“Miss Hall.” The receptionist’s voice was cool. “Thank you for being so prompt. Is there any way that you could come in to Dean Waite’s offices right now?”
Yikes. If the dean had cleared her schedule to deal with me, that couldn’t be good. “Sure,” I said, wanting to get this over with.
“I need to ask you not to speak to anyone on your way in.”
“Um, okay.” Holy crap. Did I need a lawyer? I’d watched plenty of TV. If I didn’t like the questions they were asking me, I could always stop the interview and call my father. He’d love that. But I knew he’d help me immediately.
The receptionist told me where to find the dean’s office, but I already knew where it was and it took me only two minutes of walking to reach Tappanworth Hall. The place was built to intimidate. When I pulled open the giant wooden doors, I found myself in an echoing marble anteroom. Through another set of imposing doors was a double-height office with thick Persian rugs on the floor. There were two assistants seated behind enormous desks. One jumped out of her seat when I came in. “Isabelle?”
“Yes.”
“Let me take your coat. The dean is quite grateful you could make it.”
Grateful? The rumors must be true, then. Whomping Wilma must enjoy punishing undergraduates.
“Can I get you coffee? Tea? Water?”
“Uh, water would be great.”
A few minutes later I was ushered through yet another set of carved oak doors into the dean’s private office. Dean Waite didn’t look like the dominatrix I’d expected, though. She was a rather ordinary looking lady with grey, librarian hair. “Have a seat, Isabelle. And thank you for coming.”
“It’s Bella,” I said, just to make myself feel brave.
“Bella, take a chair,” she said.
I did. Nothing happened until the receptionist had left the room and closed the door.
Then Whomping Wilma folded her hands on the desk. “Bella, we have received a complaint against the members of the Beta Rho fraternity.”
My heart lurched as I replayed that sentence in my head. She’d said the complaint was against the fraternity, not from the fraternity. Oh.
Ohhhhh. Oh no. I was afraid to hear where this was going.
“Given what the complainant has told us, the school is investigating several of the fraternity members. We have an obligation under Title Nine to maintain a safe and harassment-free atmosphere for all students.”
“Okay,” I squeaked, trying to do the math on what might have happened and how Whomping Wilma got my name.
“One member of the fraternity is cooperating with this investigation. And this member brought your name to our attention.”
Oh. But… who?
“It’s really quite unusual to have the testimony of one fraternity brother against the rest of them. So we need to corroborate the things he’s telling us.” She stared at me with expectation in her eyes.
“I see?” I said. Although I didn’t really.
“Bella, do you have anything you’d like to report?” Her gaze was like a laser.
Wow. I didn’t want to report anything. But now she had me wondering where the other complaint had come from. If another woman had gotten hurt by Whittaker and his cronies, that changed things. It had to. If I told Dean Waite that I had nothing to say, he might get away with it.
And what if they’d done something truly awful to someone else?
I swallowed hard.
“If you’re worried about implicating yourself in any wrongdoing, you could speak to a lawyer first.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said quickly. (Unless we were counting the football game stunt.) “It’s just that I really don’t want attention.”
“Bella, this office will not release your name. The investigation is private.”
Oh honey, really? “Dean Waite, there’s no such thing as private. If I tell you my story, and you start asking the fraternity questions, they’ll know exactly who talked. They have a nasty little website where they air all their grievances.”
“Do you mean…” The dean shifted the papers on her desk. “Brodacious.com?”
“That’s the one.”
The dean made a note on her pad. Shit! I’d already contributed to the investigation.
She sighed and set down her pen. “A former member of the fraternity has made serious allegations regarding their treatment of you, and I was hoping you could corroborate his story. That’s all I can say. Except that if it happened, and you don’t help us prove it, it could easily happen again to someone else.”