The Outfit Clash: I'm Told to Strip novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Playback

Four hundred people turned around in their chairs.

Patrice was on her feet.

"That student is not a party to this hearing."

"Anyone can offer evidence," Will said. He didn't even stand up. "Section nine, paragraph three. You approved the open format yourself."

The dean looked at the tiny redhead on the folding chair.

"Bring it up," he said.

Maddie climbed down.

She walked the length of the ballroom while four hundred people watched her.

She didn't look at Patrice.

She didn't look at Hunter.

She handed her phone to the woman from the business school, who plugged it into the projector cable on the panel table.

"The lab windows are at ground level," Maddie said into the microphone. Her voice shook. "I was on my way to class. I heard yelling. The angle's low."

The lights dimmed.

The screen at the front of the ballroom lit up.

It was a ground-level view through a dirty window, across a strip of grass, onto the brick path.

There was me.

There was Hunter, pointing at my chest.

The sound came through the speakers tinny but perfectly clear.

"I told you to take your shirt off. Didn't you hear me?"

Somebody in the crowd said, "Oh my God."

The video ran on.

Down the rows, people stopped breathing.

"Take that shirt off right now, or you'll regret it."

Hunter swinging his open hand at my face.

"Hold her down!"

The bodyguards coming in. The one going down on his knee.

The other one's fist.

Will was nowhere in it. Not until the very end, when a sandy head pushed through the crowd at the far edge of the frame, phone held up and nowhere near anybody.

The screen went dark.

Nobody in the ballroom made a sound.

The dean took his glasses off and set them on the table.

He looked at the girl from the steps.

She was crying.

"Who told you what to say?" he asked her, very gently.

She looked at Patrice, and then at the floor, and didn't answer.

That was an answer.

"The panel will take five minutes," the dean said.

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