32. Priorities 2.0 #2
“I want to thank you all for coming. And to whichever one of you is anonymously responsible for this space, well done, you. It’s magnificent.”
Audre looks for East and finds him lurking by the south door, drinking another glass of champagne. Audre tries to catch his eye, she imagines a shared conspiratorial wink, but East’s gaze is focused on his father.
“As some of you know, with my son Andrew’s graduation this year, I had planned to rotate off the board and bid Tiffin adieu…”
Had planned? Audre thinks. What is happening here?
Jesse reaches for O’Malley’s hand. “But I’m thrilled to announce that my lovely partner, O’Malley, is pregnant with a little girl. So I’ll be remaining a member of the Tiffin community for the next… eighteen years. I’m happy to serve on the board for as many of those years as Tiffin will have me.”
Audre feels a hand on her back, then hears Coop’s whisper in her ear. “Mic drop.”
Across the room, Cordelia is fanning herself with a cocktail napkin.
She’s the first to approach Jesse and O’Malley to offer congratulations.
Rhode Rivera is at the bar (woefully underdressed in jeans and a cheap-looking houndstooth blazer over a black T-shirt) chatting up Jefferson.
He doesn’t know how to play the game, Audre thinks.
But because he’s a man, she can’t count him out completely.
Audre spins around to see what East’s reaction to the news is. He’s getting a little sister!
East is no longer by the door. Audre casts about the room; she doesn’t see him.
He’s gone.
Olivia H-T zips herself into a lipstick-red Cult Gaia dress with daring cutouts that she bought to wear to the Kringle, which she wasn’t allowed to attend due to the Haydensboro Massacre.
But now the dress will have its moment—and so will Olivia.
She puts on her black stiletto Louboutins, a choice she regrets once she sees how steep the stairs from the cellar to the tunnel are.
She takes a beat to steady herself. She’s buzzing from an adrenaline high; after four torturous years, her moment has come.
She’s about to confront a room of important donors with the truth: The speakeasy was built by East, he held an invitation-only cocktail party every weekend last spring and never got in trouble for it.
In fact, East never got in trouble for any reason.
He had a free pass both socially and academically, bought and paid for by his father, Jesse Eastman.
It’s one more disgusting example of how people with power and money work around the rules.
Olivia will also implicate the kids who sneaked out to attend the parties at Priorities: Davi, Charley, Madison J., Taylor, Willow, Royce, Hakeem, Dub. They’re all going down.
Although Olivia is dialed up, she can still appreciate how freaking cool the vaulted brick tunnel is; the sharp click of her heels bounces off the walls.
She pictures Davi, Charley, and Taylor sneaking down here in the middle of the night.
She would have jumped at the chance to join them if she’d been invited.
She hears a muffled noise… and sees a figure up ahead, leaning against the wall. She takes a stutter step; her shoes are almost impossible to walk in.
“Hello?” she says.
“Hey, Olivia.”
It’s East—but something is wrong. When Olivia gets closer, she sees him wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, then pull out his vape.
Is he crying?
“Are you okay?” she asks.
He shakes his head. “Nah.”
They’re about ten feet from the door. Olivia can hear music and laughter on the other side. The party she’s about to disrupt. What the hell is going on?
For one second, Olivia gets the crazy idea that she’s the reason East is so upset.
Did he somehow find out she’s about to expose his little arrangement with the school?
Is this how he would react? No, she thinks.
If he knew what she was about to do, he’d be totally bullshit.
Olivia has wrestled long and hard with the understanding that, as soon as she speaks out, everyone in her graduating class will hate her, especially East. She has told herself she doesn’t care.
They graduate next month. She can handle being canceled for that long in the name of revenge.
The last thing in the world she expected was to find East like this.
“Do you want to talk?” Olivia asks.
East sucks on his vape. “My father and O’Malley are having a baby,” he says.
“A little girl.” Even in the dark tunnel, Olivia can see East’s eyes bright with tears.
“They didn’t even have the decency to tell me first. My father just announced it to a room full of people.
Which proves what I’ve always known: Neither of my parents gives a shit about me. ”
Really? Olivia thinks. Jesse Eastman cares about East enough to have rigged the whole Tiffin system in his favor.
And when Olivia met East’s mother at Family Weekend, it was pretty obvious she adored him.
It has never occurred to Olivia that East might have insecurities like she does.
Olivia feels what can only be described as a tenderness toward East in this moment.
“Do you want me to get Charley?” Olivia asks.
“Nah.” He sniffs. “I should go back in.” He ushers Olivia forward. “After you.”
“Oh,” she says. “I shouldn’t. I’m crashing.”
This makes East smile. “No shit? Baller move. Here, come with me. Everyone’s getting sloshed, no one will care.”
“Okay?” Olivia is so uncomfortable. East has no idea that the sole reason she’s here is to destroy him.
East puts his hand on Olivia’s back, encouraging her forward, and opens the door.
When Olivia steps inside, she takes in the crystal chandelier, the L-shaped bar, the jewel-toned Persian rug.
She turns to East. “Holy shit.” She nearly says, You did this?
East heads for the bar. “Let’s get you a glass of champagne.”
Olivia opens her mouth to protest—Ms. Robinson is here, and Mr. Rivera, and Spooner. But East is right, they’re all preoccupied, talking and drinking.
Oh, how Olivia wishes her years at Tiffin had gone differently!
She wishes she’d been more relaxed, more self-assured.
She should have cultivated her acting and singing, but when she arrived here, she’d been insecure about those talents.
She wasn’t as good a singer as Cinnamon or as good an actress as Taylor.
She paid too much attention to what Davi and Tilly and Pippa were doing and not enough attention to her own voice.
Mav was right: She has been a follower. Ingratiating herself with other people became her entire personality.
She’s only standing here right now because she wants to please Pippa.
But what has Pippa done for her, except disappoint her again and again?
A moment later, East is back, handing Olivia a flute of golden champagne. He touches his glass to hers. “Cheers and shit, Olivia.”
As Olivia drinks, she asks herself if blowing up Tiffin in the final weeks of their sixth-form year is what she wants.
The answer is no. Then, Olivia chastises herself: She’s a failure even at being a villain. But maybe that’s because in her heart, she’s not a villain. She doesn’t care that she’s experiencing Priorities a year after it was a thing.
She’s just happy to be here now.
Sunday morning, Audre and Jesse meet in her private library, which has a spectacular view over the flowering dogwoods and Jewel Pond. Jesse isn’t a breakfast guy, but Audre asked Chef Haz to send up coffee service and a pot of herbal tea for her. She can’t handle caffeine; she’s already shaking.
Jesse shows up in his workout clothes instead of his usual suit and tie.
Seeing him in athletic shorts, a long-sleeved Round Swamp Farm T-shirt, and running shoes, Audre is reminded that Jesse Eastman is a human being, just like everyone else.
His salt-and-pepper hair is damp around the ears—and his knees, she notes, are a little knobby.
He hasn’t shaved yet this morning, and he carries the not-unpleasant odor of sweat and freshly cut grass.
All of this serves to make Jesse seem younger, and Audre wonders if there have been moments in Jesse’s own career when he’s made mistakes.
“Did you run outside or go to the fitness center?” she asks. She fears her smile is pained; she can barely handle small talk.
“Both,” he says. “I ran to Haydensboro and back…”
A casual twelve miles, she thinks.
“… and then I went to the fitness center to do some lifting. I bumped into both Rivera and Spooner there.” Jesse pours himself a black coffee and settles back onto the Victorian fainting couch, while Audre takes the wingback chair. “Just curious who you think will do a better job as Head.”
Cordelia, but Audre can’t sit through a conversation about the next Head of School until she confesses. “Let’s put a pin in that question for a moment,” she says. “Because I’d like to start by discussing the operating budget.”
Jesse stirs one sugar cube into his coffee; Audre closes her eyes, listening to the spoon chime against the bone china cup. “The operating budget?”
Audre has practiced what she wants to say dozens of times in her bathroom mirror, but now that the moment of truth is upon her, she wants to dissolve into tears.
But no, she won’t. She sets the account statements on the table before him and says, “We suffered catastrophic losses last summer, and we haven’t been able to recover.”
Jesse rears back. “Why is now the first time I’m hearing about this?”
Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? Audre convinced herself she needed to have this conversation with Jesse in person, and this is the first time he’s made it to campus all year. This, of course, is just a way of shifting the blame onto Jesse. Audre could have scheduled a call or Zoom anytime.