9. Friday Night Lights #5
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone,” Charley says, though she considers texting Beatrix at home. I caught Davi Banerjee puking in the bathroom. But Charley would feel disloyal sharing this even with Beatrix—and the barbacoa might be the reason.
Charley heads back to her room and closes the door. When she checks her phone, she sees a text from East. You’re the fucking best, Charles.
In that moment, she feels strangely bonded to Davi. They both have secrets.
There’s no better sport, Simone Bergeron decides, than American football.
When time runs out on the clock—Tiffin 14, Northmeadow 10—Tiffin students rush the field.
Simone watches Taylor Wilson jump into Hakeem’s arms. This is exactly what Simone dreamed boarding school would be like: teenagers in love celebrating a big win on a crisp autumn night.
“Good luck to us getting everyone in for dorm checks,” Rhode says.
Simone doesn’t care about dorm checks. Some of her girls asked if they could swing by the Grille for a milkshake on the way home and Simone said oui, as long as they returned tout de suite.
At halftime, Rhode plunked himself down next to Simone in the bleachers, and the cluster of third- and fourth-formers who were sitting with Simone scattered.
They all fully believed that Mr. Rivera was scheming Simone.
Simone wanted to call the girls back— Please stay!
—but that would have made things awkward, and they wouldn’t have listened anyway.
Rhode nodded at the cup of hot cider Simone was holding.
“I have something for that,” he said.
Simone wasn’t sure what he meant; she was too busy thinking about how to make a graceful exit—she could go sit with Mrs. Spooner and Honey Vandermeid a few rows below—when Rhode pulled a silver flask from the pocket of his quilted jacket and poured something into Simone’s cider.
“What are you doing ?” she hissed. She looked around, but they were sitting pretty high up and everyone’s attention was on the field. “What is that?”
“Bourbon,” Rhode said. “The good stuff, Buffalo Trace.” He took a swig from the flask himself before tucking it back into his jacket. “It’ll take the edge off.”
Simone wanted to say that she wasn’t feeling any edge, the night was perfect, she’d been looking forward to drinking her cider once it cooled.
She wanted to say that they were teachers, and new teachers at that; they couldn’t just drink on the job.
She still felt chagrined about their night out at the Alibi back when school first started.
But instead, Simone took a sip of the cider, which made her throat and chest blaze like an orchard fire. She nearly shared this image with Rhode—he might appreciate it as a writer—but in the end she just held out her cup for more.
When the game ends, she’s not drunk-drunk, just slightly out-of-body.
She joins the throng of kids heading toward the Teddy and the dorms. As she tosses her cider cup in the trash, she considers ending her night with a glass of vin rouge —she keeps a bottle stashed inside one of her Hunter boots in her closet—though she’s certain that if she indulges, there will be some kind of emergency in the middle of the night for which sobriety is required.
She can’t be sporting blue teeth and a headache.
Her college days are, for better or worse, behind her.
She shepherds the girls into Classic South.
It’s up to the floor prefect, Madison J.
, to make sure everyone checks in; Simone will be contacted only in case of emergency.
Her night is therefore over, though she should review for class the next day; they’ve finished up with Native Americans and moved on to the original thirteen colonies, and Simone is on shaky ground.
Simone chastises herself for leaving her room light on—she thought for sure she’d turned it off; she’s leading by piss-poor example in energy conservation—when she opens the door and screams: Andrew Eastman is lying on her bed, vape pen in hand, blowing smoke at the ceiling.
Simone knows the proper course of action: Demand that he leave and report him to his dorm parent, Roy Ewanick. However, when East says, “Close the door, please,” she complies, though not before checking that both her window shades are down.
“What,” she hisses, “are you doing here?”
She puts a hand out to stop him as he approaches her, but he takes her hand and presses her palm to his mouth. She fights off a very strong, very forbidden wave of desire. She pulls back her hand as though she’s been bitten by a snake and he laughs. “Relax.”
He’s calm, she thinks, because he can’t get into any trouble.
But she, of course, can. She ignores how handsome he is, how he’s broad and strong without being bulky, how he fills out his jeans perfectly, how he managed to pair a ratty Vampire Weekend T-shirt with a vintage Rolex on a weathered leather band.
She can’t relax. How is she going to get him out of here? The dorm is crawling with girls sharing bags of Takis, getting ready to watch the last episode of Love Island in the common room, or vying for one of the sinks to start their fifteen-step skin care routines.
“You have to go—” Before Simone can say another word, East’s lips are on hers, and if it’s possible, it’s even hotter than when he kissed her down in the tunnel.
It’s lips and tongue and a playful bite and a hip lock; she can feel him through his jeans.
Is she in a puddle on the floor? No, apparently she’s still upright, still making out with East, a student, her student, as the predictable excuses roll through her head: The age difference between them is only five years; she’s French Canadian, she views things like this differently.
Brigitte Auzière was once Emmanuel Macron’s high school teacher, and now she’s Brigitte Macron, the well-regarded First Lady of France.
Simone also thinks: This isn’t happening. Or it won’t be happening in a second; she’s going to push him away.
She hears Olivia H-T’s voice, perilously close to her door. “Has anyone seen Davi? She never came back to the game.”
Madison J. says, “She wasn’t feeling well. She went to bed.”
Simone snaps back to reality and pushes East away with both hands. “Stop,” she whispers. “You have to get out of here right now.”
“Okay, okay,” East says. “Chill.”
Chill? she thinks. She wants to smack him.
How dare he sneak into her room—how did he even get into the dorm when everyone else was at the game?
—and compromise her job, her good name, her entire future?
He’s too young to consider the consequences of his actions.
He’s immature, rash, destructive, entitled—and so, so hot.
East snaps off the light: Oh no, he’s not luring her to bed. That’s absolutely not happening… is it?
No—East lifts the shade, peers outside, then opens the window and climbs out. She hears a soft thud when he hits the ground.
She closes the window and locks it. Then, without turning the light back on, she fumbles through her closet, reaches a hand into her boot, and pulls out the hidden bottle of cabernet franc, which is, thankfully, a screw-top.
She swigs directly from the bottle. Her phone dings with a text, which strikes a dissonant chord in her chest—there’s no way it’s a text she wants to read—and she takes another swig.
The text is from Rhode. Great, she thinks. He was outside, he saw their shadows or he watched East drop from Simone’s window, her life is over. She could claim her reckless behavior was Rhode’s fault: Who knew what was in the flask? It could have been something stronger and stranger than bourbon.
The text reads: Is East in your dorm? Roy Ewanick can’t find him.
Simone blinks. Not here! she types. Although this is presently the truth, she hesitates before sending it.
There’s still time to come clean—tell Rhode that she came home to find Andrew Eastman in her room and when she asked him to leave, which she obviously did right away, he leaped out her window like a little boy with Spider-Man fantasies.
But there would be follow-up: Audre might go through the motions of disciplining East (would she?).
He might counter by describing exactly what happened with Simone in her room.
It would then turn into a he said/she said, and the whole school would be ablaze with it like… an orchard on fire.
In the end, no reply is necessary because Rhode texts again: Never mind, he just turned up. Have a good night!
Simone brings the wine bottle to her mouth with one hand and with the other hand types: You too!