“Then emotionally burn them.”
It was the kind of stupid conversation Nia had missed.
Blake returned after suspension in early May.
His varsity jacket was gone.
Coach Derek Sullivan had not confiscated it, but Blake stopped wearing it voluntarily because the large gold Ridgeway letter had become inseparable from screenshots of the paint video.
Some students mocked him.
Others avoided him.
A few remained loyal.
Nia did not care which.
Then she heard two boys behind the gym call him “Blue Boy” and throw an empty paint cup near his feet.
“Stop,” Nia said.
The boys stared at her.
One laughed.
“He literally painted you.”
“I know.”
“So why do you care?”
Nia looked at the cup.
“Because humiliating him doesn’t clean anything off me.”
They picked it up.
Blake had heard the entire exchange.
He did not thank her.
Nia did not need him to.
Three weeks before graduation, Blake requested a mediated conversation through the counseling office.
Nia initially refused.
Then she changed her mind because one question had bothered her all year.
Why had he cared so much about her?
They met in a small conference room with counselor Janet Lewis sitting near the door.
Blake wore jeans and a plain gray sweatshirt.
Without teammates, phones, a varsity jacket, or an audience, he looked younger than he had in the lobby.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Nia waited.
“For the paint?”
“For everything.”
Nia folded her arms.
“Why?”
Blake looked down.
He said her arrival had bothered him because Ridgeway had started changing.
More transfer students.
More district diversity programs.
More conversations about equity.
More people questioning traditions he had spent years treating as normal.
Nia listened.
“Why did that become about me?”
Blake swallowed.
“Because you were visible.”
That answer was ugly.
It was also honest.
Nia had joined newspaper.
Student advisory.