Her lipstick is maroon today, a shade I remember as one of her favorites. I found the tube on her desk one day and memorized the name. After class, I went out and bought one of my own, though I’d never bought a fifty-six-dollar tube of lipstick before, and the shade was always too warm for my complexion. Anything to feel closer to her.
Across the room, she moves forward, and the crowd parts as if by instinct, no one taking their eyes off of her. Phones go up. A volunteer rushes over to her, passing a mic.
I hang back, wanting to leave, to be anywhere but here, and yet…I can’t look away. She’s still magnetic to me, even as I burn with hatred.
She raises her arms, the charms of her bracelets chiming like music. Then she lowers the mic to her lips and takes a small breath. “A room full of witches,” she says, winking. Beaming. “Oh, how the world would love to burn us.”
They howl like wolves—with laughter and cheers.
I’ve heard her speak hundreds of times, but it wasn’t until I saw her for who she is that I really started listening to her words. Questioning them. Wondering where she got them.
“My darlings, thank you for being here. Truly, I’m touched by this beautiful art, by your beautiful stories and words and paintings. I want you to know that each and every one of you in this room—you’re why I do what I do. You’re why—so long ago when I came to this campus for the first time with no idea what I could do or if my voice would ever matter—you are the reason I took a chance. The reason I wrote. The reason I spoke. I didn’t know if anyone would listen, but what I did know was that I’d come from a lineage of women—not just bloodlines—who fought for me to be here. Women who believed in a future different from the ones they were suffering through. Afuture where women choose their own paths. Own their own fates. Their own lives. And I wanted to make those women—those dreamers, hopers, and doers—proud. My inheritance was my unwillingness to give up or to obey society’s rules and expectations of me. I had no idea back then what my life would look like, and I never imagined that I’d be standing here alongside some of the most brilliant artists, creatives, and world-changers. That together we’d reclaim what it means to be a woman, living by our own standards and not anyone else’s.”
They cheer, and she waits until they settle down before going on. “But, folks, our work is far from done. We’re here today to celebrate, not just me, but the amazing talent in this room. And celebration is necessary, of course. Of course. But when this is over, we return to the battlefield. Together. We keep the fire alive for the next generation. We make it better for them. For your daughters.” She smiles at a young girl in the crowd, approaches her slowly. When she gets close, she bends down next to the young girl and holds out her hand.
The girl looks up at her mom, who nods. “Go ahead.”
“What’s your name, doll?” Ralston asks.
“Alexandra.”
Ralston’s eyes shine at her. “Alexandra, do you know that every woman in this room is fighting for you?”
More cheers, more applause. I swallow. It’s magical, the way she works. It’s almost possible to forget what lurks underneath.
The girl gives a bashful grin and looks at her mom again. Ralston rubs the girl’s cheek with her thumb before standing, warm as ever. Fake as ever.
She casts an arm out, pointing to the girl. “Our work is to fight for her. For every girl. Our daughters, granddaughters, sisters. So that she can walk home alone without fear. She can jog in the park safely. So she can enjoy her job. Her family. Herhealthcare. Her life. We fight for her, so that someday, some little girl might not need to fight anymore.”
The applause is thunderous in seconds, and it only grows. Eventually, someone takes the mic from Ralston as she moves to the first exhibit, the crowd following her like a swarm of bees.
I scan the masses, searching for a single face that doesn’t seem to be under her spell, but there are none. And can I blame them? She says all the right things. It doesn’t matter to them that it’s all a lie.
As the crowd moves, a familiar face near the back of the crowd jumps out at me.Dani.
She’s lingering back away from the group, her long, dark hair piled messily on top of her head, brow furrowed. I push through the crowd on autopilot until I’m standing next to her, not entirely aware I moved from my original spot.
“Dani.”
She turns, and her smile fades into caution. Anger, maybe. Annoyance, probably. “Lila. Hi.”
“I found it,” I tell her. “The draft of my blog. It’s timestamped. I can prove I was telling the truth yesterday.”
Her eyes widen. “You didn’t need to look for it. I’m changing my draft, okay? Completely reworking it. So we can all just move on.”
“You don’t…you don’t even want to see it? Don’t you want to know she was setting you up?”
“Does it matter? It was a sentence or two. She probably doesn’t even know she did it.”
“She knows,” I argue. “And I think you know that. I think it’s what you’re afraid of. Realizing she’s not who she says she is, because somehow that might mean you aren’t who she saysyouare.” I didn’t realize I had that thought until it came rushing out of me.
For the first time, I think that’s exactly what it is. And what it was for me back then.
If I even considered that Jade could be right, then everything Ralston said about me might not be true. That I was brilliant, special,formidable.And I couldn’t live with that possibility. I needed her to be right.
And Jade to be wrong.
Dani’s eyes go soft, and something in me steadies, a single thread of new hope. Something to tug on.
