The Thoroughbreds

Book 2: The Academy Series

by Elin Hilderbrand, Shelby Cunningham

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Class is back in session! New York Times bestselling mother-daughter pair Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham return with The Thoroughbreds: What has more high-stakes drama, tension, and intrigue than senior year at a New England boarding school?

It’s the start of another school year at Tiffin, with our favorite characters from The Academy returning for senior year—“sixth form” in Tiffin-speak—a time of college admissions and trying not to crack under pressure, of partying hard and last hurrahs. In the wake of Honey Vandermeid’s exit, will the new college counselor be up to the task? What do the cards hold in store for Tiffin’s It couple, Charley and East? What will become of underground speakeasy Priorities? And what was in Cinnamon Peters’s final email? Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham answer these burning questions and more in The Thoroughbreds, a page-turning story about friendship, treachery, ambition, and sacrifice.

Release date: September 15, 2026

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 400

Sample

Oh, what a difference a year makes.

Last September, Charlotte Hicks rode through the wrought-iron gates of Tiffin Academy for the first time in the passenger seat of her mother’s garden center van, the lone student entering the school as a junior (known at Tiffin as a “fifth-former”). The drive to Tiffin—located in western Massachusetts—from her Baltimore suburb had been tense: Charlotte (who went by “Charley”) and her mother, Fran Hicks, weren’t speaking. Fran was opposed to Charley going to boarding school—but Charley despised her mother’s new husband, Joey, and would not live in the house with him another minute. Charley’s father, Thad Hicks, who had died unexpectedly the previous fall, had gone to boarding school, and Charley decided she would too.

But Charley had been terrified. When they’d stopped for breakfast at a Panera in Connecticut (they’d left their house in the middle of the night in order to reach Tiffin by nine), Charley took only a few bites of her oatmeal before excusing herself to throw up in the restroom.

What had she set in motion? Was her mother actually… right? Should Charley have stayed at Loch Raven High School, where she was securely at the top of her class, with her best friend, Beatrix, by her side? Charley held no delusions: While she was respected at Loch Raven for being smart, and accepted because Beatrix dragged her out to parties on the weekends, Charley knew she was nobody’s idea of normal. The back of her mother’s van was filled with crates of books and Charley’s collection of houseplants.

She was a freak.

Charley recalls riding onto Tiffin’s campus, past the buildings she now knows are the Edward Tiffin Student Union (the “Teddy”), the Mary Tiffin Sinclair Library (the “Sink”), the Manse, the Schoolhouse, and the Gothic chapel, taking it all in as she watched the suspiciously attractive members of the student body greeting one another with squeals and hugs. Charley had to remind herself that she wasn’t at Tiffin to make friends, and she certainly didn’t come to fall in love. She was attending Tiffin to escape the hellscape of her house… and to get an elite education.

Looking back, Charley can see how her first year at Tiffin had started poorly, gotten worse, then, through a series of unexpected twists, become the best time of her life. If someone had told her that, a mere twelve months later, she would be driving to Tiffin not in her mother’s van, not with her mother at all, but rather in the black pickup truck that belonged to Andrew Eastman, the hottest and most intriguing boy at Tiffin, she would have cocked a skeptical eyebrow and turned back to her Edith Wharton.

Once East pulls onto the two-lane road that leads to campus, Charley lowers her window and stretches her legs outside into the sun like a girl in a country song. She has been DJing all the way from Baltimore, and East has indulged her eclectic playlist—Vampire Weekend (for him), Lorde (for her, though he sang along to “Supercut”), old Outkast, Mac Miller, Chris Stapleton, Morgan Wallen, Phoebe Bridgers, Cage the Elephant’s “Whole Wide World,” and “F**k You” by CeeLo Green, which they agreed was the best driving song of all time.

East blows past the line of cars waiting at Tiffin’s front gates, and Charley lets out a triumphant whoop (who even is she?) as they circle around campus to the service road and pull into the Back Lot, which is where East—and East alone—is allowed to park his truck.

He shuts off the ignition and turns to Charley with that lazy half smile of his. “We made it,” he says. “You should call your mom.”

Charley will not call Fran, though she does send a text: Arrived safely. At first, Fran Hicks said no to East driving Charley to school: She was Charley’s mother, it was her job, Baltimore was four hours out of East’s way, they were both too young to take on that kind of road trip without adult supervision.

But then East showed up. He charmed Fran Hicks, presenting himself as a mature young man who had spent his summer interning at his father’s commercial real estate company. He’d driven his own vehicle to Tiffin the two previous years, he had a clean driving record, he would take it extra slow with his precious cargo—Charley, her books, her parlor palm and fiddlehead ferns. Oh fine, Fran Hicks said. Charley knew that, secretly, her mother was relieved. Fran suspected her husband, Joey, was having an affair; all summer, she’d been stuck to him like a barnacle on a boat. The one time Joey wanted to go to a Dead & Company concert in Connecticut, Fran threw such a fit that Joey threatened to move out. You aren’t my fucking mother, Fran, Joey said, though of course Fran owned the roof over Joey’s head as well as the business where Joey worked. Joey stayed home and sulked, and Charley knew the real motivation behind letting Charley go with East was so Fran could keep an eye on things at home.

That’s what happens when you marry someone fifteen years younger and completely inappropriate, Charley thinks.

Her mother sends back the thumbs-up emoji—and with that, Charley is free.

She beams at East. “We’re so back,” she says.

He pulls her in for a kiss. “Let’s fucking go!”

Charley laughs. In her case, this means getting straight A’s, writing the best essay college admission officers have ever read, and getting into at least three schools so that she has choices.

She inhales a deep breath of Tiffin air—Mr. James must have just cut the grass, and it smells like Chef Haz has already started barbecuing for the Move-In Day cookout.

The previous year had been a roller coaster of ups and downs, drama and tears: There was the melancholy lingering over Cinnamon Peters’s suicide (Charley learned she’d been admitted to take Cinnamon’s place in the Class of 2027), the campus terrorized by the all-seeing, all-knowing Zip Zap app, an ever-changing power dynamic among the girls on Charley’s floor, and the dazzling stolen nights in East’s speakeasy, Priorities, which now lives only in the memories of the nine kids lucky enough to have experienced it.

All of that is now behind them—and Charley cares only about what’s ahead.

She checks on her parlor palm in the bed of the truck; it survived the drive just fine.

East grabs her hand. “Come on, Charles,” he says. “It’s time to make our entrance.”

Boarding school—and especially one like Tiffin, which will celebrate its 115th anniversary this year—provides us with one thing above all others: the comfort of tradition. As the chapel bells toll nine, cars proceed through the wrought-iron gates and we immediately roll down our windows so we can wave to Head of School Ms. Robinson as she descends the steps of the Schoolhouse. This year Ms. Robinson wears white flared Mother jeans, a Tiffin Thoroughbreds T-shirt, and a pair of green-and-gold Adidas Gazelles, which the company made for a collab with Tiffin influencer Davi Banerjee. (Davi must have gifted a pair to Ms. Robinson, which is so sweet. Can she get a pair for anyone else?)

Ms. Robinson calls out a name if she remembers it (she mistakes Madison R. for Olivia P., but there are so many Madisons and Olivias, we forgive her), then she joins the mayhem outside the dorms. Mr. Rivera, the fifth- and sixth-form English teacher, is the point person for the boys’ dorm, Classic North, though it’s the girls who check him out. Mr. Rivera has grown his hair, it now curls up at the collar of his polo shirt, and it looks like he’s been pumping iron, because he’s showing off some pretty impressive biceps.

Royce Stringfellow, who spent his summer at the Research Institute at MIT (where he grew two more inches and kiss-cheated on Willow Levy with a girl from the Hawken School), squeezes Mr. Rivera’s arm and says, “Dude, are you on ’roids?”

Secretly, Rhode is pleased that someone has noticed his new and improved physique. His summer sublet in the West Village came with the unexpected perk of a membership to TMPL, a gym that felt like a nightclub. Rhode also played pickup ball at the West Fourth Street courts (he only joined games where everyone was older than he was, for the sake of his self-esteem). Afterward, Rhode would grab a beer with his teammates at the Four-Faced Liar.

Rhode’s summer wasn’t only about draining buckets and pints, however. One night in the sweltering middle of July, Rhode went on a Bumble date with a woman named Yardley, a humanities teacher at Stuyvesant High School. Yardley had a well-bred, healthy, sailing-and-horseback-riding look that Rhode found appealingly familiar. Over dinner at Bad Roman (which used to be a prestige reservation but was, on that night in July, only half full), Rhode learned that Yardley had gone to Deerfield in years that overlapped with Rhode’s at Tiffin. They started playing the Name Game and found a shocking number of mutual acquaintances (Yardley’s roommate’s older brother had been Head Prefect at Tiffin in Rhode’s third-form year, yada yada).

Happily, Yardley didn’t cringe when Rhode told her he was back at Tiffin teaching English. Why would she? She was a teacher herself.

The date had gone well, the food was impressive, the conversation animated, even exuberant. Although he was on a tight budget, Rhode paid both the bill and for Yardley’s Uber back to her apartment in Tribeca. He kissed her good night, and she waved and smiled at him once she was in the car. Rhode sauntered home whistling.

Imagine his surprise when he texted the next day to see if she’d like to go out again, and she responded: No thank you.

Rhode texted back: Did I miss something? I thought we had a great time.

Yardley responded with the emoji of a red flag.

Red flag? Rhode thought. He spent hours combing back through their conversation looking for nits. Yardley had asked about his romantic past, and he’d told her about Lace Ann, the baker who left him for the man who financed her croissant business. But Rhode told the story in an upbeat, good-natured way. He pointedly did not mention his entanglement with Simone Bergeron, the Tiffin history teacher who had strung Rhode along while at the same time conducting an extremely inappropriate relationship with a fifth-form student named Andrew Eastman.

Maybe Yardley heard about Rhode and Simone? The Name Game had darker purposes, of course: It was a sticky web of gossip. Maybe a Tiffin student who lived in the city—say, last year’s editor of the ’Bred Bulletin, Ravenna Rapsicoli—mentioned Rhode’s obsession with Simone to someone who knew Yardley.

When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. Rhode had probably just texted too soon, seemed too eager. That was the red flag.

Rhode knew he should give Yardley some space, but he found himself unable to do so. He texted back: I’m sorry to hear that. If you give me another chance, I promise I’m a green flag guy.

This was met with silence. Rhode was officially being ghosted, and although it had been only one date, it stung.

It took a few days of wallowing and introspection for Rhode to figure out how to use the experience to his advantage.

“Hey, Mr. Rivera, what’s good? Let me introduce Spence Thorpe; he was my Baby ’Bred last year.” The kid speaking is Reed Wheeler, who is now a sophomore and is showing even more aura now than he improbably showed as a freshman.

Rhode daps up Reed and shakes hands with Spence Thorpe. A “Baby ’Bred” is what the kids call the incoming students who come to Revisit Day in May. Each incoming student is assigned a present student to show them around. Sometimes those relationships lasted until the fall, sometimes they didn’t.

“Welcome to Tiffin, Spence.” Rhode consults his clipboard. “You’re in 501, that’s a corner room.”

“Whoa,” Reed says. “How did my Baby ’Bred score a corner room while I’m still living in 404 with Pinkerton?”

“Room assignments are above my pay grade,” Rhode says. “If you have questions, you can ask Mrs. Spooner.”

“ ‘Mrs.’ Spooner,” Reed says, using air quotes. Reed turns to Spence, who is holding a trunk and sweating profusely. “She was getting with Ms. Vandermeid all last year, then Vandermeid hit on Miss Bergeron and Vandermeid was asked to resign. Miss Bergeron was a total smoke, so it was probably worth it. Right, Mr. Rivera?”

Rhode frowns. No matter how under wraps Audre Robinson tried to keep the events that unfolded at the end of last year, the kids still somehow heard about it. “Why don’t you show Spence where the elevator is, Reed.”

“Yeah, dude,” Spence pleads as he shifts the trunk in his arms.

As the boys walk away, Rhode notices a group of sixth-form girls looking at him. Checking him out, maybe?

After the disappointing fallout with Yardley, Rhode was inspired—for the first time in years—to write. He’d always rolled his eyes at any author who said, When I sat down, the words just flowed right out of me! But this is precisely what happened to Rhode in the week following his date. He wrote a short story entitled “Green Flag / Red Flag,” told from a he said, she said point of view. The man thinks the date goes well, the woman thinks it goes horribly—and the secret sauce is that both perspectives feel equally true and compelling.

Rhode was so happy with the story that he sent it to his former editor, Oscar, who now worked as a literary agent. Oscar called him immediately, declaring Rhode’s story a brilliant commentary on the bleakness of modern dating.

“It’ll be the next ‘Cat Person,’” Oscar said. “Viral for sure. I’m thinking The New Yorker, Esquire, or this site called LitBoo, which is all over TikTok. I’ll make some calls.”

Yes! Rhode thought. He treated himself to a beer at the Four-Faced Liar even though it was eleven o’clock in the morning.

By the end of the week, Rhode learned that The New Yorker had loved the story but passed; Esquire also passed, though it would be open to reading more of his work. LitBoo had made an offer of sixteen hundred dollars and would publish online in three weeks.

“Okay!” Rhode said. He wouldn’t beat himself up about the rejections from the magazines he’d actually heard of. He googled LitBoo and found it was a respectable online community of eighty thousand. The demographic, it seemed, was mostly millennial and Gen Z women. This would be a new audience for Rhode’s work, which could only be a good thing—or so he thought until Oscar called with a request from LitBoo. “Seems one of the editors read your second novel and found it misogynist-adjacent.”

Shit, Rhode thought. Would his novel The Writers, with its underdeveloped female characters, haunt him forever?

“Are they dropping the story?” Rhode felt a panicked sense of loss; he’d already spent the sixteen hundred dollars three different ways in his mind.

“No,” Oscar said. “But they wondered if you’d be willing to publish under a pseudonym. Initials, for example.”

Initials? Rhode thought. Plenty of fine authors did this—H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, A. M. Homes, S. E. Hinton. But the point of publishing for most authors—Rhode included—was recognition. He wanted readers to know this was his work.

“Sorry, man,” Rhode told Oscar. “I can compromise on many things, but not my name.”

“I get it, I’m sorry I even had to bring it up,” Oscar said. “I’ll tell them either they use your name or we’re taking the story elsewhere.”

“Thank you,” Rhode said. But the instant he hung up, he thought, What if no one else wants the story? Had he just sabotaged his only chance?

Not at all. When Oscar informed LitBoo that altering Rhode’s name in any way was a deal-breaker and that the ask itself was so offensive that Oscar was considering selling to another platform just on principle, LitBoo apologized and upped its offer to an even two grand.

“Everyone wants what they can’t have,” Oscar said when he called to tell Rhode the good news.

Right, Rhode thought. If he’d played hard to get with Yardley, they might be a couple right now.

But if he and Yardley were together, Rhode wouldn’t have a story—and, frankly, he’d rather be published than dating.

Rhode’s story, “Green Flag / Red Flag,” went viral (well, micro-viral) with more than twenty-five thousand downloads. Not only that, but LitBoo had told Rhode they would be submitting it to Best American Short Stories 2026.

When Hakeem Pryce’s parents pull up in their Cayenne and when Hakeem gets out of the back seat and asks, “How was your summer, Mr. Rivera?” Rhode can answer honestly.

“It was the best summer of my life.”

The group of sixth-form girls gathered in front of Classic South are checking out Mr. Rivera (he has definitely gotten hotter), while simultaneously checking out one another. Olivia H-T has undergone a major glow-up. She has grown out her hair (last year, she chopped it into a short bob, blatantly imitating Davi Banerjee), and now the pieces that frame her face have golden highlights.

“You look good,” Tilly Benbow says.

“Thanks.” Olivia tries to keep her expression neutral, though inside she’s backstroking in a pool of Fuck, yes! Olivia has spent the past three years at Tiffin worshipping at the altar of Davi Banerjee, though after some reflection this summer, she decided that the girl at Tiffin who most deserves her attention is Tilly Benbow. It’s Tilly alone among the newly minted sixth-form girls who exhibits the kind of patrician ease and entitlement that Olivia H-T wants to emulate. It’s not just money, it’s pedigree: Tilly lives in a palatial home in Greenwich, Connecticut, and summers at her grandmother’s waterfront estate in Newport. Her father runs the private bank that his family has owned since New York was a horse-and-buggy town. Tilly goes to Christmas cocktail parties at the Greenwich Country Club and to summer barbecues on Bailey’s Beach with kids from Choate, Andover, Hotchkiss. With her cool gaze and frank assessments, Tilly exposes people like Davi Banerjee as strivers.

But apparently, Tilly has had a rough summer; it looks like she just crawled out of a hole. Her blond hair is dull dishwater rather than sun-bleached, and it’s in knots; her skin is sallow, and there are brown circles under her eyes. Something is wrong.

Olivia gives Tilly a gentle hug. She suspects the problem is the older guy Tilly is involved with. When they left school last May, Tilly confided that she planned to break things off over the summer.

He’s pretty much a loser, Tilly said. But I caught feelings.

This was a revelation. Olivia didn’t realize Tilly had feelings.

Speaking of feelings, we all watch as Taylor Wilson flies from her mother’s car and jumps into the arms of Hakeem Pryce. Some of the underclass girls pull out their phones to video the tender moment—straight to private stories—but not Cassie Lee, who lost her virginity to Hakeem the spring before while he and Taylor were broken up.

The entire school knows that Taylor Wilson has hung on to her virginity. This means that Cassie Lee has experienced something with Hakeem that Taylor hasn’t, which should make her feel better.

But instead, it makes her feel worse.

A black Escalade with tinted windows and livery plates pulls up to Classic South, and the frenzy outside the dorms comes to a momentary standstill. The only student who shows up to school in a car service is Davi Banerjee. Davi lives in London and summers in Tuscany; she has one and a half million followers on TikTok and Instagram. She’s the queen of Tiffin—but she’s also real. Davi’s best friend, Cinnamon Peters, died by suicide in her dorm room at the end of sophomore year, and then last year, the Zip Zap app revealed that Davi had an eating disorder.

But when Davi emerges from the back of the car, she looks as cute as she did before any of that happened. She has also grown her hair out; it’s styled in a low ponytail. (When Olivia H-T reaches for the hair band around her wrist and collects her own hair into a low pony, Tilly Benbow snorts. “Old habits die hard.”)

The most intriguing thing about Davi’s arrival is an enormous flat box that her driver wrangles out of the back of the Escalade. Mr. Rivera jogs over to help; it’s a good chance for the sixth-form girls to watch him flex his muscles.

“What’s in here?” he asks. “A Ping-Pong table?”

He’s such a bot, we think. It’s a new mirror, or maybe a flat-screen TV (though TVs are forbidden as per page 2 of The Bridle, Tiffin’s code of conduct). It could also be a piece of art. Did Davi discover an emerging London painter?

No, we think. Mirror.

Davi laughs. “It’s a new neon sign that I had custom-made for my wall.”

Ahhhh, we think. For the past three years, Davi’s TikToks have been filmed in front of a pink neon script sign that reads: THIS IS WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS.

“You’ll appreciate it, Mr. Rivera…” Davi says.

But before Davi can explain why—What does the new sign say?—she gasps and takes off running across the freshly mowed grass of the Pasture toward the stairs that lead down to the Back Lot.

Andrew Eastman and Charley Hicks have just ascended the stairs, hand in hand. Davi plants kisses on both sides of their faces (so European) and gathers them in a group hug. Then they turn and walk together toward the rest of us. They’re too cool to act cool; the expressions on their faces are ones of unadulterated joy.

And why not? They’re sixth-formers. The school is theirs.

“Ugh,” Olivia H-T says. She bears a particular grudge against Charley for supplanting Olivia—and everyone else—in Davi’s orbit. Also, at the end of last year, Charley, East, Davi, and a handful of other kids formed some kind of secret club. They were sneaking out and going somewhere to drink, though Olivia still hasn’t figured out where.

Then Olivia remembers something. “Didn’t you tell me last year you had a way to get back at Charley?” she asks Tilly.

But Tilly is no longer the same Tilly. Olivia might have to exact revenge herself.

Benj and the rest of Tiffin’s offensive line toss the football around in front of the dorms while Willow Levy, straight from summer gymnastic camp, does back walkovers. Royce Stringfellow throws open his window so we can hear him blasting Rüfüs Du Sol.

All the players are back, we think. The year can officially begin.

Head of School Audre Robinson busies herself with the ceremonial unloading of one item from each student’s car… and tries to ignore the Feeling.

This is virtually impossible.

Earlier that morning, when Audre logged on to the school’s computer for the first time in nine weeks and clicked into the school’s operating budget, she became confused, and then, after refreshing the page and cleaning the lenses of her readers (this changed nothing), Audre started to panic. She told herself there was an accounting error, or a transposed number, something easily explained and fixed. It just wasn’t possible that a full quarter of her budget—an amount in the vicinity of seven million dollars—was missing.

She’d called her financial adviser, Oak Bellamy, and was dispatched straight to voicemail. She left a shaky (but not unhinged) message, then nearly called him right back, but it was seven in the morning and Audre suspected that Oak was either at yoga or neck-deep in his morning ice bath.

Now, Audre is too preoccupied to bob and weave when Madison J.’s mother, Naomi, approaches. When Audre hugs Naomi, she reminds herself to be present! Madison J. is Head Prefect of the school this year, and Naomi is a Tiffin alum.

“You hired a new college counselor?” Naomi asks. “Someone qualified, I hope?”

Audre respects Naomi—she was the first female student of color to attend Tiffin—but can’t help mentally rolling her eyes. What a question!

“Extremely qualified,” Audre says. The chapel bells toll ten, providing the perfect exit strategy. “That’s my cue. I have a meeting with the new faculty right now.” She offers a hand. “It was good to see you. Madison’s going to have a spectacular year.”

“She has her heart set on the Ivy League, Audre,” Naomi says.

The last thing Audre wants to do is get into a college admissions discussion with a dialed-up sixth-form parent. She gives Naomi a thumbs-up and hurries away. She has seven million other things to worry about.

The head of admissions, Cordelia Spooner, waits for Audre at the bottom of the Manse’s grand staircase.

“They’re upstairs,” Cordelia says, with an unusually bright smile.

Audre wants to pull Cordelia into her office and show her the operating budget. Cordelia has almost magical administrative powers; she would be able to find the missing money within seconds. But there isn’t time—they have two new hires waiting, and Audre has yet to meet either of them in person, which is highly, highly unusual. Cordelia did all the heavy lifting in hiring the new college counselor and new history teacher because Audre spent the summer in soupy, sweltering New Orleans moving her parents out of the home they’d owned for fifty-three years and into their new retirement community.

No good deed goes unpunished, Audre thinks. She’d dedicated her entire summer to her parents, and now she’s paying the price. A quarter of her operating budget is gone (No, it’s not gone, she thinks, there’s an explanation).

Audre checks her phone: Nothing back from Oak, not even a text.

When Audre and Cordelia enter the conference room, both new hires stand.

Audre blinks. There was a rumor last year, spread by the nefarious Zip Zap app, that Cordelia admitted students based on their appearance.

It seems she may have used this unorthodox methodology when hiring as well. Because… wow.

Audre shakes hands first with the new college counselor, John Maverick. He’s an adorably disheveled Mark Ruffalo type with salt-and-pepper curls and that crinkly eye thing when he smiles. (Audre immediately worries about the sixth-form girls crushing all over this man.)

John Maverick was the college counselor at the Colbert School outside Worcester, but then he and his wife—who serves as Head of School at Colbert—separated, and John was the one to go.

“Mr. Maverick, hello,” Audre says.

“Please, call me Mav.”

Mav is wearing jeans, and a white polo that shows off his summer tan. Hasn’t Cordelia learned that hiring hot teachers leads to trouble?

Audre then turns to the new history teacher, Dr. John Coopersmith—and her cheeks start to burn. She was aware that Dr. Coopersmith was a fifty-nine-year-old professor, recently retired from St. Michael’s in Vermont. What Audre didn’t realize was that he was so tall, so broad, so… well, frankly, she’s at a loss for words. His bald head gleams like polished mahogany; he has a silver goatee. His handshake is firm, and his smile reveals a deep dimple in his cheek. Does Audre feel an immediate affinity to the man just because he’s Black, too?

Cordelia looks on, beaming.

Audre clears her throat. “It’s lovely to meet you, Dr. Coopersmith.”

“Please,” Dr. Coopersmith says. “Call me Coop.”

Mav and Coop? Audre thinks. They sound like a couple of fighter pilots.

“Welcome to Tiffin, gentlemen.” Audre takes her seat at the head of the table, Dr. Coopersmith to her immediate left. She can’t believe how self-conscious she feels, and she tells herself to stop being ridiculous, though she notes that Dr. Coopersmith isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Audre supposes romance is on her mind because of her mother’s insistence that it wasn’t too late for Audre to “find someone.”

If you marry a man who already has children, Audre’s mother said, then you’ll have someone to help you in your old age the same way you’re helping us.

Audre deflected by pointing out that her parents were hardly “old.” Moving to the community for them was like a return to college. Her mother was already attending barre class, and the night before, her father had called after a wine tasting in the café… and he had definitely sounded buzzed.

Audre shakes her head. She needs to be present with the task at hand: orienting her new faculty!

“In your packet, you’ll find the school calendar, our weekly schedule, the faculty guidelines, and The Bridle, which is Tiffin’s code of conduct.”

Audre had meant to revise The Bridle over the summer. Last year, she’d had to dismiss the history teacher, Simone Bergeron, for acting (so) inappropriately with a fifth-form student (Andrew Eastman, who else?). In turn, Simone had accused the college counselor, Honey Vandermeid, of making unwanted advances, and Honey—who was in a relationship with Cordelia Spooner—agreed to resign immediately as long as Audre wrote her a good reference.

It had all been such a mess. Is it too much for Audre to ask for a fresh start this year? She regards “Mav” and “Coop.” Can she trust them not to cause any kind of disruption?

Audre’s phone buzzes, and although it’s beyond rude, she glances at the screen, praying for a response from Oak Bellamy. She realizes she hasn’t thought about the missing money for the past five minutes.

It’s not a text from Oak but rather, an alert from America Today.

“The rankings are out,” Audre says. She smiles apologetically at Coop. “America Today’s rankings of the best boarding schools in the country. It’s a big deal around here.”

“By all means,” Coop says. “Shall we see how we fared?”

Audre isn’t sure Coop should be using