“Exactly.”
“No.”
Nyla looked at her.
“That reaction is exactly why I’m not doing this in a hallway.”
Brooke stepped closer.
“What did you find?”
“Letters.”
“What letters?”
“From him.”
Brooke’s face changed.
“About Jerome?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”
Nyla considered.
“He regretted how the case was handled.”
Brooke stared.
Then laughed once.
“No.”
“I have copies.”
“No.”
“What do you mean no?”
“My grandfather would never write that.”
Nyla slowly opened the binder.
Brooke shut it with her hand.
“Don’t.”
Nyla looked at her fingers.
“Okay.”
Brooke’s eyes had filled slightly.
For the first time, Nyla understood that beneath the hostility was fear.
Not just reputation.
Memory.
Brooke had built part of herself around a grandfather she loved.
Any document complicating him felt like somebody altering her childhood.
Nyla lowered her voice.
“I’m not telling you he was a bad person.”
“Then stop researching him.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s part of the story.”
Brooke shook her head.
“No. You want him to be.”
Nyla sighed.
“He wrote the letter.”
“People write things because they’re pressured.”
“You haven’t read it.”
“I don’t need to.”
That sentence ended the conversation.
The first major bullying incident happened three days later.
Nyla opened her locker and found a photocopied photograph of Charles Whitman taped inside.
Across his face, somebody had written:
HAPPY NOW?
Below:
RACE BAITER
Nyla stared.
Not because the insult made sense.
Because someone had entered her locker area long enough to place it.
Grant reviewed hallway cameras.
A crowd had passed between classes.
No clear view of the locker door.
Brooke denied involvement.
Again, no evidence.
The school documented.
Harper offered to let Nyla change capstone topics.
That offended her.
“Why?”
“Because this has become personal.”
“To them.”
“I know.”
“Then why would I change?”
Harper nodded.
“Fair.”
He never suggested it again.
Nyla became more careful with the binder.
She photographed every handwritten page.
Uploaded notes to cloud storage.
Kept interview audio backed up twice.
Helen approved.
“Archives teach paranoia.”
“Good paranoia?”
“The organized kind.”
By early April, Nyla’s presentation was nearly finished.
She titled it:
WHAT WESTBRIDGE CHOSE TO REMEMBER
The first slide showed the anniversary display.
The second showed a yearbook page.
Then official records.
Oral histories.
Jerome.
Patricia.
Mabel.
Charles Whitman.
The project’s conclusion argued that institutional memory often became cleaner over time because conflict was uncomfortable to display. Westbridge’s progress was real, but describing integration only through smiling photographs erased the students and adults who forced the school to become better.
Charles Whitman occupied four slides.