20. The Haydensboro Massacre
After the initial rush of getting an actual message from Pippa with an actual invitation to the Gut Punch house, Olivia acknowledges that she probably shouldn’t go.
She has not one, not two, but three finals on Thursday.
Why couldn’t Pippa have invited them over on Friday—or even to pregame Saturday before the Kringle?
But the text says Wednesday, three p.m.
Olivia heads down the hall to Tilly’s room. She finds Tilly at her mirror, braiding her hair, listening to an old Weezer song.
“Were you invited to Pippa’s house?” Olivia asks.
“I was,” Tilly says. Of course she was: Even though she has been Debbie Downer all semester, Tilly is still somehow higher in the pecking order than Olivia. “But I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
Tilly looks at Olivia in the mirror as she ties off her braid. “You’re joking, right? I have Spanish, history, and pre-calc on Thursday. You have three finals too, don’t you?”
“So?” Olivia says. “I’ll study beforehand. The text says three o’clock. We’ll be back on camp by dinner.” They have to be back on campus before dinner unless they fill out a leave request, which would no doubt be denied because it’s finals week.
Tilly cocks one eyebrow, which Olivia notes has recently been shaped.
Tilly is back to caring about her appearance; Dr. Pringle must have worked a miracle.
“There’s no way this is just some casual afternoon hang, Olivia.
She’s inviting us over to day drink and probably smoke pot, and even if we do get back by dinner, we’re going to be wasted.
We’ll probably get caught, and even if we don’t get caught, Wednesday night will be a wash and we’ll be hungover for finals. But hey, you do you.”
Olivia knows Tilly is right. Now that they’ve both been deferred from college, these finals could mean the difference between accepted and rejected. But then Olivia questions why she’s listening to Tilly. Tilly is a mess.
“I will do me,” Olivia says. As soon as she’s back in her room, she snaps Pippa. I’ll be there.
Pippa responds right away: Yay! Bring a plus-one. (Boy!)
Shit, Olivia thinks. She was hoping to elude the plus-one part of the invitation, or hope Tilly counted as a plus-one. But now Tilly isn’t going, and the plus-one has to be a boy? Liam is probably going, and Pippa might not want him to feel outnumbered.
The only boy Olivia can reasonably ask is Grady Tish.
Grady will definitely say yes, he’s obsessed with Olivia, of course he’s obsessed with her, she’s a sixth-former and he’s a lowly fourth-former—which is why nobody at Tiffin can know they’re talking.
There’s a tradition at Tiffin called “Senior Spring,” where senior girls get with sophomore boys, and Olivia was hoping to keep her relationship with Grady on the down-low until March or April or whenever Senior Spring started happening.
Olivia doesn’t want to be the first—or god forbid, the only—sixth-form girl doing Senior Spring.
Olivia likes Grady. He’s funny, he’s taller than she is, and his acne has cleared up (because, he confided, he’s on spironolactone).
He’s the assistant editor of the ’Bred Bulletin, and all the cute fourth-form girls on the Bulletin chat him up.
He’s from New York City, he lives in a building called the Apthorp, and his sister goes to Nightingale-Bamford, which was the real-life inspiration behind Gossip Girl (or so Grady claims).
What Olivia likes best about Grady is that she has someone to text about all the things she’s thinking and feeling who will listen and respond with care.
She has a person who is especially hers.
Since they’ve been talking, Olivia has felt safer, more comfortable in her skin, and far less lonely.
She sends Grady a message: Can you come with me to Pippa’s house on Wednesday afternoon at 3?
Deadass? he responds.
She invited me and I’m supposed to bring a boy.
There’s a longish pause, and Olivia worries he’s going to tell her that he wants to go, but has to study for finals. Possibly she’s even hoping for that.
But instead he sends back a thumbs-up.
On Wednesday at quarter to three, Olivia and Grady pretend like they’re heading to the Teddy, but they bypass the Teddy and head through the wrought-iron gates to the road, where they’re picked up by an Uber.
Technically, they’re breaking school rules—no one is supposed to leave campus without permission—but it’s a rule that’s easy to maneuver around during finals week when nobody is required to be anywhere specific except during an exam.
The likelihood that a teacher will notice Olivia missing is low; she and Grady have already agreed they will leave Pippa’s house at five thirty, no matter what.
Still, it feels rebellious and therefore sexy; Olivia lets Grady kiss her in the Uber, though she pulls away once they get to Haydensboro so she can look out the window.
It’s a cute town, but tiny: There’s only a market, a bar called the Alibi, and a gift shop that sells things like scented candles and LIVE LAUGH LOVE signs.
Olivia keeps her eyes peeled for teachers—Mav, Coop, and the Wullys all live in Haydensboro—but the person she sees is Taylor Wilson, walking into the Haydensboro Pharmacy.
Olivia exhales. If Taylor is here in town, then it must be okay if Olivia is too.
Olivia wonders if Taylor is invited to Pippa’s? It doesn’t seem likely. Taylor is Honor Board chair; she wouldn’t come to Haydensboro to day drink. She probably needed tampons or a pack of Celsius.
When they turn off Main Street, the Uber pulls into the driveway of an enormous, dark-shingled house with a tower rising between two wings. One side is sheathed in scaffolding; Pippa’s Land Rover is in the driveway. This is the place.
A car pulls into the driveway alongside theirs. It’s another Uber: Cassie Lee and Reed Wheeler get out.
Okay? Olivia thinks. Cassie and Reed are both fourth-formers like Grady, though they’re both normal (whereas Grady is a little alt, if Olivia’s being honest).
Is it weird that Pippa invited underclassmen?
Cassie Lee is the queen bee of the fourth-form, Pippa knows her from newspaper, and Reed became something of a football star this fall—but it underscores how few friends Pippa has at Tiffin.
Just Olivia and Tilly, really. And Liam.
“Hey,” Olivia says. Her tone is cool, though she has butterflies.
She can hear her mother’s voice in her head, urging her to take a video, or at least pictures of the house Sondra Sacks is renovating for Gut Punch.
Strangely, it’s the thought of her mother that puts Olivia at ease.
If Olivia does get in trouble for leaving campus, she’ll tell Diane that she went on a field trip to Sondra Sacks’s house, and all will be forgiven.
When Olivia knocks on the door, Liam opens it. He has his hand deep in a bag of Doritos; in the background, Bad Bunny is playing.
“Come on in, guys,” he says.
Olivia isn’t sure quite what she was expecting, but the house is a disappointment.
The entire downstairs is a construction zone—the floors are stripped down to plywood, the walls to the studs.
There are ladders and camera tripods, cans of paint, extension cords, open toolboxes, and loose screws underfoot; doorways are hung with plastic sheeting.
Liam leads them down a long hallway, through a kitchen that has a fridge pulled away from the wall, a dinged-up kitchen table, and a stainless steel sink splattered with paint.
There are hard seltzers in the fridge. Liam says to help themselves, and in their eagerness, Grady and Reed pop open two apiece. Olivia spies a bottle of rosé in the fridge, it’s a screw-top, and Olivia asks Liam if she can have some.
He shrugs. “I guess so?”
Cassie says she wants rosé as well, and Olivia appreciates the solidarity—but there aren’t any glasses. She rustles through some reusable bags on the floor that appear to be serving as a pantry; she finds chips, pretzels, crackers, popcorn, a box of pasta, a jar of sauce.
Olivia unscrews the top of the bottle of wine and takes a swig, then hands it to Cassie Lee.
“Are you sure?” Cassie says. “I heard Taylor Wilson has been throwing up and that the whole first floor has norovirus.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia says. “I feel fine.”
“Alcohol will kill the germs,” Reed says, which is the kind of thing a fourth-form boy would believe, but it works for Cassie. She takes the bottle and chugs.
“Where’s Pippa?” Olivia asks Liam.
“She’s getting things ready out back.”
Out back? They all follow Liam outside past a massive hole in the ground filled with murky water—the future pool—toward a shed with newish-looking barn doors.
Pippa steps out of the shed, smoking a cigarette, wearing a white tank top (no bra, Olivia can see the outline of her nipples through the material) and a pair of gauzy white beach pants, which are the kind of thing one might wear in the South of France (or so Olivia imagines).
“Welcome, friends!” Pippa says as she flicks her cigarette butt into the muddy pool hole. She holds the door open and ushers them inside.
“Whoa,” Reed says. “This place is fire.”
Dominating the middle of the room is a huge bed topped with a red velvet duvet.
Above the bed hangs a chandelier, and dangling from the arms are blown-glass balls in red, green, silver, and gold.
The tables on either side of the bed are covered with red and green pillar candles that have been lit, filling the room with the scent of faux evergreen.
When Olivia looks up, she sees paintings affixed to the beams of the ceiling: scenes of the countryside, a portrait of some old dude in a top hat. Okay, cool?
“What is this place?” Grady asks.
“My She-Shed,” Pippa says. “Please, sit.” She sinks down onto a throw rug that is as white and fluffy as a polar bear. Through hidden speakers, Frank Sinatra sings “The First Noel.”