Page 151 of The Other Side of Green

Greene leaned back in his chair. “Jack, you know what we’ve got to say. You can’t work here anymore. What would the other parents say if they knew that a member of staff who worked with children had consented to sexual relations with one? We’d have kids pulled out of here before the Christmas break.”

“You’re calling them children now? They are college age.”

He nodded, holier than thou.

“Miriam Collins is going live with the story tomorrow. Unless Lyra agrees to to say there has been a misunderstanding about the selection process.”

“Well, we shall have to see what we can do about that. Honestly, Jack, you’ve made this situation so much worse. They would never have been threatening Lyra if they hadn’t had something to use as leverage.”

I snorted a laugh. “Please.”

“I apologise, Jack, but you won’t be able to come back for your PhD, and for that I am truly sorry. You have a gift for nurturing talent, but after what’s happened, I’m sure you can understand the hesitation.”

I nodded. Waited.

“So, rules?” I asked, settling back in the uncomfortable chair they’d left for me to sit in. “Aren’t there other rules for protecting staff?”

I thought back to that long ago conversation we’d had in the café, the one when we’d discussed my teaching aide job.

“Isn’t there a rule that members of faculty staff can’t participate in the application process scholarship places? It would be unethical because it would show favoritism to the winner, to one student, when everyone who studies here pays good money for the opportunity.”

Greene frowned. “You know this, we discussed it.”

“Ah, yes, I remember. I told you it wouldn’t be a problem because I wasn’t interested in anything the Collins family had to buy.”

“Good for you.” He gave me a tight-lipped smile. “Sadly, it doesn’t stop you from being fired for fraternizing with a student.”

I opened the folder and slid it across the desk.

“What’s that, Jack?” the dean asked.

“That? Oh it’s the audition notes from two years ago. Eleanor Hail won it that year, a cellist. She’s doing really well. I don’t remember the audition. Thank God. I hated them; couldn’t wait for them to end when I became employed by the college. But I got a call from London earlier. Apparently one of the other applicants has been bad mouthing Berklee, the scholarship, and me. Black kid. Cellist too. He’s done well, he’s at the Royal College of Music in London, and rumor has it he’s joining the London Symphony.”

The dean held up his hand. “Lovely, Jack, seems we missed out, but what has this got to do with what we’ve discussed?”

“Nothing, really.” I shrugged. “I just find it really annoying when I get blamed for something that wasn’t my fault.” I ran my pointer finger down the list of names and the ledger of payments they’d received to sit on the ‘Independent’ board. “Cross in the morning.” Look, here I am. No money next to my name—guess I didn’t get paid for the pleasure of sitting through it all. Greene in the afternoon.” I stared harder, taking my time. “Ooh, fifteen thousand dollars. Double what everyone else earned that day.”

Greene didn’t say a word, his skin draining slowly of all color.

“I’m guessing you really don’t want that getting to the press, not after all the other headlines.” I let my words dangle. “How would it look if one of your most senior members of staff seemed to be in the back pocket of the racist institution you were trying to separate yourself from? I think your head would be on a stick at the front gates.” I smiled at Greene.

“What do you want, Jack,” he snapped.

“Lyra. You let her stay, and you put goddamn Jensen Collins back in his box. If any stories about Lyra leak to the press, then this will too. After all, I’m guessing you’ve been in contact with him this whole time. How else would he have known back at the beginning of term that Lyra couldn’t play?”

“I have—”

I stood from my seat. “Actually, I don’t care. I’m happy to go. More than happy. But, Lyra, she deserves to play if that’s what she wants.”

Greene met the dean’s eye and then nodded.

“I mean it, one sniff of a story in the press. The slightest hint that Lyra is going to be slurred in public and I swear on my life nothing will be as sweet as my revenge.”

I stalked for the door, desperate to go and find Lyra. Desperate to taste freedom.

I stopped at the door. “Oh and, Greene, stop being a dick and wearing bow ties. That’s why the kids prefer me to you. You’re a dinosaur trapped in a thirty-five-year old’s body.”

I slammed the door, chest lifting free of the constraints banded around it.