21. Head’s Holiday
The Zip Zap post about Davi Banerjee sends Audre into a tailspin. Is nothing off-limits? She reaches out to Big East, describing the problem and asking for solutions. Does he know anyone who can figure out how to shut Zip Zap down?
I tried to ban the app schoolwide, she writes, and got called out for censorship.
Jesse Eastman responds: It took six seasons to figure out who Gossip Girl was.
Audre shows the email exchange to Cordelia Spooner. “This response is so absurd that I wonder if Big East is Zip Zap.”
“He can’t be,” Cordelia says. “Remember the geofencing.” She lowers her voice. “It’s someone in our midst.”
As if Zip Zap isn’t bad enough, Audre receives a letter from ISNEC secretary Mikayla Ekubo saying that America Today has agreed to comply with their inquiry and be fully transparent about how the rankings were decided upon this year.
Audre considers responding with bravado: Wonderful, I look forward to seeing our legitimacy verified!
But she can’t quite bring herself to do it.
On Tuesday morning, not long before spring break, Audre awakens to a startling sight out her bedroom window. After months of freezing rain, sleet, bitter winds, gunmetal skies, and flurries, Tiffin has been blessed with a proper snow. The entire campus is blanketed in white.
Audre hurries to her computer and sends a schoolwide email.
Today will be a Head’s Holiday: All classes and commitments are canceled. Enjoy the snow, Thoroughbreds!
By midmorning, the Pasture has been turned into a toboggan run.
Sixth-former Teague Baldwin finds a couple of Radio Flyers and a half-dozen plastic saucers in the field house storage room, and the third- and fourth-formers go rocketing down the hill, then run back up.
Rhode Rivera watches the kids from his window; he fondly recalls snow days when he was a student at Tiffin—which gives him an idea.
He texts Simone: Want to go cross-country skiing? I know some trails behind the school.
He expects her to decline with some feeble excuse—she’s organizing a knitting circle for the girls on her floor—but the response he receives is Oui! I have skis, where should I meet you?
There’s something magical about a snow day, Cordelia thinks.
She takes a long, hot bath accompanied by an Irish coffee, then bundles up in cozy layers: cotton turtleneck, ancient L.L.Bean fisherman sweater, down parka, long johns, snow pants, duck boots.
She sets out feeling unfettered for the first time in months; she has no agenda other than to wander the campus and appreciate the beauty of the day.
The sky is a lovely pewter color and snowflakes drift gently down, distinct against the stark black woods.
The first two people Cordelia encounters are Mr. Rivera and Miss Bergeron on their cross-country skis.
They’re chugging along, red-cheeked and smiling, Simone in a cute hat with a pom-pom.
Hello! Bonjour! Exhilarating… such good exercise… just out for a walk myself, wish I had snowshoes… have fun! Cordelia is delighted to see Rhode and Simone together. Maybe a romance is brewing after all…?
She passes Taylor Wilson and Dub Austin overseeing a bunch of the underclassmen football players in the making of a giant snowman outside the Teddy. She waves and carries on. Mr. James is out on his riding snowblower, clearing the paths.
Cordelia pretends like she doesn’t have a destination, but of course she does: Jewel Pond.
This is where Cordelia finds Honey figure skating.
Annabelle Tuckerman and Ravenna Rapsicoli are out on the ice as well, and while they’re both competent skaters, they aren’t nearly as skilled or as elegant as Honey.
She skates backward and executes an axel jump, then goes into a sitting spin.
Cordelia claps and cheers. She’s consumed by love.
East texts Charley the downward arrow. Charley had planned to dive into Doctor Zhivago, but instead she gets dressed and heads to the cellar.
Even though it’s the middle of the day. Even though anyone could follow her footprints.
Head’s Holiday feels like a free-for-all; nobody is checking where they are, it’s an opportunity they would be stupid to waste.
When Charley gets to the bomb shelter, she finds that East has unrolled a Persian rug and on top of the rug, a fleece blanket from his room.
Lana Del Rey plays from a wireless speaker, and the chandelier is set low on its dimmer.
East kisses her and they lie down side by side on the fleece blanket. This is it, Charley thinks. The seduction scene.
The instant Charley strips off her sweater and turtleneck, East’s mouth is all over her.
He takes off his own flannel and T-shirt.
Their bare chests touch for the first time and it’s both so tender and so erotic, Charley wants to cry out.
East fiddles with the button of her jeans, and she grabs his wrist.
“Is it okay?” he asks.
“If we do this, you can’t break up with me,” she says. “You can’t ghost me. You can’t hurt me, East.”
“I won’t, Charles,” he says. “Trust.”
Is there a more romantic way to lose her virginity than in the bomb shelter with East on a Head’s Holiday while the rest of the school is having a snowball fight?
She pushes off her jeans, then her underwear. She keeps her eyes open because this moment happens only once in a person’s life and she wants to remember everything.
Dinner Service, Snow Day!
Tuesday, March 10
Cheesy breadsticks and frosted garlic bread
SALAD BAR
Tonight’s additions: grapefruit and blood orange segments, fresh sliced avocado, chili-crunch cucumbers
SOUP OF THE DAY
Vegetarian chili
ENTRéES
Chicken pot pie with herbed pastry, beef stew
DESSERTS
Snow cones (grape, cherry), Baked Alaska
When Rhode and Simone enter the Paddock for dinner, Simone scans the room for East. She finds him cozied up in the Booth with Charley.
Simone immediately senses something different about the two of them.
A new intimacy. East buries his face in Charley’s hair; the two of them are sharing a bowl of stew, a plate of salad.
The Booth is high-profile seating. They’re Tiffin-official.
“The chicken pot pie sounds amazing,” Rhode says. “Where should we sit?”
“I’m going to sit with my girls,” Simone says.
“But…” Rhode says. “We had such a nice day together.”
“We did,” Simone says. “Thank you for inviting me skiing, it was just what I needed.” The snow day made Simone feel like her younger self.
In college, Simone used to cross-country ski up Mont-Royal, then go for a beer and frites on rue Bishop.
She enjoyed Rhode’s company while they were skiing—why can’t that be enough?
Why does he always have to act like she owes him something more?
She watches East feed Charley a section of orange with his fingers.
“Actually I think I’m going to take dinner back to my room,” Simone says. “I’m beat.”
Rhode’s expression is one of barely concealed annoyance. “Have a good night,” he says.
Oh, she will, she thinks. The wine in her boot awaits.
Zip Zap post: When Andrew Eastman asks Charley Hicks to “go down,” she likes it.
When Charley gets up to pee in the middle of the night, she bumps into Tilly Benbow in the bathroom. Normally they would ignore each other, but this time, Tilly says, “Hey.” Charley turns to look at her in the mirror. Tilly makes a lewd hand gesture while poking her tongue into her cheek.
This is a new low even for Tilly, who is famous for being vulgar, but it’s two in the morning, so maybe Tilly is sleepwalking, or Charley is dreaming.
But after Charley wakes up and reads the new Zip Zap post, it makes sense. When Andrew Eastman asks Charley Hicks to “go down,” she likes it.
Zip Zap has seen the downward arrows East texted her, and her response of thumbs-upping them, and Zip Zap thinks it’s a reference to blow jobs. Charley knows she should be embarrassed, but all she feels is relief that their real secret is safe.
Then the comments start rolling in.
I knew that girl was a freak in the sheets!
I’d love her to polish MY knob.
East can do better (and probably does).
Charley pretends to be elevated but she’s as common as a back-alley whore.
Charley suspects this last comment is Davi, though she has no way to prove it. She needs to remain stoic; however, it feels supremely unfair that the Tiffin community, who haven’t commented on a Zip Zap post since Annabelle Tuckerman, are now piling on her.
There’s a knock at the door. Charley holds out hope that it’s Taylor or Madison J. or someone else offering support and solidarity (this is textbook slut-shaming!)—but when Charley opens the door, she finds Miss Bergeron.
“Yes?” Charley’s tone is icy; she hasn’t forgiven Miss Bergeron for the arbitrary room search.
“You do realize I could write you an infraction for making a public space private,” Miss Bergeron says.
Charley takes her time gathering her hair in a ponytail. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The Zip Zap post,” Miss Bergeron says. “You and East?”
“Wait, I’m confused,” Charley says. “You’re threatening to give me an infraction because of something that was posted on Zip Zap?”
“Everything on Zip Zap has turned out to be true,” Miss Bergeron says. “So I assume that’s the case here. You’ve been breaking school rules.”
Charley shrugs. “Zip Zap got it wrong this time.”
Miss Bergeron glares at her with what seems like contempt.
But why? Because Charley doesn’t like to rot her teeth with Starbursts or her mind with Love Island ?
Because Charley alone doesn’t think Miss Bergeron is fierce?
She’s a mediocre teacher and she tries too hard to be liked by the girls on the floor.
The Zip Zap post about Miss Bergeron herself must have been true—she got disciplined in college and lost her floor fellow position.
Did anyone write up an infraction for that ?
“I’m watching you,” Miss Bergeron says, and Charley tries not to laugh. Are they in a movie?
The sound of rushing water and the roar of the hair dryer from the bathroom break the tension. Charley says, “If you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for class.”
The only reaction to the Zip Zap post that matters to Charley is East’s: He might not love that his sex life is trending. But as Charley is walking to the Schoolhouse for English, he calls for her to wait up.
He grabs her hand and kisses her neck, just under her ear. “We dodged a bullet,” he whispers.
“I know,” Charley says. “I just have to endure the entire school thinking I’m a back-alley whore.”
He squeezes her hand. “Nobody actually thinks that.”
“Bergeron came to my room threatening to give me an infraction for making a public space private. She has it out for me for some reason.”
East pulls Charley close, wrapping his arm around her. The paths of the school are now slushy and Charley’s toes freeze in her boots. “Zip Zap has to go,” he says. “I’ll handle it.”
“How are you going to handle it?” Charley asks.
East pulls out his phone and starts texting.
As soon as Audre gets off the phone, she hurries to the admissions office to find Cordelia.
“I just hung up with Big East,” she says. “He’s sending a computer forensics expert to the school over spring break. A woman named Laurie Hummel. She lives in New York, and she’s an IT security consultant to all the Wall Street banks. She’s going to put an end to Zip Zap.”
“We don’t have to be here to welcome Ms. Hummel, I hope?
” Cordelia says. She knows that Audre is heading down to New Orleans for break.
Honey, meanwhile, has invited Cordelia to go to Naples, Florida, to visit her mother, who has Alzheimer’s.
Cordelia is so happy to spend time with Honey that she doesn’t even mind that much of her vacation will be spent in a memory care facility.
But if someone needs to stay behind, Cordelia knows it will have to be her.
“No,” Audre says. “Jesse told me it’s like having the exterminator come. It’s better if nobody is here.”
“Wonderful!” Cordelia says. “Let’s hope she gets the little rat.”