7. Tiffin Talks Senior Speech
Royce Stringfellow walks into the sixth-floor bathroom of Classic North to find Dub Austin clutching one of the sinks with both hands as he stares down the drain.
“You okay, dude?” Royce asks.
Royce slaps Dub on the back. “Good luck,” he says. “You’ll kill it. What’s the topic?”
Dub holds Royce’s gaze in the mirror but says nothing.
Back in his room, Dub paces. Is he going to do this? Is he?
He opens his laptop and, for probably the 115th time, runs the cursor over the attachment that Cinnamon sent him in the moments before she swallowed the pills that killed her.
She asked him to wait until the morning of graduation to open the attachment.
Did she realize how much anxiety this would cause him?
What does the attachment contain? Dub is tempted to assume it’s a suicide note explaining her actions—but he knows her actions have no explanation other than that she finally drowned in the dark water of her depression.
She never knew when—or why—the sadness would come, but when it did, her body convulsed with violent, seizure-like sobs.
Everything hurt, she said. It wasn’t something she could “power through” or “shake off.” She told him to imagine that he was in the weight room bench-pressing and he just couldn’t make one more lift. Like, it wasn’t physically possible.
That’s what it feels like, she said. All the time.
She met with the school psychologist every week, but Dr. Pringle wasn’t authorized to prescribe antidepressants and Cinnamon’s parents didn’t want her taking them anyway.
Dub had met Mr. and Mrs. Peters during Family Weekend their freshman year.
They were polite, emotionally one-note Wisconsin Lutherans who believed in hard work, discipline, and stoicism; they called Cinnamon by her given name, Cynthia.
(It was Cinnamon’s beloved third grade teacher, Mrs. Izett, who nicknamed eight-year-old Cynthia “Cinnamon,” due to her auburn hair—and this instantly became the name Cinnamon used for herself.)
Most of the time, Cinnamon seemed fine, and not only fine but wonderful.
She was a straight-A student, she got the lead in the musical as a sophomore, she attended every Monday night Piano Bar, she played her guitar at Tiffin open mic nights and talent shows and was widely considered the only Tiffin student with any actual musical talent.
She was already thinking about college: Duke, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest. She was Mrs. Spooner’s favorite tour guide; she led three tours a week and inspired lots of kids to choose Tiffin over schools like Middlesex and Groton.
Cinnamon told her family physician, Dr. Johannsen, that she experienced cycles where she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, couldn’t do anything except barely hang on through a downward spiral of agonizing thoughts.
The doctor told her it was hormones and suggested Midol.
When Cinnamon bluntly explained that the problem was her brain, not her uterus, he prescribed Valium and lorazepam for sleep.
Cinnamon stockpiled the pills, then took them all at once.
What does Dub remember about Cinnamon’s final days?
It was springtime and the wildflowers in the Pasture were blooming, which everyone but Dub loved (he was allergic to pollen).
Cinnamon had been going through a rough time.
She told Dub she didn’t trust herself to be alone and begged him to sneak in through her window and sleep in her room.
She was afraid, she said.
Afraid of what? Dub asked. The school year was ending, and Dub sensed this was troubling Cinnamon.
She hated to leave Tiffin. But why? Dub wondered.
He tried to ask without prying. Was there a problem at home?
Something lurking behind the bland niceness of her parental front—alcoholism, sexual abuse?
It seemed unlikely, but the thing about secrets was that they lurked where you least expected.
Dub knew this better than anyone.
Please, Dub, she said. Please.
It was risky. Dub was at Tiffin on scholarship, he couldn’t afford to get Honor Boarded, especially not at the end of the year when any punishment might be held over to the fall, football season. What if he couldn’t play in the first games of his junior year?
But he went anyway, believing he would be cloaked in the nobility of his mission.
He sneaked out of North (his dorm parents that year were Roy Ewanick and Doc Bellamy, who had a combined age of 150) and in through Cinnamon’s window (which was no more challenging than clearing a track hurdle).
He held Cinnamon all night long, stroking her back, smoothing her hair.
Over the span of two years, she had taught him everything he knew about love, friendship, acceptance.
He would do anything—lose anything—for her.
The final day of her life, May 12, she had seemed a little better. It was a Monday, which meant Burger Night followed by Piano Bar.
In Dub’s memory, everything was normal: Cinnamon sat next to Mr. Chuy on the piano bench, she requested “Shallow,” and she and Dub performed a duet, singing their damn hearts out.
When they finished, people whooped and hollered.
They laughed all the way home, and because she was in a good mood—the depression could be like that, Dub knew, it vanished as inexplicably as it arrived—Dub stopped in the Pasture and picked her a bouquet of blue asters, primrose, and Queen Anne’s lace, even though they made him sneeze.
When he left her off at Classic South, she hugged him long and hard. He kissed the part in her auburn hair. When she looked up at him, she put a hand on his cheek. “I love you, Dub Austin.”
“I love you, Cinnamon Peters,” he said.
Ms. Vandermeid had swung open the door to Classic South and said, “Let’s go, lovebirds. You’ll see each other in the morning.”
The chapel bells had chimed ten, and Dub jogged to his own dorm. Had he looked back at Cinnamon one last time? He doesn’t remember. He likes to believe he did.
He closes his laptop. He knows Cinnamon would support what he’s about to do. He can still feel her hand on his cheek and hear her saying she loves him.
Our friends who go to public school don’t really “get” Chapel. You have to go to church twice a week? They groan sympathetically. Ugh.
But nearly all of us look forward to stepping inside the sanctuary with its soaring beams and majestic stained glass windows.
We pile our backpacks in the vestibule and sneak in our phones (which we set to Do not disturb because if it goes off, Mrs. Spooner will take custody of it for the rest of the day).
When we slide into the dark walnut pews, the girls assess one another’s outfits, the boys talk college football and their parlays.
As soon as Chaplain Laura Rae takes the pulpit, we bow our heads.
On Tuesdays, the homily is replaced by a senior speech.
A member of the sixth-form shares a personal story with special meaning.
We pay more attention to delivery than to content.
Some people are commanding and confident, some are so nervous the paper shakes in their hands.
Some people break down in tears when recounting a grandparent’s death, and some people lie (most notably, Annabelle Tuckerman last year with her speech entitled “Three Brushes with Death,” which turned out to be completely fabricated).
This morning after the gospel reading, Laura Rae beams at us. “Kicking off this year’s senior speeches, it’s my pleasure to introduce Webber Austin.” She beckons Dub up from the front pew. “Dub, I’ll hand it off to you.”
We roll our eyes, yes we see what she did there, but many of us are confused. Why is Dub Austin going first? We expected the first speech to be by Madison J., the Head Prefect, or Royce Stringfellow, who likes to be first in all things.
When Dub takes his place in the pulpit, we immediately sense his unease. Just because he’s a beast on the field doesn’t mean that he’s comfortable baring his soul to the entire school.
He looks like he’s going to puke.
He glances at Hakeem Pryce and Taylor Wilson, who are sitting in the front pew, then he expels a long breath and says, “Here goes. Take it easy on me.”
This breaks the tension; we all laugh. We want Dub to succeed now just as much as we do on Friday nights. Of course we’ll take it easy on him. After all, someday it will be us in that pulpit.
Taylor slips her phone from the Book of Common Prayer and surreptitiously takes photos of Dub up at the altar. He has been secretive about the subject of his talk.
Is it about football? Taylor asked.
More important than football.
Taylor assumed this meant he would be talking about Cinnamon. She wants to video him, but she’s afraid she’ll be caught… and she can’t live without her phone for the rest of the day.
Dub leans into the microphone like he’s about to kiss it. “I grew up in Durango, Colorado, in a family of four boys.” He pauses. “The only thing that mattered in my house was football.”
There are a few whoops from the third- and fourth-form boys.
“Compared to my two older brothers, who have both played college football on athletic scholarships, one at CU Boulder and one at Colorado State, and compared to my younger brother, who has already committed to playing quarterback at the University of Oklahoma… I suck.” He takes a beat.
“Well, I mean, I’m good by Tiffin standards. ”
Everyone laughs.
“But that’s not the only way I’m different from my brothers,” Dub says. “I’m also smarter than they are.” More laughter. “None of them would have any hope of passing chem with Mr. Wully.”
“ ‘Hot glass looks like cool glass!’” someone calls out.
“I’m also far better-looking than they are,” Dub says. In response to the cheers and catcalls, he adds, “Since they’re not here to defend themselves, I should probably just keep going.”
He has everyone in the chapel eating out of his hand, Taylor thinks. She had no idea he’d be so good at this.