The Ivy: Rivals (14 page)

“What I don’t get is why
you’re
here so much,” Callie said, lifting her head. “Aren’t you supposed to have way less work now that you’ve officially made it onto the paper?”

“I, er,” Matt stammered, glancing toward the office door that read
MANAGING EDITOR.
“I’m just trying to make a good impression.”

“. . . on Grace?” Callie prompted.

“Well, yes, but the other editors, too!” Matt cried, his face going all ripe tomato.

Callie nodded, deciding not to push it. She was glad Matt, who felt more and more like a brother every day, had finally misplaced his misplaced affection elsewhere. (Teddy was still stuck to the bulletin board.)

“Plus, they were all out of issues of
FM
this morning at breakfast and I sort of wanted to snag a paper copy,” Matt explained, waving said copy in the air, which featured the results of yesterday’s grueling photo shoot on its cover with
The Freshmen Fifteen
written beneath in glossy lettering.

Callie grinned. “We should frame it,” she said, grabbing the magazine.

“Stop—”

“No, seriously. You look good!”

Matt stared at his photo for a moment. “I’ve gotten eighteen new friend requests on Facebook since this morning. Do you suppose it’s related?”

“Either way, your stock is through the roof!” she said. And it’s about damn time.

“You think?” he muttered, squinting again at his photo.

“Yes I think,” she said. “And I also think that maybe you’re . . . dare I say . . . enjoying it?”

Matt dropped the magazine, looking guilty. “Well, of course I—well—goes completely against everything we—I mean, me and Grace, or, ah, Grace and I, or yeah,
we
stand for but . . .” Miserable, he frowned.

“It’s
okay
to enjoy it,” Callie said, placing a hand over his. “You
are
one of the coolest freshmen on this campus, and it’s awesome that now everybody else knows it, too!” Matt blushed. Quickly Callie removed her hand. After all, the “we” of “me and Grace, or, ah, Grace and I” only went so far. “I just hope,” she added, slightly reproachful, “that maybe now you’ll have a bit more sympathy for the fun side of being selected to belong to a supposedly ‘exclusive’ or ‘elite’ group on campus.”

Matt narrowed his eyes, but then he grinned like he knew that she had him. “Well, I did draw the line at going to that party your Pudding club put on last night in our ‘honor.’ What was it called? ‘The Fortunate Fifteen’ or ‘Fifteen and Fabulous’—”

“‘The Fabulous Fifteen,’” Callie supplied. She had also missed the party thrown for those featured in the article—a high number of whom were already in the Pudding or were punching this spring—due to the volume of her workload, the fact that it was a Monday night, and the small part of her that felt less than “fabulous” after being excluded from the article.

“Besides,” Matt was saying, “I wasn’t
actually
selected: I was filling in only because Greg decided at the last minute not to show.”

“What a flake,” Callie exclaimed. “Did you ever find out why he bailed?”

“He said something in the room this morning about ‘wanting to keep a low profile.’”

Callie snorted. “Yeah, because that sounds just like him.”

Matt shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think he might mean it. OK asked if he could borrow his car the other day and Gregory said that it was in the shop but that he might be getting rid of it because he’s decided that for a student to have a car on a contained college campus is, and I quote, ‘excessive.’ Maybe he was lying, though,” Matt added, “as I’m not sure OK knows how to drive or that it would be wise to lend him any car—let alone a Porsche—even if he did.”

Callie leaned back in her chair, staring at the ceiling. “Weird,” she finally said. Maybe Gregory really was undergoing some kind of major personality overhaul, and maybe it had something to do with—well, now, what a coincidence. . . .

“Alessandra! Hi!” Callie called as the girl in question walked into the offices.

“Hey, did you see the issue?” Matt added, sitting up straight and holding the magazine.

“Hi,” said Alessandra shortly, setting her purse down by a computer near the back. “I did, and you look
great
,” she answered Matt, coming over to where they were sitting. “I’m sorry, but I can’t hang around and chat, though—I’ve got a lot of work to do,” she finished, nodding toward the other end of the room.

“No worries,” said Callie. “We’re, uh, working, too,” she added, pulling up a browser, “. . . and checking a few e-mails,” she added guiltily, coming face-to-face with her in-box. Whoops.

“See you later then,” Alessandra called, walking away to join several other COMPers who were also working quietly in the back of the offices.

“
Whoa
,” said Callie suddenly after turning back to her e-mail. “Look at this!” she cried in a hushed tone, clicking on a message.

“Wow,” said Matt, who had been reading over her shoulder. “Good thing neither of us went to that party!”

“Yeah, seriously,” said Callie. “I hope nobody we know got in trouble. . . .” Returning to her in-box, she saw another e-mail from Anne, subject heading:
Thank you.
What the . . .

What the . . . WHAT?!?

“Huh . . .” said Matt from where he was sitting, staring at his own computer.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing, just reading Grace’s op-ed on the shoot yesterday. . . .”

“Oh, it’s up?” said Callie, opening the
Crimson
website.

“Yeah, it’s up,” Matt murmured, his eyes still trained on his screen. “It’s up and it’s a little . . .
harsh
.”

“A
little
harsh?” Callie repeated incredulously after she had skimmed the article. “It’s poisonous,” she said in a whisper, looking around to make sure that none of the people working in the back were listening. “Poisonous to the point of being . . . unprofessional.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Look,” Callie said. “I get why she hates the Final Clubs and the Pudding even though it’s co-ed—I mean, I get why you do, too—but what I don’t fully understand is this rage against
FM
. It just seems so . . .
personal
.”

“The magazine does tend to praise certain institutions and practices that . . .” Matt glanced down at the issue that was still open on the page declaring him one of Harvard’s hottest freshmen, looking sheepish.

“Even though I have every reason to hate you-know-who,” Callie continued, pointing up to the second-floor offices, “I can still admit that I genuinely enjoy the magazine. Yes, sometimes it’s trashy, but mostly it’s just entertaining, lighthearted, and fun. And you gotta admit that everyone on campus reads her column, whether or not you agree with the advice.”

“Sure,” Matt said. “There’s definitely some value to the lighthearted, entertaining stuff. . . . You know, I really wish they’d given me some more time to come up with my ‘best pick-up line.’ Like, how about the one where you ask if she has a library card, ’cause ‘I wanna check you out’?”

Callie wasn’t listening, staring instead at the screen in front of her. “I wonder . . . hmm.”

“You wonder what?” asked Matt, setting down the issue and watching her pull up a browser.

“I wonder if Lexi and Grace have some sort of weird history that we don’t know about,” she explained, starting to type.

A simple Google search revealed nothing. Frowning, she navigated to the page for the
Crimson
’s internal website. “Huh . . . that’s strange,” she muttered.

“What?” Matt asked.

“Oh, nothing. It just says that it logged me out of our internal server because I was logged in at another location.”

Matt shrugged. “Unfortunately that’s not unusual; the system gets pretty buggy sometimes. Or your session could have timed out while you were busy reading your
e-mail
—I mean working really hard!” he amended as she socked him on the arm.

“Ooh, look at this!” she said a moment later. “It’s a list of everyone who’s ever COMPed the
Crimson
. . . . See, there’s ‘Lee, Grace, in fall 2008,’” she pointed out while Matt leaned in, “And . . . whoa . . . looks like Lexi COMPed the
Crimson
that semester, too! I wonder if she got
cut
,” Callie finished excitedly.

Bored, Matt turned back to his own computer. “Frankly I’m not sure why you care.”

Callie silenced him with a wave, pulling up the list of everyone who had COMPed
FM
. Frowning as she passed her own name, she continued scrolling down until she found it:
Thorndike, Alexis, spring 2009
.

“Interesting . . .” Callie muttered.

“Oh, I’m sure it is, Nancy Drew,” Matt said with a smirk, now busy editing an article.

“Hush!” she admonished him. Then she ran Grace’s name through the Harvard College search engine. There were three Grace Lees but only one who was class of 2012 and currently lived in Dunster (the upperclassman house where Grace resided), after apparently living in Thayer when she was a freshman.

There was only one Alexis Vivienne Thorndike in the system (thank
god
). Class: 2012; Current Residence: Kirkland House; Freshman Dormitory: Weld (
Thayer
).

Thayer in italics and parentheses? The same Thayer where Grace had lived? Now that was intriguing. Quickly Callie pulled up a site that let you search the exact room and residence of every former Harvard freshman (designed to cater to incoming students who liked to brag that Bill Gates or Tommy Lee Jones had once propped his feet up on
their
desk in
their
bedroom, ergo they too would one day invent Windows and win Oscars). Her fingers flew across the keyboard.

Lee, Grace
: Thayer 314 (2008-2009)

Thorndike, Alexis
: Weld 33 (2008-2009); Thayer 314 (2008)

“Oh my goodness,” she said breathlessly.
“Matt!”

“What?”

“Lexi and Grace were
roommates
during their freshman year!”

“So?” he said, returning to the article he was working on.

“So! Um . . . so . . .” Huh. So what? “Well, Lexi must have transferred out, for one thing, and maybe the reason they hate each other has to do with something that happened back when—”

“Callie?” a voice called from behind them. Turning, she saw Clint strolling into the offices with two lattes in hand. Quickly she shut the browser before standing and throwing her arms around him.

Matt glanced up and gave Clint the usual cursory grunt.

“There’s my hottest freshman,” Clint said, smiling and handing her a latte.

“Gee, thanks,” said Callie, sitting back in her chair. “Glad somebody thinks so.”

“It’s my word against the school’s,” Clint said, bending to kiss her cheek.

“Actually, it’s your word against the editors’,” Callie retorted. “One of whom is your ex-girlfriend. Speaking of which—”

“Oh no,” said Clint, shooting Matt a look. “Here we go again.”

Callie pursed her lips. “I’m just wondering if you know anything about a possible feud between Lexi and Grace.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious. From a journalistic perspective.”

Sighing, Clint perched on the edge of her desk. “They were roommates for a while, and then something happened—maybe something about stolen shoes?—but Lex and I had only just started dating when she transferred rooms so more than that, I couldn’t say.”

“Did you know that Lexi COMPed the
Crimson
her first semester freshman year?” Callie asked.

“Yes,” said Clint.

“Do you know why she joined
FM
the following semester instead? I mean did she get cut or—”

“I don’t really remember,” he said shortly.

“Well, then is there anything else you can tell me? Anything that might seem odd or relevant?”