The Ivy (20 page)

When she heard “bleach blond,” Callie had been ninety-nine percent certain about the identity of the speaker: a fear which was then confirmed as the girl took a step forward and Callie caught sight of the ivory Chanel flats with two interlocking golden Cs and the slim, alabaster ankles that could belong to only one person.

Alexis Thorndike.

Lexi, plotting against her in the Advanced Theoretical Physics section of Lamont Library with an unknown cohort, trying to figure out if there was a way they could keep Callie out of—

“Now, I can’t ensure that she gets cut this round if her scores continue to be so high, but we are at liberty to use our discretion when it comes to serious questions of character. If
somebody
can cast a dubious light on another person’s integrity, then we can choose to deny her admittance based on the potential for scandal because, like I said, we do have a very important reputation to uphold. Can you think of something?”

The other girl, whoever she was, was silent.

“Plagiarism? Racism? Nepotism? Inappropriate Facebook photos? No? Anything at all?” Lexi prodded.

More silence.

Lexi’s flats disappeared from view. “Look,” she started again, her tone dropping so that Callie had to strain to hear, “I think we both know what the real issue is here and that’s this thing about the Pudding. Now that I know you a little better, I for one think it’s a crime against nature that you didn’t get in.”

Callie felt her heart start to sink in her chest as she realized she
did
know a specific somebody who owned a navy Longchamp bag . . . somebody who also didn’t get into the Pudding. . . .

“I’ll admit that I wasn’t exactly pushing for you during elections, but I can see now that I was mistaken: you fit the Pudding profile exactly. You belong with us. In fact . . . when I think about it, you had a lot of advocates, but then one girl went ahead and blackballed you. I believe it may have been something to do with her boyfriend . . . Jeremy or Jeffrey something? Anyhow, blackballing is such an aggressive, distasteful move that personally I would never make, but as you know, once an individual invokes it, there’s really nothing we can do.”

“Wait. If you can’t do anything for me, then why am I . . . ?” came the sound of a voice that was now painfully familiar.

“Because the girl who blackballed you is a fifth-year senior, meaning she’s going to be
graduating
—thank god—at the end of this semester.”

“Ahh . . .”

“Exactly. Spring Punch. I can guarantee it for you, just as I can guarantee now on behalf of the club that you really are a perfect fit and we’d absolutely love to have you. That’s the beautiful thing about
true
friends, Vanessa: they help each other out with these things. And you: you’re a true friend. I knew from the second I read your e-mail that you’d be somebody I could count on. . . .”

“It’s just so frustrating, you know?” Vanessa suddenly exclaimed. “I did
everything
for her! It’s like she was Cinderella and I was her fairy godmother.”

“A social ugly duckling that
you
grew into a beautiful swan.”

“Yeah!” said Vanessa with bitter enthusiasm. “Yeah, exactly. I practically made her what she is today: she was just so freaking
clueless
when she first got here! I mean, how can you be from
Westwood
and yet the only shoes you own are a pair of ten-dollar bargain-bin flats? I did my best to include her, I showed her how to dress and introduced her to all my old friends and how does she repay me? By stabbing me in the back!”

“You deserve better from your friends,” Lexi agreed. “We all do. I know how it is: I had a friend like that
my
freshmen year, too. She was fun and sweet to my face, but all the while she was plotting how to steal my things—my social life, my extracurriculars, my classes, my boyfriend—she even stole my favorite pair of Manolos, for crying out loud!

“Essentially these people are all the same: they know they can never be like us and that they can never truly belong to our world, so they take, take, take—shamelessly clawing their way up the social ladder because they’re so
painfully
jealous. . . .”

“Jealous?” asked Vanessa. “You really think she’s jealous—of
me
?”

“Of
course
she’s jealous of you!” Lexi replied. “Who
wouldn’t
be jealous of you? You’re Vanessa Von Vorhees, for heaven’s sake! You don’t need me to tell you that!”

Callie could just imagine Lexi’s sweet smile and large doe brown eyes. Vanessa was probably hanging on her every word, eating it up faster than mac-n-cheese after a party.

“Anyway, it’s time for Vanessa Von Vorhees to start thinking about who her true friends really are. Are they the people who use you to get ahead and then leave you in the dust? Or are they the people who promise to go out on a limb and make sure that you get what you want—what you
deserve
?”

Vanessa was quiet. “Okay,” she said finally. “All right, yeah. I’ll see if I can think of anything that might help you, but you should know that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find anything good. She’s very secretive, you know.”

“Really,
anything
scandalous will do. . . .”

“I
said
all right,” Vanessa answered. “I just need some time to . . . think about it, that’s all.”

“Good,” said Lexi. “And in the meantime I’ll be pulling strings for you with the board. And do keep in mind what I said earlier about you being a great fit for
FM
, too: the fewer freshmen that get on the magazine this semester, the more spots there will be in the spring. . . .”

Callie’s face was burning. She made her way as quickly—and as quietly—as she could out of the stacks, leaving a pile of books abandoned in the middle of the aisle.

Her head was reeling. She could barely think straight; she could barely
walk
straight. Was Vanessa going to tell Lexi . . . everything? And if she was, what could Callie possibly do to stop her? And
why
had Vanessa suddenly turned on her—just when it seemed like everything was going so well? What about all that bullshit about being “best friends”?

Why did I think I could fucking
TRUST
her? Callie stumbled down the stairs and burst through the double doors.

Thankfully, that obnoxious little child genius was gone; there was no telling what Callie would have done if he had still been there, but strangling him with the front desk’s telephone cord or clobbering him to death with the metal date-stamping device both seemed like excellent, viable options.

It was already well past seven o’clock. She hadn’t finished her usual clean-up duties, but she didn’t care. She rushed behind the checkout counter and started jamming things into her bag, desperate to leave as soon as possible.

What do I do? Confront Vanessa? Bribe her? Lock her in the bathroom and wait for her to starve? Invite her on a walk along the Charles River and then push her off a bridge? Or do I try to make nice: kiss her ass and convince her that I
am
a true friend and that Lexi is a goddamn, mothereffing, two-faced son of a !@#$%^&*!@#$%—

“Hi, you!” a familiar voice called from behind her as she was bending to retrieve her scarf.

Oh no, not . . .

“I made dinner reservations at Casablanca tonight—surprise!” Clint said as Callie turned around to face him.

“Or . . . you’re not in the mood for surprises today?” Clint added, catching sight of the expression on her face.

“No—fine—sounds good. Let’s get out of here,” she replied, throwing her bag over her shoulder and striding ahead of him toward the door.

“Whatever you say, boss!” he said, following her down the steps.

Outside it was beginning to look a lot like winter. The once brilliantly colored leaves decorating the ground had turned brittle and brown, the tree branches bare and skeletal. The sky was an ominous shade of gray. Callie walked as swiftly as she could away from the library—so fast that Clint practically had to jog to keep up.

“I’ve never been to this restaurant, but I hear it’s supposed to be good: really quaint and romantic—”

“Great—fine—whatever,” she shot over her shoulder, quickening her pace.

“Hey . . . wait a minute,” he said, running to close the gap between them and reaching out to touch her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” she snapped. “I’ve just had a horrible day!” She knew she shouldn’t take her anger out on him, but she could hardly stop herself.

“What? Why? Was it something I did?”

“Yes! I mean, no! Nothing
you
did. I’m just—I’m just frustrated, that’s all!”

“Frustrated . . . ?” he asked, looking confused. “With me? Why? What did I do?”

“It’s not you—it’s
this
! This situation you’ve created,” she floundered, gesticulating between them. “What we have is so—frustrating—because it’s so, so . . . ambiguous!”

“What?”

“Yes, ‘what.’ That’s exactly right.
What
. . . are
we
? What am
I
to
you
? A girlfriend? A fling? Just some freshman you’re hoping to bang by the end of this week—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Callie, now hang on just a second.” he started. “Slow down.”

She knew she was hurtling into the dangerous territory of high-risk relationship behavior, but she just couldn’t shut up.

“I should have
known
better and followed everyone’s advice about staying away from upperclassmen. You never know what they expect from you. Well, you should know from
me
that I am
not
the type of person who’s into drama and random hookups. It’s just too complicated and—”

Her speech ended abruptly as Clint leaned in and kissed her on the lips.

“Calm down, Callie. . . . There’s no drama or complication here. We’re dating, that’s all. I like you a lot, and I hope that you feel the same way about me. In fact, I’ve been wanting to ask if I can call you my girlfriend, but I thought you felt like we were moving too fast when I invited you home for Thanksgiving, so I figured I would give the whole ‘official relationship’ thing a little more time. . . .”

His voice trailed off as she started to sob.

“Calm down,” he whispered, taking her into his arms. “There’s no need to cry. If something’s wrong—if you’re unhappy with me—you can tell me.”

“No,” she mumbled into his chest. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re perfect.” But there is something horribly wrong with me, she added silently, forcing herself to look up.

“Oh no—your shirt!” she cried, realizing that two huge mascara stains had formed on his left shoulder.

Looking down, he broke into a grin. “You know, there are more subtle ways to tell me that you don’t like my wardrobe.”

She smiled weakly through her tears.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s get you home.”

“I can’t go back there!” she cried, shaking her head.

“All right, well, then: do you want to come to my place?”

Chapter Sixteen
Dangerous Liaisons

Y
ou know, you look much better . . .
without
your clothes on,” said Clint.

“Hey!” cried Callie as she hooked her bra behind her back. “There are more subtle ways to tell me that you don’t like my wardrobe!”

“In that case,” he said, rolling off the bed and grabbing her top from her hands before she could slip it over her head, “I hate this shirt. It’s just so . . . white. And it doesn’t have any sleeves. Totally offensive.”

“I still have twenty minutes before I have to be in class,” she said, leaning into him and placing her hands low on his waist.

“But . . . how . . .”—he moaned as she began nibbling on his ear—“but . . . how . . . will you . . . ever . . . learn?”

“Shhh . . . ,” she said, brushing her lips against his neck. “It’s okay, I can skip. . . . We’re covering
On the Genealogy of Morals
this week, and I already read it in high school.”

“Oooh, baby, I love it when you talk Nietzsche to me,” he teased her before picking her up and tossing her back on the bed. “I promise I’ll make it worth your while.”

No thanks to Economics 10, Callie was beginning to discover the true value of prime real estate. For the past week she had been staying at Clint’s and had quickly learned the many reasons why Adams House was to Wigglesworth Dormitory as the Four Seasons is to a broom closet as The Ritz-Carlton is to jail.

Number one: privacy—you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Number two: sleep space—after a few months in a twin, a king-sized bed is not to be underestimated. Number three: residential dining halls—where the food is slightly less lumpy and colorless. Number four: cute, popular, male roommates—enough said. And most important, reason number five: no Vanessa.

As far as Callie was concerned, she never needed to see Vanessa again.

Now it was Thursday evening, and she was putting the finishing touches on a paper for Justice discussing the role of autonomy in Kant’s
Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals
. She was nervous about the assignment because she had skipped both lectures that week: the last two before Thanksgiving break. Yesterday she’d had a legitimate excuse: she’d needed to do a final read-through of her second COMP portfolio before turning it in later that day. And on Monday she’d needed to . . . catch up on extra . . .
uh . . .
sleep. . . .

She yawned: a reaction that seemed to be causally correlated with hearing or even typing the word
metaphysics
. She knew that cutting class had been a stupid, stupid decision that she would later regret, but the reality was that—COMP and Clint excuses aside—she’d rather suffer through Kant alone than in a lecture hall full of people like Vanessa.

She looked up as her phone started to ring. It was Mimi.

“Hey, Meems,” she answered, her eyes continuing to skim the computer screen.

“Callie, darling, just phoning to say
bonjour
. When will you return to the room? I miss you and Dana is distraught, although I think that might have something to do with you and Clint living wed without a lock, whatever that means.”

Callie laughed, but she couldn’t help noticing the conspicuous absence of Vanessa’s name. Whatever. “You know you can come here and watch
Entourage
On Demand anytime you want, right? Clint’s roommates keep bugging me to invite you over: they said to tell you that we have Grand Theft Auto V. . . .”

“Tempting.” Mimi sighed. “But I would prefer to have you back here.”

“Not yet, Mimi,” Callie said quietly.

“Oh, well. I guess it is true what they say: sex really does conquer all.”

“I think it’s
love
that conquers all, and no, we’re not having sex. Yet.”

“What? You have been sleeping there for an entire week and you have yet to—uh, what is it you Americans say, ‘do it’?
Pourquoi pas
?”

“Just waiting for the right moment, I guess.”

“Oh-kaaay,” said Mimi. “But I will be seeing you tomorrow, no? Must we really leave at nine in the ante meridiem? I am not convinced I can do it.”

“I’m sure you can sleep in the car.” Callie laughed. “See you tomorrow.”

Rubbing her eyes, she turned back to her paper. It was the only thing left standing between her and one final weekend of freedom and fun before Thanksgiving break. And she needed to finish it fast, because tomorrow morning she and Mimi would be traveling down to Yale for The Game: the one day a year when even the least social Harvard students started drinking and tailgating at eight
A.M.
All week long the campus had been abuzz with pep rallies, posters, and people making plans about what to do, where to stay, and how to get down to New Haven. In an abnormal display of school spirit—given that 45 percent of students polled were unaware that Harvard even
had
a football team—Callie spotted crimson T-shirts with colorful sayings everywhere: from Y
UCK
F
ALE to
S
UCK ON IT
, S
AFETY
S
CHOOL and
W
HEN ALL ELSE FAILS, GO TO
Y
ALE.

Callie, however, couldn’t care less about a pathetic excuse to drink early-morning beers—ahem, watch a really great game of ball—and was basically holding her breath until she could fly home to California. There she would be in a much better position to do damage control and, say, hire a hit man to deal with Evan, an arsonist to burn his fraternity to the ground, and go shopping with Jessica to provide an alibi while all the shit went down. Then,
maybe
then, she’d feel like it was safe to return to Harvard, where it wouldn’t really matter that much if Vanessa told Lexi because Callie could just deny, deny, deny and live happily ever after with Clint. . . .

Trying not to let her homicidal fantasies get the better of her, she forced herself to reread the paper one last time. It definitely wasn’t her finest work, but extenuating circumstances surely allowed for a little leeway—or so she tried to convince herself. In any event, there was nothing she could do about the paper now except print it out and turn it in.

She had two options: Lamont Library or the offices at the
Crimson
.

Lamont would be packed at this hour with frantic students hastening to print off their assignments before heading down to New Haven and then home for Thanksgiving. Vanessa was probably in there right now, gossiping in Lamont Café about god knows what. If Callie were to actually see her, there was no telling what she might do, but hair pulling and fist fights both seemed like likely courses of action.

On the other hand, to go to the
Crimson
was to risk the imminent threat of Lexi—except that for tonight, Callie suddenly remembered, Lexi would be at the Pudding board meeting from seven till eight. In other words, the same place where Clint was right now.

Quickly her eyes flicked toward the clock: 7:50. If she hurried, she could make it. She didn’t have a flash drive, so she e-mailed the document to herself instead. Grabbing her coat and the maroon scarf Clint had given her after he’d gotten sick of watching her “freeze to death,” she rushed out into the common room, past Tyler’s porn stash (poorly disguised as a collection of bad nineties music—note to self: take special care to avoid the
Spice Girls Greatest Hits
), out the door, and down the winding spiral staircase.

Three minutes later she arrived at the
Crimson
. Climbing the stairs two at a time, she hurried to the second floor offices, clicked on a computer, and logged into her e-mail account. Swiftly she downloaded the document, scanned it once, and then clicked Print.

The printer, it seemed, was taking a while to warm up. She began tapping her foot impatiently as it whirred into motion, glancing over her shoulder and half expecting Lexi to explode into the room and attack her at any second. The sudden, loud burst of sound from her cell phone almost sent her into cardiac arrest.

“Hey, gorgeous, it’s me.” Clint’s voice came over the line.

“Hi,” she said, smiling in spite of her nerves.

“Great news: the meeting let out a few minutes early.”
Oh, shit.
“You know how usually these things can run over for hours. . . . Anyway, I was just wondering: what are you doing right now? Are you in the room?”

“No, actually I’m rushing to print off my paper and then I have to walk all the way to the law school to turn it in,” she said distractedly as the printer
finally
started to move. “It’s not due until tomorrow morning, but I want to finish it now so Mimi and I can get an early start. . . .”

“You’re
sure
it’s all right that I’m driving down on a party bus with the Fly?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Mimi’s arranged for Gregory to drive us so we’ll be fine,” she said as the second page printed out more slowly than a tortoise’s crippled geriatric grandma.

“Great!” said Clint. “You really are the best. Which is why . . . I have a surprise for you! Make sure you stay away from the room for at least fifteen minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” she said as she slammed the stapler down on the pages of her mediocre paper and threw it into her bag, anxiously checking the clock. “It’ll take me at least twenty minutes to get there and back.” She flung her bag over her shoulder and rushed toward the stairs.

“Wonderful. I’ll see you in twenty, then—”

“Great, see you soon!” she cried, hanging up her phone. She entered the main foyer and began picking her way through the extra newspapers that were stacked against the wall. She was about to reach for the door when it opened and in walked—

Three guesses:

Ali Baba and the 40 thieves

Lulu the inflatable monkey

Alexis Vivienne Thorndike.

“Aren’t you worried that coming into this building during an evaluation period is
almost
as tacky as a groom asking to see his bride’s gown before the big day? Bad luck, too—” Lexi began with a wicked smile on her face.

“The editors at large said we can use the resources here whenever we want,” Callie said shakily. Did Alexis know—well, everything? Was it worth it to try to be nice?

“My mistake,” said Alexis sweetly. “You should definitely feel free to use our resources as much as you want—for the limited time that they’ll be available to you.”

Callie swallowed. “I guess we’ll see about that,” she said, forcing herself to return Lexi’s gaze. “Hopefully the quality of my work will speak for itself.”

“You know,” said Lexi, taking a step forward, “that sometimes it’s not just your
Us Weekly
rejects that count. I can assure you that the editors care about certain
other
things beyond the quality of your work. . . .”

“Oh?” Callie asked, fighting to keep her voice even as she added: “Like what other things?”

Lexi was silent, but a tiny downward twitch near the corner of her mouth gave away her hand: no aces, no nothing. Because, as it suddenly dawned on Callie, Vanessa hadn’t talked.

Too shaken to feel triumphant, Callie turned her back on Lexi and practically ran all the way to the law school, her heart pounding in her chest.

As soon as Callie was out of sight, the mask of composure melted off of Lexi’s face. Turning to the neat stacks of newspaper that lined the walls, she traced her fingers over the piles delicately as she made her way down the hall. At the last second she turned and, seizing a fistful of papers in hand, she screamed and flung them across the floor. Whirling around, she kicked the nearest stack: cursing as pages from the
Crimson
shot into the air and then floated back toward the floor like ugly, gray snowflakes.

Then she took a deep breath and pulled out her BlackBerry, quickly drafting an e-mail message to some of the COMPers.

S
OMEBODY LEFT A
HUGE
MESS

IN THE OFFICES AT THE
C
RIMSON
.

T
HIS IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE
.