2. Tiffin Talks How I Spent My Summer Vacation #2
The group of sixth-form girls gathered in front of Classic South are checking out Mr. Rivera (he has definitely gotten hotter), while simultaneously checking out one another.
Olivia H-T has undergone a major glow-up.
She has grown out her hair (last year, she chopped it into a short bob, blatantly imitating Davi Banerjee), and now the pieces that frame her face have golden highlights.
“You look good,” Tilly Benbow says.
“Thanks.” Olivia tries to keep her expression neutral, though inside she’s backstroking in a pool of Fuck, yes!
Olivia has spent the past three years at Tiffin worshipping at the altar of Davi Banerjee, though after some reflection this summer, she decided that the girl at Tiffin who most deserves her attention is Tilly Benbow.
It’s Tilly alone among the newly minted sixth-form girls who exhibits the kind of patrician ease and entitlement that Olivia H-T wants to emulate.
It’s not just money, it’s pedigree: Tilly lives in a palatial home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and summers at her grandmother’s waterfront estate in Newport.
Her father runs the private bank that his family has owned since New York was a horse-and-buggy town.
Tilly goes to Christmas cocktail parties at the Greenwich Country Club and to summer barbecues on Bailey’s Beach with kids from Choate, Andover, Hotchkiss.
With her cool gaze and frank assessments, Tilly exposes people like Davi Banerjee as strivers.
But apparently, Tilly has had a rough summer; it looks like she just crawled out of a hole. Her blond hair is dull dishwater rather than sun-bleached, and it’s in knots; her skin is sallow, and there are brown circles under her eyes. Something is wrong.
Olivia gives Tilly a gentle hug. She suspects the problem is the older guy Tilly is involved with. When they left school last May, Tilly confided that she planned to break things off over the summer.
He’s pretty much a loser, Tilly said. But I caught feelings.
This was a revelation. Olivia didn’t realize Tilly had feelings.
Speaking of feelings, we all watch as Taylor Wilson flies from her mother’s car and jumps into the arms of Hakeem Pryce.
Some of the underclass girls pull out their phones to video the tender moment—straight to private stories—but not Cassie Lee, who lost her virginity to Hakeem the spring before while he and Taylor were broken up.
The entire school knows that Taylor Wilson has hung on to her virginity. This means that Cassie Lee has experienced something with Hakeem that Taylor hasn’t, which should make her feel better.
But instead, it makes her feel worse.
A black Escalade with tinted windows and livery plates pulls up to Classic South, and the frenzy outside the dorms comes to a momentary standstill.
The only student who shows up to school in a car service is Davi Banerjee.
Davi lives in London and summers in Tuscany; she has one and a half million followers on TikTok and Instagram.
She’s the queen of Tiffin—but she’s also real.
Davi’s best friend, Cinnamon Peters, died by suicide in her dorm room at the end of sophomore year, and then last year, the Zip Zap app revealed that Davi had an eating disorder.
But when Davi emerges from the back of the car, she looks as cute as she did before any of that happened.
She has also grown her hair out; it’s styled in a low ponytail.
(When Olivia H-T reaches for the hair band around her wrist and collects her own hair into a low pony, Tilly Benbow snorts. “Old habits die hard.”)
The most intriguing thing about Davi’s arrival is an enormous flat box that her driver wrangles out of the back of the Escalade. Mr. Rivera jogs over to help; it’s a good chance for the sixth-form girls to watch him flex his muscles.
“What’s in here?” he asks. “A Ping-Pong table?”
He’s such a bot, we think. It’s a new mirror, or maybe a flat-screen TV (though TVs are forbidden as per page 2 of The Bridle, Tiffin’s code of conduct). It could also be a piece of art. Did Davi discover an emerging London painter?
No, we think. Mirror.
Davi laughs. “It’s a new neon sign that I had custom-made for my wall.”
Ahhhh, we think. For the past three years, Davi’s TikToks have been filmed in front of a pink neon script sign that reads: THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS.
“You’ll appreciate it, Mr. Rivera…” Davi says.
But before Davi can explain why—What does the new sign say?—she gasps and takes off running across the freshly mowed grass of the Pasture toward the stairs that lead down to the Back Lot.
Andrew Eastman and Charley Hicks have just ascended the stairs, hand in hand.
Davi plants kisses on both sides of their faces (so European) and gathers them in a group hug.
Then they turn and walk together toward the rest of us.
They’re too cool to act cool; the expressions on their faces are ones of unadulterated joy.
And why not? They’re sixth-formers. The school is theirs.
“Ugh,” Olivia H-T says. She bears a particular grudge against Charley for supplanting Olivia—and everyone else—in Davi’s orbit.
Also, at the end of last year, Charley, East, Davi, and a handful of other kids formed some kind of secret club.
They were sneaking out and going somewhere to drink, though Olivia still hasn’t figured out where.
Then Olivia remembers something. “Didn’t you tell me last year you had a way to get back at Charley?” she asks Tilly.
But Tilly is no longer the same Tilly. Olivia might have to exact revenge herself.
Benj and the rest of Tiffin’s offensive line toss the football around in front of the dorms while Willow Levy, straight from summer gymnastic camp, does back walkovers. Royce Stringfellow throws open his window so we can hear him blasting Rüfüs Du Sol.
All the players are back, we think. The year can officially begin.