9. Friday Night Lights
Tiffin students stomp on the metal treads of the bleachers when Tilly plays “We Will Rock You.” Is Tiffin about to make school history, Audre wonders, with its winningest season ever?
She takes a sustaining breath—she can do this, she must do this—and strolls over to the visitors’ side to greet Northmeadow’s Head of School, Douglas Worth.
Northmeadow students call him “Worthless”—and not without reason, Audre thinks.
A caricature artist would have a field day with Doug: His abnormally large head is set on a long, slender stalk of a body.
(Whenever Audre looks at Doug, she gets an involuntary vision of what his penis must look like.) Doug always wears a bow tie, even to football games.
This is a sartorial affectation that Doug plagiarized from his father, George Worth, who served as Northmeadow’s Head for a whopping forty-two years.
There’s a way in which Doug’s earnest imitation of his father is both endearing and pathetic.
“Audre,” Doug says, offering a long, limp hand, which Audre shakes a bit more aggressively than she needs to. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”
If her years at Tiffin have taught Audre anything, it’s how to offer a convincing smile. “The game hasn’t even begun.”
“I meant because of your number two ranking in America Today, ” Doug says. “I’ve been puzzling over it since the list came out, trying to figure out how Tiffin managed such a coup.”
“No one was more surprised than me,” Audre says. “I wish I could explain it, but as you know, the algorithm is a mystery.”
“I’m not sure it’s exactly a mystery,” Doug says. “I’ve put a good deal of thought into why Tiffin jumped from nineteen to number two, while Northmeadow dropped from two to three…”
Should Audre remind Doug that Heads are supposed to be indifferent to the rankings? Though naturally they aren’t indifferent, and especially not Doug, and especially not this year.
“… and I came up with three possible explanations.”
Audre can’t help but take the bait: She wants to hear these so-called explanations, but Tilly chooses that moment to blast DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win.” Audre motions for Doug to move behind the visitors’ side bleachers where it’s slightly quieter.
“Oh, have you?” She looks up to see a couple members of the Northmeadow marching band peering down at them, and she realizes how unusual it must look—two Heads sneaking behind the bleachers to conduct a tête-à-tête.
Audre gives the kid holding a French horn a wave, letting him know this is all on the up-and-up.
“I love that you bring the marching band. I love that you have a marching band. We never have enough musicians to field one.”
“I suppose Tiffin students are too cool for that sort of thing,” Doug says.
There’s probably some truth to that statement, Audre thinks; “marching band” has a stigma that most Tiffin students would want to avoid.
Audre then recalls that Doug plays the trombone; he’s been known to whip it out at the Independent Schools of New England Coalition’s social gatherings.
“You were saying? The three ‘explanations’?”
Doug squints at the players who are stretching on the field. Oh no you don’t, Audre thinks. “You brought it up, Doug. You can’t just leave me in suspense.”
“Well… one explanation is that the America Today editors wanted to show support for diversity.”
“Tiffin is no more or less diverse than other top schools…”
“I’m talking about leadership,” Doug says.
Audre’s cheeks burn like she’s been slapped. “Me, you mean? You think our ranking rose because I’m a person of color ?” Isn’t it just like Doug to assume Audre has been rewarded solely because of her race. God, he’s reprehensible.
As he sputters something along the lines of that’s not, of course, what he meant, Audre says, “I’m in my sixth year, Doug.
I hardly think that had anything to do with it.
” She turns away from Worthless and looks across the football field at her student body.
Tiffin doesn’t have a marching band, nor do they have cheerleaders, but they don’t lack for school spirit: Davi and her friends are leading the crowd in some kind of chant.
Doug follows her gaze. “Then, of course, there’s your TikTok phenom. She has one point three million followers. Can you imagine a sixteen-year-old girl wielding that kind of influence?”
What Audre thinks but does not say is: You’ve checked Davi’s following?
“You think America Today ranked us above you”—Audre pauses to emphasize that she knows it’s this fact that chafes him; if Northmeadow had been number one and Tiffin number two, Worthless would have sent Audre flowers—“because of Davi Banerjee?”
“She’s very charismatic,” Doug says.
Audre barks out a laugh. Has Douglas Worth watched Davi’s TikTok content? Her OOTDs? Her makeup tutorials? “She’s one of the most dynamic students at this school,” Audre says. “However, I highly doubt that’s why…”
“There’s only one other explanation,” Doug says. “Which is that the president of your board, Jesse Eastman, bribed somebody.”
Just when Audre thinks the man can’t dig a deeper hole, he reaches for a bigger shovel.
Audre spins on Douglas Worth and affixes him with a death stare—even though she has also wondered if this was the case.
Jesse Eastman wields all kinds of power.
He could have bribed the people who create the rankings at America Today.
Everyone has a price, especially underpaid journalists covering the education beat.
But Audre recalls how on edge Jesse was the day the rankings came out; he had sounded as shocked and incredulous as Audre herself.
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Audre says.
“You can act as indignant as you want,” Doug says. “But I’m far from the only Head who wonders about this.”
In addition to serving as Northmeadow’s Head, Douglas Worth is also the chairperson of ISNEC. He might have started a nasty text stream with the Heads of Excelsior, Brownwell-Mather, and Old Bennington positing conspiracy theories about Tiffin and maybe even Audre herself.
“Good luck in the game, Douglas,” Audre says, and then she strides back to the field. She searches for Dub Austin—she wants to tell him to beat the snot out of Northmeadow—but strangely, he’s not on the field.
Everyone on the Tiffin football team is out stretching, except for Dub Austin and Hakeem Pryce, who are in the locker room. Hakeem has Dub jacked up against the locker, his hand wrapped around Dub’s neck.
Dub struggles for air, and yet he doesn’t knee Hakeem in the groin like he probably should. Frankly, he’s relieved it’s come to this.
Taylor had left her phone unguarded; Hakeem looked at it and learned that Dub was Taylor’s number one on Snapchat.
Dub was in the library when Taylor went to Hakeem’s room, so he missed the immediate drama but heard about it from Ravenna Rapsicoli.
Dub and Ravenna were in the same Spanish class, but they’d never spoken.
He noted her presence in the library; she was sitting close enough to him that he heard her phone buzzing and saw her checking her alerts.
She looked over at him three times, then sighed and approached.
“People are saying Hakeem and Taylor broke up,” she said.
Dub experienced an involuntary burst of joy, but skepticism soon followed. “Which people?”
“Only everyone in North,” Ravenna said. “Hakeem saw Taylor’s phone and discovered someone else was her number one on Snap.”
Dub knew not to outright panic until Ravenna was safely back at her desk; then he collected his things and headed to Hakeem’s room. Normally Dub would have walked right in, but this time he knocked. No answer. Dub cracked the door to see Hakeem lying face down on his bed. “Yo,” Dub said.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Hakeem said.
“Taylor is like a sister to me, man… You know I’ve been going through a lot.”
“Get. The. Fuck. Out.”
Dub would have confessed to Hakeem then and there—except that obviously wasn’t an option.
And so, Dub slunk back to his room. Because he wasn’t sure what to do, he typed out a text to Taylor: What happened?
Then he deleted it before sending because he didn’t want to get into a whole thing with Taylor.
He needed someone to talk to, but whom did he trust besides those two?
Dub replayed the way Ravenna said “someone else” and realized that she knew it was him; everyone in the school knew it was him.
The other day someone had referred to them as a “throuple.”
Dub opened up his laptop and hovered the cursor over DO NOT OPEN THIS FILE UNTIL THE MORNING OF OUR GRADUATION. Dub caressed the words as though they were Cinnamon’s cheekbone. It was a game he played with himself, of teasing and taunting. Of willpower. Could he keep the secret?
Yes, he could. He’d had plenty of practice.
He closed his laptop. He would straighten things out with Hakeem tomorrow.
He sent Hakeem a text that said, I promise to remove myself. I respect what you two have.
There was no response… which was what Dub deserved for telling a total lie.
The next morning, neither Hakeem nor Taylor was at breakfast, which was a relief.
Dub had received a text from Taylor in the middle of the night that read: Hakeem is right, you are my number one, in all of the ways.
Dub couldn’t pretend to be surprised: Taylor touched him all the time, she leaned into him, she held his gaze, her brown eyes melting, her lips parting.
Dub left her on read. His first period was, unfortunately, English. Instead of sitting with Taylor like he normally did, he sat all the way across the table, next to Charley Hicks. Everyone seemed surprised, even Mr. Rivera.