The Outfit Clash: I'm Told to Strip novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Podium

From the podium Georgia names what happened on the quad, freezes every vendor contract for an audit and tells Hunter his suit is fake; backstage his father pulls a $40 million pledge and promises a vote to remove her.

I walked up the steps to the stage.

The applause was still going when I reached the podium.

The president shook my hand and leaned in.

"You're bleeding," he whispered.

I looked down. There was a scrape across my knuckles from the bricks.

"I'm fine," I said.

He stepped back, and it was just me and two thousand faces.

I had a speech in my jacket pocket.

My assistant had written it. It was about legacy and excellence and my grandfather's love of this place.

I left it in my pocket.

"Good morning," I said.

"Twenty minutes ago, on the quad outside this building, a student told me to take my shirt off."

The room went silent so fast I heard a chair creak in the balcony.

"He said it in front of about forty people. When I said no, his friend shoved me, he stood on my phone, and he took a swing at me."

"Then his bodyguards tried to hold me down."

I didn't look at the front row.

I didn't need to. Everyone else was.

"Not one person stopped it," I said. "I'm not angry at the forty people. I know why they didn't. They believed nothing would happen to him."

"Here's what's going to happen."

"First. The conduct office will open a hearing on this morning. It'll be public, because I'm asking for it to be. Anybody who saw it can come and say so."

"Second. As of today, every vendor contract this university holds is frozen pending an outside audit. Food service, construction, housing, all of it. Nobody gets paid until somebody who doesn't work here has read the invoices."

A murmur ran across the faculty rows.

Somebody in a robe sat up very straight.

"Third," I said.

Now I looked at Hunter.

He was white to the lips, gripping the arms of his chair.

"Mr. Sterne, you told me my suit was a copy of yours."

"Your wool is a polyester blend. And your shirt pleats run left to right."

"On the real one they run right to left. My mother cut it that way."

I touched my own lapel.

"There are two of these in the world. One is in a studio in Paris. The other one is right here."

It started in the balcony.

A snort, then a laugh, then the whole room.

Two thousand people laughing at once is a physical thing. It rolled down the rake of seats.

Hunter stood up.

He turned around and faced them.

It got louder.

He pushed past Tyler's knees, past the end of the row, and up the side aisle.

The doors banged behind him.

Tyler sat frozen in his seat, not sure whether to follow.

"Thank you," I said into the microphone. "Welcome back, everybody. Go learn something."

I walked off stage right.

My legs didn't start shaking until I was behind the curtain.

I leaned against a rope rail and breathed.

My assistant came hurrying down the backstage corridor with a bottle of water and a face.

She was a calm woman in her fifties who had worked for my grandfather for twenty years.

I had never once seen her run.

"Your phone," she said. "Where is your phone?"

I held up the cracked one.

"That explains it. I've been calling you for fifteen minutes." She pushed the water into my hand. "He's here. He wants to see you."

"Who?"

She didn't have to answer.

A man came around the corner behind her.

He was in his late fifties, tall and heavy and tanned, with Hunter's sharp jaw sitting on a thicker neck.

His suit was real.

I could tell from twenty feet away.

He stopped in front of me and looked me up and down, slower.

"Miss Carlisle," he said. "I sit on your board. We haven't met."

"Mr. Sterne."

"You just humiliated my son in front of the entire university."

"Your son humiliated himself on the quad," I said. "I only told people about it."

"He's twenty-one."

"So he's old enough to know better."

His jaw worked.

"My company pledged forty million dollars to this school last spring," he said. "A new science building. With my name on it."

"I know. I read the agreement."

"Then read this."

He took out his phone, tapped it twice, and turned the screen to me.

An email to the president, to the board secretary, to all thirteen trustees.

Sterne Group hereby withdraws its pledge in full.

He'd sent it while I was still at the podium.

"You'll lose the building," he said. "You'll lose the faculty lines that came with it. And at the end of the month I'm calling a vote to remove you as chair."

"You'd need seven trustees."

"I have six already," he said. "You squeaked in by one vote in August, Miss Carlisle. Your grandfather's friends voted for his name, not for you."

He put his phone away.

"Thirty days. I'd enjoy them."

He walked off down the corridor.

I stood there with my bottle of water.

My assistant put her hand on my arm.

"For what it's worth," she said, "your grandfather would have done exactly the same thing."

"He'd have done it with a better speech."

"No," she said. "He'd have liked that one."

Out in the hall, the auditorium doors were open and students were streaming out into the sun.

A few of them saw me and pointed.

One boy started clapping, alone, until his friends laughed and joined in.

At the far end of the lobby I saw the redheaded girl with the pincushion.

She was standing against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself.

When she saw me looking, she turned and pushed out through the side door and ran.

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