The Ivy: Secrets (5 page)

f) Add all of the above to a written schedule of things to do before reading period

g) Do none of the above and take a nap instead

And the winner is . . . g! Hooray for responsible decision making! (Whoever decided that four-year-olds are the only species deserving of mandatory naptime was seriously misguided.) Then, there was always
h
, aka call Clint and tell him everything.

At the top of the stairs she stopped and unwound Clint’s scarf from her neck. He had looked and smelled even better than she’d remembered. This staying-away business was going to be a lot harder than she expected—especially if she could run into him somewhere as random as the dry cleaner.

She was halfway down the hall when she froze.

Gregory had just stepped out of suite C 23, devil-may-care half smile on his face. He saw her a second later, and the smile faded into a grim line. He shut the door quickly behind him but made no move to come closer.

Callie took a deep breath. Fortunately her hands were empty so there was nothing embarrassing to drop (like a box of underwear, for example), no way to humiliate herself as long as her lips remained glued together so she wouldn’t say something stupid or impulsively press them to his. . . .

Keeping her feet planted, she forced herself to meet his gaze. His eyes still had the same effect on her, like that of the nightshade flower: blue, beautiful, but deadly poisonous. Symptoms if plucked: paralysis, loss of voice, heart palpitations, respiratory troubles, and probably also death. But possibly also totally worth it. Maybe.

She had obsessively pictured this moment and its endless permutations over the break, lying awake in her bed in California after Thanksgiving and pretending to be incapacitated by a tryptophan-induced food coma so she could avoid the parties where she might run into Evan, or worse, the shadow of her former happy pre-Harvard self. In bed, in the dark, she wondered,What would she say when she saw Gregory? What would she do? What would he do? What would he say? It was a simple set of (1, 2, 3, 4), but it had countless variations: (3, 2, 1, 4,), (2, 4, 1, 3), (3, 4, 2, 1) or even (2, 1, 4) if one of them said nothing or did nothing. On and on and on, until even the mathematics—normally so dependable—seemed useless.

Now the moment was here, so of course she did nothing and said nothing: silent save for her internal monologue, which was yammering a mile a minute—
How was your break? Why haven’t you called? Incidentally, I’m kind of obsessed with you, but not in a creepy way
. Still, she forced herself to stay quiet. Hadn’t she already made the first move by asking OK to tell Gregory that she missed him and wanted to talk? The ball was in his court now.

But Gregory just stood there, looking, if anything, like he was at a loss for words. Where was the usual arsenal of sarcastic quips and phrases? Searching his face for a hint of that signature smirk, the twisted corners of his mouth that made him seem constantly amused at her expense, she came up blank. He looked serious, which was . . . encouraging? But then why wasn’t he saying anything! Was this another game? Was he daring her to break the silence?

If so, she would not take the bait. Instead, she held her breath and counted down from five. Four . . . he was still silent. Three . . . the grim line of his lips was starting to resemble a frown. Two . . . if he wasn’t going to say anything, then why wasn’t he moving? One . . . she must not speak.

“Don’t you have
anything
to say for yourself?” she blurted, horrified as the words flew out of her mouth.

Gregory shook his head and shrugged.

“Well,” she said, completely thrown, “about Harvard-Yale . . . I don’t know if you got my message—”

“I got it,” he said.

“So, uh . . .” she began, her eyebrows arching, begging him to fill in the rest. Did she really have to spell it out for him? Was he torturing her on purpose?

She took a deep breath. “So, do you—”

A muffled giggle sounded from somewhere inside C 23.

Callie cocked her head, listening, the end of her sentence swallowed into the abyss.

Another giggle—definitely a giggle—cut through the silence, this time from right behind the door.

Gregory shuffled slightly, as if to block the sound. “I should really—”

“Gregory, is that you out there?” the giggler trilled, followed by more giggling.

“Hurry up!” called another female voice—wait,
another
one? “We don’t like to be kept waiting.”

Gregory stared at Callie, remorseless and, if anything, defiant.

Callie stepped back, her hand fumbling blindly for the doorknob to C 24.

But she wasn’t fast enough. As her trembling fingers closed around the handle, the door to C 23 swung open. Two girls, arm in arm, stood framed under the doorway. They were the epitome of a term popularized by none other than Alexis Thorndike:
froshtitutes
.

“Well,” said the taller blonde on the left, “some cigarette break.”

The shorter one giggled. “Are you coming back inside?”

“I changed my mind,” Gregory said abruptly. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Ooh, where are you taking us?” the shorter one asked.

“It’s a surprise,” he said, throwing an arm around each girl’s shoulders.

“Is
she
coming, too?” the tall one asked, narrowing her eyes and talking as if Callie wasn’t even there.

“Nah,” said Gregory, starting to turn. “She’s just my neighbor.”

They retreated down the hall and the giggling faded. Callie, her back against the wall, watched the
ménage à gross
disappear from view. Then, she let her knees give out. Slowly she sank to the floor.

How—
how
—could I have been so
stupid
? she thought, her fingers knotting through her hair. How could she have ever let herself believe that she was special, that she might be the exception that would break the rule? She was disposable, single-serving (but not good enough for the two-for-one special): used and then tossed, just like everybody else.

I should have known better, she thought. Gregory is, was, and always will be officially, unequivocally, and with no exceptions, EVIL.

“Hello-ooh, Gregory . . . and company,” a voice said from the stairwell. Callie cringed. She could recognize that simpering trill anywhere, even if it had a bizarre chemical reaction with airborne testosterone that made it two octaves higher. Even if it weren’t accompanied by the distinctive stomp and click of dainty high heels bearing the weight of excessive curves and—in this particular case—the jingling of bells and bling that embellished what Vanessa fondly referred to as her “motorcycle boots.” (
Motorcycle boots?
Callie had asked last October, before all hell had broken loose.
But you don’t drive a motorcycle, do you?
Vanessa had given her that typical what-planet-are-you-from look before saying exasperatedly,
Callie, Christian Lacroix doesn’t make motorcycles. These are motorcycle
boots.)

The boots in question were now making their way down the hall. They stopped where Callie sat crumpled on the floor. She probably should have tried to run when she heard them coming, but she lacked the will to move. The velvet bows fluttered, rhinestones (diamonds?) gleamed, golden bells jingled, and black leather crinkled as Vanessa shifted on her feet.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” said Vanessa unsympathetically, digging into her oversized, black Chanel Cambon in search of her keys. “Just another proverbial notch on the old bunk bed post,” she muttered as she continued rooting through her bag. “Frankly I’m just glad it wasn’t me—”

“It’s unlocked,” Callie cut in, staring vacantly ahead.

“What? Oh,” said Vanessa, slinging her purse back up her shoulder. For some reason her boots weren’t moving. Callie could sense Vanessa’s gaze lingering on her, but she kept her eyes glued to an invisible spot on the opposite wall.

Vanessa cleared her throat, and when she spoke, her voice sounded softer. “Um . . . are you going to get up anytime soon?”

“Don’t have a definite relocation plan for the near future, no,” Callie mumbled. She had been aiming for sarcastic but had hit somewhere inside the pathetic-hopeless range instead.

Vanessa still wasn’t moving. She was quiet for a moment. “Here,” she finally said, leaning down and extending her hand.

Callie looked up and found herself staring into the face of her former friend: a shadow of the old Vanessa before she had transmogrified into her evil, backstabbing, status-obsessed alter ego. Vanessa’s fingers fluttered: a white flag ruffling in the breeze.

Callie hesitated. She took a deep breath and started to reach for Vanessa’s hand when—

Beep beep beep!

Gregory writing to say he’d made a gigantic
sex
take and was on his way back.

Or Clint writing to say he knew everything and he forgave her and was on his way over.

Or . . . Reality, which was:

Callie snapped her phone shut and pushed herself to her feet, bypassing Vanessa’s hand. Shake and make up with Vanessa? The very girl who had sold her secrets to Lexi in the first place? I don’t think so!

“This,” she said, pointing emphatically at her phone, “is all your fault.”

Vanessa’s eyes widened. “Excuse me?” she said indignantly. “You’re the one who should have known better! It’s not like
I
told him that threesomes were back in vogue or—”

“Not
Gregory
,” Callie interrupted, forcing herself to say his name even though it caused a prickling sensation in the corners of her eyes. “Lexi.”

“Lexi?” Vanessa echoed, folding her arms across her chest. “What
about
Lexi?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Callie said, taking a step forward. “The tape! She knows! Because
you
forwarded her a copy!”

Vanessa looked confused. Clearly she was a better actor than she was a dieter. “I did no such thing,” said Vanessa, drawing herself up and pretending to look indignant. “You’re delusional.”

“Oh,
I’m
delusional?” Callie repeated hotly. “
You
were the only person who knew! How else could she have possibly found out if you didn’t tell her?”

Vanessa shrugged and reached for the door. “I don’t know,” she said, stepping through the frame, “but more importantly, I don’t care.”

Liar, liar, LIAR! Callie had to fight to keep from screaming as the door shut in her face. Wheeling around, she found herself staring at C 23. The hallway wasn’t safe. She had to get out before Gregory returned with his Harem. Pressing her ear against C 24, she listened for the telltale slam of Vanessa’s bedroom door that would indicate the common room was safe to cross.

It was a shame that Callie’s upcoming exam was on the nineteenth and not the twentieth-century novel because she felt like she finally understood what Harvard alum Thomas Wolfe had meant when he wrote, “You can’t go home again.”

Clearly Wolfe must have had a diabolical roommate just like Vanessa.

“T
he exam will consist of three parts: multiple choice, short answer, and essay questions,” said the teaching fellow, who, standing in front of the blackboard of a small lecture room in Sever Hall, was leading a review session for the Nineteenth-Century Novel. Callie, who had just arrived breathless and late after delivering a certain somebody’s lunch to a certain office in a certain newspaper headquarters, slid into a wooden desk chair near the back. She hastened to pull out her spiral-bound notebook and began scribbling down everything that the English PhD student was saying.

“For the essay questions we expect that your answers will be approximately the same length and scope as a typical response paper. While it isn’t mandatory that you quote directly from all the material we’ve covered this semester, you ought to at least be able to cite detailed examples from the text.”

Callie’s pen hovered over the note she had just made to “cite detailed examples.” She swallowed. Not “mandatory” that you quote directly from
all
the material? As in, the students were expected to be able to
quote
from memory most or some of what they had read?

“Some of the other section leaders and I—it’s Mary Anne, by the way, for those of you from the Wednesday and Thursday sections—have selected several student response papers for you to refer to as examples.” She paused, picked up a large stack of papers from the oak desk in front of the blackboard, and handed them to a guy in the front row. He took one and passed them on.

As the packets made their way around the room, Callie could feel the panic rising in her chest. She’d be fine on the Austen front—after all, Janie was her homegirl—and had also reread
The House of Mirth
over Thanksgiving break (something about Lily Barth’s fall from grace into poverty and social exile really hit home). But Hawthorne? She’d barely been able to bring herself to skim
The Scarlet Letter
. And as for
Madame Bovary
, she had interpreted a tad too loosely the professor’s suggestion that if they weren’t “wholly comfortable with the original, refer to the English translation alongside
la version française,
” reading
exclusivement en anglais
and generously gifting her French copy to Mimi. Whoops.

The girl sitting one row in front of Callie on the right turned and handed her the stack of sample essays. She was petite as a pixie and yet there was something imposing about her presence: her black, stick-straight hair hit precisely at her shoulders and framed an angular face. Oversized glasses with square, masculine frames magnified her dark eyes, which lingered on Callie for a moment before she turned to face forward once more.

Seeing that everyone now had a handout, Mary Anne cleared her throat. “I think it would be fruitful to begin with an overview of the major themes, and so, Ms. Lee”—here she nodded at the girl who had just passed Callie the packet—“if you don’t mind, could you please start us off by summarizing the main points from your paper reprinted on page one?”

Callie glanced down at the sheet in front of her.

Grace Lee

The Nineteenth-Century Novel

Response Paper

Get Me to the Cemetery on Time:

Sexual Transgression as Death Sentence for the Nineteenth-Century Heroine

Grace nodded curtly and sat up even straighter—if possible—in her chair. “Certainly,” she began. “My main point of issue with the majority of novels required this semester, most notably
Daisy Miller, Madame Bovary, The House of Mirth,
and
The Mill on the Floss,
is that the only plausible solution—or dare I say ‘moral’ outcome—for a heroine who has transgressed in the eyes of society—which I define, in the Lacanian sense, as governed by a distinctly male gaze—is death. In
The Scarlet Letter
Hester’s metaphorical death in the social sphere supersedes her literal death at the end of the novel; this is, however, the one notable exception to the rule, as all the other heroines—Daisy, Emma, Lily, Maggie—suffer a literal death from their ‘crimes’ against the Victorian feminine ideal, ranging from innocent flirtation to adultery, from failure to marry in a suitable match, to failure to suppress one’s true intellectual and creative spirit.”

Callie blinked twice and stared at the back of Grace’s head. The size of it hardly hinted at all the big words, intricate analyses, and direct quotes from literary theorists inside.

“Meanwhile,” Grace continued, “what reward can the intelligent, free-spirited, and above all, chaste heroine hope to glean for her virtuous behavior? If we take our cues from Austen and Brontë, then we are forced to conclude that, in the world of the Nineteenth-Century novel, the only key to a heteronormative happily-ever-after is the institution of marriage.”

Callie’s eyes wandered down the page as Grace launched into a more in-depth analysis of examples from the text. There were footnotes—footnotes in a response paper?—detailing hard-to-pronounce names Callie had never heard. She turned the page.

Mary Anne had now opened the discussion to the rest of the students, and the guy in the front row was struggling to form a counterargument. Lee shot him down point by point, and he began to stammer, shrinking into his chair. Callie, impressed as she was, stifled a yawn. She glanced at the clock. Thirty more minutes until two o’clock, when she had to report to her thrilling part-time job at Lamont Library, which paid her a measly twelve dollars an hour to sit behind the front desk and make sure nobody made off with the Gutenberg Bible without first receiving a due-date stamp.

Callie’s stomach grumbled. When was the last time she’d had something to eat? Not lunch: she’d been too busy picking up Lexi’s; and not breakfast: that time had been used to prep for the review session; so yesterday . . . maybe? Her hands flew to her stomach as it growled angrily in protest, so loud she was certain everyone could hear. The stress of finals (not to mention blackmail) really must be getting to her, because eating was normally high on her list of priorities, right up there with certain other things that had lately, come to think of it, fallen by the wayside, like showering, getting good grades, and happiness.

She willed herself to stare at the TF—instead of obsessively reviewing the long list of things she had to do after her shift at Lamont—and ignore the feeling of dizziness that seemed to be radiating from her stomach. It was no use. Her mind drifted like the snowflakes falling gently on the brick paths outside the classroom window, gathering in banks and frosting the dark brown tree branches. The furnace rumbled—or was it her stomach? She could no longer tell—and she began to feel hot and sleepy. She yawned, overcome by a strange longing to lie in the new fallen snow, fluffy as a white down comforter, and let the fresh flakes quietly bury her.

“Ms. Andrews?” the TF was asking.

Crap.
Callie shook herself. Had she fallen asleep without realizing? Had she drooled?

“Is there a Ms. Andrews present? A Ms. Callie Andrews?” Mary Anne repeated.

“Yes?” said Callie cautiously, hands checking the corners of her mouth.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” said Mary Anne. “I was hoping you could highlight some of the themes touched on in your essay?”

“Um . . . sorry, which essay?” asked Callie.

Mary Anne smiled patiently. “The one reprinted on the last page of our handout.”

Confused, Callie thumbed through the packet. She blinked twice.

Callie Andrews

The Nineteenth-Century Novel

Response Paper

Reputation, Reputation, Reputation:

Comparing
Pride and Prejudice
to
The House of Mirth

Her paper—as an
example
? She flushed and skimmed the page, collecting her thoughts. Then she took a deep breath. “In my essay I compared Austen’s treatment of reputation in
Pride and Prejudice
to Wharton’s in
The House of Mirth
. I, uh, concluded that even though
Pride and Prejudice
was published nearly a century earlier, Austen’s take on reputation is more modern and nuanced than Wharton’s, and could even be considered relevant to today’s world, in which
reputation
sometimes seems like an antiquated, nineteenth-century concept.”

Callie finished, locking eyes with Mary Anne. She gave Callie a sly, you’re-not-done-yet sort of a smile.

Callie took another deep breath. “In
The House of Mirth
Wharton depicts reputation as something inextricably linked to status and material wealth: in essence, your good name can be bought. As her material wealth declines throughout the novel, Lily gambles in a series of bets, staking her money and her reputation. Eventually she loses, and subsequently, she dies. Without belonging to the elite upper-class sect of turn-of-the-century Manhattan and without the money it takes to fund said membership, Lily simply cannot go on.”

Mary Anne was nodding thoughtfully, and several students, including Grace Lee, had turned in their chairs to face her. Speaking faster, Callie barreled on.

“Austen, in contrast, satirizes reputation with her negative portrayal of characters like Miss Bingley, who look down on people like Elizabeth for her muddy skirts and middle-class roots.” Callie paused. “They’re snobs—according to Austen. Yet at the same time that she mocks the importance certain characters place on reputation, Austen also captures the gravity of the topic by rendering a situation where the loss of reputation can lead to a woman’s downfall—in other words, when Wickham seduces Lydia. So, while Austen implicitly criticizes the snobs who behave condescendingly to a girl simply because she is poor or without the right clothing, family background, or connections, at the same time she also suggests that all a girl like Elizabeth has as a marker of personal value—in addition to her wits—
is
her reputation. So you can see that, uh, Austen’s treatment of reputation is more nuanced than Wharton’s comparatively one-note conflation of status and material wealth. And, for me at least, it seems more modern since today there are still snobs, and sometimes all you have is your good name, and to lose it would be devastating, though it probably wouldn’t, uh, kill you.” Time to stop talking. Callie trailed off, looking down at her desk.