6. Day Student #2
The class smirks at the bungling of Mrs. Spooner’s name. Charley wonders if Spooner said anything to this chick about how her shorts are breaking dress code.
Mr. Rivera fumbles with his papers until he finds the class list. Then he can’t quite get a grip on his pen. He’s such a meme.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Philippa Sacks,” she says. “Pippa.”
Willow and Taylor gasp and Charley thinks, Do they know her?
“This class is for sixth-form students only,” Mr. Rivera says. “Are you… I’m sorry… I can’t recall ever seeing you before. Are you a sixth-former?”
“I’m a senior, if that’s what you’re asking,” Pippa says. (Charley wants to hate the whole faux British Philippa-Pippa naming thing, but she kind of loves it.)
“You’re new, then?” Mr. Rivera says. He takes a beat to glance around the table, again landing on Charley, as if she might know what’s going on, which is laughable.
“Yes,” Pippa says, and she gives Mr. Rivera a smile so dazzling that he actually sighs. “I’m a day student. I’m sorry I’m late. I flew back yesterday from Tanzania…”
Charley laughs out loud. “Oops, sorry,” she says. “I thought that was a joke.”
Watching Pippa run a hand through her blond corkscrews makes Charley suddenly want to curl her hair. “I know it sounds absurd…”
“Were you on safari?” Mr. Rivera asks.
Pippa’s shorts are kind of giving safari, Charley thinks.
“I climbed Kilimanjaro last week, actually,” Pippa says—and again Charley laughs because Come on! Someone hired this chick to show up as a prank.
Right?
“Kilimanjaro?” Royce says. “Which route did you take? My dad and I did the Marangu.”
“Lemosho,” Pippa says.
“Cool,” Royce says. He’s staring at Pippa as though he’d like to eat her, and Charley sees Willow kick him under the table.
“Take a seat, Pippa,” Mr. Rivera says. “I didn’t realize we had any day students.”
Pippa gives Mr. Rivera a theatrical wink. “Well,” she says. “Now you have me.”
By lunchtime, Pippa Sacks is the subject of private Snapchat stories all across Tiffin. Cassie Lee and her cohort of little fourth-formers are freaking out. She’s such a celebrity.
“I don’t get why they care,” Charley says. “Tiffin already has a celebrity. We have you.”
Charley is a good friend, Davi thinks. But the girl is painfully clueless.
“Pippa Sacks is another level,” Davi says. From where she and Charley are standing in the sandwich line, Davi can see Olivia H-T shamelessly fangirling over Pippa, and (predictably) inviting her to sit with her and Tilly at the senior table.
“But how?” Charley says. “I checked Instagram and TikTok. I couldn’t find her.”
“That’s part of her thing,” Davi says. “She doesn’t do social media.
But here, look…” Davi clicks and swipes her way through Instagram: Pippa with Millie Bobby Brown and Jake Bongiovi at some Formula 1 race, Pippa at Wild Cherry with Lila Moss, Pippa on the rooftop of Soho House smoking a cigarette next to Kaia Gerber.
“Kaia Gerber, the one who launched the book club?” Charley says.
“Why are you such a freak?” Davi says.
“Why does Pippa smoke cigarettes like she’s an old person in a movie?”
“Cigarettes are making a comeback.” Davi steps up to the counter and orders the “Anthony Bourdain,” which is griddled mortadella and provolone on a potato bun, for herself and the roasted turkey with green apple slaw for Charley.
“I don’t understand why Pippa is relevant,” Charley says.
“She started appearing in posts a few years ago with New York people. Because she’s so pretty and not tagged, the internet became obsessed with her. Then some online sleuths discovered that she’s the daughter of Sondra Sacks.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?” Charley asks.
“She started out as one of the Housewives,” Davi says.
“But she had an affair with the attorney general of New York and got kicked off the show, then she got divorced. Then she moved to Morocco, leaving Pippa with the dad, Erik Sacks, who’s the chairman of the Brigantine Group.
He was never around, and so Pippa ran wild and became a New York ‘It’ girl. ”
“A New York It girl?” Charley says. “Does East know her?”
I’m sure he does, Davi thinks. But Davi isn’t going to be the one to decimate (“ruin, spoil”) Charley’s day.
“Sondra reinvented herself in Morocco as an ‘interior decorator.’ She landed a job at HGTV as the host of Gut Punch, the renovation show.”
“What is Pippa doing at Tiffin as a day student?” Charley asks.
Davi watches as Olivia H-T clears Pippa’s lunch tray. Pippa Sacks’s presence here, in Davi’s domain, is as annoying as something stuck between her two front teeth.
“I’m sure we’ll find out,” Davi says.
Charley doesn’t give a shit about Pippa Sacks. She sounds like a second-rate nepo baby. She refuses to let Pippa live rent-free in her head on their first day of sixth-form.
“I feel like Dr. Coopersmith’s class is going to be my favorite,” Charley says as she and Davi slide into the Booth.
“We’re studying the civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and Vietnam obviously, but also the Beatles, the Kennedy assassinations, Truman Capote…
” Charley stops when she realizes Davi isn’t listening.
Like, at all. She’s still locked in on Pippa Sacks at the senior table.