Page 20 of The Academy
Silence.
When the chapel bells chime nine, the music in the first-floor bathroom abruptly stops.Thank god,Charley thinks. The past hour has consisted of incessant screeching.Take one with my phone, take one with mine.Charley can envision the girls forming different configurations, and she laughs when she overhears Olivia H-T ask to take a pic of just her and Davi, and Davi says, “I don’t think that’snecessary.” (Charley is reluctant to admit it because she hates going along with the group mentality, but Daviiskind of cool.)
The girls on her floor have now spent more time getting ready for First Dance than they’ll spend at the actual dance. What a waste of time.
Charley hears the front door slam shut, and she peeks around her window shade to see the neon river flowing up toward the Teddy.Do I wish I was with them? I do not.
And yet… she can’t stop herself from picking up the dress Davi left on her bed. It’s hideous for sure, but even so, Charley tries it on. It’s as snug as a wetsuit, and Charley turns in the mirror. She takes off her glasses and undoes her braids, which leaves her hair in kinky waves. She considers going into the bathroom and using Olivia H-T’s makeup—Olivia is Tiffin’s answer to Sephora—but Charley would need a YouTube video. She hasn’t worn makeup since her ballet recital in fourth grade.
Just as she’s thinking it might be amusing to shock the hell out of everyone by showing up at the dance, she hears something hit her window. It sounds like a pebble. Random? Oh, she hopes so. But then there’s another strike, more forceful. Then a voice.Hey.Charley returns to the window and peers behind the shade.
It’s East.
“Let me in,” he says, pointing to the front door.
Charley imagines her mother getting a call from the school alerting her that Charley has sneaked a boy in. (Her mother would be thrilled.) Everyone is at First Dance; no one will be back in the dorm for at least another hour. But she can’t let East see her like this. She shucks off the dress and pulls on her jeans and the red-and-navy rugby shirt that used to belong to her father. Replaces her glasses. Then she hurries to the foyer and peeks out in both directions before letting East inside. Without an invitation, he strides down the hall toward her room.
“Why aren’t you at the dance?” he asks.
“Why aren’tyouat the dance?” Charley tries to keep her voice chill even though she’s completely shook.
“I have to maintain a certain mystique,” he says. “I can’t be hanging around with the hoi polloi.”
Hoi polloi?Charley thinks. East isn’t stupid, and yet she’s pretty sure he’s going to fail history, which is the one class they have together. He doesn’t do any of the reading. Like, none of it.
“Well, I didn’t come to Tiffin to dance,” Charley says. They’ve reached the door to Charley’s room, but East strides right past it and heads around the corner toward the stairs.
“Come with me,” he says. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to check out.”
“Do I need shoes?”
“You need shoes.”
Charley ducks into her room and slips on her Top-Siders. She looks at the book splayed open on her bed. Has Tom Ripley been a bad influence? Is she just going to follow East into the unknown… and probably end up Honor Boarded and right back at home with her mother and Joey?
No!she thinks. But her feet don’t have any sense of their own. She goes after him.
He leads her out the back of the dorm to a set of concrete steps that leads to a subterranean door. The basement, great, this is so against the rules there probably isn’t even a category for it inThe Bridle.And yet, when East yanks the door open, Charley follows. He’s been here for two years, she’s brand-new; if she gets caught, she’ll claim ignorance. They walk through a dank, cavernous room filled with excess furniture to another door that leads even deeper into the bowels of the building.
Charley balks. “What is this?”
“Just follow me,” East says. “My dad was in charge of therenovations on campus, and when I looked at the as-built, I noticed a tunnel that connects the dorms with a secret room or something in the middle. I thought about it all summer; I just needed the right opportunity to investigate. And this, Charles, is that opportunity.”
“It’s Charlotte,” she says.
“I know, Charles, I’m just playing. Now, let’s go.”
When a boy like East gives you a nickname,Charley thinks,it’s basically impossible to refuse him.She follows him down a set of rickety wooden stairs. The door closes behind them, and Charley fears she’s descending to her doom.
“So if you’re not at Tiffin to dance, why are you here?” East asks.
“To get an education.”
He laughs. “I’m not Ms. Robinson, you can tell me the truth.”
Weirdly, she believes him. “My father died,” she says. “He was having shoulder surgery and he just… never came out of the anesthesia.” She swallows. “He was my favorite person in the world.”
East stops on the stairs and turns to her. “I’m sorry.That blows,bruh. So, you came here because home had, like, too many memories?”
