When she asked whether the incident made him reconsider, he looked almost irritated by the question. “Your field skills did not disappear because you had one terrible afternoon,” he said. Then he handed her a stack of sample logs and asked her to mark the recording errors before Monday.
That simple normalcy helped more than he realized.
The internet, of course, preferred a louder version.
Within days, the video had spread beyond campus. One caption read: RICH WHITE GIRL KICKS BLACK SCHOLARSHIP STUDENT THROUGH THE ICE — THEN GETS WHAT SHE DESERVES. Another read: THEY MESSED WITH THE WRONG BLACK GIRL.
Talia hated that one most.
She called her grandfather Leon and told him why.
“There isn’t a right one,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“If you couldn’t fight, kicking you through the ice would still be wrong.”
“Yes.”
“If you weren’t on scholarship?”
“Still wrong.”
“If you weren’t doing research?”
“Still wrong.”
He let the silence sit for a moment.
“You done testing me?”
Talia laughed despite herself.
The viral attention brought a second problem. Some students who had ignored her all year suddenly treated her like a legend, or worse, like a warning. One guy at the dining hall jokingly raised both hands when she walked by and said he did not want any problems on frozen surfaces.
Talia stopped and looked at him.
“I was the one who went through the ice.”
His grin disappeared.
“Right.”
“Remember that part.”
He apologized.