Total pages in book: 85
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 410(@200wpm)___ 328(@250wpm)___ 274(@300wpm)
“Okay,” Hannah began. “See, the guys in our dorm are just relentless. They catcall and make with the lewd comments all the time, and yeah, I could beat the crap outta them, and so could Coretta, and Jalissa has a serious Taser––”
“I do,” Jalissa chimed in, “even though it’s pink and looks like a toy. I promise you it’s not a toy, Mr. Harcourt.”
“I believe you.”
“––but short of doing them physical harm,” Hannah continued, “they won’t stop.”
“Plus, they travel in packs,” Coretta let me know. “And it’s not just us, and there are a lot of guys who aren’t pigs, but some of them try to follow us into our room, and if we leave our door open, they just walk in and sit on our beds––”
“And they don’t try and touch us,” Jalissa said, “except for Cliff, Clint––what’s his name again?”
“Carson,” Coretta reminded her.
“It’s Calvin,” Hannah corrected. “God, you’re both terrible with names.”
“Yeah, that’s it, Calvin,” Jalissa agreed. “But Hannah flipped him over her back and winded him last time, so I think he got the message.”
“No, he did not,” Coretta informed the others. “He and his friend, the one who plays baseball, they were all over me in the library the other day, and if you guys hadn’t come when you did, they would have touched me, maybe groped me, I just know it.”
“You can report them to the school,” I reminded the young women standing in front of me. “They’re not allowed to harass you.”
“Yeah, but it’s one of those things, right? They can deny it, and whoever hears the complaint will give them a warning, and then—that’s all that’s gonna happen.”
Clearly, I had more faith in the administration than they did, having attended the University of Chicago myself a hundred years ago. “Okay, so then what?”
“Well,” Coretta said with a grin, smiling at Sam as he walked into the kitchen, having changed into jeans and a T-shirt that, even though it wasn’t tight, still hugged his bulging biceps, wide chest, and broad shoulders. No one could miss how big he was or all the hard, heavy muscle on his solid frame. “I’m thinking if the boys see Hannah’s dad come visit us, and you know, get a really good look at him…and his badge…”
“Come on, people, let’s eat,” Sam growled behind them, taking the salad from Hannah. “Some of us are starving around here.”
Coretta and Jalissa were both looking at Hannah.
“We don’t need a man to fight our battles,” she told them.
They both continued to stare at her.
“We can handle idiots ourselves, and will have to in the future.”
“Yes, agreed,” Jalissa told her. “We have to not walk anywhere alone. We have to make sure we only have one of our AirPods in for situational awareness at all times, and keep in mind that at night, in a parking lot, we have forty-five seconds to get in our cars.”
“That sucks,” Coretta stated, taking the vegetables to the table.
“I just think that if we didn’t have to deal with the shit in the dorm, where we live, that might be good,” Jalissa told Hannah.
Hannah went to get the oven mitts out of the drawer to pull out the pot roast, where I always finished it. I noted her hands were shaking, though, so I took them from her.
She spun around to face her friends, Coretta back in the kitchen as well, with Sam having followed her.
“What’s going on?” he asked his daughter gently.
“I just like to handle things myself, and I don’t think we’re in danger of anything happening to us, not in the dorm, but––”
“Wait, what?”
I put my hand on his chest for a moment, and he went still and quiet, listening.
“I just—it’s hard to think that I have to resort to having my father come to my dorm and walk around campus with me to let all the guys know that if they disrespect me, he’ll pound them into goo.”
“Which I will,” he informed his child. “Do you know what the broken windows theory is in criminology?”
“I do,” Coretta told him. “It’s that visible signs of crime, like broken windows, bad graffiti, not the artful kind, and trash everywhere make people think that it’s an area where there’s crime, so they feel comfortable there, if they’re criminals.”
“Right, but also, it’s about the behavior you allow. Antisocial behavior, civil disorder, if you let that happen and don’t do anything about it, then people think they can do more, get away with more.”
“Like hate speech,” Coretta said. “That has to be checked.”
“Without question,” he agreed.
“Like those people who attacked the capital,” Jalissa offered.
“Yes. They all have to be prosecuted and put in jail. We can’t let that go. We have to always stand up, in big ways and small, and fight for what we believe.”
“Yeah, but what does this have to do with Calvin and the rest of the assholes in our dorm?” Hannah asked her father.