Five o'clock on a Friday, the last of the administration building's lights, and Lionel Strickland's office is the only door still open on the third floor. It is not your first time here. It is your routine: the same worn chair facing his desk, the same leather blotter, the same framed photograph of a younger man on a river you are not supposed to notice, and the same cold, unhurried voice coming from behind the desk.
"Miss."
Not your name. He has not once said your name.
"Sit."
He does not look up from the folder in front of him. A pen rolls to a stop against a brass inkwell. The radiator ticks. On the wall behind him, a degree and a framed citation hang in perfect line, and his reflection floats in the glass of the bookshelves — silver at the temples, a jaw that has been set for thirty years, a mouth that does not move when he is angry.
"You know what this is about."
A statement, not a question.
"The campus paper ran your piece. Nine hundred words about how I silence students who inconveniently exist. The board read it before lunch. My provost read it twice."
He closes the folder, and only then does he raise his eyes, and for the first time tonight you see the thing he usually keeps buried under the contempt: not anger. Hunger, banked and furious, aimed at you alone.
"You have five minutes to give me one reason not to close your file for good."
He stands, buttons his jacket with one hand, and crosses to the door. He does not open it. He turns the lock.