5. Admissions #2
The school year has just begun, but Simone Bergeron has already garnered a fair amount of attention from the students.
Part of it is her age—Simone has just turned twenty-four; she graduated from McGill only two years earlier.
Between graduating and getting the job at Tiffin, Simone worked as a barista at Le Br?loir in Montreal.
Simone’s mother is Quebecois, her father from Mali; they spoke both English and French at home.
Simone had, in fact, applied to be the French teacher, but what was (desperately) needed was history, and Simone agreed to give it a shot.
She was apparently as eager to take the job as Audre was to fill it.
“The fifth- and sixth-formers won’t show up until nine,” Cordelia says. “They like to make an entrance.”
“Nine?” Simone says. “What time does the dance usually end? I was out late last night with Rhode Rivera. He took me to the Alibi, and I was overserved. I was hoping to meet my pillow by ten o’clock tonight.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Cordelia says.
“We need to be vigilant tonight, constantly monitoring who comes and goes. The kids will sneak off to the Schoolhouse, or to God’s Basement.
One of us should do the rounds in about an hour.
” She would like to suggest that Simone be the one to do the rounds so Cordelia and Honey can have some time alone, but Simone is wearing those impractical heels.
“Why would the kids go to the Schoolhouse ?” Simone asks.
“To join the Harkness Society,” Honey says. “That’s what the kids call it when they have sex on the Harkness tables.”
“It’s a prestige thing,” Cordelia says.
A look of distaste crosses Simone’s face. “I teach at a Harkness table,” she says. “And where is God’s Basement?”
Is the woman daft? Cordelia wonders. Has no one filled her in on the very basics of Tiffin legend and lore?
“The basement of the chapel,” Cordelia says.
“There are couches and chairs down there. Years ago it served as a reception area—before we had all this.” She indicates the walls of the Teddy around them.
“The kids have sex in the chapel ?” Simone says.
“The Harkness Society is a bigger coup,” Honey says. “God’s Basement is second choice.”
“Although well-used,” Cordelia says. “There are stains all over the furniture.”
Simone bows her head and sways on her feet. She hands the clipboard to Honey. “I need to use the ladies’ room.” She hurries away.
Now Cordelia feels free to touch Honey’s back. She and Honey have never had sex on a Harkness table, but they’ve stolen moments in God’s Basement.
“Simone is a hot mess,” Cordelia says. “Hungover. And that dress is disgraceful.”
“Oh, lighten up, Cord, she’s young,” Honey says.
“All the more reason why she should be setting a better example. I’m sure you’ve noticed the boys ogle her…”
“The boys aren’t the only ones,” Honey says. “She might have the most fantastic legs I’ve ever seen.”
Cordelia clears her throat. Is Honey trying to make her jealous? “And the girls are dazzled by her as well. She needs to understand that she’s a role model and not act in a manner unbecoming.”
“You sound a hundred and fourteen years old,” Honey says. She stiffens under Cordelia’s touch. “Hands to yourself, please. We’re in public.”
“No one’s here,” Cordelia says. There’s a group of third-form girls in a cluster on the dance floor, all playing with their hair, singing along to “Saving Up” by Dom Dolla.
The new English teacher, Rhode Rivera, is lingering by the mocktail bar.
He glances up at Cordelia and Honey, but he’ll think the touch platonic.
“Cord,” Honey says.
“What’s up with you?” Cordelia asks. She can’t keep the longing out of her voice.
When school resumed, the romance and reverie of their summer came to an abrupt end; Honey became busy and distracted.
Cordelia realizes that Honey has sixty sixth-formers to place in college, some of whom have very high and possibly unrealistic expectations (Annabelle Tuckerman comes to mind).
But Cordelia also worries that Honey is tiring of her, and of their arrangement.
Honey hasn’t spent the night in Cordelia’s cottage since Move-In Day.
“Nothing is up,” Honey says in a voice so tight with irritation that Cordelia knows she’s lying.
Cordelia tries not to panic. Has Honey become infatuated with Simone Bergeron?
There’s no time to ask because a gaggle of fourth-formers in their skintight metallic pink-and-blue skirts and silver bandeau tops approach the entrance checkpoint.
The poor fourth-form—or sophomores, as they’re known elsewhere—are probably the most overlooked class at Tiffin.
They aren’t upperclassmen, nor are they ingenues like the third-form.
Cordelia smiles at the girls, though she can’t recall a single one by name, and how is that possible when she would have interviewed at least some of them?
She feels relief when, behind the fourth-formers, she sees Hakeem Pryce and his girlfriend, Taylor Wilson, and with them (of course), Dub Austin. Hakeem raises a hand. “Yo, Mrs. Spooner, Ms. Vandermeid, Happy First Dance!”
Cordelia can’t help but beam. Even twenty-two years in, she feels proud to be acknowledged by the students.
“Hakeem!” she says. “Taylor! Dub! Welcome!”
Honey, who now has the clipboard, squares her beautiful shoulders. “State your name, please,” she says to Hakeem.
Lighten up, Honey, Cordelia thinks. Hakeem and Dub don’t drink or do drugs.
Not only do they care too much about their bodies, Hakeem aspires to play football in the Ivy League and Dub is a scholarship student and knows any infraction puts him at risk of being sent home to Durango.
Taylor Wilson is also a good kid—her mother, Kathy, sits on the board of directors—though Taylor’s eyes are suspiciously bright, her cheeks rosy.
She’s wearing the dress chosen (for what reason Cordelia cannot fathom) by the fifth-form: a neon tube with contrasting neon mesh overtop.
The overall effect is that of a garish laundry basket.
“Taylor Wilson,” she says to Honey, making eye contact and flashing her dazzling smile.
Does Honey see a glimmer of contraband in Taylor’s demeanor? Taylor likely took a shot of Tito’s from the “water bottle” she keeps in her mini fridge. Can Cordelia blame her? She’d love a glass of buttery chardonnay herself.
“Have fun,” Honey says, admitting all three kids to the Egg.
With the arrival of the upperclassmen, First Dance officially begins.
Simone locks herself in the end stall of the girls’ bathroom and throws up the banana she ate at lunch.
When it comes to upset stomachs, Simone’s mother, a pediatrician, swears by brAT—bananas, rice, applesauce, toast. But ew, banana was an unappealing choice.
What even is a banana but a rubbery, phallic-shaped fruit with a distinctive smell?
Simone wipes her mouth with toilet paper and flushes. She will never eat another banana, nor will she drink champagne. Even thinking the word champagne makes her dry heave.
It was very bad form to get so drunk during her first weeks at work. Has she learned nothing from the past?
Simone fears she might be in over her head with this job.
She’s certified to teach French, but somehow the French position that was advertised evaporated (there weren’t enough students interested to justify a hire; everyone wanted to learn Spanish).
What Tiffin had to offer Simone instead was history—fifth-form American studies and sixth-form world cultures.
Simone’s mother is Quebecois and her father immigrated to Canada from Mali when he was a boy—however, this hardly makes Simone qualified to teach world cultures.
She knows even less about American history.
In addition to teaching those classes, the school was looking for a dorm parent for the fifth- and sixth-form girls.
“Do you have any experience in that kind of role?” Audre asked during Simone’s interview.
The answer was yes: Simone had been a floor fellow at McGill—but she had been dismissed in disgrace less than two weeks before she graduated, and so Simone had chosen to leave it off her American résumé (she’d left it off her Canadian résumé as well, but everyone in the province of Quebec knew someone at McGill, and so they’d either heard what had happened on the first floor of McConnell or seen the video, and this was why Simone had spent the past two years making latte art).
Audre must have noticed the constipated expression on Simone’s face because she started throwing out prompts. “Were you a camp counselor? An au pair? Did you ever… babysit ?”
“Oui,” Simone said. “Yes, I babysat.” She did not mention that this was a job she’d held the summer she turned twelve and was properly more mother’s helper than babysitter.
But it didn’t matter because Audre beamed. “Wonderful!” she said. “We’d love to offer you the position.”
Upon arriving at Classic South, Simone papered the door of her room and wrote If you don’t stretch, you won’t grow at eye level in black Sharpie.
Then she encouraged the girls to write their own favorite quotes.
“The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”—Steve Jobs.
“There is no substitute for hard work.”—Thomas Edison.
“They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no!”—Amy Winehouse.
The door has now become an attraction. The girls will stop by to see if anything new has been added, and they’ll try to guess who wrote what. (“That’s Tilly’s, I’m pretty sure…”)
There’s no denying that most of the kids like Simone; her youth, to them, is a surprise and a delight.
They feel that she can more easily understand their roommate disputes, menstrual cycles, and Snapchat accounts.
Simone knows what “left on read” means; she might be the only faculty member at the school who does.
But there are two students who have already managed to get under Simone’s skin.
One is Charley Hicks. She’s in Simone’s F-period American history class, and—Simone will just admit it—she has a better grasp of the material than Simone does.
Simone assigned a reading of Bartolomé de Las Casas on the exploitation of Indigenous people, and Charley’s response to this reading left everyone in the class speechless, including Simone.
After class, Simone had pulled Charley aside: Do you have a special interest in Indigenous people?
she’d asked. And Charley had shrugged. Not really, but I did the reading and I checked out some Native American creation stories.
Simone was eager to segue to the topic of Charley’s behavior in the dorm. Why did she skip the ice cream social in the common room?
When Simone was leaving the dorm earlier, she noticed Davi Banerjee—whom Simone treats as an equal probably more than she should—knocking on Charley’s door.
Davi had one of the mesh dresses tucked under her arm, and Simone experienced a wave of relief because there was no way Charley would have purchased the fifth-form First Dance dress on her own.
Thank god for Davi, Simone thought.
Before Simone exits the stall, she hears a group of students enter. She peers through the crack in the door. The girls are all in tie-dye: third-formers. Freshmen.
“I heard he never comes to First Dance,” one of the girls says, before pouting in the mirror to apply lip gloss.
“I heard he has a private party in his room, invitation only,” another girl says.
“Should we try to crash?” a third girl asks. “I’ve heard he gets good drugs.”
Simone nearly gasps. The girl speaking is only fourteen, what does she know about “good drugs”? Then Simone checks herself. Didn’t she first try pot her freshman year? No, it was the summer between freshman and sophomore year. She was fifteen.
“He’s not going to let us in,” the first girl says. “I’ve heard he doesn’t fuck.”
“Like, at all ? What is he, asexual?”
“He is so hot. The hottest guy in school.”
Simone closes her eyes and shakes her head.
She now knows who they’re talking about: Andrew Eastman.
She shoves away her absolutely inappropriate response to this chatter.
He never comes to First Dance? A tiny, very secret part of her is crushed.
Would she admit, even to herself, that she chose this dress with East in mind?
He doesn’t fuck? She feels an odd elation: She would have assumed he was able to seduce any girl in school, maybe even multiple girls at once.
“Honestly, I think he’s kind of pathetic. He reclassed when he got here and I heard he was held back somewhere along the way, so he’s nineteen. A nineteen-year-old fifth-former? He’ll be twenty when he graduates. What a joke.”
He’s nineteen, Simone thinks. This doesn’t surprise her. He seems older.
She can’t linger here any longer or the girls will know she’s eavesdropping, besides which, Honey and Mrs. Spooner will be wondering where she is and Spooner was already giving off some pretty judgy vibes. Simone flushes the toilet again and steps out of the stall. “Hi, girls!” she says.
“Hey, Miss Bergeron,” they say. One adds, “That dress is so cute.”
“Merci,” Simone says. As she washes her hands, she basks in the admiring glances of the girls in the mirror. Forget him, she thinks. She is Miss Bergeron, history teacher, dorm parent, role model.