the retaliation Tyler said she’d commit before she committed it.
“The evidence supports a pattern of targeted harassment beginning in late February and escalating through the present,” Okafor says, reading from her summary.
“Including unauthorized surveillance, dissemination of private images, improper access to protected student records, physical intimidation, and destruction of property.”
She looks up.
“Additionally, Ms. Adams’s social media post the day after Ms. Callahan filed constituted retaliation against a complainant, which is a separate violation under university policy.”
“My client was exercising her right to free speech,” the lawyer says.
“Your client posted intimate images of another student without consent and disclosed protected designation information obtained through an improper records access.” Okafor’s voice doesn’t change.
She could be reading a shopping list. “That is not protected speech under any reading of university policy.”
Kinsley whispers something to her lawyer. He puts a hand on her arm and she shakes it off.
“This is bullshit.”
“Ms. Adams,” Warren says.
“No. This is bullshit.” Her voice is climbing. “She lied about what she is. She manipulated an entire team of Alphas with her pheromones. She’s been sleeping with all of them and you’re sitting here like I’m the problem?”
“Ms. Adams, I’m going to ask you to let your counsel speak for you.”
“My counsel isn’t saying what needs saying.
” She’s on her feet. Her lawyer takes her elbow and she pulls free.
“You want to know what Reese Callahan actually is? She’s an Omega.
She registered as a Beta. She’s been lying to this university since the day she transferred and nobody in this room seems to care. ”
The room goes quiet. Okafor’s pen has stopped. Carmine leans forward a fraction.
I’ve been braced for the accusation. What I wasn’t braced for is what the word Omega does to the four faces at that table. Warren’s eyes narrow. The faculty rep glances at Carmine. Nobody at that table is looking at me like a complainant anymore.
They’re looking at me like a problem that has arrived on their desk.
“Ms. Callahan’s designation is not the subject of this hearing,” Okafor says, and I hear how carefully that sentence is built. Not a denial. Not a defense. A procedural redirect.
“It should be,” Kinsley snaps. “She’s a fraud.”
“My designation was registered as Undifferentiated at the time of my transfer.” My voice comes out steady, because Tyler drilled me on this last night until the words ran on their own.
“My medical records, which Ms. Adams accessed improperly, reflect a subsequent update that occurred after my enrollment. I did not misrepresent my status during the admissions or transfer process.”
It’s true. Technically.
My father filed that registration when I was sixteen. The suppressants kept my biology ambiguous enough to get through medical screening, and by the time the status was formally updated I was already enrolled and racing.
The lawyer leans in. “And when exactly was that update made?”
“That’s a question for the registrar, not for this hearing,” Okafor says. “We’re here to address the complaint Ms. Callahan filed against Ms. Adams. Not the reverse.”
The damage is done anyway. I can see it on all four faces. Kinsley just put something in the ground that’s going to grow no matter what gets decided in this room today.
The hearing runs another forty minutes. The lawyer works each piece of evidence in turn.
The restaurant footage was taken in a public place.
The morning photograph was taken from a public road.
The post was commentary. Every argument is thin and Okafor takes each one apart without raising her voice, and after a while I stop listening.
I watch the panel instead. Warren keeps glancing at his phone under the table. The faculty rep hasn’t spoken in twenty minutes. Carmine is looking at me the way she looked at our crew through those observed practices, measuring and filing it away for a report I will never read.
They’re going to rule for me. The evidence is overwhelming and Kinsley torpedoed whatever her lawyer was building the second she stood up. They’re also going to flag my designation for review, and I can feel that coming as clearly as I can feel the chair under me.
The win is going to cost me.
“Based on the findings of Dr. Okafor’s investigation,” Warren says at last, “this panel finds that Ms. Adams engaged in a sustained pattern of harassment and retaliation against Ms. Callahan, in violation of the university’s harassment, retaliation, privacy, and student conduct policies.”
Kinsley goes white.
“The recommended sanctions are immediate suspension from all university athletics, a no-contact order covering Ms. Callahan and every member of the men’s varsity crew, and referral to the student conduct board for additional sanctions.”
“You can’t do this.” Her voice has gone thin. “My mother is on the alumni board. My family has donated—”
“Ms. Adams.” Warren’s tone closes the door.
“Your family’s contributions are not relevant to conduct findings.
You are suspended from competition effective immediately.
The no-contact order takes effect the moment you leave this room.
Your counsel receives the written decision within forty-eight hours. ”
The lawyer stands, already assembling the appeal in his head. Kinsley doesn’t move. She stares at me the way you’d stare at a bill you were certain somebody else was paying.
I meet her eyes for the first time all afternoon.
I don’t gloat and I don’t smile and I don’t say anything. I just let her see that I’m still here. That the photographs and the dead animal and the whispering and the public humiliation weren’t enough.
Her lawyer walks her out. The door closes.
“Ms. Callahan,” Okafor says. “A word before you go.”
The others file out. Carmine pauses at the door, looks back at me, and leaves without saying anything. Warren nods at Okafor and follows.
When it’s the two of us, Okafor sets her pen down.
“You handled that well.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m going to be direct.” She meets my eyes. “Ms. Adams’s comments about your designation are on the record now, and I can’t unring that. Carmine reports to the athletics department, and they will have questions.”
“I know.”
“The university’s position on mixed-designation team dynamics is still developing. The current policy wasn’t written for a situation like yours. There may be further inquiries.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?” She leans forward slightly. “Because what I’m telling you off the record is that winning this may have opened a different door, and that one is harder to close.”
I sit with it. Through the window I can see the quad three floors down, students crossing between classes with no idea any of this is happening above their heads.
“I’d rather fight something I picked than hide from something somebody picked for me.”
Okafor studies me, then nods once, like I’ve confirmed something she already suspected.
“Your teammates are downstairs. Mr. Strickland has been pacing the lobby for an hour. Mr. Lockwood hasn’t moved from his chair.” The corner of her mouth moves. “They aren’t subtle.”
“They never are.”
“Go home, Ms. Callahan. Take the weekend.”
I pick up my bag and walk out into the third-floor hallway. The fluorescents buzz. My heels click on the tile. I feel scraped out, like something’s been taken and I haven’t identified what yet.