Frat Girl. Kiley Roache

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ red, and a few people laugh.

      “Tell your mother I say hello. I do hope the only person you felt the need to contact during my class is the woman who brought you into this world. Otherwise, do put it away.”

      He sheepishly slides the phone into his backpack.

      “Now, where was I?” She puts her glasses back on. “Oh, yes. The Hawthorne effect. So now, knowing this, it makes sense to conduct some studies covertly, although, that of course carries its own array of risks...”

      The door in the back of the room swings open, but luckily, Professor Abbott is too engrossed in her notes to notice.

      I see someone walking down the aisle out of the corner of my eye, but I am too terrified of my tiny, fierce professor to look.

      “Excuse me,” a familiar voice whispers.

      My heart skips a beat as Jordan shimmies past the rest of the people in my row and settles into the seat next to me.

      I steal a glance. He’s fishing through his backpack for a notebook, so luckily he doesn’t see me staring. He’s wearing a checkered button-down and light blue shorts, impeccably dressed for a nine o’clock class. And he looks good, like so good I have a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was hoping he wouldn’t live up to the memory I had replayed in my mind as I lay in bed the night before. But instead he’s even more beautiful than I remembered. I’m painfully aware of how close he’s sitting to me, scared I’ll give myself away, like he’ll hear my breath catch or my heart race.

      He looks over, and my eyes dart to the front of the room, where Professor Abbott is rambling on about things that honestly would probably be very helpful for me to know. But I can’t focus, can’t hear anything but my own heart beating wildly.

      I keep my eyes forward as he leans over and whispers, “You could’ve just told me you were going to DTC.”

      I glance over. “I didn’t know what to say.”

      He stares at me like he’s trying to figure something out. Then he shakes his head and turns to his notebook.

      He doesn’t say anything for the rest of class, taking notes in tiny, neat handwriting and meticulously organized columns.

      My own notes are an appalling scrawled mix of cursive and printing, sometimes veering off the lines.

      When the lecture ends, he leaves without saying anything to me.

      Okay, then, bye.

      I head out into the fresh air and feel a bit better in the California sun. I cut through the sandstone quad, past the dry fountain and toward the coffee shop.

      I am here, I keep telling myself, but it doesn’t seem real as I walk through scenery I’m used to seeing on postcards.

      I grab a cappuccino so I won’t be too dead for my first meeting with the professor who will be helping me with my independent study.

      My project coordinator, an uptight blonde from the Upper East Side who’s constantly checking one of her countless social media accounts on one of her two smartphones, is not my favorite person. We’ve had several Skype meetings, and she is always wearing designer business wear and telling me that this topic “is so hot right now” and “will generate so much buzz” once we go public. That’s her favorite word, I think, buzz. She truly sounds like a bee during most of our calls. It just worries me that she doesn’t seem to care what people will say about the project as long as they’re saying something.

      But I do have to give it to her; she hooked me up with about the best faculty adviser in the history of ever. I’ve been a fan of her for years, reading her entire body of work the summer I first heard about her, and impatiently anticipating the release of everything she’s done since. One of the top women’s studies professors in the world, and she’s going to sit for an hour a week and listen to me rant about frats. I almost feel bad for her.

      The imposing door in front of me opens. A beautiful, tall black woman smiles at me. She’s wearing a patterned dress that complements her headscarf. She looks polished and smart, but also like she exudes sunshine. A bit different from the salt-and-pepper-haired old men in heavy black and navy suits who teach so many of the classes here.

      “Hello, I’m Dr. Eva Price.”

      I know. I’ve read all your books. “Cassie Davis.”

      “Would you like something to drink? Coffee, water, juice?” she asks as she leads me into her office.

      There is a grand dark-wood desk, and ornate bookshelves overflowing with easily hundreds of books, as well as vases and boxes covering every available surface.

      Most notable are the pictures on the wall behind her desk, so that when she sits she’s flanked by photographs of her at the Fruitvale Station protests, holding a sign outside the Supreme Court during Roe v. Wade, meeting Malala on the floor of the UN, deep in conversation with Nelson Mandela, shaking hands with the president of the United States. Jesus.

      She sits, and so do I, feeling about an inch tall. There is no way she should be taking on my project. She’s light-years too big for this.

      “Well, I’m going to make myself some tea, if you don’t mind.” She grabs a mug off her shelf.

      Speechless, I nod. It’s always odd to see larger-than-life people do such mundane things.

      She settles into her chair. “So, I know this is the last thing you want to hear right now, but as feminists—You do consider yourself a feminist, yes?”

      “Yes, of course.”

      “Good. I always like to avoid the whole ‘feminism means equality’ conversation when I can. You do not understand, Ms. Davis, how exhausting it is to have to urge young women to align themselves with a movement that simply fights for their dignity.”

      She takes a sip of her tea. “So, as I was saying. As feminists, I don’t know if this is exactly what we want to or need to be getting behind right now, and I know that’s scary to hear. But I think as a researcher, an activist, or a writer, that sort of self-reflection, continuously asking yourself, Why am I doing this? Is this the best way to go about it? Is this what the cause needs right now? is endlessly important.

      “When it comes to creating a just world, you have two main fights, in my opinion. There’s the legal and the social. Do you know the slogan ‘the personal is political’?” She gets up and scans her shelves, finally grabbing a book and handing it to me before she sits back down.

      “It comes from second-wave feminism,” she says. “The idea that we aren’t just fighting for the vote, which we had by that time. It meant that the issues women continually face in personal relationships, like gender roles in the traditional family, are a huge social problem and not isolated incidences. It’s similar to the philosophy that microaggressions—those little acts of prejudice, like asking a biracial person ‘what they are’ or touching a black woman’s head in public because you want to feel her natural hair, or assuming all Hispanic people are Mexican—can add up to become a major contribution to the continuation of systematic oppression.”

      She pauses, probably to see if I’m still following, so I nod.

      “And while I don’t think people СКАЧАТЬ