35. Tiffin Talks Prize Day
The day before graduation, the news drops: Charley Hicks has been named valedictorian, beating out Royce Stringfellow by two-tenths of a percentage point.
Those of us on the sixth floor of Classic North hear Royce ranting.
“It’s such bullshit. She spent two years at another high school where they were probably assigned Twilight for high school English. ”
“Bro, watch it,” Hakeem says. “You sound like a sore loser.”
Royce can’t help himself. He vents to Liam Donovan that night while they’re in line for dinner. Not fair, there’s no way her other high school was as academically rigorous as Tiffin…
Liam raises his eyebrows… and Royce realizes too late that he’s chosen the wrong person to complain to.
“I came in third,” Liam says. “Four-tenths of a percentage point behind you. And yes, I know the high school I came from wasn’t as good.
That’s why I’m taking pride, man. I came to Tiffin without the same foundation that you had, and I worked my tail off to get the grades.
You should be giving Charley props. And just…
I don’t know… be happy with what you got, bro. ”
“Yeah, no, you’re right,” Royce says. “I am happy.”
“He’s not happy,” Davi says to Charley later that night. They’re in Davi’s room, lifting the COMPARISONS ARE ODIOUS sign off the nails Davi illegally hammered into the dorm room wall. “How satisfying is it beating Royce’s ass?”
“Honestly?” Charley says as they lower the sign to the floor. “I’m just sad our time is almost over.”
Their time is almost over. This is all it takes for Davi’s eyes to water. She regards the sign. “It feels like just yesterday I put this thing up. Where did this year go? Where did the last four years go?”
Davi will never forget the day she arrived at Tiffin, back when her parents were the only two people in their marriage.
She remembers her first time in Chapel, her first Intervis (with a fifth-former named Leander Ambrose), the first time Ms. Robinson called her by name.
She remembers learning about irony in Mrs. Wully’s English class, and going with Cinnamon to Piano Bar, where she tuned everyone else out so she could hear that girl sing.
Davi gazes around her room at the boxes and bags. She’s packing up her entire existence. When Davi went to grab Charley a few minutes earlier, and she saw the empty bookshelves and Charley’s houseplants lined up in a plastic tray, she wanted to wail.
“Don’t cry because it’s over,” Charley says. “Smile because it happened.”
“That sounds like one of the stupid quotes on Bergeron’s door. God, remember Bergeron’s door?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Charley says. She, infamously, wrote a quote from Demon Copperhead in red marker right at eye level where it couldn’t be ignored or overlooked. I think most of humankind would agree, the hard part of high school is the people.
Charley had believed that at the time, but now…
well, now she realizes the only part of high school that matters are the people: Ms. Robinson, Mr. Rivera, Mrs. Spooner, Chef Haz, Grady Tish, Madison J.
, Willow, Taylor, Dub, Hakeem, and yes, Royce.
But especially East. And more than East, the person who matters the most to Charley is the one here with her now.
What would Charley’s life at Tiffin have been like without Davi?
“Remember last year when you weren’t speaking to me?” Charley says. “That was a whole month of our time here, wasted.”
“Can you not, please?” Davi says. “I prefer to believe the bad times made us stronger.”
Like a couple of synchronized swimmers, Davi and Charley flop back on the bed. Charley is tall enough that her feet still touch the floor, but Davi’s feet are hovering.
What were the chances that the girl who arrived to…
replace Cinnamon would end up becoming another best friend?
Davi wonders. Someone who could see past the unboxings of the hair masks and the lip gloss, someone who valued Davi’s interior life?
Davi doesn’t believe in ghosts or spirits and she’s undecided about the afterlife, but she knows that somehow, some way, Cinnamon sent her Charley. And thank god.
“Do you realize how much you’ve influenced me?” Davi says. “Thanks to you, I’m now a person with a favorite Ann Patchett book.”
“The Magician’s Assistant,” Charley says. “So underappreciated.”
“But you’re not underappreciated.” Davi thinks back on the past two years, all the shit with her parents, battling her eating disorder, enduring Pippa Sacks. She takes Charley’s hand. “I’m grateful for you, girl.”
A knock at the door interrupts their CW-drama moment.
“What?” Davi shouts.
Olivia H-T enters. She’s barefaced with her hair in a messy bun. It’s amazing how pretty she is when she doesn’t try too hard.
“Hey,” Olivia says. “I was wondering if you were keeping your neon sign or giving it away?”
“Oh,” Davi says. She’d planned to keep it, but now she wonders if she shouldn’t get a new sign for Miami in the name of a fresh start. Or, possibly, do the unthinkable and go to college without a neon sign. “I’m not sure. Do you want it?”
“I do,” Olivia says.
“Take it.”
“Really?”
“Yes, yes, take it,” Davi says. “Light up High Point, girlfriend. You’re going to be great there.”
Olivia beams. “Thank you. I think we’re all going to be great.”
When Olivia leaves with the sign, Davi turns to Charley. “Is it my imagination or has she become sort of normal?”
Graduation at Tiffin Academy—known as Prize Day—is held on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. This year, the weather is clear, sunny, and warm enough that the sixth-form boys are going to be sweating in their green-and-gold rep ties and navy blazers.
Although Prize Day is still two years away for Cassie Lee, she makes notes about the sixth-form girls’ white dresses.
Taylor is in short LoveShackFancy, Davi is in a white slip dress from her parents’ label, Out of Office.
There is a lot of Hill House. Charley wears a white poplin Staud dress; it’s the graduation version of a plain white oxford, but what did Cassie expect?
Cassie’s favorite dress is the lacy Alexis midi that Olivia H-T is wearing.
Cassie and the other fourth-form girls worship Olivia; she’s the only upperclassman who pays attention to them.
Cassie is already planning a road trip to High Point next February.
Cordelia is always in charge of Prize Day ceremony logistics.
It’s her job to pick up the programs from the printer and the long-stemmed red roses from the Haydensboro florist. She oversees the placement of the flooring in the Pasture.
The flooring flattens the grass, but it’s necessary to contain the green-and-gold confetti the graduating students toss in the air.
(Cordelia and Mr. James joke that whoever dreamed up the confetti tradition wasn’t the person responsible for cleaning up.) Cordelia also arranges the processional.
The valedictorian, Charley Hicks, will lead the class in, followed by salutatorian Royce Stringfellow.
The rest of the kids follow in pairs, decided by Cordelia’s whimsy (she matches Hakeem with Taylor, for example, she couldn’t not).
Cordelia has every detail of the ceremony down to a science, with contingencies for rain or extreme heat (they move the whole thing into the chapel).
In Cordelia’s twenty-three years, there has never been a snafu she hasn’t been able to handle.
One year a girl unexpectedly got her period and bled through her white dress moments before “Pomp and Circumstance” was about to begin—and Cordelia swapped her dress out for a white choir robe.
Because Cordelia is so well organized, there have been very few surprises.
However, this year, as Cordelia is distributing the roses among the girls, Dub Austin pulls her aside.
He is, for what reason she cannot fathom, holding his laptop.
Does he owe someone a last-minute paper or exam so he can receive his diploma?
And if so, why is Cordelia only hearing about this now?
“Mrs. Spooner?” he says. “There’s something I have to tell you.” He opens the laptop and clicks on an email from… Cordelia blinks… Cinnamon Peters.
Despite the warm day, Cordelia gets a chill. Cinnamon Peters has been very much on Cordelia’s mind this week. There’s an In Memoriam page honoring Cinnamon in the program, and Cordelia and Audre agreed to leave an empty chair in the front row of graduates, symbolically for Cinnamon.
“What… is this?” Cordelia asks Dub. She notes the date of the email—May 12, two years earlier—and suddenly feels dizzy.
Dub explains that Cinnamon sent him the email before she died and asked him not to open the attachment until the morning of their graduation.
“I obeyed her wishes,” Dub says. “I waited until this morning to open it.”
He then tells Cordelia what’s in the attachment, and what he would like to do.
As the first notes of “Pomp and Circumstance” play (piped in over speakers, Tiffin’s music department is too anemic to populate a band, something Audre vows to remedy in the coming years), Audre watches the sixth-form file in.
Jesse Eastman is next to her on the stage, along with Tiffin board members Kathy Wilson and Ari Levy because they also have children graduating this year.
The sight of the girls in their white dresses gives Audre all the feels.
They look like virgin brides (or not virgin, thanks to the Harkness Society).
The white is meant to symbolize a hopeful new beginning.
Audre has no idea where the tradition of the single long-stemmed red rose came from; possibly it’s meant to symbolize a blossoming.
Or love? At any rate, the flowers look wonderful in the pictures.
The first young man Audre locks eyes with is class salutatorian Royce Stringfellow.
Audre can’t help but remember Royce as a third-former, back when he was a foot shorter than he is now and wore braces, complete with headgear.
The kids, Audre thinks, arrive as total strangers.
Getting to know them is a process, and a privilege.
When East comes loping down the aisle—his tie is too loose for her taste, but why stop flouting the rules now?—he blows Audre a kiss, and beside her, Jesse Eastman chuckles.
“Bet you never thought you’d see the day,” he murmurs.
Oh, Audre knew she’d see the day, Jesse had made certain of that. But what Audre didn’t expect was the way she could gaze upon East and see a young man who has grown and thrived. He’s graduating with a 3.3 GPA! He’s heading to Babson!
Audre beams as her other particular favorites take their seats—Madison J., Dub, and of course, Davi. She could never have predicted the trajectories of these kids when she met them four years ago. But the stories that unfurl here at Tiffin are what make her job worthwhile.
When Chaplain Laura Rae rises to give the opening prayer, Audre seeks out Coop, over in the faculty section. He winks at her, and all is well.
For most of us, the Prize Day ceremony is actually pretty boring.
Olivia H-T is only pretending to pay attention while she takes selfies to snapchat to Tilly.
(Back in Greenwich, Tilly is suffering major FOMO.) Taylor and Hakeem are playing footsie in their row, Liam fiddles with the packet of glitter hanging from the chair in front of him and asks Davi in a whisper what it’s for.
“We throw it,” Davi says. “At the end.”
Ms. Robinson gives a speech, calling the sixth-form “unusually strong and resilient” with a nod to the empty chair in the front row.
Spence Thorpe, who is only a third-former, asks what the deal is with the chair, and Imogen, who has followed Davi Banerjee since long before she came to Tiffin, says, “A girl named Cinnamon died while she was here. The chair is for her.”
When Jesse Eastman, president of the board of directors, gets up to speak, we really zone out. Our minds and eyes start to wander, and that’s when we notice Mrs. Spooner whispering to Mr. Chuy. She’s holding a laptop.