The Ivy: Secrets (21 page)

“Listen,” said Mimi, lowering her voice. “You have to face them sometime. You cannot stay in here forever watching old movies.”

“Hells ya!” OK agreed, slipping back into rapper mode and flexing his muscles. “Old movies be trippin’, yo.”

Callie looked at Mimi and OK and realized just how much she missed them, and missed this. In fact, she missed
all
of her friends, even the one who presently counted herself an enemy.

How much longer could she stay in her room—really? It’s not like she was going to drop out of school. Hadn’t the point of coming out with her most intimate secret been about freedom anyway? So she could walk around without worrying about it all the time?

Mimi saw her advantage and pressed. “Matt will be there. . . .”

“Yeah, and Greg comes back toni—
ow!
” OK cried. Mimi had elbowed him in the ribs. “Woman be cramping ma
style
, know what I’m sayin’?” he asked Callie.

“I’m going to regret this later,” Callie muttered, walking into the bathroom to fix her hair—if such a thing were even possible at this point. “And I’m still not wearing that!” she yelled back at Mimi, who had retrieved the mini-dress from the couch and was holding it up hopefully.

Mimi started grumbling something in French, but the sound of OK’s whooping drowned out her words: he began dancing around the room, squirting his gun into the air and crying, “I’m makin’ it raaaain! Yeah, baby, yeah!”

“
Dépêche-toi.
Hurry up!” Mimi cried. “We are already more than an hour late.”

Half an hour later they were waiting in line at the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub: the bar that somebody at Harvard had the genius idea to build right underneath the freshman dining hall (but no underage drinking allowed!). Callie could see through the darkly tinted glass windows that it was very crowded inside. She wondered if everyone would be dressed like a pimp or a ho. If so, she was probably going to stand out like a sore thumb in her jeans and black tank top.

No matter, she decided. I’m used to it by now.

What she wasn’t used to was not really caring. It felt nice.

The smile faded from her face when they reached the front of the line and she noticed that the girl at the door who was checking IDs had paused to stare blatantly.

“You’re Callie Andrews?” she asked before Callie could even hand over her ID.

“What is it to you?” said Mimi, leaning in hostilely.

“Uh—nothing really, I just—I read the article and . . .”

“What about it?” asked Mimi, moving even closer.

“I—I thought it was really great. Inspiring. I’m in Theta, and for part of our initiation we had to flash a bunch of Owl guys. . . . I was so scared that I started crying—but in the end I did it anyway. I know it doesn’t even begin to compare, but it was nice to hear someone else’s story and get some perspective.”

“Thanks,” Callie whispered.

“Are we done here?” Mimi interrupted. “You going to let us in or no?” she asked, holding out her hands to get the Big, Black, Under-Twenty-one X.

“Oh,” the girl said, clearly puzzled by Mimi’s defensive attitude. Quickly she looked around before pressing three Over-Twenty-one bracelets into Callie’s palm. “Find Marcus at the bar and tell him the first drink’s on me. I’m Brady,” she finished, grinning at Callie.

“Thanks!” said Callie, smiling back.

“Score!” said OK, sliding the bracelet onto his wrist.

“What’s Theta?” Callie asked Mimi.

“Sorority,” said Mimi, pushing through the swinging doors to the pub.

“We have sororities?” It was hard to believe that she’d been here for a semester already and there was still so much she didn’t know.

The first thing Callie felt when they entered the pub—a large dimly lit space with dark mahogany-colored wood paneling and a huge circular bar in the middle like the hub of a wheel—was relief. It swept over her the moment she realized, glancing left to the room filled with couches and chairs arranged around low tables and then right at the booths over by the dartboards, foosball, and pool tables, that the majority of people present were dressed casually and were not members of the Hasty Pudding social club.

The second thing she felt was dread. The whole school wasn’t here, but almost everyone she knew—and, as Vanessa might have said, everyone that
mattered
—was present. Clint: in the corner talking with some of his buddies from the Fly. Matt: on the other side of the bar yapping at Grace Lee’s heels like an overgrown puppy. Vanessa: standing awfully close to Tyler, no doubt trying to mark her territory (or secure next semester’s membership) by holding hands in public. Only Gregory was missing from the crowd. He was probably stuck in traffic on his way back from Brown or unpacking—or whatever.

And then, of course, last, least, and worst of all: Alexis Thorndike, over in a booth with Anne Goldberg, Ashleigh Templeton, and several other upperclassman girls.

Their heads were bent low, and Lexi, tossing her hair and laughing at something Anne had just said, either didn’t notice or didn’t care that Callie had arrived. Suddenly Lexi stood and, still without sparing Callie a glance, made her way over to the group where Clint was hanging out.

A reddish tinge that had little to do with the “mood lighting” colored Callie’s vision.

“Drinks?” asked Mimi, steering Callie toward the enormous round bar.

“Drinks!” OK confirmed, snagging them three stools at the bar.

“Are you Marcus?” Callie asked the vaguely familiar student bartender who came rushing over.

“Depends who’s asking,” he said, eyeing OK’s bizarre outfit with what seemed like appreciation rather than amusement.

“Uh, well, I’m Callie, and this is Mimi,” Callie began.

“What’s your name, sugar?” he asked, still staring at OK.

“Er, no. It’s OK.”

Marcus laughed. “Love the pants, by the way,” he said, looking OK up and down.

OK brightened immediately. “See?” he asked, turning to Callie. “They
are
cool.”

“So what’ll it be, ladies?” Marcus asked, chuckling. “That’s Mimi and Callie . . . Wait. Shut up. Stop!” he interrupted himself when his eyes finally settled on Callie. “Is this
the
famous Callie Andrews?”

“Um . . .” said Callie

“Yes!” Mimi nodded.

“Honey, you—are—
fabulous
! Saw the article. Read it. Loved it!”

“Thanks,” said Callie

“But, honey, tell me,” he continued, leaning in to take a closer look. “Why is it that when I’m seeing your face, I’m picturing a hedge behind it?”

“Uh . . . no idea?” said Callie, even though she knew exactly why, for she had just remembered this was the same Marcus who’d been coming out of the Spee when Clint had caught her spying on him from behind the shrubbery. That same Clint who was now staring at her from across the room, trying to make eye contact—

“What’s a girl got to do to get a drink around here, anyway?” Callie asked, quickly averting her gaze.

“Nuh-uh, ladies, drinks are on me,” Marcus said, throwing a dash of this and that into a cocktail shaker.

OK looked distressed that he had been included as one of the “ladies,” but didn’t seem to know quite what to do about it. “Allow me,” he began, reaching for his wallet.

Marcus shook his head as he shook the shaker, swaying his hips. “
Your
money’s no good here,
okay
?” he said, pouring the drinks. “That’ll be zero dollars—unless you want to give me some sugar?” He pointed a finger to his cheek and winked.

“Can we get a little help over here?” a guy called irritably from down the bar.

“Uh-oh, duty calls!” cried Marcus. “Girl’s gotta work for a living,” he added, and then, with a snap of his fingers, he was gone.

“Well, he seemed nice,” OK commented, reaching for his drink. “And did you hear him? He liked my pants!”

Callie and Mimi looked at each other and laughed.

“
I’ll say
he did. . . .” Callie started.

“But he’d probably prefer,” said Mimi, taking a sip of her drink, “to see you take them off—”

She stopped talking. Vanessa—apparently having detached herself from Tyler—sidled up to the bar.

“Hey, Meems; hi, OK—two rum and cokes please,” she added to the bartender who’d approached to take her order. “Make one a diet.”

Suddenly anxious, Callie took a huge sip of her drink and accidentally started to choke.

“Is something funny?” Vanessa asked, whipping around to face her.

“We will return . . . momentarily,” Mimi said quickly, grabbing OK’s hand and dragging him from the bar.

“Hey—Callie Andrews,” said a girl from a group of three as she filled the newly vacant space to Callie’s right. “Great article.”

“You are just
so
brave,” another girl added.

“I went over to my boyfriend’s
immediately
after I read it to check for cameras,” the third chimed in with a rueful laugh. “He’s in the AD club, and you never know what they get up to: Sketch City!”

“Um, thanks,” said Callie, acutely aware that Vanessa was listening to every word.

“Seriously,” the first one said, starting to turn back to her friends, “you rock. Don’t let anyone get you down.”

Callie blushed. Then she stole a sidelong glance at Vanessa.

“What?” Vanessa said sharply.

“Nothing,” said Callie, surprised that whatever nasty commentary she’d been bracing herself for still hadn’t come.

Vanessa drummed her fingers on the bar while she waited for her drinks. Finally she murmured, “I can’t believe you did it—coming out with everything that way, I mean.”

Callie glanced at Vanessa, searching her face. She could discern no innuendo, criticism, or ridicule. Instead it seemed simply like a benign statement of fact. “I still can’t believe it either,” Callie said. “But I was out of options. Lexi . . .” she trailed off, watching Lexi, who was still talking to Clint, out of the corner of her eye.

“She’s a heinous bitch,” Vanessa jumped in. “The heinousest of the heinouses. If either of those are words.”

Callie smiled. “By the way, I know you didn’t tell her about the tape. Turns out I left my e-mail open in the
FM
offices. Like an idiot.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Vanessa said with a shrug.

The bartender plunked two rum and cokes on the counter. “That’ll be twelve fifty,” she told Vanessa.

Nodding, Vanessa pulled her Marc Jacobs wallet out of her purse. “Well . . . I guess I’m not gonna say I told you so.”

Callie smiled ruefully. “You did tell me so, and I’m sorry that I didn’t believe you when you said you didn’t tell anyone about the tape. I’m also sorry . . .”

She watched Vanessa pull some bills out of her wallet and count them.

“I’m sorry for the things I wrote—in that other article,” Callie said, trying again. “But you have to believe me when I say that it was
never
meant to be published. It wasn’t even a real article draft—I just needed a way to vent after you trashed my bedroom, and so I wrote it all down. But nobody else ever saw it, and I swear nobody was ever meant to see it either.”

Vanessa was staring down at the bar, making no move to take her drinks.

“I felt terrible when I reread it, and of course I deleted it immediately,” Callie continued. She swallowed hard. “I know you can probably never forgive me. If not for this, then for everything, but I want you to know . . . that I’m sorry.”

Slowly Vanessa nodded. “Deep down I think I knew that you were never going to publish it. And I’m sorry too, about what I did to your room. I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said. Callie leaned in, straining to hear her over the noisy group that had just sat down next to them at the bar. “Turns out the earrings were in my sock drawer the entire time. I was just so mad. . . . But then when you saved me with the ec exam, I thought . . .” She sighed, shaking her head. “You were right, though. I don’t think I can forgive you. Maybe for the Gregory stuff, because it’s obvious now that it was never me and always you, but that article—” She stopped, picking up her drinks. “It doesn’t really matter what you were planning to do with it. The point is that you wrote those things in the first place. That you
believe
those things about me.”

Callie was at a loss for words. Some of the things she had written were purely reactionary, but some of them did have a kernel of truth, even if they had been phrased in the meanest possible way. Callie bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

Drinks in hand, Vanessa turned to leave. She sounded sad, not angry, when she said, “I really am sorry it turned out this way . . . but I just don’t think I can get past it.”

Callie nodded even though Vanessa was gone and there was no one there to see. Blinking rapidly, she kept her eyes trained toward the bottom of her glass. She grabbed a cocktail napkin and a pen and tried to think of a three-digit number to factor into primes or whether she still had the Nash Equilibrium memorized. . . .

If she had looked up, she might have caught Clint staring at her, again, but her eyes stayed focused on her napkin.

“Andrews!” a voice barked from over Callie’s shoulder. Grace Lee slid onto a neighboring stool. Matt was hovering right behind her, golden retriever style. “What are you drinking?” she asked, summoning Marcus with a wave of her hand.

“Hey!” said Matt, his voice bordering on whiney. “How come you get to buy Callie a drink, but I can’t buy one for you?”

“Because Andrews is neither my subordinate—yet—nor the current bane of my existence. Plus, I can’t have you reporting me for sexual harassment.”

Callie wondered if that joke-like-thing meant that Grace was in a good mood.

“Lee bebe!” Marcus cried, leaning over the bar to kiss her on both cheeks. To Callie’s surprise, Grace submitted willingly. “Missed you at the meeting this week!” he added, pouting.

“I was getting my nails done,” she said dryly. “And there’s this paper I occasionally edit—you may have heard of it—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he cut her off, pouring her a pint of very dark ale. By now Callie had guessed that they must be quite close: you had to be a very special friend of Grace’s if you managed to interrupt her and live to tell the tale.