Page 53 of The Academy
Yes,Cordelia thinks,but the students aren’t supposed to know that.Cordelia has been working at Tiffin for twenty-two years, longer than anyone except Roy Ewanick and Mr. James. When Cordeliainterviewed for the job, Chester Dell was Head and he was a man with traditional values. Cordelia used the title “Mrs.” and invented a story about a husband who died only months after their wedding of… testicular cancer. This did the trick: Chester Dell waved a hand as if clearing the mention of testes from the air, and Cordelia knew her marital status would never be broached again. She goes by “Mrs. Spooner,” and this has effectively served to keep questions about her sexuality at bay. How did the students uncover this long-ago lie? It’s troubling, but apparently only to Cordelia.
“Well, what about the other part?” Cordelia says. “The part accusing me of admitting students based on appearance.”
“Preposterous,” Honey says. “Why are you worried aboutthat?”
“They’re insinuating that I’m…corrupt.”
“This has nothing to do with you, Cord,” Honey says. “Teenagers are narcissists. They’re feeling themselves. You admit students based on appearance and they’re here, which means they’re good-looking.”
“So you don’t think theyknowanything?”
“What could they possibly know?” Honey waits a beat. “Cord?”
“Nothing. Obviously nothing,” Cordelia says. “I’m sorry I bothered you at work.”
Cordelia hurries back to her office and logs on to her computer. She has a group of thirty people attending the information session at ten; she needs to move fast.
She googles “how to clear your search history” and follows the instructions. Only once it’s done (Right? She was successful? It’s been cleared?) does she sink back in her desk chair.
No one canproveanything, yet it is deeply disturbing because… well, because Cordelia does occasionally check out an applicant’s photo before deciding whether or not to admit. She does this whenan applicant is on the cusp—maybe her SSAT score is underwhelming but her grades are promising or vice versa; maybe there’s a problematic disciplinary infraction in an otherwise sterling application; maybe the essay, while technically sound, lacks inspiration. Cordelia will, on such occasions—assuming the child hasn’t interviewed at the school in person (which is true for over half the applicants because Tiffin is so far out in the boonies)—find the student on Instagram or TikTok and poke around. Many times the student’s account is private and so Cordelia will hunt down the parents on Facebook and look at pictures of the prospective student that way. Is it a pretty face she’s searching for? Not exclusively, though physical beauty certainly doesn’t hurt. She’s moved by overall appearance: Does the student look like she’ll fit in at Tiffin? Cordelia eschews students who are too pale, too pimply; she’s not fond of overbites, or worse, underbites. She once turned down a repeat fourth-former with an unironic mullet. Really, she thinks, she’s doing these children a favor, sparing them high school trauma.
But let Cordelia again state: She looks up only the students who might need something to push them over the line. Tilly Benbow, for example. Mediocre academically, but an astonishing beauty. Tilly has managed her academics just fine, she’s in charge of the music at the football games, she’s part of the tight-knit group of girls on the first floor of Classic South. Admitting Tilly had been a good decision.
Is admitting a student based on looks any worse than admitting a student because her mother is the US ambassador to Ireland or her father runs the third-largest hedge fund in New York? Cordelia somehow senses the answer is yes. What she’s been doing is shameful, so shameful that she would deny it even if polygraphed.
The perplexing question is: How did someone discover this well-guarded secret? Cordelia has never confessed this shameful habit to anyone—not Audre, not even Honey. She reassures herself thatnobody “found out.” Honey is right, the kids are simply giving themselves props and Cordelia became collateral damage.
She checks her phone again. The post now has 202 “ups” and so many comments that, if Cordelia read them all, she would miss the information session.
She thinks,202 is a concerning number. Nearly the entire school is now on Zip Zap.
The second post on Zip Zap arrives bright and early the next morning.
Annabelle Tuckerman’s senior speech about her “three brushes with death” was fabricated. Annabelle has had… zero brushes with death. The entire speech was a lie.
Audre reads the post with her first cup of coffee.Who has a beef with Annabelle?she wonders.Who would post something so damaging?Audre can come up with only one answer: Lisa Kim, the Head Prefect. Lisa and Annabelle are “friends,” but they’re also neck and neck for valedictorian. But would Lisa, as the chosen student leader, blaspheme a classmate and risk being Honor Boarded and removed from her position? She would not. It wasn’t Lisa Kim. But who else would have it out for Annabelle? Audre had been so impressed with Annabelle’s senior speech that she mentioned it to Annabelle’s mother over Family Weekend. Carolyn Tuckerman asked if Audre would send the video, which Audre remembered to do the week following with the subject line:Proud mom moment ahead!
Annabelle Tuckerman reads the Zip Zap post only moments after opening her eyes. She hears a gasp from the bunk above her and realizes that her roommate, Ravenna, must have seen the post as well.
Ravenna hangs her head down into Annabelle’s air space. She’s wearing a silk bonnet to protect her long dark hair from overnight breakage; it makes her look like Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. “Uh… did you…?”
Annabelle has to decide quickly: Should her reaction be righteous indignation or should she brush it off as no big deal? She’s too addled to figure out what an innocent person would say.
Her eyes fill with genuine tears, and all she can hope is that Ravenna doesn’t construe these as tears of admission.
Because… Annabelledidfabricate some/most of her senior speech. First off, her mother never considered having an abortion. By all accounts, when Carolyn Tuckerman found out she was pregnant, she jumped at the chance to pursue a non-partner track at Echols & Diamond and she has enjoyed a happy, stress-free, and fulfilling career at the firm in contracts. Annabelle might make the argument that her mother at least privately considered terminating the pregnancy—but Carolyn has been vocal about work-life balance and how getting pregnant with Annabelle was the best thing that ever happened to her.
Annabelle, at the age of eight, did not have a tumor removed from her abdominal cavity, though she did have tubes put in her ears, which was scary at the time but not life-threatening.
And finally, this past summer, Annabelle did fall off her bike on her way home from working at the Red Cat in Oak Bluffs, but she wasn’t the victim of a hit-and-run. She scraped her knees and took all the skin off her palms.
Annabelle made up her senior speech and fully intended to get away with it, because who would ever know? What Annabelle didn’t anticipate was Ms. Robinson talking with Annabelle’s mother over Family Weekend and then sending Carolyn Tuckerman the video of Annabelle’s speech. Last week, Annabelle received an email fromher mother with the video attached, subject line:You made up your senior speech?!??!The body of the email read:Don’t call me for a few days. I need to process that my daughter is a liar.
But Annabelle called her mother as soon as she could, in the afternoon while Ravenna was at the’Bred Bulletinoffice. She cried and begged forgiveness and tried to explain that she had no choice, senior speeches had to be about something dramatic, nothing had ever happened to Annabelle, she had never known hardship.Which is such a disadvantage! You don’t realize how challenging it is to be a normal suburban kid, how am I supposed to stand out? You and Dad put so much pressure on me. Princeton is never going to take me, they wouldn’t take either of you today, it isn’t 1987 anymore!
Her mother repeated three times that she was “very disappointed” and then she said that thing about having to face yourself in the mirror every morning, but she admitted that she and Annabelle’s father were, perhaps, guilty of pushing Princeton, they just wanted Annabelle to have the same stellar collegiate experience that they’d enjoyed.
Carolyn Tuckerman said, “I’m not going to tell Ms. Robinson about this,” and Annabelle breathed out a substantial sigh of relief. She knew her mothershouldtell Ms. Robinson; the correct course of action from anintegritystandpoint was to come clean. “But, Anna, you can’t use any iteration of this speech in your college essay. Am I clear?”
