I dry my hands on my jeans. I don’t know why I came. Maybe I needed to see it all again for myself, to understand how the lie has grown so big no one even questions it anymore.
Or maybe I just hope someone will.
Someone braver than I was.
Am.
With that, I square my shoulders and continue. I’m already here. I may as well get a glimpse of her. If nothing else, I need to bear witness to what this has become. I need to know. To remind myself of what she is.
The housing office is up ahead, looking just the way I remember: a squat brick building with stained-glass windows too small to belong to churches and too decorative for classrooms. Inside, a student worker in a Ralston Week polo hands me a key attached to a faded leather tag. Everything has to look old. Expensive. Even when it isn’t.
His dark skin is youthful and untouched yet by time as he smiles at me and offers up a Ralston tote bag. I pretend not to notice the gesture, turning away quickly as though I’m distracted.
He doesn’t offer a map or guidance to find my dorm as I make my way to the door, just a warning. “Watch your step—some of the stairwells in the alumni housing aren’t fully reinforced yet.” He seems to rethink his words. “They’re safe, I mean. Just…you know, be careful.”
Lovely.
The leather tag lets me know my temporary housing—or as they’ve chosen to call it in the welcome letter from the event coordinator,Historic Alumni Lodging—is Addison Hall, a building in the southeast corner of campus. If I remember correctly, it’s near the Prism Gallery which was constructed during my first two years of college and showcases feminist art.
Everything about this place sells a story, a lie. Including the neatly trimmed and well-maintained landscaping that leads to Addison Hall. I snort when it finally comes into view, remembering.
Ahh, yes. Right.
The complex is a ghost town full of peeling paint and rotting wood trim, a building that appears to have to hold its breath, so it doesn’t collapse. No wonder it’s so vague in my memory. It was student housing before my time and had already been condemned before I arrived.
They’ve made attempts to clean it up, it’s obvious, but I suspect they’re only opening it now because it’s the fall semester, and they don’t have any other housing available for the massive guest list Ralston must’ve given them.
I force that thought away before it can take root in my brain. The wondering. The questions that have been on my mind for months now. Did Ralston invite me herself? Did she put my name on the list? Or was I only chosen because I was one of her prized students once? Such wondering could drive me mad.
My room is on the second floor, and the stairs creak under my weight. The halls bustle with other arrivals, many wearing shirts with Ralston’s picture or her quotes on them, others carrying her books clutched tightly to their chest. The hallway smells of fresh paint, with a hint of mildew.
My room is cramped, with a twin bed, a desk bolted to the floor, a tall, narrow dresser, and a too-small mirror on the wall. There’s no bathroom or laundry in the rooms themselves. I’ll be back to using a communal facility.
But it’s clean, at least.
I drop my bag on the bed, exhaling. My entire body buzzes with an emotion I can’t quite understand. Part of me wants to run, part of me dreads seeing her.
Part of me is ready.
I’ve been waiting fifteen years for this moment—something deep inside of me knowing it would come. That I’d find myself back here, find myself facing her again.
Ralston is somewhere on this campus. Maybe already doing press, shaking hands, signing books. Her fans are out in full force, ready to laud her for all she’s done.
It’s almost religious—the reverence, the hunger for proximity to her. The way they quote her, follow her, trust her. Peoplewantto believe her. To believeinher. They want her to be everything she claims to be. Maybe that’s why it has worked for so long.
Sometimes all it takes for something to be true is for enough people to believe it is.
I was one of them once, one of the blind. The enamored.
I believed her. Looked up to her. Trusted her. I let her lead me, and I followed with blind faith. She was everything I wanted to be someday.
But now I know better.
I know the truth, and I know all the lies.
CHAPTER THREE
The halls reek of memories and cleaning products. Fifteen years later, it’s still familiar. I think some part of me was already nostalgic for this place long before I left it.
