Page 107 of The Academy
Now, in the stairwell (which has a wicked echo), Simone is blathering about a room down where the tunnel is. She fumbles with the back of her shorts and produces a key that she—Rhode can’t believe this—stolefrom East’s room.
“You can’t just steal things from the kids’ rooms!” Rhode says (forbidden: page 1 ofThe Bridle,no stealing or “borrowing without permission”). “Besides, that’s probably the key to his truck.”
“Thisssss,” Simone says, “is not a truck key. Surely even a city boy like you realizes that.”
She’s slurring her words, but before Rhode can figure out what to do—text Audre? Does he want to be that guy?—she drags him down six flights of stairs, then outside into the rain.
They make a run for the door to the cellar and descend the steep flight to the brick barrel-ceilinged tunnel. Rhode had hoped never to return, though now that he’s here, he gets a vivid flashback: He saw Simone and East together in this tunnel pulling apart after what must have been a kiss. Rhode was too naïve (and optimistic about his own chances with Simone) to have let himself believe it way back during First Dance.
But he is neither naïve nor optimistic anymore.
Rhode turns on the light of his phone so that Simone doesn’t stumble and fall on her face. The hallway ends with, yes, a door. When Simone turns the knob, it’s locked. She brandishes the key, and the scene then becomes a comedy of errors—first she puts the key in upside down, then she pulls it out and drops it and neither of them can find it. Rhode panics for a second because now his curiosity is piqued. He spies it almost all the way under the door and he says, “Why don’t you let me…” but Simone wants to be the one to open the door. This is her discovery.
Finally, the lock releases with a satisfyingthunkand they both step in. Rhode fumbles against the wall for a light switch, and when he finds it, a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling throws spangles of light across a…wow.It’s a room unlike any other at Tiffin. There’s a Persian rug, a deep leather sofa and suede chairs, a granite-topped bar. Rhode moves farther into the room. The walls are brick, the floor is glossy hardwood. In the back there’s a powder room that looks like it belongs in a magazine: light fixtures with fringed red shades, wallpaper printed with sailor’s tattoos, a hatbox toilet.
“This is the coolest place I’ve ever seen,” Rhode says. “East masterminded this?”
“It’s a drug den,” Simone says. “Or a sex club. At the very least, the kids drink down here.”
Rhode sees how she might think this; he would love to settle onthe sofa with a bourbon himself. Alongside the copper sink he finds a garnet-red cocktail napkin with the wordPRIORITIESprinted on it in gold. Beneath the counter is a stainless steel drinks fridge, empty. The illuminated shelves above the sink are bare.
“I’m going to tell Audre,” Simone says. “I want to see East get kicked out.”
Her words are, of course, fueled by passion. Rhode has read bothAnna KareninaandMadame Bovarymultiple times; he knows what a woman undone by her desire sounds like. He won’t ask Simone straight up, she’ll just lie.
Rhode says, “I’m not going to tell anyone that you’re drunk or that you confronted East in his room or that you stole his key, okay?”
Simone moves her lips but the sound she makes is unintelligible.
“But I would advise you to think long and hard about how you explain this place to Audre,” Rhode says. “It could backfire on you.”
“Backfire how?” Simone waves her arms at the chandelier, the copper sink. “Nobody could forgive this.”
“There’s no alcohol, there are no empty bottles,” Rhode says. “You don’t have any proof that East or anyone else was drinking down here.”
Simone scoffs. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt.” Rhode swallows. The truth is, he cares about Simone even more now that he can see her cracks. “I don’t want to see you get in trouble.”
“Why wouldIget in trouble?” Simone asks. Her eyes blaze; she’s challenging him. “Go on, say what you think.”
Rhode crumples the cocktail napkin and stuffs it in his pocket. “I think Andrew Eastman is untouchable.”
Simone glares at him, but then a single tear rolls down her face. “I want to see him fry,” she says.
Of course you do,Rhode thinks.
28. Alias
Monday morning in the office is hectic for Cordelia Spooner. There are only a few days before the sixth-form graduates and the rest of the school leaves for the summer, and there’s a lot to cram in. Today, the entire senior class is having their picture taken on the beach at Jewel Pond, with everyone wearing a shirt from the college they will be attending. While Audre and Honey are overseeing that cat-herding, Cordelia will answer the phones (the sixth-form parents have lots of questions about dress code for Prize Day) as well as run the final information session and campus tour of the year. She hopes nobody shows up. It’s too late for this year’s applicants, but there are always those dialed-up parents ofnextyear’s applicants who want to get a jump on things, and Cordelia isn’t in the mood for anyone that Type A.
When, at ten o’clock, there is no one signed up, Cordelia breathes a sigh of relief. She’ll pop over to Jewel Pond to see if Audre and Honey need any help. (A mini-crisis arose when the Princeton T-shirt that Annabelle Tuckerman ordered didn’t arrive in the mail. Her ever-adoring parents came to the rescue, driving all the way from Westfield, New Jersey, with their own vintage Princeton-wear.)
Just as Cordelia is leaving the Manse, a gentleman jogs up the stairs. He’s a middle-aged white guy in horn-rimmed sunglasses with a bushy head of Bob Ross hair, which is so unlikely that Cordelia wonders if it’s a wig. Oh, how she’d love to ignore him andpretend like nobody’s available, but she can’t just let a stranger walk through the Manse.
She smiles at him. Is something about this gentleman familiar? No, she would have remembered that hair. He’s dressed in khakis and a linen blazer, straight from suburban Dad central casting. He’s not wearing a wedding ring, but he could be divorced. Why on earth is he here alone?
“Can I help you?” she asks.
