The Academy

by Elin Hilderbrand

The Head of School before Audre used to brag that they were cultivating Tiffin students to be sought-after guests at cocktail parties, though Audre sometimes worried they were raising the next generation of douchebags.

A visiting minister once famously quipped, “Why not just add a racetrack, an odds board, and a bookie office while you’re at it?” But their chaplain, Laura Rae Splaine, is the kind of pastor who believes god is everywhere and with everyone, even the bookies.

What is up with Charley Hicks, reading all by herself? Is she super weird, or is she… intriguing? We’ve seen this storyline on Nickelodeon—a new girl shows up and doesn’t fit in. Should one of us say hello? We were all new once.

Laura Rae has a way of telling us what to do without telling us what to do: We sit up a little straighter and remove our phones from their hiding places within the Book of Common Prayer.

Tiffin in 2025 is a hell of a lot more diverse than it was in 2003 when Rhode graduated, but in other ways, it’s more homogeneous. The girls all wear belted miniskirts with their Veja sneakers; they all smell the same and have the same vocal inflections; they all constantly (and incorrectly) use the word “literally.” Their confidence is dizzying.

Simone knows what “left on read” means; she might be the only faculty member at the school who does.

On Miss Bergeron’s door, Taylor wrote the Louisa May Alcott quote “Rivalry adds so much to the charms of one’s conquests.”

Tiffin exists in a bubble; it feels removed, sealed off from the rest of the world. Do traffic, pollution, poverty, pestilence, or the Olive Garden even exist?

“It’s better to be yourself and have no friends than to be like your friends and have no self.”

She tries to imagine becoming an accomplice to a wealthy New York kid who starts a speakeasy in the basement of his boarding school. It’s so ludicrous, it’s sort of appealing.

Audre couldn’t pass an Algebra II test now if her life depended on it; she’s lost the basic plot of The Old Man and the Sea—does he die in the end? But a truly fine education teaches the students to be curious, to ask questions, to augment their understanding of the world around them and feel at ease in it.

Her daughter was born a middle-aged woman; Fran and Thad used to laugh about it, but her exacting judgment puts Fran on the defensive. She can’t get any shoddy behavior past Charley; she can’t lie or be disingenuous. Charley will call her out.

Charley and the others have created the beloved trope of every campus novel Charley has ever read: the secret society.

Audre wonders if any news outlets will pick up the story that Tiffin achieved its number two ranking legitimately, but she suspects the answer is no. The absence of corruption and bribery isn’t interesting to anyone.

It is, as her grandmother would say, one of god’s days, offering the kind of spring weather people write poems about.