The Ivy (12 page)

“I should get going,” he said abruptly, returning the book to its position on the shelf.

“Why did you even come here in the first place?” she asked, not really expecting an answer, not really bothering to keep the edge out of her voice.

“Oh,” he said. For the first time since she’d known him, he looked caught off-guard. “I just came in to ask if you were . . . uh, if I could have a copy of your Justice notes? I missed class on Thursday, and I’d ask OK, but he’s kind of an idiot, and I know how thorough you are. . . .”

Why was he asking for her notes at the same time that he made fun of her for being a good student! Or wait, no: was that supposed to be a compliment? Or—

“So could you just e-mail them to me? I really have to run.”

“Uh . . . sure,” she said.

“Thanks. It’s gbolton@fas. Well . . . see ya,” he said, slipping through the door.

Shaking her head, Callie sat down at her desk. She logged into her e-mail. There was a new message waiting for her:

Numbly she picked up her cell phone and dialed Jessica’s number. Jessica answered on the third ring.

“Callie! I haven’t heard from you in over a week! Where the hell have you been, girl?” Her voice sounded so warm and sunny that Callie immediately burst into tears.

“Callie—what’s wrong?” Callie had never cried in high school—not even when her parents announced their decision to divorce. But now, ever since she’d started at Harvard, it seemed like she was on the verge of tears almost every time that she called.

“Jess, do you remember when Evan and I got keys to the soccer team locker rooms—right after we both made captain?”

“Yes . . . ?”

“And do you remember when I told you how we used to sometimes have—uhm—
Captains’ Practice
?”

“Yes, but what does that have to do with—”

“Apparently he told some people, too. Ted, Jerry, a couple of seniors on the team—only they didn’t believe him, and so they told him to
prove it.
. . .”

It felt good to finally confess.

Chapter Nine
Sealed with a kiss

J
ust one kiss . . .” said Gregory, his tone softening suddenly.

“You can’t be serious. . . .” she trailed off, forgetting herself and falling into his eyes like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole: deep down into an abyss that was a maddening shade of blue. . . .

“Hey! I never noticed before,” he said, leaning down, “but your eyes are green.” He raised his hand, perhaps to brush the hair from her face, and as if he were a hypnotist, her eyelids began to feel heavy. His hand compelled her forward, up closer and closer until her eyes started to close and—

Wait a minute, wait a minute: REWIND.

Callie awoke from a nap with a start on Wednesday evening overcome by the strange sensation that there was something she should be excited about, only she couldn’t remember what.

Then it dawned on her: tonight was the Pudding Punch event, and
she
had no reason to feel excited because she had not been invited.

She had, however, listened to both of her roommates talk about it incessantly over the previous few days. Vanessa had been especially bad, running out to get waxed, plucked, trimmed, exfoliated, manicured, moisturized, highlighted, and styled—all in preparation for the
momentous
event.

There was a knock on her door. Callie threw the covers over her head, pretending to be asleep. It was no use. Vanessa flipped on the light and said, “Callie, I know you’re awake. Come on, get up! You can’t sleep forever. Plus I need your advice on something.”

Callie poked only the top third of her head out from beneath the sheets, giving Vanessa a look that clearly said:
What do you want?

Vanessa was holding two red dresses, one in each hand. “I need you to tell me which one I should wear.
Mimi
seems to think—”

“I can hear you!!” Mimi yelled from the common room.

“—that they look exactly the same! Which one do you like better?”

Callie gazed at Vanessa in disbelief. The dresses were virtually identical.

“The one on the left,” she muttered, throwing her head back onto her pillow.

“See?” Vanessa cried as she rushed back into the common room. “I
told
you there is a difference between a red strapless Carolina Herrera dress and a jacquard bustier dress by Dior—they’re not even in the same genre!”

Callie almost wanted to giggle. Mimi’s reaction had to be priceless.

Sighing, she rolled out of bed and trudged into the common room.

“
Eeiggah!
” Vanessa shrieked, visibly recoiling at the sight of her. Glancing in the mirror, Callie couldn’t blame her: she was wearing her oversized gray sweatpants and a tattered long-sleeve shirt, while her hair—which she hadn’t washed in three days—stuck out in crazy angles from her head. She didn’t care.

She greeted Mimi and then headed toward the cabinet above the refrigerator. Her stomach rumbled angrily. She pulled out a bag of popcorn—extra butter, extra salt—and flung it into the microwave.

While the popcorn exploded in loud, satisfying pops, she glanced over at Mimi. She looked stunning: modeling a dark blue Dolce & Gabbana cocktail dress for Vanessa. Vanessa nodded her approval before slipping into her own gorgeous gown that clung to her curves and made her look dangerously voluptuous.

The clock on the wall read 7:15. There was still an hour left before the event: a cocktail party held at the Pudding’s clubhouse on Garden Street. Clearly, Mimi and Vanessa were testing out their outfits early because they were
so excited about the party.
. . .

She pulled her popcorn out of the microwave and tore it open. Those dresses—just two of the dozens both Mimi and Vanessa had in their closets—couldn’t have been worth less than three thousand dollars each. How many starving kids in Africa could you feed for that amount? Callie thought bitterly, shoveling handfuls of popcorn into her mouth. The butter was making her fingers greasy, so she wiped them on her shirt. I bet if I were Vanessa, she thought poisonously, I’d be wiping my hands on that dress—wouldn’t matter at all, would it, when you can just buy another one?

She wanted to keep thinking self-righteously about Africa, but her mind wouldn’t stay focused. . . . She was poor, too, in a different way, and at least
they
didn’t have to worry about losing all their friends to the Pudding, never finding a boyfriend, and trying to make it onto some stupid magazine.

Her self-hatred mounted as she continued crunching her popcorn. She was watching Vanessa whirl and twirl—a reddish blur in front of the full-length mirror—when she thought she heard someone moving around outside in the hall.

With another sigh she pulled herself up off the couch and, popcorn in hand, started toward the door.

Her heart froze. A small white envelope slid across the floor. She sprinted the last few steps and flung the door open, yelling “Hey—wait!” as the boy who had left the invitation raced toward the stairs.

“Clint?”

Clint stopped dead in his tracks. Turning around, he held out both his palms: “Guilty as charged.”

Callie was suddenly aware of the popcorn bag she held clenched in her fist and realized, with horror, how she must look.

Instead of continuing down the hallway like he was supposed to, Clint was making his way back. She did her best to shrink into the doorframe, trying to recall the last time that she had brushed her teeth.

He bent and picked up the invitation, which was addressed in the same ornate handwriting that had been scrawled across Mimi’s and Vanessa’s envelopes.

Callie Andrews

Wigglesworth C 24

“Listen,” he said, handing her the invitation as the color mounted in her cheeks. “Do you think we could keep this between you and me? All of the invites were technically supposed to go out on Sunday, but there was no way I was going to let the coolest freshman on campus go uninvited.”

Then he smiled his incredible eye-crinkling grin, and for a moment Callie forgot everything. Clint wanted her. He had gone out of his way to invite her. And now, there he was: standing on her doorstep and looking at her in a way that made it hard to remember she hadn’t showered in days or that her hair was sticking out from her head like pipe cleaners.

“Thank you so much,” she said, trying to speak softly so that he wouldn’t get a whiff of her breath. She paused. “You know, about the other night . . . You left so quickly, I wasn’t sure if you wanted to see me again.”

“No, it’s not like that,” he said. “Sometimes things are just complicated when they should be easy. . . . But this morning I realized that it really should be as simple as I like you and maybe you like me, so I invite you to a party and then you say yes?”

“Yes—but . . . ,” she said, pausing again. “About the
other
other night . . . I don’t usually drink that much—”

“Stop!” he cried, laughing. “Just say you’ll come.”

“I’ll come.”

“Good!” He smiled. “In that case, I’ll see you in an hour!”

Her heart still pounding, Callie bounced back into the common room, flinging the popcorn bag into a nearby trash can.

“You guys!” she cried. “Guys—I’m coming, too!”

“What?” said Mimi, emerging from her room wearing only her underwear and smiling wider than she had smiled all year. “How?”

“I just got the invite. You wouldn’t believe who— There must have been some sort of mix-up,” she said with a shrug.

“Or
maybe
,” said Vanessa, running out of the bathroom, “I was able to work my magic and get you onto the list!” She squealed and clapped her hands. “I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t work, but I spoke with a girl I know from the Hamptons who is also on the board and I just happened to mention your name. . . .

“Still,” she added, paving the road to hell with good intentions, “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. From what I hear, it’s very hard to get in if you’re an addition to the original Punch list.”

Callie wasn’t going to let anything spoil the moment. She didn’t care if she made it to the second event—rumored to be a luncheon at the clubhouse followed by a final cocktail party—she was just so happy to be invited . . . and to be invited by Clint.

After taking the fastest shower of her entire life, she ran into her room and pulled out the fanciest thing she owned. It was the black minidress with a silver sequin top that she had worn to her high school graduation party, and even though it had been heavily discounted, it still made her look like a million bucks—or so she hoped.

She brushed her hair until it shone like platinum, then dabbed on light makeup and fastened some cheap, silver costume jewelry in her ears and around her neck.

Ready, she stepped into the common room.

“Wow . . . ,” Vanessa said, her eyes opening wide. An odd look flickered across her face, almost as if she was—was it possible?—jealous. Callie blinked, certain she’d imagined it as Vanessa continued: “You look . . .”

“Great,” said Mimi. “Really, really great. I am
pink
with envy!”

Vanessa laughed as Callie looked nervously at her dress. “Really? It’s not too much?” Callie asked.

“Not at all!” Vanessa cried. “It’s just that I don’t think either of us is used to seeing you in anything other than a T-shirt and jeans.”

“Ha! Yes,” agreed Mimi. “You are usually a terrible dresser.
Absolument terrible
.”

“Thanks,” said Callie, laughing.

“And those awful flip-flops that you always w—” Vanessa froze midsentence when she noticed the shoes in question on Callie’s feet. “Oh my god—no—absolutely not. Be right back . . .”

In a moment, she returned, brandishing a pair of black stilettos.

Callie accepted them gratefully. She put them on. They fit perfectly.

“I’m
so
glad that all three of us are going tonight,” Vanessa said. “Nothing could be more fabulous!”

Battling perilous cobblestones, the girls made their way across the Yard hand-in-hand, past Cambridge Commons, and onto Garden Street. A few minutes later Callie found herself staring at the front door of a large Victorian-style house. The three girls squeezed hands and then walked into the Pudding.

It looked less like a mix-and-mingle cocktail party and more like a reunion between old friends. All the members—denoted as such by the color on their name tags—already seemed to know all of the guests—or if they hadn’t actually met them in person yet, they had at least memorized their names, family background, and hometown (New York City, nine times out of ten).

Callie had no way of knowing, but the fall semester Punch event was more of a formality than anything else: spots had already been reserved for people from established families and prep schools across the East Coast, with a few places set aside for students of international prominence and fewer still for people from non-eastern states with a lot of electoral votes, like Texas and California. As Vanessa had predicted, nearly every invitee was automatically guaranteed admission. Only a handful of individuals were up for discussion. They were considered to be a group of “dark horses,” and Callie was the darkest of them all.