“After everything?”
Laila stared at him.
“Humiliation doesn’t become smart because you switched targets.”
The student said Camille deserved to feel embarrassed.
Laila answered that formal consequences already existed.
“I don’t need everybody recreating the same behavior and pretending it’s justice.”
The toy camera disappeared.
Word spread that Laila did not want retaliation jokes.
Most stopped.
Camille learned about it.
She never thanked Laila.
Laila did not want thanks.
Three weeks before graduation, Camille requested mediation.
Laila immediately refused.
The counselor said she had no obligation.
For four days, Laila remained comfortable with that answer.
Then one question kept returning.
Why the camera?
Not the physical camera.
Why had equipment become such an obsession from the beginning?
She agreed to one meeting.
Counselor Dr. Monica Patel sat near the window.
Camille wore plain jeans and a black sweater instead of the varsity jacket.
Without the jacket, without friends, without the studio, she looked younger.
Seventeen.
Laila found that strangely unsettling.
Camille apologized.
Laila stopped her.
“I want an answer first.”
Camille nodded.
“Why did you care so much about what camera I owned?”
Camille looked confused.
Laila continued.
“September. You wanted to know whether I relied on school gear.”
“I remember.”
“Why?”
Camille rubbed her hands together.
“I assumed you didn’t have equipment.”
“Why?”
“Because yours was old.”
“Evan’s camera was old.”
Silence.
“He’s white.”
Camille looked down.
“Yes.”
Laila waited.
Camille eventually said she had grown up around expensive photography gear.
Her mother purchased cameras professionally.
Most students she knew entered Briarwood already owning good equipment.
Then Laila arrived from Wilmington with an older camera, a transfer portfolio, and photographs of hospital workers.
Camille constructed a story.
Black transfer girl.
Probably lower income.
Probably admitted partly because Briarwood wanted representation.
Probably dependent on school equipment.
Probably successful because teachers liked the story.
None of those conclusions came from actual information.
“But every time something contradicted you,” Laila said, “you found another explanation.”