The Ivy: Secrets (4 page)

Callie sighed. Of course Lexi would never do something so sordid as to release the tape; she was just making sure Callie had an incentive to follow instructions. Still, thought Callie, why bother? Why not just get rid of me now?

As if she could read Callie’s mind, Lexi, toying a finger through the gold chain around her neck, said, “Now, I know we’ve had our differences, but your—er—talent is clear, and I’ve come around to the idea that you could be very
useful
. To the magazine, of course.”

Callie gulped.

“It is crucial, however,” Lexi continued, “that we, the editors, get a chance to see your commitment, dedication, and above all, obedience. If you should fail or refuse to complete any of these new assignments, I’m afraid that you would be in danger of . . . exposing yourself as someone who has a problem with authority. Is this making sense to you?”

“Yes,” said Callie through gritted teeth. “I get it.” If I don’t write your stupid pieces and make myself look like an idiot, then you’ll “expose” the tape. “Are you going to give me the list?” Callie asked, eyeing the paper that Lexi still held just out of arm’s reach.

“Silly me—of course,” said Lexi, handing it to Callie.

Callie barely glanced at it before looking back up at her. “So are we—” She paused. Slowly her eyes fell back toward the sheet of paper she held in her hands. They grew wide. You can’t be serious. “You can’t be . . .”

“Can’t be what?”

“Um—nothing, sorry, I just . . . I mean . . .”

Lexi gasped suddenly with apparent concern. “Look at the time,” she said. “Please forgive me for keeping you; with so much work to do, you must be anxious to get started!”

“Yes,” said Callie, clutching her “new assignments” list in her fist. “Lots of work,” she muttered, standing and heading toward the door. Her cheeks were on fire, and she knew she was minutes, if not seconds, away from the same helpless hysteria that had set in once during her senior year in high school when an evil soccer referee had given her a yellow card with twenty minutes left in the game. Unable to watch as the opponents clobbered her team, she had locked herself in a bathroom stall, where she had stayed long after the game was over. Too bad the bathrooms at the
Crimson
were all the way down on the first floor.

“Callie?” called Lexi.

Callie froze with her hand poised above the doorknob.

“I have just one more piece of advice.”

“Yes?” asked Callie, forcing herself to turn and meet Lexi’s eyes.

“Personally I always find that when a girl is truly dedicated to her work, she doesn’t have time for boys or a boyfriend—especially not someone older. Upperclassmen can be so distracting, and it would be such a shame to see you lose . . . so much . . . for a fling that never would have lasted until next semester anyway. Am I making myself clear?”

Callie stared, clutching Clint’s scarf in her hands. Finally she said in a whisper, “Crystal.”

C
allie paused in front of the big glass window labeled A
RROW
S
TREET
C
LEANERS
in gold block lettering, rubbing her arms. Her biceps ached from lugging a gigantic crate of VOSS water—bottled in Norway and made from distilled unicorn and mermaid tears with crushed diamonds instead of minerals (or so you would think, given the price)—from CVS all the way to Kirkland House where Lexi lived in a suite with Anne Goldberg and some of the other Pudding girls. A note on the whiteboard read L
EAVE ALL DELIVERIES AT THE DOOR
, so she hadn’t even been able to sneak a peek into the enemy lair. Even though it had felt like hours, the trip—including four rest breaks—had taken only thirty minutes. Still, she’d barely made it to the cleaners before the 5
P.M.
closing.

Like losing her pot-smoking “virginity” or her imminent C in economics, going to the dry cleaners was about to become another College First. After all, since the majority of her clothing ended up with grass stains or in the bottom of her gym bag, she tended to avoid anything sporting a “
DRY CLEAN ONLY
” label.

The bell above the glass front door tinkled when she stepped inside.

“Hi,” she said, smiling at the man sitting behind the counter who had more hair on his face than on his head. “I’m picking up for A. Thorndike?”

The man set down his newspaper and squinted over the thick frames of his glasses. “You are not Ms. Thorndike,” he said, speaking with a Pakistani accent. “Ms. Thorndike will get very, very angry if I give clothing to a stranger!”

“But I’m not a stranger, I’m her—” Callie paused. What was she, exactly? Her maid? Personal assistant? B-I-T-C-H? Blackmailee? Helpless little stepdaughter Cinder-Callie . . .

“Yes?” he prompted.

“I’m doing her a favor. So if you could please just hand over the clothes—”

“No. Absolutely not. You are not doing anybody any favors if Ms. Thorndike’s dry cleaning is not here
exactly
the way she likes it. Very good customer—but very, very particular!”

And very, very going to kill me if I don’t get this done. “Please . . .” Callie began. The man continued shaking his head. “Please— Wait!” she suddenly cried. “I have a note!” Digging into her book bag, she pulled out the paper detailing her new COMP Assignments, i.e. the lengthy list of personal favors thinly disguised as prompts. “Here,” she said, sliding the page across the counter. “That’s her handwriting—right there!”

The man made a great show of polishing his lenses before pushing his glasses back up his nose and looking at the sheet of paper. After what felt like forever, he shoved it back toward Callie. “Very well,” he said. “Wait here.”

“Thank you,” she called as he disappeared behind rows of plastic-covered dress shirts.

In a minute he returned wheeling a clothing rack with some fifteen-odd dresses, skirts, and tops, each immaculately ironed, pressed, and individually wrapped. It was incredible: Gucci, Prada, DVF, D&G, Zac Posen, and more: a semester’s worth of Harvard tuition all on one little rack in a dingy dry cleaner.

“Which ones belong to Alexis?” Callie asked, sticking her hands in her pockets lest she inadvertently reach out and rip the plastic off to run her fingers over the luscious fabrics. Or grab that cigarette lighter lying on the counter, flick it open, and set the entire rack on fire.

The man gave her a funny look. “All of these belong to Ms. Thorndike.”

“All?” Callie asked, her eyes widening. “Everything here?”

“You count,” he replied, misunderstanding. “It is all here.”

“No, I just meant—”

“You count!” He was agitated. “We make no mistake,” he added, pointing to an itemized receipt that was taped to one end of the metal rack. “But you verify, to be certain. We make mistake once: lose dress”—he shuddered—“and Ms. Alexis get very, very angry. She yell, very loud, and my wife—she make her cry. Now my wife, she will not work on Tuesdays.”

Callie gulped. She could definitely sympathize with Mrs. Arrow Street Cleaners. “Maybe it is a good idea to check,” she said, taking the receipt from the rack, “just to be sure.”

The man nodded, returning to his newspaper. Callie began to sift through the clothing on the rack, checking the receipt and then sliding the item from right to left.

She was nearly two-thirds of the way through when suddenly, through the space between a red floor-length gown and a black single-shoulder dress, she spotted a familiar figure through the glass windows making his way down the street: Clint.

He had pulled his scarf up against the cold and his light brown hair was messy and windswept as usual. Even though he was still several dozen feet away, he stood out among the crowd: tall, gorgeous, perfect in every imaginable way and . . .

Slowing down . . .
Callie realized with horror. Clint came to a halt in front of the dry cleaner. He glanced at his watch and reached for the door.

Callie grabbed the dresses on either side of her and yanked the hangers toward the center, closing the gap and concealing her—hopefully—from view. She glanced down at her dirty Converses and shuffled to the left behind the red floor-length number.

The bell over the glass door tinkled. “Almost didn’t make it!” she heard Clint exclaim, sounding slightly out of breath. She heard footsteps and then his voice coming from near the counter. “How’s it going, Hassan?”

“Very well, Mr. Weber. Good to see you, sir.” The owner—Hassan—was also blocked from view, and Callie stood still, holding her breath. Were her feet visible? Biting her lip, she tried to concentrate on counting the buttons of a Missoni sweater. She wasn’t even sure why exactly she was hiding, only that it was too late to be mature now.

“I will be right back,” Hassan continued, and Callie watched, barely daring to breathe, as he disappeared down an aisle and returned with three plastic-wrapped dress shirts.

“Two Oxfords and one tuxedo shirt, Mr. Weber,” he said, laying the shirts on the counter.

“Thanks so much. Just in time for the Financial Aid benefit tonight,” said Clint, reaching for his wallet. “That’ll be . . . ?”

“Seven fifty.”

It was silent save for the ding of the cash register. Then—

“You there!” Hassan’s voice boomed loudly. Callie cringed. “What are you doing hiding in the corner? Hurry up—the store is about to close!”

Callie did not answer. Instead she continued to count buttons and hold her breath, willing Clint to take his tuxedo shirt and leave: please . . . go . . . now.

“Crazy customer,” Hassan muttered. Clint chuckled sympathetically. “I’m sure you’ve seen it all,” she heard him say.

Leave . . . leave . . . leave . . .

There was more rustling and then—thank goodness—footsteps.

Unfortunately they appeared to be heading in the wrong direction. “There’s something very familiar about that dress . . . and this one,” she heard Clint murmur under his breath. “Hassan, who do these belong to?”

But before Hassan could answer, Clint was reaching out to slide the hangers aside, saying “Lex, is that you back th—
Callie?
”

“Clint!” she managed to choke out, trying to look surprised even though she knew she was redder than the dress Clint was clinging to in amazement.

“Callie?” he said again. “What are you doing?”

“Picking up my dry cleaning,” she said with a shrug. And not hiding—definitely not that.

“
Your
dry cleaning?” he repeated incredulously.

“Yep,” she lied. “So funny how I didn’t see you there! What a coincidence! Isn’t it funny how these things sometimes happen? So . . . funny.”

“Very funny,” he agreed, eyes twinkling and looking—to her horror—like that was exactly what he meant. “So, how have you been? Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?”

When he smiled, tiny crinkles formed around the corners of his eyes: light green, charming, and full of warmth—the kind of glow you could bask in like it was a sunny summer day—

“Ahem.” Hassan cleared his throat: a phlegmy, smoker’s sound. “The store is closing two minutes ago.”

“Right. Sorry, Hassan,” Clint said, his eyes never leaving Callie’s face. “Why don’t you let me carry some of these things home for you,” he offered, reaching for a dress.

“No!” Callie cried, intercepting him and throwing the dress over her arm. “I mean, no thank you,” she said, piling shirt after dress after skirt on top of it. “I can handle it.”

“Okay . . .” said Clint slowly, watching her. “Well, what about later this evening? I have this benefit thing, but maybe after we could go somewhere and talk. I really missed you, you know.”

Callie froze. “You—you did?”

“Yes, I did. And I do . . . miss you,” he said, smiling and taking a step forward. Leaning in, he propped his arm along the metal rack: no longer a real barrier absent of Lexi’s clothing, nothing separating them, save air.

Callie could barely feel the dresses weighing down her left arm. She took a deep breath, and his scent—which smelled sweetly of cinnamon and autumn leaves and still lingered on the scarf she was wearing now and the fuzzy, oversized sweater she had no intention of returning anytime soon—washed over her. She sighed.

Beep beep beep.

“I—I missed a call,” she murmured, shifting the clothing in her arms so she could reach for her cell.

“Crap,” Callie muttered. “I have to go.”

“Wait,” Clint began, reaching out a hand as if to touch her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said, ducking around him and heading for the door. “But I’m late—”

“Well, can I at least call you later?” he said, beating her to the door and holding it open for her.

“Uh—I—um—no. Okay? I just have to go,” she said. Slipping past him, she darted out into the cold, hoisting the dry cleaning into both arms and power walking as fast as possible.

Clint watched her round the corner in the direction of the upperclassman river houses, a bemused expression on his face. Then he looked across Massachusetts Avenue at Wigglesworth, her freshman dormitory. Glancing back in the opposite direction where she had just disappeared, he slowly shook his head.

On the plus side, I can cancel my Amazon order for arm weights, Callie thought, trudging up the stairs to the second floor of Wigglesworth. Her arms were really aching now. How it was possible for a bunch of fancy dresses to be heavier than a crate of bottled water was unclear but true nevertheless.

It had grown dark outside in the time it had taken her to finish her COMP assignments for the day. Now, all she had left to do was:

a) Write response paper about angry philosopher with unpronounceable last name

b) Get started on
real
COMP assignments

c) Go to the gym and fight angry 2Ls for a chance to run on the hamster wheels

d) Eat something, preferably other than basement vending-machine food

e) Unpack clothing and clean room