Page 91 of The Academy
Simone is crushed by this answer. She expected him to hedge, to say he and Charley were “just talking,” to say it wasn’t a big deal, possibly even to tell Simone things had cooled off over the break. She wonders if there still might be a little wiggle room. With nineteen-year-old boys, there usually is.
Simone checks out the building materials in the back of his truck. “What’s all this?”
East shrugs. “I’m helping Mr. James with a project.”
“I thought you said Mr. James wasn’t here.”
East licks his lips; for one second, he looks nervous. “He’s not. That’s why I’m helping him.”
“Doing what?”
“You sure ask a lot of questions,” East says. He presses his key fob to lock his truck, and the electronic chirp reverberates in the empty lot. He says, “I’ll see you, Miss Bergeron.”
As he’s walking away, Simone says, “You know what I think you’re doing? I think you’re building a little love nest below the dorms.”
East turns around and, after the briefest pause, starts back toward her. The expression on his face is psychopath-calm, and for a second Simone wonders if he’s going to hurt her. But instead, he takes the case of wine from her and says, “Why don’t we have a drink up inmyroom?”
Rhode posts pictures of himself all over New York City in hopes that Lace Ann might see them and decide to reach out. He tells himself that Lace Ann must be growing weary of Miller the finance bro, who is probably hip-deep in his March Madness bracket right now or planning a guys’ trip to Augusta for the Masters.
When Rhode’s posts don’t garner any attention from Lace Ann (or anyone else, really), he considers casually bumping into her near her new storefront on Ludlow, but he fears she’ll think he’s stalking her—and he’s not desperate.
He is, however, broke—so broke he has to cut his trip short. He can’t help but bitterly dwell on the two grand he spent on the date with Simone. With that money in hand, he could have stayed at the Warwick, or at least the Belvedere, instead of surfing the couches of old friends who barely concealed their bemusement about where Rhode’s life had taken him.
He has just enough money left for a bus ticket to Springfield, an Uber to campus, and a couple days’ worth of DoorDash from Moon Palace.
Rhode arrives on campus after dark and, he’s not going to lie, walking through the gates and across the deserted campus is spooky. While Rhode was in the city, he met up with his former editor, Oscar, who suggested that Rhode try his hand at writing a boarding school novel, an idea that caused Rhode to rear back in revulsion.
“You mean write YA?” he said.
“No, man, I meanA Separate Peace,but bring it into the 2020s. There must be hella drama in your day-to-day that you could mine.”
Rhode wasn’t sure anything “literary” could be drawn out of reading fifteen ChatGPT papers aboutThe Crucibleor overhearing the noises Royce Stringfellow made as he jerked off in the bathroom stall. Therewasthe whole situation with Zip Zap. Maybe Rhode could exploit that? Would readers care about a high school terrorized by an app? They might… but Rhode would be fired for sure.
It’s only now, as Rhode wanders past the darkened Schoolhouse and locked-up Teddy that he realizes thereissome intrigue here—not only with the students but with the faculty as well. Rhode could write the hell out of a scene about a well-meaning English teacher who tries to impress a hot young colleague with the world’s most expensive dinner date only to have said colleague puke her guts up all night.
Ha.
Rhode enters Classic North, but the hall light isn’t working. Maybe he should write a horror novel set at Tiffin, because entering the empty dorm in the dark is terrifying.
It’s not quite as terrifying as his finances, however—but at least Rhode opted to amortize his salary over twelve months instead of taking it all in nine. It’s less money per month, but he won’t be completely destitute over the summer. The best thing that happened to Rhode in the city was that he lucked into an unbelievable sublet situation: Some chick named Josephine manages a boutique on Bleecker and will be managing the East Hampton branch of the same boutique all summer. She advertised a one-bedroom on West Fourth for fourteen hundred a month. (The rent is actually twice this, but Josephine needed someone right away to appease her parents. “They really don’t want to pay for an empty apartment, so half is fine!”) Even so, Rhode will have to take on some tutoring clients, but that will still leave him with plenty of time for writ—
“Whaaa!” Rhode screams. A shadowy figure appears in the hall,then moves into one of the doorways. Part of Rhode wants to run out of the building rather than become the doomed main character in his own unwritten novel. He scrambles for the light on his phone. “Hello?”
There’s no response. Is Rhode imagining things? He creeps down the hall, holding his lit phone out like a cross to ward off a vampire. “Hello? It’s me, Mr. Rivera.”
The figure runs to the other end of the hall. Rhode, in a moment of uncharacteristic courage, drops his bags and takes chase. He sprints after the figure and catches him leaving out the back door. In the moonlight, he sees it’s not a him after all, it’s a her.
“Simone?” he calls out.
She stumbles in the grass, which gives him time to catch up.
“Oh, hey,” Simone says, righting herself. She puts a hand to her chest. She’s wearing a soft purple sweater, her braids are collected in a bun, she’s wearing eye makeup. She’s panting and Rhode sort of wants to laugh, but what the actual hell?
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Doing?”
“You came back early?” he says.
