Page 31 of The Academy
“You can act as indignant as you want,” Doug says. “But I’m far from the only Head who wonders about this.”
In addition to serving as Northmeadow’s Head, Douglas Worth is also the chairperson of ISNEC. He might have started a nasty text stream with the Heads of Excelsior, Brownwell-Mather, and Old Bennington positing conspiracy theories about Tiffin and maybe even Audre herself.
“Good luck in the game, Douglas,” Audre says, and then she strides back to the field. She searches for Dub Austin—she wants totell him to beat the snot out of Northmeadow—but strangely, he’s not on the field.
Everyone on the Tiffin football team is out stretching, except for Dub Austin and Hakeem Pryce, who are in the locker room. Hakeem has Dub jacked up against the locker, his hand wrapped around Dub’s neck.
Dub struggles for air, and yet he doesn’t knee Hakeem in the groin like he probably should. Frankly, he’s relieved it’s come to this.
Taylor had left her phone unguarded; Hakeem looked at it and learned that Dub was Taylor’s number one on Snapchat. Dub was in the library when Taylor went to Hakeem’s room, so he missed the immediate drama but heard about it from Ravenna Rapsicoli. Dub and Ravenna were in the same Spanish class, but they’d never spoken. He noted her presence in the library; she was sitting close enough to him that he heard her phone buzzing and saw her checking her alerts. She looked over at him three times, then sighed and approached.
“People are saying Hakeem and Taylor broke up,” she said.
Dub experienced an involuntary burst of joy, but skepticism soon followed. “Which people?”
“Only everyone in North,” Ravenna said. “Hakeem saw Taylor’s phone and discoveredsomeone elsewas her number one on Snap.”
Dub knew not to outright panic until Ravenna was safely back at her desk; then he collected his things and headed to Hakeem’s room. Normally Dub would have walked right in, but this time he knocked. No answer. Dub cracked the door to see Hakeem lying face down on his bed. “Yo,” Dub said.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Hakeem said.
“Taylor is like a sister to me, man… You know I’ve been going through a lot.”
“Get. The.Fuck.Out.”
Dub would have confessed to Hakeem then and there—except that obviously wasn’t an option. And so, Dub slunk back to his room. Because he wasn’t sure what to do, he typed out a text to Taylor:What happened?Then he deleted it before sending because he didn’t want to get into a whole thing with Taylor. He needed someone to talk to, but whom did he trust besides those two? Dub replayed the way Ravenna said “someone else” and realized that she knew it was him; everyone in the school knew it was him. The other day someone had referred to them as a “throuple.”
Dub opened up his laptop and hovered the cursor overDO NOT OPEN THIS FILE UNTIL THE MORNING OF OUR GRADUATION.Dub caressed the words as though they were Cinnamon’s cheekbone. It was a game he played with himself, of teasing and taunting. Of willpower. Could he keep the secret?
Yes, he could. He’d had plenty of practice.
He closed his laptop. He would straighten things out with Hakeem tomorrow.
He sent Hakeem a text that said,I promise to remove myself. I respect what you two have.
There was no response… which was what Dub deserved for telling a total lie.
The next morning, neither Hakeem nor Taylor was at breakfast, which was a relief. Dub had received a text from Taylor in the middle of the night that read:Hakeem is right, you are my number one, in all of the ways.Dub couldn’t pretend to be surprised: Taylor touched him all the time, she leaned into him, she held his gaze, her brown eyes melting, her lips parting.
Dub left her on read. His first period was, unfortunately, English.Instead of sitting with Taylor like he normally did, he sat all the way across the table, next to Charley Hicks. Everyone seemed surprised, even Mr. Rivera.
For the next week, Dub actively avoided Taylor—he wouldn’t even look at her—and he saw Hakeem only at practice, where Hakeem iced him out. Coach Bosworth, who cared solely about beating Northmeadow, devised a new play called “Around the Apple Tree,” which they ran five million times and successfully executed three. After practice, Coach called both Dub and Hakeem into his office, where he said the predictable things:I don’t care what the two of you are dealing with off the field, but you need to leave it behind for the sake of the team. Am I understood?They both grudgingly nodded, but Hakeem wouldn’t look at Dub and they did not shake hands.
That night at dinner, Hakeem and Taylor sat together in the Booth and Dub ate with his offensive line, all of them underclassmen. Taylor led Hakeem out of the dining hall by the necktie and there were cheers and whistles and Dub figured they were probably headed to God’s Basement, where she would give him a blow job.
He cleared his tray. This was the way things had to be. For now and maybe forever.
Before the Northmeadow game, Dub let Teague Baldwin, the senior running back, lead the chants because he just wasn’t feeling it. As the rest of the team was heading out to the field to stretch, Dub noticed Hakeem sitting on the bench with his head in his hands. He waited until everyone had left, then said, “Man, just punch me so we can get this over with.”
Hakeem leaped to his feet and socked Dub in the jaw, hard. Dub, who had grown up with three brothers, instinctively hit back, andwithin seconds the two of them were brawling. At one point Dub got Hakeem in a headlock and thought,What am I even doing?So he loosened his grip, and Hakeem spun out and threw Dub up against the side of the lockers, trying to choke him.
Now, here they are: Hakeem has Dub up against the lockers. Dub closes his eyes and remembers being in this same position as an eighth grader back in Durango. A kid named Calhoun Royal, who had already gone through puberty and a growth spurt, was bullying Dub, saying he was being rewarded by the coach only because of who his older brothers were.But your brothers aren’t here to help you now, are they, little Webber?He then called Dub a pole choker, threw him to the floor, and kicked him so hard he broke two of Dub’s ribs.
Dub told the nurse in the ER that he’d taken a hit on the field, which was the same thing he’d told his mother. Karen Austin, however, was a perceptive woman: A brochure for Tiffin Academy arrived in the mail the following week. She’d already talked to Coach Bosworth, already discussed financial aid.
Massachusetts?Dub said.
You’ll get a top-notch education,Karen said.You’ll get… away.
