One woman recalls how Ralston sat by her hospital bed when she was battling cancer, lending strength and bringing laughter when no one else came.
A man speaks of Ralston’s relentless fight for funding to support marginalized scholars.
Every voice adds to her monument of respect, admiration, devotion. All around me, the truth I know about her is cast into shadows as they shine new lights on her once again.
She just can’t lose.
I stand still, the ground shifting beneath me as hope crumbles at my feet. Every time we take a step forward, she makes sure we’re pushed three steps back. And the worst part is, it’s not even her doing the pushing. She has people for that now.
I know the truth beneath the stories shared on that projector screen. The ones they can never take away. The shadows beneath all of her light.
As I watch the support in the crowd growing, I’m drowning in the silence of all those who’ve never been given the chance to speak.
Someone touches my arm, and I look over my shoulder. Hayden juts her chin toward the exit, and I take the hint, slipping past the people in the doorway, my heart pounding so loudly in my ears I can no longer hear the stories being shared.
Outside, the late-afternoon sky is already gray. Like it, too, knows what just happened. We make our way to the parking lot without ever really planning where to end up. There are no words, just heavy looks exchanged. I don’t think any of us knows what to say, how to address the weight of everything.
We worked so hard—theyworked so hard—and it was wiped away as if it was nothing.
“There’s a place nearby where we can grab food,” Hayden says. “Away from…”
She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. Away from the wreckage. The ruins. We nod in unison and begin to walk.
The diner is small, set back on a quiet street about twenty minutes away from the glare of Havenport. Hayden walks in first, leading us to a booth in the back. We crowd in—Hayden, Jade, Naya, me, and then Professor Bell. The air smells of fried food and coffee, a nauseating but somehow comforting contrast to the sterile chemical stench of the auditorium, which always smells of floor wax and age.
“It doesn’t take away from what we did,” Hayden says, trying to rally us. “It got new eyes on her crimes.”
“All it did was make us look stupid,” Naya says. She’s on her phone, scrolling through comments from her live feed. “Someone else is going live now, showing all the people talking about how she, like, saved their life or whatever. Anyone who saw what happened—whether they were at the ceremony or watching from home—is seeing all the stories being shared now too.”
“It was never going to be easy,” Jade says. “We knew that.”
Professor Bell’s voice is soft. Sad. “All it takes is to change one mind. You don’t bring down empires all at once. And all of those stories, no matter how true, don’t erase the bad she’s done. It doesn’t absolve her. An abusive husband who tips the waitresses well is still an abusive husband.”
“Holy shit.” Naya lifts her phone closer to her face.
“What is it?” Jade asks as we all lean in.
“Someone said they just saw Ralston loading boxes into her car.” She looks up, eyes wide. “Do you think she was fired?”
“Impossible.” The word leaves my mouth before I’ve had time to process it. “They’d never fire her.”
Professor Bell looks as if she agrees, but no one speaks.
Hayden’s phone buzzes next, and she lifts it up. “Umm…”
“What?” Naya asks.
“Someone just sent me this.” She turns the screen around so we can see it. It’s an independent media website, one riddled with ads, but there it is. The headline I’ve dreamed of seeing for so long.
Dr. Althea Ralston Resigns from
Havenport University
There’s no fanfare or explanation, just an article quoting an anonymous source.
“We don’t know if it’s true,” Professor Bell says, worry lines etched into her forehead.
And that uncertainty is all we have until Naya turns her phone around a few minutes later, showing us a photo someone snapped of Ralston placing a box into her trunk.
