“Barely,” I reply, my tone cutting. “You aren’t writing anymore. Not that I could find, anyway. You aren’t even teaching. I read some of your stuff. I know being an influencer wasn’t your dream. You wanted to be a journalist.”
Her eyes flash with rage. “I gave up on that on my own, not because of her.”
“You actually believe that?” I watch her face, searching for something. Anything.
She doesn’t respond.
I release a breath and turn my head. Outside, students walk across the green lawn with bright scarves and paper coffee cups.
“Look, none of this matters. Ralston is brilliant. We’re nothing. Even if we tried?—”
“She’s a fraud, hiding behind our brilliance. Her only accomplishment is figuring out how to build a legacy on our backs.”
She laughs. She actually laughs. “Wow. You really think you’re that special?”
Her words sting. “Ralston’s brilliance is a mask, and behind it is an empty void hungry for credit. If you can’t see that, I feel sorry for you.”
She sighs, rubbing her forehead as if I’ve exhausted her. “Look, you reached out to me. If you want my advice, here it is. Let it go. Move on and start over. Don’t keep clawing at this. Learn from it. Take that from her. Fighting her won’t give you anything but pain.”
“If we don’t fight, she wins.”
She pushes her chair back from the table. “She already has.”
I ball my hands into fists in my lap. She’s only right if I allow her to be. “Thanks,” I say finally as she stands. “For meeting me.”
She shrugs on her jacket and leaves without another word. For a long time, I just sit there.
In this crowded room, no one is paying me any attention, but still I feel the burn of eyes on my skin. Ralston isn’t here, but I swear I feel her watching me.
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 likeFINAL,FINAL_2,FINALFINAL,FINALFORREALTHISTIME,LASTFINAL,REALFINAL, andFINALFINISHED(USETHISONE), which makes thetask 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 someoneruns like a girland 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.
