Page 79 of The Academy
“So it’s true?” Honey says. “You got into some kind of trouble your final year at college?”
Oh yes, big trouble. Simone was a floor fellow at McGill, in a dorm called McConnell. A floor fellow was less than a dorm parent, but it was still a position of responsibility. Simone went through hours of training and, in return, received free room and board and a small stipend. She dealt with roommate squabbles, homesick kids, breakups, failing grades. She passed out condoms, organized ride shares for kids to get home at the holidays, sponsored taco and sushi nights, created a community. Her door had been papered and graffitied with quotes then too.
McConnell was composed of mostly U1 students, all of whom seemed impossibly naïve; Simone felt like she suddenly had twenty-four younger siblings.
The drinking age in Canada is eighteen but drinking was forbidden in the dorms, a rule that was broken every single night. Simone turned a blind eye as long as no one threw a banger.
Simone’s year unfolded beautifully until reading week in May, which preceded finals and, for Simone, graduation. Simone was in her room studying for her Byzantine art final—she was scrutinizing picture after picture of the Hagia Sophia—when there was aknock knock knockat her door.
It was Lars Kelley, a freshman on her floor, and his friend JasperStiefel, who was a junior on the hockey team. Simone knew Lars had a crush on her and she, in turn, had a crush on Jasper.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” she asked.
“We came to see if you wanted to hang,” Jasper said. He opened his backpack to reveal the makings for chocolate martinis, which at that time were Simone’s favorite drink if someone else was paying.
The answer should have been no. She could meet up with Lars and Jasper later at Gerts. But Simone was weary of Constantinople and Justinian I, it was spring semester, she had less than two weeks of university life left before she had to face the real world, so… what the hell, she let them in.
Jasper mixed the drinks on Simone’s desk, pouring the martinis into red Solo cups. Lars declared his too sweet and produced a bottle of cheap tequila from his own backpack. Simone put on a dance mix and shed her hoodie; after a couple of martinis, she and Jasper were bouncing on her bed, Simone in just a cami and cutoffs. Lars was on the floor with the bottle of tequila. Simone remembered checking on him a couple of times to make sure he wasn’t filming her. She didn’t want to show up in his Snapchat stories.
The song playing was “Hello” by Martin Solveig and Dragonette. Simone and Jasper were grinding together, completely shit-faced. Simone checked on Lars but saw only his legs; his head and torso were blocked by Simone’s overflowing laundry basket. She and Jasper started making out, but as soon as Jasper slid his hand up her camisole, she nudged him away and said, “Let’s get Lars out of here.”
They couldn’t wake Lars up. At first, Simone thought he was playing around or intentionally cockblocking Jasper—but then Simone started to panic.Call 911!she told Jasper. Lars was completely unresponsive.
The paramedics came; the entire dorm clotted the halls. A girl named Celine, who had a robust Instagram following, took asweeping video of the empty bottles, the Solo cups, Simone’s duvet on the floor, and the McConnell floor fellow Simone Bergeron in her cami and cutoffs, crying into her hands.
Lars’s blood alcohol was 0.42. He’d imbibed over half the bottle of tequila while in Simone’s room.
Simone immediately lost her fellow position and had to move out with less than two weeks of school left. After Celine’s video circulated, none of Simone’s friends wanted to shelter her, so she ended up confessing what had happened to her parents and moving back home to Saint-Henri. She bombed her finals, her GPA suffered, and she met with the provost, who said she would receive her diploma but would not be allowed to walk at graduation. Lars’s parents filed a civil suit against Simone, and Simone had to hire a lawyer. The suit went nowhere because Lars was eighteen and had bought the tequila himself. There were moments when Simone felt indignant:I did nothing wrong! They interruptedme! It was all their idea!Simone didn’t force or even encourage Lars to drink the tequila.
But she was the floor fellow. It had all happened in her room while she was present. Her job was to make sure the students on her floordidn’tgo to the hospital with alcohol poisoning. She had failed.
“There was an incident in the dorm where I was a floor fellow,” Simone tells Honey now. “A kid drank too much on my watch. He was fine, but the university needed someone to blame.” She hates making it sound like she was scapegoated—but she can’t very well tell Honey Vandermeid the truth. It would make Honey think that Simone had issues with alcohol and younger men.
Honey leans in and gives Simone a hug. “You poor thing,” she says.
Bright and early Monday morning, Cordelia Spooner calls the provost at McGill, identifying herself as the “Assistant Head” at TiffinAcademy. “We recently realized we missed an important piece of due diligence,” she says. “Could you fill in some blanks for me about a 2023 McGill graduate named Simone Bergeron? We’ve learned she lost her position as floor fellow, and I’m hoping you can share what happened. I ask because Miss Bergeron is now teaching at our academy and also serving as dorm parent to forty teenage girls.”
Audre is at her laptop googlingTiffin Academy.Nothing worrisome turns up—and the post in The Cut about the inquiry has magically disappeared.
Audre releases a breath. Jesse Eastman must have called a fixer and scrubbed the internet of any bad press regardingAmerica Today.
If Jesse is capable of this,Audre thinks,what else is he capable of?She’s becoming more and more concerned that he had something to do with Tiffin’s ranking.
“Audre?”
Audre spins in her chair to find Cordelia Spooner in the doorway. “Tell me some good news, Cordelia.”
“The Bills beat the Texans,” Cordelia says, though she knows Audre is a fan of the New Orleans Saints, a team for which there is presently no hope. “Other than that, I’m afraid the news is not so great. I assume you saw yesterday’s Zip Zap about Simone Bergeron?”
Audre closes her eyes and nods. She’s been trying not to think about this because, back in August, she was in such a hurry to fill the history position that she didn’t confirmanydetails on Simone’s résumé; Simone could be Anna Delvey for all Audre knows.
“I just spoke to the provost at McGill,” Cordelia says. “Simone served as a floor fellow in the dorms, and at the end of the year she entertained two male students in her room, one of them a freshman on her floor. The student drank himself unconscious, and Simone and the other student were, apparently, too intoxicated themselvesto notice. Simone was dismissed from her position, although she was allowed to graduate.”
Audre exhales. Thank god for that much. “The student survived? He was okay, no brain damage?”
“He was fine, as far as I know,” Cordelia says. “The parents filed a lawsuit, which was dismissed.”
Also good news,Audre thinks.
