“No. What’s enough is your apathy, the ingrained sexism in the legal field, and no one doing anything about it.”
He shot to his feet. I refused to have him looking down on me, so I stood too.
“You are not privy to the selection process at Horowitz, Ross, and Shore,” he growled, “and you are not aware of how the real world works. But you will be very soon, so let me give you one quick lesson now. Women who throw around those kinds of baseless accusations against institutions such as Fulton Academy and Horowitz, Ross, and Shore very quickly find themselves unemployable. I would’ve thought that as a student of law, you’d know not to make accusations without proof. I’m sure you could cause a media storm in a teacup what with all this social media and the Twitter and such, but I’d be very careful who you make enemies of, Miss Mead, if you wish to have any chance of being employed after you finish college.”
I immediately wanted to post, tweet, fucking TikTok about this and show him just how fast I could cause some trouble. And his suggestion that I’d be ruining all my carefully laid plans by doing so was . . . weirdly freeing? I guess I was just in a “fuck everything” kind of mood.
He gathered some papers off his desk, walked to his door, and held the handle. “The bell rang ten minutes ago. I’m late for a meeting, and you should be in class.”
I was clearly dismissed, but it was probably for the best. The urge to grab his too-short tie and twist until he couldn’t speak nonsense anymore was growing by the second.
“This is bullshit,” I muttered as I stormed past him and down the corridor.
He let the cursing slide, pulling the door shut and rushing off in the opposite direction.
Chapter Eleven
Hendrix
My meeting with the guidance counselor was mandatory, but missing most of lunch to sit in an office with a woman who had no concept of my past turned out to be as big a waste of time as I thought it would be. When she asked why I hadn’t graduated last year as I was supposed to, I told her that information should be in my file and I wasn’t comfortable talking about it. I resented that it had even been brought up in such a casual way.
Then she spent a stupid amount of time rambling about college applications and areas of study while I tried to keep my bored mask in place. In reality, my skin was crawling, and I wanted to storm out of there the entire time. To her credit, she did try to ask me questions about what I wanted to do after high school, but I didn’t give her much in the way of responses. Because I had no fucking clue. I just wanted to get through the school year and graduate. I couldn’t bear to think about what would come after, what kind of future I might have.
I was so wrapped up in thoughts of a potential future I didn’t deserve that I almost missed the blonde ball of anger barreling toward me from the other end of the hallway.
Seeing Donna made me pause and look around. Where the hell was I? Somehow I’d wandered into a quiet, locker-free corridor I wasn’t familiar with. I was still getting the lay of the land—the school was massive.
“What the hell are you doing in the administrative wing, Hendrix?” Donna stopped directly in front of me and somehow managed to look down her perfect little nose—despite being a good foot shorter. She was seething.
I knew she couldn’t stand the sight of me, but even I couldn’t elicit this level of rage. What was up her ass?
I made sure not to let my amusement show as I frowned down at her. “None of your business.”
Oh, she did not like that at all. She took another step closer, her chest just inches from mine, and gritted her teeth, but she didn’t seem to have a witty comeback. I kept perfectly still, stifling the chuckle that was bursting to tumble out of me.
When it became apparent she wasn’t going to say anything, I looked around the corridor, careful not to give away how affected I actually was by her proximity, by her sweet, girly smell in my nose. “Why’s it so quiet here?”
She finally found her voice. “Because anyone who’s not teaching a class is currently in a