Page 32 of The Academy
His mother knew there was a lot Dub wanted to escape in Durango: the looming shadow of his two older brothers, Brent and Case; the encroaching shadow of his younger brother, Dallas, who was already playing better ball than Dub; Dub’s father, who’d had an affair with one of the rafting guides at his outdoor expedition company, gotten her pregnant, and moved with her to Telluride; but most of all, Dub wanted to leave behind the bullies like Calhoun and his buddies who somehow sensed Dub’s weakness and preyed on it.
Now, in a reedy voice Dub doesn’t even recognize as his own, he says to Hakeem, “Kill me.” Dying, Dub can handle. But he can’t handle Hakeem hating him.
Hakeem lets Dub go and Dub coughs, bends in half, and spits onthe ground. When he stands up, his vision is blurry and his jaw throbs. Hakeem has his hands on his hips and his eyes are blazing. “Man, she’smygirlfriend, not yours.”
They stare at each other for a long moment; then they hear the music out on the field and Dub knows Coach is about to come looking for them.
Dub says, “I know. I’m sorry. I’ll back off. I love you, man.” He isn’t the kind of person who would sayBros before hos,but he considers doing it now, just to make things okay.
“I know you do, man, which is why I just don’t fuckinggetit.” Hakeem shakes his head, his hands, his shoulders. “I know Cinnamon is gone and Taylor’s a nurturer and whatever the fuck, but you have to stay away from her.”
“I will.” Dub raises a fist. He just wants this whole thing over.
Hakeem stares at Dub a second, then grudgingly bumps knuckles. “Let’s kick Northmeadow’s ass.”
“Bet,” Dub says, and they run out onto the field.
Taylor Wilson is in the bleachers. She’s wearing Hakeem’s practice jersey and has his number, 62, painted on her face. But what the past week has brought into focus is that Taylor doesn’t love Hakeem like she used to, and maybe not at all.
She discovered a new word on TikTok:limerence.It means “an intense desire for someone, marked by intrusive thoughts and a desire for a relationship and reciprocation.”
This perfectly describes how Taylor feels about Dub. It’s notherfault that Cinnamon Peters’s death turned Dub into a tragic romantic hero. Underneath Dub’s tough exterior, Taylor senses a swollen river of grief that draws her to him. Dub is Hakeem’sbest friend,which makes him completely off-limits. This only makes Taylor want him more.
The Tiffin team bursts onto the field to “Lose Yourself” by Eminem, and Taylor cheers along with the rest of the crowd. Hakeem seeks her out—maybe to make sure she’s looking at him and not at Dub. She waves, blows him a kiss. She’ll def get the lead in the musical this year, she thinks. Her acting is that good.
Chef Haz has Friday night off. He considers going to the game, though he really only enjoys sports when he has money riding on the outcome. He wonders if old Jameson wants to wager fifty bucks—Jameson will take Tiffin like the loyal dumbass he is—but before Haz can reach out to him, a text comes into his phone.
It’s Andrew Eastman:Can u talk?
This is interesting,Haz thinks.And probably not good.
Sure,Haz says.I’m in the Back Lot having a butt.
A couple minutes later, Haz sees the glow of a single phone moving through the trees above the lot, and then East comes loping down the stairs. In the distance, Haz hears cheers: The game is underway.
“Hey,” Haz says. He offers one of his Camels to East.Corrupting a minor,Haz thinks—except East isn’t a minor, he’s nineteen, and he could smoke crack and no one here would blink an eye.
East waves away the pack and sucks on his vape, also forbidden. Then he reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a thick stack of—Haz blinks—hundred-dollar bills.
“I have a proposition for you,” East says.
A speakeasy. In an old bomb shelter deep beneath the dorms, connected to both Classic North and Classic South by brick tunnels. Did Haz know this place existed? No, but he’s not surprised: Thiscampus is like something out of a book, so why wouldn’t there be a secret tunnel that connects the boys’ dorm to the girls’ with a bomb shelter in between that is fitted with both electricity and running water? East seems to think it was built during the Cold War. (Has he been paying attention in history class?) He wants it bougie, he says, with velvet and leather, brass and mahogany, soft lighting, good music, craft cocktails.
“Cocktails?” Haz says. For the last few moments, he’s been able to pretend this might all be on the up-and-up, a new hangout space, a place for the kids to chill that would be an alternative to the loud, bright chaos of the Teddy. “With alcohol, you mean?”
East laughs. “Yes. Cocktails with alcohol.” He flips through the bills in his hand like an old-time gangster. There’s twenty-five hundred, maybe three grand there, Haz would guess.
“No,” Haz says. “I am not going to help you set up a speakeasy. I am not going to buy you booze.”
“You are, though,” East says in that goddamned cocksure way he has. “You’re going to tell me it’s morally wrong; I’m going to tell you the kids drink anyway. Last year in the dorm checks, they found forty-one water bottles filled with Tito’s and something like a hundred nips of Fireball. Everyone drinks, Chef, even the third-formers. This would be elevating the experience; we’d be showing the kids how proper drinking is done. I’m going to keep our clientele exclusive. This isn’t a keg party. It’s two hours on a Saturday night, eight or ten kids who will sneak down to enjoy a vodka martini or a Dirty Shirley, listen to music, and conversate.” He hits his vape again. “Think of it as a representation of the seventeenth-century Parisian salons. Or the Algonquin Round Table. Fucking intellectual.”
“Ha!” Haz says. “You’re an entrepreneurial chip off the old block, that’s for sure.” What Haz thinks but does not say is:I’ve already been banished out here to East Japip for breaking the rules once. I’m not idiotic enough to do it again.“But I’m sorry to say, I’m not helping you with this little endeavor.”
“I’ll pay you twenty-five thousand dollars, cash, to provide alcohol, juices, mixers, garnishes, glassware, and specialty swizzle sticks and cocktail napkins. I’ll give you twenty-five percent on top of everything you order.”
Haz flicks his cigarette butt to the ground and crushes it under the heel of his clog.Clientele,he thinks.Dirty Shirleys. Glassware, swizzle sticks.Despite the chill in the air, Haz starts sweating under his chef’s jacket as he fights off his worst impulses. But, as Haz has learned again and again, his worst impulses will win.
“Thirty-five grand,” Haz says. “And thirty-five percent.”
