Page 21 of The Academy
“I came because my mother started dating this guy who worked at her landscaping company,” she says. “Then she married him. Then… some other shit happened. I applied here in May, and they miraculously had an opening.”
“Yeah,” East says. “Because of Cinnamon.” He pauses. “You know about that, right?”
“I do,” Charley says, although she didn’t know about Cinnamon when she accepted the spot. She wasn’t sure why she’d been admitted so late in the year, and as a junior. She supposes she believed it was because she was such an exceptional candidate that Tiffin couldn’t refuse.
But this past week during Chapel, Charley opened the Book of Common Prayer and a program for a memorial service fell out.Charley studied the front—a picture of a girl with long auburn hair and freckles, holding a guitar—and noted the name, Cinnamon Peters, and the dates, February 21, 2009–May 12, 2025. The back pages of the program had other pictures of Cinnamon—with Dub Austin at some kind of formal dance, onstage as Sandy inGrease,sitting next to Mr. Chuy on the piano bench during the Monday night sing-alongs, in the Grille with Davi, drinking milkshakes. Apparently, Cinnamon Peters had died while she was a student at Tiffin. Charley wondered what happened… until she saw the words written at the bottom of the back page:If you or someone you know is in emotional distress and considering…
Charley got a chill. Cinnamon Peters had died by suicide. A second later, it clicked: Charley had been admitted to replace Cinnamon.
“She was friends with Davi?” Charley asks.
“Best friends,” East says. “But she wasnothinglike Davi. Cinnamon was chill. Really smart, musical, and she loved Tiffin. She was always giving tours for the admissions office.”
Charley was tempted to ask how she did it, and where—but Charley doesn’t want to be ghoulish, and also, she’s afraid of the answer. She changes the subject. “Why areyouhere?”
“I got kicked out of a couple schools in the city before this.”
“Don’t tell me,” Charley says. “You had a Chuck Bass thing going? Clubbing, drugs, older women…?”
“Is that how little you think of me?” he says, and then he grins. “It wasn’t quite that bad. More like vaping, skipping school, failure to properly yield to authority. My dad sent me here to West Bumblefuck so I couldn’t get in trouble.”
“Where’s your mom?” Charley asks.
“She lives in LA.”
At the bottom of the stairs is an arched opening; East breaks a cobweb and shines his phone’s flashlight into a brick, barrel-roofedtunnel. “There’s a tunnel like this on the Classic North side too, but it ends at a locked door, which I’m pretty sure is some kind of secret room. Come on.”
They walk down the tunnel until they come to a door.Surely this side will be locked as well,Charley thinks. But when East turns the knob, it opens.
And—whoa! They enter a spacious room with brick walls and a peeling linoleum floor. The room has four bunk beds against one wall, and against the opposite wall is a makeshift kitchen: a sink, open shelving, a Formica countertop with a stovetop thingy plugged in. East strides over to the sink and turns the faucet: Water runs out in a surprisingly powerful stream. When he turns the knob of the stove, a red light comes on. He shines his phone toward the ceiling: There’s a single bulb with a dangling string. When he pulls it, the room is almost too bright. A door against the back wall reveals a bathroom: toilet, sink, shower stall.
“Is this, like, where they used to put kids when they were bad?” Charley asks.
East cackles. “No, Charles, it’s a bomb shelter.” There’s a door opposite the one they entered that’s bolted. “Ah, see, I tried this from the other side and couldn’t get in.” East unbolts the door and opens it. “Here’s the north tunnel.” He grins at Charley.
Charley has to admit it’s cool, discovering the underpinnings of the school. “They probably built this during the Cold War.”
“Must have,” East says. He walks back toward her and takes one of her hands. East, she thinks, isholdingher hand. “But we’re going to turn it into something else.”
Charley worries he can hear her heart beating. “What?”
“A speakeasy,” East says. “We’ll have a bar with real cocktails, music, couches. We’ll open it after lights-out on Saturdays. Invitation only, of course.”
“Of course,” Charley says.
“I’m serious. I’ve given this a lot of thought. I want it to be upscale, civilized… Do you know about the Algonquin Round Table?”
“You mean Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley?” Charley says. “I know about it, yes. Doyouknow about it?”
“I’m not a philistine,” East says.
Charley thinks he is a philistine, but she keeps her mouth shut.
“I’m doing this,” East says. “And I want you to be my partner.”
“Partner?” Charley says. She tries to imagine becoming an accomplice to a wealthy New York kid who starts a speakeasy in the basement of his boarding school. It’s so ludicrous, it’s sort of appealing.
“If we get caught, I’ll take the blame. My dad is the president of the Tiffin board. I can’t get expelled.”
