Page 38 of Nowhere to Hide
I shower, dress in jeans and a hoodie, then start the walk home.
Only then do I check my phone, and there are nine unread messages.
Ivy.
Mom.
The team WhatsApp.
A grade notification — the Shelton paper, finally.
All in, it’s an avalanche of shit I’ll need to deal with.
Or later tonight, if I’m being honest, the moment I walk in my door.
But I can’t handle it right now. My apartment is a fifteen-minute walk south, and I stand with my keys in my hand, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but there. So, I turn and walk the other way, to campus, with no real destination in mind.
Knowing the problems follow me anywhere I go.
ten
SLOANE
The teaching assistantdoesn’t show up for the evening seminar.
He isn’t late, disengaged, or reading off his phone. He’s just absent, the chair at the front of the table empty, with a group of students sitting around it in awkward silence and Professor Moreno seated off to the side.
Moreno waits four minutes, grading with her red pen and not making a production of it. Then she catches my eye and lifts her chin toward the whiteboard, and I’m so intimidated and impressed by her that I’m up before I find a reason not to.
As seventeen heads track my movement to the front, I keep my eyes on the whiteboard and try to act more composed than I feel. When I’m in position, I flip to chapter three, thankful I did the reading twice to avoid thinking about Rowan.
“Mendez’s framing argument,” I say. “Who wants to start?”
Nobody wants to start.
A girl at the front gives me a sympathetic wince, and I love her for it and also kind of want her to die. The rest of them stare at me, waiting, and at this point, I realize maybe half of them have done the reading and most of them don’t want to speak up.
“Fine, I will.” I tap the page. “The claim that public narratives about transgression aren’t neutral — that someone is always authoring them — frames the whole piece. Does anybody not buy it?”
Prescott’s hand goes up.
“I think she’s overstating,” he says, with the kind of patience men use when they’ve already decided you’re wrong. “The case she cites had a documented record, so the account isn’t authored, it’s reported.”
I let that sit, then I uncap the pen and write RECORD on the whiteboard.
“Okay, but the account puts the woman’s testimonyafterthe committee’s response, so that isn’t therecord, right?” I turn back. “In the record of investigation, the testimony camefirst, and Mendez flips it, so the testimony reads like reaction instead of accusation.”
“So?” Prescott asks, defensively, knowing he’s being set up.
“So the narrative framing — the order of presentation — changes who has agency.”
“That sounds like spin.”
“Itisspin.” I smile. “On the part of the committee, who covered it up.”
Somebody in the middle of the table laughs, low, and I feel the room tilt toward me. But more than that, for the first time since arriving at Halden, I feel the spark of myself without the immediate urge to stuff it back down.
Am I actually enjoying this?
