Night fell on campus, painting the old brick buildings in shades of grey and orange from the streetlights. The administrative hall meeting had ended with a temporary injunction: I was to remain on campus, and Harish was not to approach me directly without a university mediator present.
The peace lasted only a few hours.
Siobhan burst into our dorm room, her arms full of printed flyers. Her face was grim.
“Look at this, Maya,” she said, tossing them onto my desk. They were crudely printed, black and white, depicting a blurry photo of me. The text, in bold, aggressive font, screamed headlines like “UNSTABLE STUDENT ABANDONS FAMILY” and “MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS ON CAMPUS.”
“He hired a local PR firm,” Siobhan explained, her voice tight with indignation. “They’re plastering these everywhere. Dorm bulletin boards, lampposts, even the campus coffee shop.”
The flyers twisted the narrative. They painted me as an ungrateful, mentally ill runaway, pushing away a devoted immigrant father who had sacrificed everything. The image of me in his carefully crafted story was now being broadcast to the entire university.
I picked up one, my fingers tracing the smudged ink. It was an escalation, just as I’d suspected. A public smear to discredit me before any official hearing.
From across the room, Leela hummed a little tune, completely absorbed in her coloring book. She was drawing a vibrant purple dinosaur, its scales intricately detailed. Her small, innocent world was so far removed from the ugly battle raging around us.
My stomach twisted. He wanted total legal control. And if he had me declared unfit, that would include Leela. He wouldn’t just liquidate *my* trust; he’d try to claim her too, as part of his supposed “cultural authority.”
I thought of the trust fund my late mother had established for me. It was set to reach its final maturity date in exactly seven days. That was why he was rushing this. Why the public spectacle, the smear campaign, the emergency transfer demands.
He wasn’t trying to save me; he was trying to steal my future, and Leela’s, before the window closed. The dinosaur on Leela’s page took on a fierce, protective hue.
“We have to fight this, Maya,” Siobhan said, her jaw set. “This is libel.”
I nodded, my eyes still on Leela. My fight wasn’t just for me anymore.
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