18. Resolutions #2
Simone ignores Tilly, Willow, and Madison J.
and marches down the hall to Room 111. She flings open the door without knocking to find Charley—not reading like she claimed, but rather, on her phone.
Simone already feels justified: Charley was lying (though Real Americans by Rachel Khong is splayed open next to her on the bed).
“Charley,” Simone says. “I’m conducting a room check.”
Charley rises to stand in the doorway, as is protocol, phone still in hand. Simone wants to grab it. Is she texting East? Making a plan to meet later in that room down below?
Simone opens Charley’s mini fridge to find six cans of A the girls are watching all this unfold like it’s tonight’s movie.
“Plant food,” Charley says.
Simone deflates. Plant food—for the parlor palm, the fiddlehead fern, and all the other greenery that, for the first semester anyway, counted as Charley’s only friends.
Simone replaces the plant food and slams the fridge door closed.
She ransacks Charley’s dresser drawers. There is vodka here somewhere, she knows it.
She tears through the closet, rummaging in the duffels on the floor.
She hears Olivia P. in the hall say, “Buh-bye, Miss Clavel; hello, Dolores Umbridge.” In Charley’s mirror, Simone sees the other girls huddled around Charley, watching as Simone rifles through Charley’s boat shoes and L.L.Bean moccasins.
The Dolores Umbridge crack stings, but Simone will not be deterred. She abandons the closet and targets Charley’s desk. She pulls open the top desk drawer and… stops short.
She pulls out a shiny metal tape measure, just like the one East had down in the tunnel.
Slowly, she holds it out to Charley. “What is this?”
Charley blinks. “A tape measure.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I brought it from home.”
A lie, Simone thinks. She got it from East. Simone is convinced it’s the same one East used to measure the distance between her shoulders.
“What are you doing with it?”
Charley points to the wall next to her bed. “I hung up a poster I got for Christmas. I wanted to make sure it was centered.”
Simone follows Charley’s finger. Next to Charley’s poster of Virginia Woolf is a new poster of the Bronte sisters—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—which is annoyingly on-brand. Simone recalls hearing that Charley was named after Charlotte and Emily Bronte.
Simone squints. “Did you use tacks ?”
“Putty,” Charley says. “As specified in The Bridle. The kind that won’t stain the paint.”
Simone huffs, then resumes checking the desk drawers—extra notebooks, printer cartridges. She inspects Charley’s hanging baskets, peers under the bed. Where is the vodka?
“Fine,” she says, standing up. The girls in the doorway disperse. She’s given them plenty of time to dispose of any contraband in their own rooms—but she doesn’t care what anyone else is hiding.
Out in the hall, Madison J. touches Simone’s arm. “Miss Bergeron?” she whispers. “Are you okay?”
Zip Zap alert: Turns out, Miss Bergeron wasn’t always such a sterling role model. She lost her floor fellow position in her final semester of college and was disciplined by the university.
Early on Sunday morning, Simone is awakened by her phone ringing. She can’t lift her head off the pillow and her mouth is chalky.
After the room check, Charley decided to go to the movies after all; the other girls treated Charley gingerly, as though she’d been the victim of some gross abuse.
Olivia H-T said she felt a migraine coming on, which was just the excuse Simone needed to hang back as well, and in the darkness of her room, she drank the new bottle of wine that she’d stashed in her Hunter boots.
It was shameful, but at least she’d resisted the temptation to text East.
She grapples for the phone. It’s Rhode.
Ugh, she thinks. At eight o’clock on a Sunday morning?
“You’ve been Zip Zapped,” he says.
Cordelia Spooner has made a resolution: She will fix things between herself and Honey.
She invites Honey over to her cottage for Sunday supper. I’m making my pimento cheese dip and the ham and poppy seed sliders you like. We can watch the Wild Card games in front of the fire.
Honey says: Sounds heavenly. I’ll be over at five. Go Bills! followed by blue and red hearts.
But five o’clock becomes five thirty, the Bills game is at halftime, the sliders are warming in the oven, and Cordelia has to put the dip back in the fridge because it’s growing too soft. When is it reasonable to text and ask Honey when she’s coming?
Cordelia waits until six fifteen; the Bills are up by three but the Texans are driving. She sends Honey a text: All good? She knows only too well how many last-minute distractions can pop up when you’re a dorm parent for so many girls.
It takes twelve minutes for Honey to respond. I’m not going to make it, Cord. I have Simone here in my room and she’s in bad shape. You saw Zip Zap?
Oh yes, Cordelia saw Zip Zap. She was secretly overjoyed to find Simone Bergeron was the victim. Something happened during her final year in college; she lost her position as floor fellow (which Cordelia assumes is similar to a prefect) and was disciplined. Is Honey getting the story?
Why don’t you and Simone both come over? Cordelia writes. We can talk her through it.
Good idea! Honey says, and Cordelia pulls the dip from the fridge again.
She and Honey will serve as sounding boards for poor, maligned Simone.
She’s so young. A person’s prefrontal cortex isn’t fully developed until the age of twenty-five.
Simone still has an entire year to go before she reaches the age of reason.
A little while later, Honey texts again: She doesn’t want to come. Sorry, Cord. Rain check.
60 Minutes is starting. Cordelia sits down in front of the TV and eats all the pimento dip herself.
On Sunday, the girls on the first and second floors give Simone side-eye—and when she suggests a group order from Moon Palace that they can eat in the common room while they binge Below Deck, everyone declines.
Fine, Simone thinks. She has work to do anyway.
There’s a knock on her door and Simone opens it to find Ravenna Rapsicoli, pen and pad in hand.
“I’m here in my role as editor of the ’Bred Bulletin, ” she says.
“Would you like to comment on either the Zip Zap post from this morning concerning the incident at the end of your collegiate career, or on your behavior during the room check last night, which certain anonymous sources called ‘hostile’ and ‘unhinged’?”
“No,” Simone says. As she closes the door in Ravenna’s face, a text comes in. She hopes it’s East but fears it’s Rhode.
It’s neither. The text is from Honey Vandermeid: If you need a friend, I’m here.
Simone has never been to Honey’s room and is surprised to discover it’s a suite—a bedroom and a sitting room with a kitchenette.
“Tea?” Honey says.
“Please.” Simone settles on the buff suede love seat, moving a needlepoint pillow that says, I literally can’t right now. She accepts a mug of jasmine tea from Honey.
The tea reminds Simone of her maman, though she’s very glad her parents aren’t here to witness any of this.
“I heard about the room check,” Honey says. “Charley Hicks? What prompted that decision?”
“Her list in the ’Bred Bulletin, ” Simone says. “It included vodka Red Bulls.”
Honey blows across the surface of her tea.
Even on a Sunday in the middle of winter, Honey is impeccably put together.
She’s wearing an ivory cashmere turtleneck with an assortment of gold bangles on one wrist and an Apple Watch with a tortoiseshell strap on the other.
Cute jeans, ballet flats. Simone is in sweatpants and her Expos T-shirt; it’s what she slept in.
“Charley didn’t write that list,” Honey says. “Ravenna Rapsicoli did, in an attempt to make Charley seem a little more relatable to her peers.”
“Ravenna wrote the whole thing?”
“The whole thing.”
Ravenna was the one who wrote orgasms and fifth-form repeats ? Hmmpf.
“Charley has been acting differently this semester,” Simone says.
“She’s figured it out. She’s become friendly with Davi now and she’s hanging with East.” Honey winks. “I’d say she’s too good for him but I’m kind of obsessed with him myself. Give me naughty over nice any day. More interesting.”
For some reason, this makes Simone feel better. Honey is north of forty-five and she’s “kind of obsessed” with East, which makes Simone being full-on obsessed with East seem almost reasonable.
“Do you want to talk about Zip Zap?” Honey asks.
Simone regards the needlepoint pillow. I literally can’t right now, she thinks—but Honey is waiting for an answer. “It’s just so… violating, ” she says. “I’m pretty sure someone read through my email. Is that possible ?”
“So it’s true?” Honey says. “You got into some kind of trouble your final year at college?”