“No, Brooke.”
She adjusted the papers.
“That being the same thing to you is actually interesting.”
Brooke’s smile vanished.
Nyla walked away.
The comment bothered her more after she reached class.
Not because Brooke had disagreed.
Because the project itself was becoming proof of Nyla’s supposed obsession.
If she found discrimination, she was looking for it.
If she investigated whether discrimination happened, she was making everything about race.
The framework left no room for history to contain racism without the historian being accused of creating it.
Nyla told Harper.
Not as a complaint.
As context.
Harper asked whether she wanted him to intervene.
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want every stupid comment becoming disciplinary paperwork.”
Harper nodded.
“Reasonable.”
Then added:
“Keep your own notes.”
Nyla did.
Date.
Location.
Words.
Witnesses.
No adjectives.
Her father approved.
“Documentation.”
Her mother groaned.
“Do not encourage her.”
“This is why spreadsheets exist.”
“This is not inventory.”
“All systems are inventory.”
Nyla laughed.
Malcolm created a folder anyway.
The deeper Nyla went into the archive, the less simple Charles Whitman became.
A 1972 memo showed him opposing a parent request to remove Black Voices, a poetry anthology, from an English reading list.
A 1973 letter showed him defending a Black teacher accused of being “too political” for discussing the civil-rights movement.
Then came Jerome Bell.
Recommendation for expulsion.
No reference to weeks of harassment.
No acknowledgement that another student reportedly shoved first.
Same man.
Same school.
Different record.
Nyla loved the contradiction academically.
Brooke hated it personally.
The conflict escalated after Nyla interviewed Evelyn Ross Carter—not related to Nyla’s family—the white student whose handwritten statement appeared in Jerome’s file.
Evelyn was sixty-nine and lived in Norfolk.
The interview happened by video call.
She remembered the hallway fight clearly.
“Jerome was angry.”
“Did he start it?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I saw Tommy Graves shove him.”
Evelyn described reporting what she saw to an assistant principal.
Charles Whitman.
“Did he believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your statement go into the file?”
“You found it.”
Nyla smiled.
“Right.”
Evelyn became quieter.
“I always wondered why it changed nothing.”
That sentence entered Nyla’s draft.
Not as proof of motive.
As a question.
Why preserve a witness statement and then write a final summary that minimized it?
Nyla emailed the district archive requesting any correspondence from Charles Whitman around the case.
The archivist said they would search.
Brooke somehow learned about the interview.
Sarah told her.
Sarah learned from Cassidy.
Cassidy had mentioned it without realizing the information would travel.
Monday morning, Brooke approached Nyla in the outdoor courtyard.
“You called some old woman about my grandfather?”
Nyla closed her book.
“I interviewed a witness.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“You’re stalking dead people.”
Cassidy nearly laughed.
Nyla did not.
“I’m doing a history project.”
“You’re trying to destroy his reputation.”
“With what?”
“Exactly.”