25. The Tuck
Charley waits for Mav on the road just outside the school gates; she doesn’t want East, or anyone else, to see her climbing into Mav’s car alone.
Mav pulls up ten minutes late in a minivan. Why is Charley surprised he drives a dad car? He has twin boys, he probably takes them to McDonald’s in this van when he has them for his sad-dad weekends.
Mav has a large Starbucks in the console. “I should have texted to see if you wanted a coffee.”
The van is far from new but immaculately clean and smells sharply of air freshener. Charley feels like Mav might have cleaned it just for her. She is so glad he didn’t get her a coffee; that would have been an alarming amount of forethought. “I’m fine.”
“Well then, off we go,” he says. “To the Clark!”
Charley pulls out her book. Williamstown is an hour and twenty minutes away, and she has no desire to sustain a conversation for that long.
Before she can start to read, Mav says, “So what pieces are you most excited to see? We should make a plan to maximize our time. The museum closes at five.”
Charley exhales. If they leave the museum at five, Charley will be back to Tiffin by six thirty at the latest. The Tuck starts at eight. She’ll have plenty of time to get ready with Davi after all.
Plenty of time.
“I think I’m most excited to see Degas’s Dancers in the Classroom, Renoir’s Box at the Theater, and the Piero della Francesca.
” Yes, Charley did her research (of course she did).
She has developed an actual appreciation for art is the thing.
She has found she loves the rarefied air of art museums, the hushed galleries, the velvet ropes, the uniformed guards, the other visitors with headphones in as they listen to the erudite words of the curators on the paintings and sculptures.
“I want to thank you for agreeing to take the class,” Mav says. “It’s really enhanced my experience at Tiffin. I’m going through something tricky in my personal life with my separation from Amanda. My time with you on Wednesdays has given me something to look forward to each week.”
Charley tries to keep her expression from becoming Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Initially, Charley thought the class would be something she looked forward to as well, but once Taylor stopped coming and it became just her and Mav in the dark study room for an hour, Charley began to dread it.
East hated her going, he teased her about it nonstop, which made it that much worse.
Charley wanted to end the class at the holiday break, but Mav texted her as soon as she got back with the second-semester syllabus, and Charley sensed that, if she told Mav she wanted to stop, he would be crushed.
And so, for the past six weeks, she has been going only because she doesn’t want to hurt Mav’s feelings.
Which is fucked-up.
Charley isn’t sure how to respond, but it doesn’t matter because at that moment, her phone starts vibrating.
No! she thinks. No no no! The only person who ever calls her is East, and he would only be calling if something was wrong—if, for example, he’d bumped into Taylor and realized she wasn’t with Charley.
Tiffin is a shoebox diorama, a terrarium, there are no secrets, no sleights of hand like the one Charley is trying to pull off.
Look what happened with the Haydensboro Massacre! Everyone knew within hours.
When she checks her phone, she sees the call is from her mother.
“I have to take this,” Charley says. “Sorry, is that okay?”
“Of course,” Mav says. He turns down the radio—it’s playing old-person pop music, Britney Spears or whatever—and pulls a pair of Ray-Ban Aviators from the console because the sun has just come out.
The Aviators are cringey. Does he think he’s Glen Powell?
Charley answers the phone. “Hi, Mom.”
She’s met with the snuffling sound that means Fran Hicks is, once again, weeping. There have been dozens of such calls since Charley returned to Tiffin; Charley has somehow become her mother’s breakup confidante.
Normally something sets Fran off—a conversation with Joey, or a possession of his that Fran finds, or a triggering memory. While Charley waits for Fran to speak, she wonders if Mav knows why Tilly left school. If so, he’s been kind enough not to mention it.
When Fran finally collects herself, she says, “You remember last summer when he said he was taking a guys’ trip to Newport…?”
Oh god, Charley thinks.
“Guess who spends her summers in Newport?”
Charley knows Tilly spends her summers in Newport, she knew that then, but when Joey announced that he was spending the long Fourth of July weekend in Newport, Charley had been overjoyed he was leaving.
It never occurred to her to connect Joey to Tilly Benbow—because Tilly Benbow was in high school!
“I’m so sorry, Mama…”
“Everything he told me in the past sixteen months has been a lie.” Fran breaks down in sobs. “I can handle a lot of things, Charley, but I cannot abide a liar.”
Charley closes her eyes. She would love to join Fran in her Joey-bashing, but she had led East to believe she wouldn’t be alone with Mav. Today, she, Charley, is also a liar.
POV: Your father’s girlfriend, O’Malley, has sent identical red Balenciaga T-shirts for you and Liam to wear to the Tuck, but at the last minute, you change into a custom Jeremy Shockey Giants jersey, also red.
“What’s the matter, bro?” Liam asks. “You don’t want to match?”
It’s not the matching thing that bothers East. It’s the whole O’Malley wanting to be involved in East’s life at Tiffin that chafes him.
He snaps Charley a picture of himself wearing the jersey. Roof after the Tuck?
There’s no response. East is only half-joking about the roof.
It would be too risky to head up there while everyone else was in the chapel basement…
but East is always looking for alone time with Charley.
He’s gotten to a place where his hours only have meaning when they’re together.
Today, he tried to do some work on his independent study project for English—his topic is the Glass family across J.
D. Salinger’s work (Charley helped him pick the topic)—but he got bored and restless and ended up taking a pot gummy and falling asleep.
He sends her a regular iMessage text: You okay?
It’s nearly seven thirty now. Charley texted him earlier to say the museum closed at five and that she’d be back at six thirty, seven at the latest.
The text East sends turns green instead of blue. Has something happened to Charley’s phone?
East tries calling her and gets voicemail. He paces his room and tries again, and again. Straight to voicemail.
He checks Snap Maps for the dorky little avatar Davi helped Charley create: a skinny girl with glasses wearing a plaid skirt and navy blazer—but he doesn’t see it. Has she turned off Snap Maps? What the fuck?
He chugs a Celsius and walks over to Classic South with Liam to pick up Davi. She’s dressed in a red bralette top and a long red silk skirt with red sparkly platform heels. This is typical Davi, dressing as if Nicky Campbell will be judging her look on the red carpet.
He says, “Have you heard from Charles?”
Davi frowns. “I’m annoyed with Charley Charles.”
East hears vodka in Davi’s voice, and he’s jealous. He could use a shot himself; he needs to fucking relax.
“But have you guys texted? I think maybe her phone is dead.”
“I haven’t heard from her all day, I assumed she was in museum mode,” Davi says, linking her arms through East’s and Liam’s. “Let’s go have fun. She’ll get here when she gets here.”
They walk, three abreast, down the aisle of the chapel, around the altar to the back room: racks of choir uniforms, pillar candles, boxes of Communion wafers. Then they head down a set of rickety stairs to God’s Basement.
Mr. Ewanick sits in a folding chair outside the main room.
He’s wearing his brown tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches over his mustard yellow shirt.
Not on theme at all, but that’s Mr. Ewanick for you.
He must have taken his hearing aids out because although the bass is thumping, he looks unbothered as he checks their names off the list on his clipboard.
Rumor has it Mr. Ewanick is the only chaperone tonight; supposedly he won’t come in unless there’s an emergency.
When he sees East, he chuckles. “Young Eastman, where’s your far better half this evening?”
“She’ll get here when she gets here,” East says, and he gives the old guy a fist bump.
Madison J. has done her best to make the basement inviting—a garland of red hearts hangs around the perimeter of the room—but the space is beyond aesthetic help.
“I’ve actually never been down here before,” Davi says. “I didn’t realize it was so grotty.”
Liam and East repeat the word “grotty” in Davi’s British accent.
East doesn’t mention that he’s been down to God’s Basement before.
As a freshman, he sneaked down here with a green-eyed sixth-former named Caroline who made her own clothes on a sewing machine she kept on her desk.
He can’t remember her last name, though he does recall that they came down here the night Caroline found out she’d been accepted to Ohio State.
She teased East because he didn’t know what a buckeye was.
(He guessed it was a species of deer, but it turned out to be a nut or something.)
The room is lit only with black light, so it’s difficult to see anyone except the kids wearing white.
There’s a galvanized tub filled with sodas and a snack table that holds bowls of potato chips, pretzels, and the candy hearts that taste like chalk.
The music is aggressively loud; Madison borrowed Royce’s speakers, which are nightclub-grade and not meant for a room with a dropped ceiling.
An old Drake song is playing, and the third-formers are bopping along in one sweaty clump.
They apparently don’t mind the grottiness, they have not yet grown used to the luxuries of the Egg—the elegant dome, the DJ, the mocktail bar, the buffet by Chef Haz.