Vivienne Walker stayed up until midnight on her first night, texting and FaceTiming her friends in L.A. She had broken up with her boyfriend that summer when she left L.A., because neither of them felt they could handle the responsibility and burden of a long distance relationship, with college looming in a year. It seemed too complicated to both of them, and they hadn’t contacted each other since she’d left. But she missed her girlfriends. Her two best friends, Lana and Zoe, had gone to school with her since second grade and it seemed strange to be without them now. They called themselves the Three Musketeers. Lana’s parents were TV producers and had gotten divorced when she was ten. She had been supportive of Vivienne when her parents split up and assured her she’d be fine. Zoe’s parents were still together. Her father was an attorney like Vivienne’s mother, and her mother was an actors’ agent. The three girls were inseparable in L.A., and Vivienne felt lost without them. She had met the other seven senior girls at Saint Ambrose, and they were okay, but seemed stuck up to her. She liked her L.A. friends better. The girls at her new school seemed to be there due to force of circumstances. Three of them had divorced parents who couldn’t agree on the custody arrangements, so boarding school was the simplest solution for their parents. Another one had begged to go to boarding school because she hated her new stepfather and wanted to get away. She said her mother acted like an idiot around him and agreed with everything he said. They were having a baby at Christmas, and she didn’t want to be around for that, so she had opted for boarding school.
Two of the senior girls were new to the area, one with parents in Boston, the other in New York, and since they had to go to a new school anyway, they had agreed to try Saint Ambrose. One of them said she fought with her parents constantly about her boyfriend, and he got along just as badly with his parents, and they had sent him to boarding school nearby, so she agreed to go away too. She and her boyfriend were going to apply to the same colleges and hoped they would get in, so they could be back together again. They were nice to Vivienne but she didn’t feel close to any of them yet.
And none of the boys interested her particularly. Her mother had wanted her to come to New York with her and go to boarding school. Vivienne had wanted to stay with her father in L.A., but he had reluctantly agreed to let Vivienne go east for a year, for the experience. Her mother had convinced him that if she did well, the strong reputation of the school might help her get into a better college, so he had given in. But all Vivienne wanted was to go back to L.A. She was going to apply to UCLA, USC, UC Santa Barbara, and nothing further away from L.A. than San Francisco. She had no intention of staying in the East after this year. At least when she visited her father, she would see Zoe and Lana. She could hardly wait for Christmas vacation to see them and her dad.
Her parents hadn’t told her the reason for the divorce, but the separation had been sudden and it was obvious that her mother hated her father now. Vivienne knew he must have done something big for her to react so vehemently. She had filed for divorce, quit her job at the law firm, found a position in New York, and they had moved away. Vivienne was disappointed that her father hadn’t fought to make them stay. He called her every night, and she had told him she liked the school. She didn’t hate it, but a lot of the kids seemed cold and snobbish to her. Most of them were from the East Coast, and all the senior boys she had talked to so far had been there for three years. The girls were new like her, so at least she didn’t have to fight her way in to a clique of girls who had been through high school together. Her mother had pointed that out as an advantage.
She had seen two boys she thought were cute the first day, Jamie Watts and Chase Morgan. They had invited her to sit with them at lunch, but she didn’t want them to think she was panting after them. One of the girls had told her that Chase’s parents were movie stars, but Vivienne didn’t really care. There were lots of famous actors’ kids at her old school. And she had met several stars at Zoe’s house, since her mother was an agent. So she wasn’t as impressed as the other girls about Chase’s parents.
She thought Jamie was nice. He was in her first class that day, which was social studies. He sat down next to her, and walked her to her math class afterward. She liked him, and thought he was handsome, but she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. She had just gotten out of a relationship and wanted some time to breathe before she got involved again. She missed having a car, but there was nowhere to go here anyway. The school was in the middle of nowhere from what she could see.
“Where are you from in California?” Jamie asked her. She liked his blue eyes and loose curly blond hair. He was warmer and friendlier than Chase, who seemed more aloof.
“L.A.,” she said. He was easy to talk to, and she noticed others watching them as they walked along.
“Chase is from L.A. too. He’s been here since freshman year,” he told her, which she already knew.
“I want to go back after I graduate,” she said simply. “I’m only applying to California schools.”
“So is he, except for NYU. I’m going to apply for early admission to Yale. My dad will have a fit if I don’t get in. All the men in our family have gone there.”
“Are your grades good enough?” she asked, curious about him.
“Sometimes.” He smiled and looked like a kid when he did. She had already noticed that most of the boys looked younger than the girls. A lot of the boys still looked like kids, a few looked like men. Jamie looked a little like her old boyfriend, but not enough to make a difference. She had gone with him for two years, and they had both been ready for a change. The relationship had gotten stale. From fifteen to seventeen was a long time. “Did you try out for any of the teams today?” Jamie asked her.
“I’m going for volleyball, tryouts are this afternoon.”
“I’m on the swim team, and I want to try out for soccer with Mr. Edwards. He’s a good guy. He started here last year.”
She saw Jamie again in the cafeteria when she wandered in for lunch. They were on the same meal schedule, and she agreed to have lunch with him and Chase. She saw Chase looking her over during the meal, but he didn’t say much. He was quiet all through lunch. Her next class was earlier than theirs, and she saw them talking animatedly after she left the table, and wondered if it was about her. She saw an Asian boy carrying a violin case join them, and then she went to her next class. She made the volleyball team when she tried out that afternoon. They barely had enough girls for the team, and added junior girls, which Vivienne didn’t mind.
At the end of the afternoon, Simon Edwards ran into Henry Blanchard in the teachers’ lounge. He was a fellow math teacher who had worked in co-ed boarding schools for most of his career. Simon walked over to Henry as soon as he came in.
“Okay, tell me the trick. How do I get them to listen to me? The guys in my class are mesmerized by the girls, they stare at them and into space. They don’t listen, they don’t hear me, they don’t even look at the board.” Simon was exasperated, and Henry laughed at him.
“Give it time. It’s brand new. You’re dealing with fifteen-year-olds. All they can think about is how to get their hands on those girls. Except if they actually did, they’d run like hell. It’s all fantasyland for them right now. They’ll get bored with it, and stop gawking at them. Eventually, they’ll see them like anyone else. Give it a few weeks, maybe a month, and they’ll hardly notice them.”
“Right now, I could sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in my underwear and none of them would notice. I could be speaking Swahili or cursing at them.”
“Try it. It might make you feel better. But whatever you do, in a few weeks they’ll relax and listen to you again. Especially after a couple of lousy grades.”
“I taught at a co-ed day school in New York and they never acted like this. Boarding school intensifies everything.”
“That’s because they don’t get away from each other. They don’t go home at night to parents, siblings, and other friends. We all live together. It’s heady stuff for boys that age. It’s all new to them. They’ll get tired of it. Trust me. Just keep things light in class for a few weeks until they settle down.” It reassured Simon somewhat as he headed to his room in the dorm.
Both sexes wore a school uniform so it wasn’t even as though the girls were wearing suggestive clothes, although he had noticed that the girls knew how to tweak it, and some girls wore their skirts shorter than others. Some of the ones who did wore shorts underneath their uniform. He noticed that the girls who rode to class on bikes did that. As he thought about it, Vivienne Walker raced past him on her bike. Her skirt fluttered in the breeze, and he saw the shorts she was wearing under her uniform skirt too, but what he saw mostly were her gorgeous long legs. For an instant, he forgot who and where he was, and suddenly he realized how his students were feeling. How could you ignore, or get used to, legs like those? Then he reminded himself that she was a seventeen-year-old student and he was a teacher and he had no business admiring her legs. But it was hard not to, with a girl who looked like she did. It gave him new compassion for his male students, who were being taunted by a hundred and forty girls their age, living in the same place, in close proximity. He said something about it to Gillian, and she laughed and said she just wore them out, and kept them all so busy, they didn’t have the time or energy to think about anything except practice when she had them. But if the junior and senior girls looked like women to him, it was no surprise they looked so enticing to the boys they were in class with.
There was an all-school picnic on Saturday, and Simon noticed very little mingling. He’d held the soccer tryouts two days before, and chosen his team. There was talk of starting a female soccer team, but too few girls had signed up. He noticed that the library was full all weekend, so they were actually studying. In spite of Henry’s prediction that it would take several weeks, by Monday the male students were starting to act sane again. They were still ogling the girls, but they were paying attention to him in class too, which was a relief.
By the following Monday, a week later, everyone was back in the groove. Homework assignments were being turned in, and the students who had been chosen for sports teams were going to practice. A few had signed up for clubs. Others were still deciding. The new students were making friends, and more often than not, the boys hung out in clusters, and the girls kept to themselves too. They hadn’t really started to integrate yet. They were mainly observing each other from a distance.
But in spite of that, Simon saw Vivienne walking with Jamie on campus several times, just walking and talking, not holding hands. He saw her once with Chase Morgan too, walking into the library, which probably didn’t mean anything. He hadn’t seen any sign of romance on campus yet. It was probably too soon. They were just fellow students for the moment. The freshmen were shy, and the seniors were cautious. The sophomores were carefree and gregarious, and the juniors were worried about the year ahead and how it would impact the colleges they’d get in to, as juniors did everywhere.
By the end of four weeks, Gillian and her assistants were working hard with the male and female teams. Everyone attended when they competed against other schools. Vivienne was a strong player on the girls’ volleyball team. She had been on the team at her L.A. school too.
Simon was already busy with the recommendation forms his senior students had given him to fill out for their college applications. All of them were nervous about what schools to apply to, with a few exceptions, like Jamie Watts and Tommy Yee who were sure to get in almost anywhere, and even Chase Morgan. It was an unsettling time for all of them. Simon was thoroughly enjoying coaching male soccer, and after his years in Italy and France post-college, he was good at it. Gillian was grateful for his help. She had her hands full with all the male and female teams she was responsible for.
Much to everyone’s surprise, by mid-October it almost felt as though they had always been a co-ed school. As Henry Blanchard had predicted, the students had stopped staring at each other all through class. The boys had stopped lusting after the cute girls long enough to listen to their teachers occasionally. The boys and girls had started joking around with each other in the cafeteria, around the campus, in the gym, the way high school kids did and not like aliens who had just arrived from two different planets. Simon was enjoying teaching them. It challenged the students and added balance and reality to have boys and girls in the classroom. Gillian still said she loved her new job, and all was well in their world.
In the third week of October, they had their annual parents’ weekend, and even the parents noticed how easily the kids were mixing, how at ease they seemed with each other, with genuine camaraderie, and how congenial the atmosphere was. Many parents tried to come but some couldn’t, for valid reasons. But it was always lonely for the students whose parents weren’t there. Other parents tried to compensate for it, and included their children’s friends. Neither of Chase’s parents could make it, but he had known they couldn’t. They were both on location, working on films. He and Jamie Watts hung out together, and the Wattses were happy to include Chase when they went off campus to dinner, which was allowed on parents’ weekend.
Steve Babson’s father hadn’t come either. He never did. His mother said he was on call, but he always had some excuse. His mother came, and seemed nervous and shaky. She took Steve out to dinner, had three glasses of wine, and a cocktail first, and he drove her back to her hotel, since he had his license. He walked back to school, hoping no one at the restaurant had noticed how much she drank. It was the only nearby restaurant where parents could take their kids, and the place was jammed with students from Saint Ambrose and their families.
The Yees had come but always stayed separate from the other parents. They had a list of teachers they wanted to speak to, and managed to get a few minutes with each of them, although that wasn’t the purpose of the weekend. Parents’ weekend was to get a feeling for how their children spent their time out of the classroom. Tommy said that all his parents cared about were his studies and his grades, which were fine so far. But fine was never good enough for them. They expected him to be top of every class.
Gabe Harris’s father came and had a long talk with Gillian about what teams his son was on and how he was doing, and if they were the right ones for him. His mother hadn’t been able to get the day off from the restaurant she managed, and she had to stay with Gabe’s younger siblings in New York. Gabe’s father made no effort to meet the other parents, and felt out of place with them. He spent time alone with Gabe, talking about what colleges he was going to apply to, and which schools gave the best athletic scholarships, which he had thoroughly researched.
Both Russos were there in full regalia, dressed to the teeth, as loud and showy as they always were. Joe Russo was driving a new red Ferrari, and Adele was wearing a shocking pink mink jacket with jeans and high heels. Rick looked like he wanted to climb under a rock the entire time they were there. Joe made sure everyone knew how much he had donated to the school. They mortified Rick every time. He hated it when they came to visit, and that they flaunted their money in everyone’s faces. Unlike them, he was always discreet about it, or tried to be.
Vivienne’s mother drove up from New York, and her father canceled at the last minute. He’d promised to come from L.A., but a meeting came up that he couldn’t miss. The atmosphere was tense between Vivienne and her mother, although she was very impressed with the school, and thought Chris would have been too. She was sorry he hadn’t seen it. She didn’t say anything overtly nasty about him, but Vivienne could tell how angry she still was and how hurt. Nancy implied that the meeting that had kept him from coming was probably only an excuse, and more than likely he was with his girlfriend. Her father had been vague about her and Vivienne hadn’t met her yet. The bitterness of their divorce in progress hadn’t dissipated, and Vivienne doubted that it ever would, although her mother refused to discuss it with her. Whatever the reason, she was sad that he hadn’t come. She wouldn’t see him now until Christmas, since she was spending Thanksgiving with her mother in New York.
Several of the boys hovered around Vivienne, and she introduced Chase and Jamie to her mother. They were very polite, Chase said he was from L.A. too, and Jamie introduced his parents, who were standing nearby. They chatted for a few minutes, and Nancy questioned her daughter afterward, asking if she was interested in either one.
“They’re just friends, Mom,” Vivienne said with a dismissive look.
“They seem like they like you a lot,” although she knew Vivienne had that effect on men of all ages, and was blasé about it. She had been faithful to her boyfriend for two years, but she didn’t seem interested in either of these boys, and said she didn’t want to get so deeply involved again.
“There are eight girls to a hundred and eighty-six senior boys, Mom. They don’t have anyone else to gawk at.” She blew off their attention as without consequence, although her mother thought both were very good-looking, well brought up boys. And she was even more impressed when she heard who Chase’s parents were.
There wouldn’t be a full senior class of girls until the current freshman class graduated, and thereafter. For now it was slim pickings for the senior boys, but Vivienne wasn’t looking for romance. She was still adjusting to the school, and all she could think about was getting into college and back to California as fast as possible. She was working on her applications every weekend. She hadn’t decided who to give her recommendation forms to yet. She wasn’t close to any of her teachers, and had only met with her advisor, Charity Houghton, the headmaster’s wife, once since school started. She was writing her essays, and wanted to be finished with the application process when she left for California for Christmas, so she’d have time to see her friends. Zoe and Lana couldn’t wait for her to come and she still FaceTimed with them almost every night.
She’d made friends with one girl in her dorm, Mary Beth Lawson. She was from Washington, D.C., and her parents worked for the government. She was vague about what they did, and Vivienne wondered if they worked for the CIA. They visited each other in their rooms at night. Vivienne liked her, but they were still getting to know each other. It wasn’t the same as Zoe and Lana, whom she had known since she was seven and had gone all through school with every day.
Adrian Stone spent most of the weekend in his room. Neither of his parents had shown up, as usual. They refused to be at the school at the same time, and they could never agree which of them should attend the weekend, so neither came. He didn’t really care. He spent most of the weekend in the computer lab, or alone in his room. Everyone else was out, and it was peaceful. He didn’t have to talk to anyone or make excuses for his parents, which he had to do all the time. No one noticed his absence, which was a relief. He was afraid he might get into trouble for not going to the big parents’ lunch in the cafeteria on Saturday or the brunch on Sunday. He went down after everyone had left, said he had the flu, his parents hadn’t come, and the kitchen staff let him take a plate of food back to his room.
There was a tug-of-war on Sunday afternoon, with parents and faculty on one side, and students on the other. The students always won. Then everyone disbanded. The goodbyes seemed easier than they’d been on the first day of school. The students were going home in five weeks for Thanksgiving. They would have a full week at home, and were looking forward to it. Since his parents would both be on location then, Chase was going to New York with Steve Babson. He wasn’t upset about it. It had happened before. His parents had an apartment in New York, but he wasn’t allowed to use it when they weren’t there.
By the time the parents left the campus on Sunday afternoon, they were satisfied that their children were well and happy, and the school as a whole had adjusted to a major change. Having girls there seemed to add a lighter, more festive atmosphere. The girls’ parents seemed pleased that their daughters were being treated well. It had been a very good weekend. The leaves were in full flaming color, and the weather had been perfect. Everything had been just right.
“I’d say it was one of the best parents’ weekends we’ve had. Great turnout,” Taylor said to Nicole as they walked across the campus toward Taylor’s house that came with the job of headmaster. Charity had been busy with the parents all weekend too, and Ellen Watts, as the head of the parents’ association, had tried to meet all the new parents of the girls, so she would at least recognize their faces in the future. She had enjoyed speaking to some of them a lot. It was true, having girls there changed things subtly. The school seemed more balanced somehow, even though there were fewer girls than boys, but it was more representative now of the real world with females in it. The all-male atmosphere previously had seemed more intense.
“You have a very impressive parent group,” Nicole said to Taylor as they walked. She had enjoyed the weekend too. And she wasn’t surprised by the racial disparity. She had been aware of it before she came to Saint Ambrose. It was true of her previous school too. There were about forty African American families in the student body, all the parents doctors and lawyers and bank presidents. And that had only been true for the last twelve or fourteen years. Before that, there was no diversity at all at schools like Saint Ambrose. It was a fact of life in elitist schools of its kind. Saint Ambrose made no pretense of being anything other than an elitist school. And twenty years earlier, those forty families wouldn’t have been a part of the school at all. One day it would be different, she knew, but they hadn’t gotten there yet. Being assistant headmaster as a female African American was already a huge step for them, and the rest would come with time. Those forty African American students were getting the best education money could buy. It was a beginning. Nicole was proud of being part of bringing women into the school.
They crossed paths with Larry Gray, walking home to his rooms in one of the older dormitories which had housing for heads of the departments. Nicole had her own house at the edge of the campus, smaller than Taylor’s, but it was perfect and big enough for her. She was comfortable there.
“Great weekend, don’t you think, Larry?” Taylor said and Larry nodded with a cautious look.
“The year is young. Anything can happen,” he said, saluted them and walked on, as Nicole and Taylor laughed.
“Ever the optimist,” Nicole said to Taylor, who smiled and shook his head.
“I’d say we’re off to a good start,” he said in a confident tone. “Whatever Larry thinks.”
“I think so too. A very good start. Saint Ambrose is now officially a very credible co-ed school.” It was only six weeks into the school year, but they were off to a very good start indeed. None of Larry Gray’s dire predictions had come true. Nor would they, Taylor and Nicole were both sure.