The room became still.
Greene wrote the sentence down.
“And less Black on announcements?”
Kendall hesitated.
“Yes.”
“What does less Black sound like?”
“I don’t know.”
“You apparently do.”
Kendall began crying.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
Greene remained calm.
“How did you mean it?”
“She changes herself.”
“Do you?”
“What?”
“Do you speak the same way with your volleyball teammates as you speak during a college interview?”
Kendall looked away.
“No.”
“Do you speak to your mother the same way you speak to a teacher you dislike?”
“No.”
“Is one version fake?”
“No.”
“Then why was Imani’s variation evidence?”
Kendall had no answer.
Greene did not stop there.
He compared how Kendall reacted to other media students.
White senior Ethan Coley narrated sports segments using a polished broadcast cadence noticeably different from his casual speech.
Kendall never called him fake.
Avery Lane used a high-energy camera voice.
Kendall described it as presenting.
Brooke Tanner became more formal while interviewing adults.
Kendall called that professionalism.
Imani’s change received a racial vocabulary.
Safe.
White.
Corporate.
Perfectly articulate Black girl.
That difference mattered.
Kendall finally admitted something the school had never previously been able to establish.
“I was jealous.”
Greene waited.
Kendall explained the audition.
She believed senior-year broadcasting would belong to her.
She had been in media longer.
She was comfortable presenting.
Teachers praised her video work.
Then Cole selected Imani for morning audio.
Kendall missed the regular audition because of Europe but submitted afterward.
Cole still kept Imani.
“At first I thought it was because she was better for radio.”
“What changed?”
“I don’t know.”
Greene waited.
“My mom said schools care about representation.”
Christine immediately looked at her daughter.
“Kendall.”
“You did.”
Christine went silent.
Kendall described family conversations about companies wanting diversity, college admissions, television casting, businesses changing advertisements, and schools making sure brochures looked inclusive.
None were framed as hatred.
They were framed as realism.
Kendall applied the framework to Imani.
If Eastborough wanted a Black announcement host, then losing made more sense.
But Imani’s actual voice created a complication.
It sounded polished.
So Kendall solved the contradiction by deciding the polish itself was performance.
“She was Black enough for the school to get diversity,” Greene said, “but when she sounded professional, you decided she was pretending to be white.”
Kendall looked down.
“Yes.”
“And when she spoke casually with Black friends?”
“I thought that was more real.”
“Because?”
She cried.
“I don’t know.”
Greene did.
The stereotype had become circular.
If Imani spoke formally, she was fake.
If she spoke casually, that proved what she was supposedly hiding.
No behavior could escape the theory.
Greene then asked about Friday.
“Why the sports drink?”
Kendall said she wanted a prank.
“Why Imani?”
Silence.
“Why did you go downstairs before it happened?”
“I wanted to see.”
“Why not remain upstairs?”
Kendall wiped her face.
“I wanted to talk to her after.”
“What did you intend to say?”