Page 3 of The Academy
He looks chipper in his green polo shirt (school-issued, with a racehorse embroidered on the chest) and khaki shorts. (He’s wearing Skechers and white ankle socks; the kids will be merciless.) Most teachers loathe Move-In Day—they consider it glorified manual labor—so it’s no surprise that the only two faculty members Audrecould corral are new: Rhode and one of the history teachers, Simone Bergeron, a recent graduate of McGill in Montreal. Rhode and Simone seem to have developed a rapport. Rhode is regaling Simone with the high jinks of his own boarding school days, something about a ferret one of his floormates in Classic North was keeping in a cage under his desk, very much in violation of school rules (forbidden: page 3 ofThe Bridle,“pets,” listed just below “firearms”).
“Our prefect noticed the smell,” Rhode says. “But he thought it was Townie’s socks.”
Simone’s laugh is like a bell. She gathers her braids into a bun on top of her head and ties a silk scarf around it in a way that seems very elegant and French. “You had a classmate namedTownie?”
“Nickname,” Rhode says. “Because he grew up in Haydensboro, the closest town to campus. His parents owned a bar called the Alibi.”
“Is it still there?” Simone asks. “I was wondering if there were any fun places around.”
“If by ‘fun,’ you mean ‘gritty and depressing,’ then yes,” Rhode says. “I’ll take you there sometime.”
“I’d love that!”
Internally, Audre groans. She encourages camaraderie among the faculty, but she has never had two new single teachers before and would have no idea what to say or do if a… romance were to blossom. Will she have to worry about this? Furthermore, Audre likes to pop into the Alibi herself from time to time. It’s gritty but not necessarily depressing—a string of colored Christmas lights hangs over the bar year-round, and the jukebox features songs ranging from Motown to One Direction. Jefferson the bartender keeps a bottle of Finlandia vodka in the freezer expressly for Audre. One or two icy shots followed by a glass of cheap chardonnay, and Audre can forget all about Tiffin for a while. The last thing she wants to do is bump into a couple of teachers on a field trip.
The chapel bells ring to signal ten o’clock, and Audre’s phone buzzes again. She’s about to check it—it’s Big East, she’s certain—when she sees a car approach. Audre gets the Feeling again. It’s a silver panel van, nothing remarkable about it, and yet somehow Audreknows:This is the girl she’s been waiting for. This is Charley Hicks.
Charley’s admission to Tiffin was… unusual. Her application had arrived on May 23, either tragically late or comically early. A quick check revealed the former: Charlotte Emily Hicks was a sophomore at her public school, applying for admission that very September. Tiffin didn’t generally admit students as fifth-formers, though there were exceptions. Such as when Tiffin had an unexpected opening.
Cinnamon Peters had died eleven days earlier.
“This is uncanny, right?” Cordelia Spooner, head of admissions, had said to Audre in a stage whisper. “It’s almost like”—she cast her eyes up toward the ceiling rosette in Audre’s office—“divine intervention.”
Mmmmmm.Audre had thought this might be stretching things a bit. Was Cordelia intimating that some kind of greater power had sent them Charley Hicks of Towson, Maryland?
“Is she Tiffin caliber?” Audre asked. They certainly weren’t going to admit someone just because they happened to have an opening for a fifth-form girl.
“Top one percent,” Cordelia said. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have brought this to you. Her GPA is above a four point oh, she’s taken only honors classes, her PSAT scores were nearly perfect. Her English teacher wrote a glowing letter saying she had never had a student who loved reading as much as Charley. Always reading, apparently. My only concern is that she might be too…brainyfor Tiffin.”
Cordelia was right to be concerned: Very cerebral kids didn’t tend to do well at the school, which was aggressively social. The Head ofSchool before Audre used to brag that they were cultivating Tiffin students to be sought-after guests at cocktail parties, though Audre sometimes worried they were raising the next generation of douchebags. “Any extracurriculars?” Audre had asked.
“Editor of the literary magazine,” Cordelia said.
Tiffin didn’t have a literary magazine; Doc Bellamy had tried to start one many times, but not a single student signed up.
“Sports?”
“No.”
The girl will have to acquaint herself with a field hockey stick,Audre thought. “Anything else of note?”
“The letter from her guidance counselor said she was top of her class, a lock for valedictorian. But he also mentioned her mental toughness. Apparently her father died suddenly last fall—he was an attorney with a big firm in Baltimore—but Charley kept her grades up.”
The father dying probably explained why the application was so late. “Attorney with a big firm” had piqued Audre’s interest. “Is she seeking financial aid?”
“No,” Cordelia said. “Full tuition.”
Tiffin wasn’t need-blind, and so it had been this revelation that tipped the scales in Charley Hicks’s favor. Admitting Charley also prevented 111 South from sitting empty. Audre had feared the other girls would light candles (forbidden: page 11 ofThe Bridle) at séances where they might try to contact Cinnamon’s spirit.
“Should we offer her the spot?” Cordelia had asked.
“Let’s,” Audre said.
The side of the silver panel van says,HICKSLANDSCAPING&GARDENSUPPLY—TOWSON,OWINGSMILLS,ELLICOTTCITY. The woman who climbs out of the driver’s side—Charley’s mother, presumably—has a suntan, a dark ponytail, and feet in rubber clogs.
Audre recognizes the expression on the mother’s face; she sees it multiple times every Move-In Day: dread, sadness, fear.
“I’m Audre Robinson, Head of School,” she says. “Welcome to Tiffin Academy.”
