But it’s no use. It’s her.
She’s everywhere this week, even in my head. Even in my dreams. She smiles from every corner, every poster, every shirt. Following me like a ghost. Smiling like a bobcat—teeth too white and sharp—daring me to take another step.
I don’t want to take another step, but I also can’t stop myself.
I sit up, throwing the blanket off my legs. My skin instantly cools in the fan’s breeze. I cross the room and pull my laptop from the bag on the floor. Back in bed, I open a browser.
Still, I have no real plan. Just instinct. The same thing that led me to Bell’s office. A whim. A hope. A dull ache in the pit of my stomach that won’t let me go back to sleep, that warns me of the dead ends I’ve hit and the sand in my hourglass running out.
I go to the Havenport student newspaper archive—The Beacon—and type in her name.
Althea Ralston
There are over four thousand results. No surprise. Panels, interviews, awards, articles. Quotes that make her sound somehow wise and relatable.
I refine the search, starting with the year I left. Scrolling back, I look for patterns.
There were others. I know there were. Bell all but confirmed it. I wasn’t special, I was just one in a line of many. This place gives her a never-ending conveyor belt of targets.
And I’m right.
It doesn’t take long to see it. Every three or four years, there’s a new name mentioned beside hers too often. A new student “protégé.”
Always a young woman.
Each one, at first introduction, appears in glowing language. She’s a “rising voice” or “fresh thinker.” She’s working closely with Ralston as her newest mentee.
And then, things start to shift. She goes from very visible to…nothing. To silence. The women don’t last more than a few years. Not in the press. Not in the programs. Not in the profession. You could easily look at it as though the woman just left the university, but none of these women did anything else either. They aren’t writing anymore, unless it’s under pen names. None of them seem to be…anywhere. Ralston closed the door and turned out the light on their careers, their dreams, just like she did on me.
I make a list:
Naya Sanchez
Hayden French
Priya Sharma
With Dani next, the women account for nearly the entirety of my fifteen-year absence. She just kept doing it. Just kept getting away with it, all while pretending to be our champion, all while promoting “the sisterhood.”
The truth is the sisterhood is a fragile myth, a promise that’s only ours if we fight for it. Right now, it’s painfully obvious the silence between us is real. I didn’t warn them, and they didn’t warn the others. No one stopped her.
They say we have to stand together as women, but it’s clear we only do it when it’s safe. When the space is paved and waiting for us. When someone hands us the mic.
I don’t want to be quiet anymore. Safe. I want to be loud enough to shatter the silence—before the silence swallows us whole.
I Google each of the women’s names, digging deep into the pages of search results, but there’s nothing.
No academic bios. No university careers. No articles published. No novels. No podcasts. No glowing careers. No dreams come true.
Naya Sanchez is the one I find the most on. There is one article about her, a faculty page welcoming her as an adjunct professor for one of their summer programs. It’s dated six years ago, and there’s no mention of her on the current faculty listing or the semester’s calendar.
It looks like she’s a makeup influencer now. And with a decent following actually. I click on the link, opening her Instagram.
The first picture forces a breath of air into my lungs. It was posted today. In it, she’s posing with a group of other women under a bright purple banner:
Ralston Week
The caption simply says,They say you can’t come home…
