The Campus Bully Hounded Me Out of My Seat, Then I Told Him I Was Pregnant novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Read Aloud
The hall did not breathe.
I walked to the center aisle with the card held up in front of me, so the nearest tables could see the faded green.
Aksel walked half a pace behind my shoulder.
He did not take my arm.
I had asked him not to.
"This is a private matter," Ragna said.
Her voice had gone thin.
"It is an irregularity, and I will ask the president to remove this girl."
"Let her read," a man at the trustees' table said.
It was Gunnar.
He had not stood.
He sat with both hands flat on the cloth and his eyes on the card in my hand.
"Let her read it," he said again, and nobody moved.
I turned the card over.
"This is a time card from Kvale Feed and Seed," I said.
"It belongs to Maren Solheim, nineteen years old, twenty years before I was born.
"On the back, in pencil, somebody wrote two lines."
I read them.
"*Short four hundred and twelve dollars. Till, August.*
"*M.S. on duty. Dismissed. No reference.*"
A rustle went around the room, thin and dry, like wind in a cornfield.
"My mother was put out of that store in front of a dozen people," I said.
"She was accused of taking four hundred and twelve dollars.
"She said she hadn't.
"Nobody answered her.
"She went home to North Dakota on a bus and never came back, and she told me only that she had worked in town one summer and it ended badly."
I looked at the lectern.
"I'd like to tell you whose hand wrote it," I said.
"This is absurd," Ragna said.
She had taken her glasses off.
"A forgery.
"A card produced at a public dinner by a girl with a grievance and a scholarship under review."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Campus Bully Hounded Me Out of My Seat, Then I Told Him I Was Pregnant are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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