8. Tiffin Talks Day in the Life #2
He greatly envies one of the other English teachers, Ruth Wully.
Ruth is married to the science teacher, Kent Wully.
They should really be named “the Woolies ,” Rhode thinks, because they both have prodigious amounts of hair and they wear what look like homespun garments.
They live in an old Victorian in Haydensboro and also have a summer cottage on Sweet Pond, across the border in Vermont.
Ruth teaches third- and fourth-form English as well as a senior elective called Boarding School Lit, which has a waiting list every year because who wouldn’t want to spend a semester reading The Starboard Sea and Prep ?
But then the magical moment Rhode has been waiting for finally arrives. Charley Hicks, Dub Austin, and Taylor Wilson get into a debate about what Emerson means by the “transparent eyeball.”
“What,” Rhode asks the class, “is he talking about when he writes, ‘I am nothing, I see all.’”
Dub Austin—whom Rhode has perhaps misclassified as a football bro—says, “Emerson believed that when he stepped into nature alone, he achieved a greater understanding of the world. And self-awareness, maybe? I’ve dealt with a bunch of stuff in the past six months that…
I don’t know… changed the way I think about things.
If you leave yourself open to learning about the world and other people, then no matter what happens to you, good or bad, you become wiser. ”
“Interesting answer,” Rhode says. “Does anyone have other thoughts?”
Charley says, “I think what Emerson means is that, when he goes into nature alone, he loses his… ego, I guess you’d call it? And becomes one with nature and therefore closer to god?”
Taylor jumps in. “That is what he’s saying, but it discounts the importance of individuality. Like, your personality and opinions cease to matter when you walk in the woods, and he thinks that’s a good thing. To Emerson, all that matters is nature.”
Ahhh, brilliant. The bell rings, class is over, the kids slap their laptops shut, pack up their books, and pull out their phones to take pictures of themselves to snap to whomever. The golden bubble they were sitting in pops, but even so, Rhode is suffused with a sense of purpose.
Maybe he should put off his lesson prep for an hour and go for a walk in the woods, he thinks. There are definitely some things he’d like to transcend—such as the unease he’s been feeling since the night of First Dance and what he thinks he saw happening down in the tunnel.
After our school day ends, we transition to afternoon activities. Tiffin has a theater troupe run by Mr. Chuy—but for most of us, the afternoon means athletics.
Charley Hicks spends three weeks as a member of the Thirds field hockey team, where she reluctantly laces her cleats and charges up and down the field alongside her teammates, holding the stick backward on purpose in hopes that she might get cut.
She eventually learns that Thirds field hockey is like the trap in the sink drain: It scoops up all the misfits and half-asses. Nobody gets cut.
But then one day, while they’re waiting in line to do a shooting drill, Olivia H-T, a girl so annoying that Charley wills her ears to fall off every time Olivia H-T speaks, turns to her and says, “I can’t believe you’re not doing newspaper.”
Charley knows that Tiffin has a student newspaper—it’s mentioned in the brochure—but she has dismissed it because back at Loch Raven High, Charley was the editor of the literary magazine; she loved fiction, and her interest didn’t extend to journalism.
But with Olivia H-T’s words, she realizes that “newspaper” can take the place of dreadful Thirds field hockey!
She throws her shin guards into the recycling bin and heads to the newspaper’s “office” in the Teddy.
The editor of the ’Bred Bulletin this year, Charley learns, is sixth-former Ravenna Rapsicoli, Annabelle Tuckerman’s roommate and best friend.
Charley also knows from listening to gossip—the other girls treat Charley like she’s invisible, and she’s learned an enormous amount by just keeping quiet—that Ravenna lost out as Head Prefect to Lisa Kim.
Being editor of the ’Bred Bulletin must be how Ravenna is exerting her influence.
Freedom of the press… means the freedom to criticize and oppose, Charley thinks. George Orwell.
But upon poking her head into the Bulletin ’s office, Charley finds that the newspaper is a complete joke.
It has a staff of… three: Ravenna, and two third-form boys named Grady and Levi who have yet to go through puberty.
Grady has glasses and braces, Levi a severe case of acne and a cowlick.
After thirty seconds of observation from the doorway, Charley discerns the dynamic.
Ravenna is the dominatrix, and Grady and Levi are her subs.
They slump in their chairs around the Harkness table while Ravenna trashes their ideas for articles.
Levi has just suggested doing an investigative piece about which third-form boy took a shit in the shower at Classic North; he claims to have some leads.
“That’s a situation for your dorm parent,” Ravenna says. “No one wants to read about your scatological issues.”
Both boys stare at Ravenna with wide eyes, and Charley wants to cuddle them.
“Come up with something better,” Ravenna says as she runs the thick gold cross around her neck along its chain.
Grady says, “My best friend from the city goes to Brownwell-Mather, and he said there’s this app the kids at his school are posting on that’s getting everyone suspend—”
“Stop right there,” Ravenna says. “When you say ‘the city,’ what are you talking about?”
Grady swallows. “New York.”
“You live in New York City?”
Grady nods.
“Where?”
“West Seventy-Eighth between Amsterdam and Broadway. I went to Ethical—”
“I live at 720 Park,” Ravenna says. She seems to take new measure of Grady. “I’m confused. If you’re from New York, why aren’t you cooler?”
Grady shrugs.
Ravenna turns to Levi. “Where are you from?”
“Annandale,” he says.
Ravenna blinks at him, then turns back to Grady. “We aren’t doing an article about something that happened at Brownwell-Mather; that makes no sense. This is the Tiffin paper. Brown-Math was ranked number sixteen this year. That’s way below us.”
“I think it’s newsworthy because—”
“An article about an app will put everyone to sleep,” Ravenna says. When she turns her back on Grady, she sees Charley in the doorway.
Charley pushes up her glasses. “Hey.”
It’s the new girl, Ravenna thinks. And she’s wearing another inconceivably bad outfit—a red cotton turtleneck and an honest-to-god kilt, with a gold pin and everything. She’s traded in her boat shoes for penny loafers with short white socks. Awful.
And yet, Ravenna can’t help but feel some relief at her presence. Ravenna was beginning to feel like a nanny. “You’re the new girl, right?”
“Right,” Charley says. She offers an interview hand. “Charley Hicks. I quit Thirds field hockey, and I need a new activity.”
Ravenna gives Charley the up-down. “Well, I’m not putting you in charge of the fashion pages.”
Charley shrugs. “We mock what we don’t understand.”
Ravenna laughs. Is the new girl secretly…
sort of normal? Ravenna knows she’s smart: Someone said she showed up to beat Royce Stringfellow for valedictorian; someone else said she has a library and a greenhouse in her room; and there was a crazy rumor that she was getting with East. ( Not possible, Ravenna thinks.) “Do you have any ideas for articles? Because I was thinking about some Top Tens, What’s Hot and What’s Not… you know, listicles?”
Listicles? Charley thinks. Does Ravenna want to turn the ’Bred Bulletin into Cosmo ?
Will she include “Tips for Giving a Better Blow Job on a Harkness Table”?
“Surefire Ways to Sneak into God’s Basement”?
Charley considers leaving, but she is the definition of desperate.
“I was hoping to do book reviews, actually,” Charley says. “You know, like the New York Times ?”
“Nobody will read book reviews,” Ravenna says.
“It’s too much like school. I think the reason everyone thinks our newspaper is trash—as you can see, normal people aren’t exactly clamoring to join—is because the past editors wanted to make it too serious.
But I’m in charge now, and I don’t want the New York Times.
I want the New York Post. ” She glares at Grady.
“Please tell me you know the difference between the Times and the Post. ”
Grady nods. “The Post has Page Six. ”
“You just got your name on the masthead,” Ravenna says. She eyeballs Levi. “Why should I keep you around?”
“Because I’m a computer genius?”
“Molto bene!” Ravenna says. She turns her attention back to Charley. “You live on the first floor of South, right?” She’s only asking to be polite; she knows the answer is yes, this chick took Cinnamon Peters’s spot in the Class of 2027. She lives in Cinnamon’s room.
“I do.”
“I was thinking about a deep dive into the difference between how Tiffin really is and the way Tiffin is portrayed in social media by… certain influencers.”
“Certain influencers?” Charley says. “You mean Davi?”
Of course Ravenna means Davi. There have been rumblings, especially from the sixth-form girls whom Ravenna is friends with, that maybe Davi is getting a little too Insta-fabulous for her own good.
Olivia H-T claims Davi took credit for Tiffin being ranked number two, which is not only shameless but absurd.
The rankings aren’t determined by teenage girls.
On the one hand, it’s unthinkable to do a hatchet job on Davi Banerjee—she’s the queen—but on the other hand, even Marie Antoinette was beheaded.