My stomach twists violently. I’m shaking, half tempted to run from the room, but that will only draw attention to me.
This was a mistake.
I shouldn’t be here.
I can’t watch this.
Dean Carlyle steps back toward the microphone once Ralston reaches his side and continues his speech. “For over thirty years, Professor Ralston has been a force of intellect and integrity, not just at Havenport, but across the world. Her writing—fearless and unflinching—has forced us all to ask the hard questions, and has generated real, lasting change.”
I close my eyes, drowning in his words. Ralston may have done a lot of good—I’d be a fool to argue that—but does it outweigh the bad? At the end of the day, does it matter who the message belonged to, so long as it gets out?
Who gets to speak? Who gets to be heard?
I posed those questions in class once, meaning to lead the discussion on the topic. Ralston smiled then—indulgent and dismissive—and chose someone else’s question to direct our conversation for the day. She pretended not to have heard me, and I wasn’t even certain she had, but then she pulled me aside after class to tell me it was an interesting thought. That she wanted to discuss it further.
After things ended with us, when she cut me off in every way that mattered—dismissed and belittled my research proposal for the senior thesis she’d later take credit for, stopped acknowledging me in class even when I was the only one with my hand raised, and used my words over and over again in her books and speeches without speaking my name for credit or acknowledging it in any way—those questions suddenly felt ominous. Like a warning from my past self.
They were no longer rhetorical.
They were what I desperately needed answers to.
“She has not only advanced the field, she has mentored generations of students—many of whom sit in this very room—who now carry her legacy forward.”
I run my finger across her name on the program, looping and tracing each letter. He speaks of us as if we are, in fact, the beloved heirs she spoke of two days ago in my dorm, and not the shadowy remnants of her eraser marks.
Her legacy.
Then again, I suppose Ralston’s legacy is exactly what we are.
Me.
Jade.
Naya.
Dani.
Hayden.
Professor Bell.
We are the pain she will leave behind.
We are how she should be remembered.
Someday, when Ralston is gone, there will be so many names buried under hers—some mentioned in footnotes, some discarded completely.
All forgotten.
In the end, none of us will shine as brightly as the woman on that stage.
“So, without further ado, please join me in celebrating Professor Ralston, recipient of a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award and someone who continues to remind us that the work of equity and inclusion is never finished and never silent.”
The crowd stands again, roaring with cheers, hands above their head. I go unnoticed, still frozen in my seat.
From where I sit, I catch sight of Professor Bell near the front. She’s standing, clapping, a bright smile on her face. My stomach sinks.
No.
