3. New Blood
Head of School Audre Robinson busies herself with the ceremonial unloading of one item from each student’s car… and tries to ignore the Feeling.
This is virtually impossible.
Earlier that morning, when Audre logged on to the school’s computer for the first time in nine weeks and clicked into the school’s operating budget, she became confused, and then, after refreshing the page and cleaning the lenses of her readers (this changed nothing), Audre started to panic.
She told herself there was an accounting error, or a transposed number, something easily explained and fixed.
It just wasn’t possible that a full quarter of her budget—an amount in the vicinity of seven million dollars—was missing.
She’d called her financial adviser, Oak Bellamy, and was dispatched straight to voicemail. She left a shaky (but not unhinged) message, then nearly called him right back, but it was seven in the morning and Audre suspected that Oak was either at yoga or neck-deep in his morning ice bath.
Now, Audre is too preoccupied to bob and weave when Madison J.’s mother, Naomi, approaches. When Audre hugs Naomi, she reminds herself to be present! Madison J. is Head Prefect of the school this year, and Naomi is a Tiffin alum.
“You hired a new college counselor?” Naomi asks. “Someone qualified, I hope?”
Audre respects Naomi—she was the first female student of color to attend Tiffin—but can’t help mentally rolling her eyes. What a question!
“Extremely qualified,” Audre says. The chapel bells toll ten, providing the perfect exit strategy. “That’s my cue. I have a meeting with the new faculty right now.” She offers a hand. “It was good to see you. Madison’s going to have a spectacular year.”
“She has her heart set on the Ivy League, Audre,” Naomi says.
The last thing Audre wants to do is get into a college admissions discussion with a dialed-up sixth-form parent. She gives Naomi a thumbs-up and hurries away. She has seven million other things to worry about.
The head of admissions, Cordelia Spooner, waits for Audre at the bottom of the Manse’s grand staircase.
“They’re upstairs,” Cordelia says, with an unusually bright smile.
Audre wants to pull Cordelia into her office and show her the operating budget.
Cordelia has almost magical administrative powers; she would be able to find the missing money within seconds.
But there isn’t time—they have two new hires waiting, and Audre has yet to meet either of them in person, which is highly, highly unusual.
Cordelia did all the heavy lifting in hiring the new college counselor and new history teacher because Audre spent the summer in soupy, sweltering New Orleans moving her parents out of the home they’d owned for fifty-three years and into their new retirement community.
No good deed goes unpunished, Audre thinks. She’d dedicated her entire summer to her parents, and now she’s paying the price. A quarter of her operating budget is gone (No, it’s not gone, she thinks, there’s an explanation).
Audre checks her phone: Nothing back from Oak, not even a text.
When Audre and Cordelia enter the conference room, both new hires stand.
Audre blinks. There was a rumor last year, spread by the nefarious Zip Zap app, that Cordelia admitted students based on their appearance.
It seems she may have used this unorthodox methodology when hiring as well. Because… wow.
Audre shakes hands first with the new college counselor, John Maverick. He’s an adorably disheveled Mark Ruffalo type with salt-and-pepper curls and that crinkly eye thing when he smiles. (Audre immediately worries about the sixth-form girls crushing all over this man.)
John Maverick was the college counselor at the Colbert School outside Worcester, but then he and his wife—who serves as Head of School at Colbert—separated, and John was the one to go.
“Mr. Maverick, hello,” Audre says.
“Please, call me Mav.”
Mav is wearing jeans, and a white polo that shows off his summer tan. Hasn’t Cordelia learned that hiring hot teachers leads to trouble?
Audre then turns to the new history teacher, Dr. John Coopersmith—and her cheeks start to burn.
She was aware that Dr. Coopersmith was a fifty-nine-year-old professor, recently retired from St. Michael’s in Vermont.
What Audre didn’t realize was that he was so tall, so broad, so…
well, frankly, she’s at a loss for words.
His bald head gleams like polished mahogany; he has a silver goatee.
His handshake is firm, and his smile reveals a deep dimple in his cheek.
Does Audre feel an immediate affinity to the man just because he’s Black, too?
Cordelia looks on, beaming.
Audre clears her throat. “It’s lovely to meet you, Dr. Coopersmith.”
“Please,” Dr. Coopersmith says. “Call me Coop.”
Mav and Coop? Audre thinks. They sound like a couple of fighter pilots.
“Welcome to Tiffin, gentlemen.” Audre takes her seat at the head of the table, Dr. Coopersmith to her immediate left.
She can’t believe how self-conscious she feels, and she tells herself to stop being ridiculous, though she notes that Dr. Coopersmith isn’t wearing a wedding ring.
Audre supposes romance is on her mind because of her mother’s insistence that it wasn’t too late for Audre to “find someone.”
If you marry a man who already has children, Audre’s mother said, then you’ll have someone to help you in your old age the same way you’re helping us.
Audre deflected by pointing out that her parents were hardly “old.” Moving to the community for them was like a return to college. Her mother was already attending barre class, and the night before, her father had called after a wine tasting in the café… and he had definitely sounded buzzed.
Audre shakes her head. She needs to be present with the task at hand: orienting her new faculty!
“In your packet, you’ll find the school calendar, our weekly schedule, the faculty guidelines, and The Bridle, which is Tiffin’s code of conduct.”
Audre had meant to revise The Bridle over the summer.
Last year, she’d had to dismiss the history teacher, Simone Bergeron, for acting (so) inappropriately with a fifth-form student (Andrew Eastman, who else?).
In turn, Simone had accused the college counselor, Honey Vandermeid, of making unwanted advances, and Honey—who was in a relationship with Cordelia Spooner—agreed to resign immediately as long as Audre wrote her a good reference.
It had all been such a mess. Is it too much for Audre to ask for a fresh start this year? She regards “Mav” and “Coop.” Can she trust them not to cause any kind of disruption?
Audre’s phone buzzes, and although it’s beyond rude, she glances at the screen, praying for a response from Oak Bellamy. She realizes she hasn’t thought about the missing money for the past five minutes.
It’s not a text from Oak but rather, an alert from America Today.
“The rankings are out,” Audre says. She smiles apologetically at Coop. “America Today’s rankings of the best boarding schools in the country. It’s a big deal around here.”
“By all means,” Coop says. “Shall we see how we fared?”
Audre isn’t sure Coop should be using the pronoun “we” when he’s been at Tiffin all of ten minutes and doesn’t yet know any of its legend or lore.
He hasn’t taught a single class, or met a single student; he hasn’t tasted Chef Haz’s homemade focaccia; he doesn’t know that the kids’ greatest goal will be to have sex on the Harkness table in his classroom but that they’ll settle for the lesser conquest of hooking up in God’s Basement beneath the chapel.
But with his blessing, Audre refreshes the America Today’s web page.
Please, she thinks, though she isn’t sure what she’s hoping for.
The list appears: Old Bennington, as usual, is at number one, Exeter and Andover follow at numbers two and three… and Tiffin appears at number six.
“Number six,” she says.
“Are you okay?” John Maverick asks. Because Mav came from the Colbert School, he’ll be only too aware that Tiffin was ranked number two the year before.
“Yes, yes,” Audre says. Her worry over Tiffin’s ranking this time last year seems positively quaint; she has a far bigger problem now. “It’s where we belong, solidly top ten.”
“What about Northmeadow?” Cordelia asks. Northmeadow isn’t a historic Tiffin rival, but Audre loathes the Head of School, Douglas Worth, with every atom of her being, as Cordelia well knows.
“Number nine,” Audre says, with a bit of snark in her voice. Northmeadow has dropped from number three to number nine, three spots below Tiffin.
“Outstanding!” Cordelia cries out. “Worthless must be losing his mind.”
Audre notices the nonplussed expressions on Mav’s and Coop’s faces. “Don’t worry,” she says. “You’ll figure out how things work around here soon enough.”
Audre reviews each point of the faculty guidelines, emphasizing the rules about student interaction.
No romantic or sexual overtures. If a student initiates, it’s the faculty’s responsibility to extricate themselves from the situation immediately and report the student.
Both Mav and Coop nod, but Audre feels the need to add, “It’s best to avoid moments where something like this might happen.
You can meet with students one-on-one, but we prefer that be done in a public space such as the Sink or the Teddy.
If you must meet in your office, the door should be left at least partially open.
Mr. Maverick, as college counselor, you’ll of course have confidential meetings with the students behind closed doors, but as you’ll see, your office has large windows and is something of a fishbowl.
And you’re never to be alone with a student in his or her dorm room with the door closed.
If it’s a sensitive disciplinary conversation, the respective dorm parent will join you. ”