Page 13 of The Academy
The phone in the admissions office has been ringing nonstop, every single interview slot for the first semester is filled, and don’t get Cordelia started on how robust the numbers for group tours have been this week. Tiffin offers an information session every weekday at ten, followed by a campus tour. A very busy week in past years would see groups of three, maybe four students per session, each with a parent or two. But yesterday there was even a group that totaled thirty-one people—twelve prospective students and nineteen parents. Annabelle Tuckerman had given the tour. She wasn’t Cordelia’s first choice, but Cordelia was desperate and Annabelle was eager to add one more piece of flair to her already gaudy application to Princeton.
The best tour guide Cordelia Spooner has seen in her twenty-two-year tenure was Cinnamon Peters. Cinnamon made a wonderful first impression—her dancer’s posture, her musical voice, her long auburn hair—and, of course, her unusual and yet fitting first name. Nobody could sell Tiffin to prospective students the way Cinnamon could.
Cordelia blinks back tears. Cinnamon was beloved on campus by students and teachers alike. Her deathmakes no sense.But then, other people are mysteries. Cordelia Spooner understands this better than anyone.
After the thirty-one-person tour had dispersed, Cordelia had sent a text to Honey Vandermeid, the college counselor.America Today has made my life a special hell.
Honey texted back:Oh Cord, how about a little gratitude?
Of course Honey was right and Cordelia felt bad for complaining. The previous school year had ended with tragedy and heartbreak. If the media had learned that a student committed suicide in Classic South, Tiffin’s application numbers would have plummeted. But Audre Robinson did a superlative job of preserving the privacy of the Peters family and the school alike. She handled the situation with care, dignity, and above all discretion.
America Todaybestowing Tiffin with the number two ranking this year—above Northmeadow! Above Milton!—has provided exactly the boost they all needed. Even if the reason how/why is a bit perplexing. Even if Cordelia Spooner’s workload will double (and maybe triple).
The night of First Dance has always been Cordelia’s favorite. She strolls from her one-bedroom cottage behind the Manse over to the Teddy, enjoying the still-balmy late summer air. She overhears giggling, singing, happy chatter. The Tiffin football team won again yesterday, this time on the road, thanks to another spectacular pass from Dub Austin to Hakeem Pryce. A two-game winning streak might be the longest in Cordelia’s tenure. Cordelia chuckles about this as she enters the Teddy.
The Edward Tiffin Student Union, known as the Teddy, wasconstructed in the late ’90s, thanks to a donation from Edward Tiffin’s great-great-grandson “Teddy Five,” who was an original pioneer in Silicon Valley at the start of the internet boom. The Teddy features soaring, open spaces, reclaimed-wood floors, and massive plate-glass windows that offer views across Tiffin’s resplendent acreage. The Teddy had “work done” two years ago when Jesse Eastman joined the board of directors. He suggested turning the auditorium—once only used for Friday assembly and the school musical—into a three-hundred-seat theater with a retractable movie screen and Dolby surround sound. He also renovated the grill, added an “e,” and modeled the new Grille on an English pub—with leather booths, burled wood tables, and brass pendant lighting. The Lower Level, which used to house a few Ping-Pong tables, became a proper arcade, a place very popular with the third-form boys.
The one spot Big East didn’t dare change was the Egg, where school dances are held. The Egg is a large oval ballroom with a domed, illuminated ceiling that looks like, well, an egg.
At First Dance, the girls dress according to class. The third-form wear tie-dye, the fourth-form wear metallic, the fifth-form wear neon, and the sixth-form wear black. How did this start? And why do only the girls do this while the boys from every class wear black? Cordelia believes the matching dates back to the dawn of Instagram and Snapchat. And why only the girls? Maybe because the school—and the world at large—remains stubbornly gender-biased. Boys are judged for what they do. Girls are judged for how they look doing it.
Tonight, the Egg has been transformed into a nightclub. Green and gold laser lights crisscross the dance floor, and a disco ball spins. At one narrow, curved end of the Egg, a DJ named Radio (ironic?) is spinning tunes (Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music”;the songs will get more explicit from here). At the other end of the Egg is the mocktail bar, where students can procure either a frozen piña colada or a strawberry daiquiri with a chocolate rim. The mocktail bar is, of course, controversial. The idea was proposed a number of years ago but was shot down by the former Head of School Chester Dell (who was a notorious killjoy). He didn’t understand why the students couldn’t just drink punch like Tiffin students had been doing since time immemorial. Audre Robinson was the one who finally okayed the mocktails. Did she find it unsettling that the kids were mimicking adult behavior, hoisting their daiquiris for a toast? A little bit, yes, but she wanted to pick her battles, and mocktails weren’t among them.
Cordelia makes a beeline for the buffet. There’s a charcuterie board complete with salami roses and a seeded cracker river. There are pigs in a blanket and deviled eggs. Cordelia contemplates inhaling the entire tray of pigs in a blanket, but then she spies Honey Vandermeid at the entrance, where students are checking in. “Checking in” means looking an adult in the eye and stating your first and last name. Are your eyes red and bleary? Are you slurring your words? If yes, then you may be subjected to a pat-down. (It goes without saying that kids hide nips of Tito’s and Captain Morgan in their clutch purses and tube socks and then slip them into the mocktails.) The students have been told that the chaperones keep a Breathalyzer on hand; they don’t, but the rumor has served as a useful deterrent. Cordelia has seen plenty of kids arrive at First Dance completely wasted—a fourth-former named Jonas Brim once threw up at Cordelia’s feet; a girl named Lily Corning fell in her platform heels and broke her ankle. Neither child had been Honor Boarded because the school preferred to save Honor Board—the panel composed of five students and three faculty who decide upon consequences for disciplinary infractions—for more serious offenses such as cheating, stealing, and sneaking out.
“How goes it?” Cordelia asks. Honey looks beautiful tonight in a gauzy ivory dress that shows off her toned, tanned arms. Each day this summer, Honey swam twenty lengths of Jewel Pond, then lay out on the beach to dry off in the sun. Cordelia would often meet her there with a picnic and a chilled bottle of rosé. The rest of the staff and faculty left Tiffin for the summer while Cordelia and Honey “held down the fort.” They spent mornings in the office dealing with administrative issues, then took the afternoons off. It was a luxury, having the whole campus to themselves. The only other person who stayed on was Mr. James, a Tiffin legend—he’s the custodian, handyman, security. He’s quirky—and a drunk—but he alone knows where all the bodies are buried, so Cordelia likes to keep on his good side.
Cordelia Spooner and Honey Vandermeid have been conducting a clandestine love affair ever since they bumped into each other unexpectedly at the Alibi the Christmas break before last. Cordelia had always found Honey attractive—her blond hair, her athletic build, her elegant style—and she intuited that Honey might be gay, if way out of Cordelia’s league. Honey was eleven years younger—forty-six to Cordelia’s fifty-seven—and a good deal less matronly. (Cordelia wore her hair sensibly short, and she favored embroidered sweaters, voluminous blouses, and Eileen Fisher schmatas meant to camouflage her shelflike bosom and the muffin top she could not seem to lose.) But that evening at the Alibi, as the bartender, Jefferson, refilled their glasses, they gossiped about Tiffin students and staff (except for Audre; they both adored Audre), and they laughed until they fell into each other. The night ended with them making out in the back seat of Honey’s Jeep Cherokee.
The relationship with Honey has changed Cordelia’s entire experience at Tiffin. The solitariness (indeed, loneliness) of Cordelia’s out-of-school life has vanished. She now has a friend who is also a lover.
When Cordelia caresses Honey’s elbow, Honey yanks her arm away as though she’s been burned, and—almost too late—Cordelia sees that Simone Bergeron is just on the other side of Honey, holding a clipboard.
“It’s been mostly third- and fourth-formers,” Simone says. Simone is wearing a cocktail dress spangled with purple paillettes that is so short, it wouldn’t pass dress code.
Hmmmm,Cordelia thinks. If Simone were a student, Cordelia would send her back to the dorms to change. Did Honey say anything to her? Maybe suggest adding a cardigan or putting on flat shoes so her legs don’t seem quite so long?
The school year has just begun, but Simone Bergeron has already garnered a fair amount of attention from the students. Part of it is her age—Simone has just turned twenty-four; she graduated from McGill only two years earlier. Between graduating and getting the job at Tiffin, Simone worked as a barista at Le Brûloir in Montreal. Simone’s mother is Quebecois, her father from Mali; they spoke both English and French at home. Simone had, in fact, applied to be the French teacher, but what was (desperately) needed was history, and Simone agreed to give it a shot. She was apparently as eager to take the job as Audre was to fill it.
“The fifth- and sixth-formers won’t show up until nine,” Cordelia says. “They like to make an entrance.”
“Nine?”Simone says. “What time does the dance usually end? I was out late last night with Rhode Rivera. He took me to the Alibi, and I was overserved. I was hoping to meet my pillow by ten o’clock tonight.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Cordelia says. “We need to be vigilant tonight, constantly monitoring who comes and goes. The kids will sneak off to the Schoolhouse, or to God’s Basement. One of us should do the rounds in about an hour.” She would like to suggestthat Simone be the one to do the rounds so Cordelia and Honey can have some time alone, but Simone is wearing those impractical heels.
“Why would the kids go to theSchoolhouse?” Simone asks.
“To join the Harkness Society,” Honey says. “That’s what the kids call it when they have sex on the Harkness tables.”
“It’s a prestige thing,” Cordelia says.
A look of distaste crosses Simone’s face. “I teach at a Harkness table,” she says. “And where is God’s Basement?”
Is the woman daft? Cordelia wonders. Has no one filled her in on the very basics of Tiffin legend and lore? “The basement of the chapel,” Cordelia says. “There are couches and chairs down there. Years ago it served as a reception area—before we had all this.” She indicates the walls of the Teddy around them.
“The kids have sex in thechapel?” Simone says.
“The Harkness Society is a bigger coup,” Honey says. “God’s Basement is second choice.”
