The Ivy: Secrets (8 page)

“Dana, relax, I’m not—”

“Look,” Dana cut him off. “Just look.” She seized a red pom-pom from the coffee table. “
This
is a dextroamphetamine molecule, and
this
is a monoamine transporter where it binds in your brain,” she explained, taping the red pom-pom inside a cagelike structure made of toothpicks. “
These
,” she continued, casting around and seizing a box of orange Tic Tacs, “are your neurotransmitters: dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. And
this
,” she said, shaking the Tic Tacs violently, “is how they start bouncing around in your synaptic space when the amphetamine binds and blocks the transporter. And
this
,” she whispered, eyes wide and arms raised, “is what happens when you DO DRUGS!” In one swift move she threw the entire model onto the floor and then jumped on top of it, stomping it with both her feet.

“Huh,” said Mimi. “That first part was actually fairly enlightening. I shall make a note of it in the psychostimulants section of my study guide.”

Dana froze, toothpicks crunching and colorful pom-poms sticking to her feet. “Glue!” she cried, gasping suddenly. “I need
glue
!” She grabbed her textbook and dashed across the common room. “ADAM! Do you have any—” The door slammed shut behind her.

It was quiet for a beat and then Matt said, “I’m not even going to ask. I don’t want to know. I’m going back across the hall now. It’ll be like I was never here.”

“Econ study group tomorrow,” Callie reminded him.

“Right,” said Matt, taking one final look at the room. “You would think,” he muttered, “that girls would be cleaner.” Then he was gone.

“I’m going, too—to my room,” Callie said, picking her way through the pizza boxes and stepping over OK’s legs.

“Tootles,” said Mimi.

“Tootles!” OK echoed, waving his peach-colored nails.

Shaking her head, Callie opened the door to her bedroom.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

Books had been ripped from their shelves and now littered the floor. Her dresser drawers had been thrown open and clothing overflowed the sides. What little had been hanging in her closet had also been yanked off the hangers. Stepping gingerly over her white down comforter—and noting the distinctive gray footprint of what appeared to be a high-heeled boot stomped across it—Callie approached the desk. A bottle of cherry cough syrup on her dresser had been knocked over: the sticky red liquid oozed over her COMP assignments, dangerously close to her laptop, and trickled over the side of her desk, dripping onto the floor. She grabbed her laptop and set it on her bed. Slowly she sank down next to the stack of papers—sticky with cough syrup—and surveyed the damage in shock.

It looked like she had been robbed. Her desk lamp had also been knocked over; a coffee mug she had “borrowed” from Annenberg had cracked into three pieces, and certain items appeared to be missing.

Taking inventory, she realized what it was: everything that Vanessa had given or lent her last semester: the dresses, the heels, the bags, the sweaters, the jeans—all of it was gone. She had taken her stuff back. Like after a bad breakup. Like an angry ex-wife who throws her husband’s clothing out the window singing “You Don’t Own Me” while his mistress waits terrified in the car. She had also—by the looks of it—been searching for something: her missing diamond earrings, probably, which she had most likely misplaced herself.

Callie took a deep breath and propped her elbows on her knees, letting her head fall into her hands. Clamping her lips together, she suppressed the urge to scream. It was one thing to have to deal with Vanessa in the hallway, in the common room, on her way to the bathroom, and through the wall—her endless screaming into her iPhone, her catty comments aimed at Callie’s room, the dirty looks in the dining hall and in class, her stomping, door slamming, and
her
snoring, but how dare she—how
dare she
—invade the only eight-by-ten-foot patch of space at Harvard that Callie could call her own?

Exhaling, Callie caught sight of a tattered green book cover poking out from under her bed.

That had better not be what I think it is, she thought, bending over to pick it up with a sinking feeling. It was exactly what she thought it was: her copy of
Pride and Prejudice
, now cracked at the spine and split in two. Several loose, yellowed pages fluttered to the floor. Carefully Callie held the two pieces of the book up in front of her. More pages tore free and dangled from the spine. Not even duct tape—which had come to the rescue of Callie’s Converses on more than one occasion—had a prayer of fixing it. The book was destroyed.

Callie placed the remains of the book gently on her bookshelf. Then, propping a pillow against the headboard of her tiny twin, she flipped open her laptop and placed it on her knees. She glanced down at her COMP assignments, which were sticking to her sheets, her eyes falling across a particular item on Lexi’s latest “Suggested Topics” sheet, “Issues in the Bedroom: What are some of the most common roommate problems that first-year students face?” Callie stared at her screen for a moment. Then she began to type.

Callie Andrews

COMP ASSIGNMENT

The Roommate from Hell

In the olden days monsters could be found in a variety of reliable places: in a cemetery, on the moors, the fens, or in a black lagoon. Today the modern-day monster also hails from a very specific location: a tiny island, population ∼1.6 million, known to many as Manhattan. She slinks undetected through her overpriced private school system (where she learns little other than which bags cost the most and how to buy friends and influence people) and somehow bribes her way—no doubt with Daddy’s money—into the top university in the country, where she is allowed to live inside the dorms disguised as any other teenage girl.

Oh, but there are signs. Is your roommate really a monster in disguise? Ask yourself the following ten questions:

1. Does she hail from Manhattan? Is it a Park Avenue address, or somewhere else on the Upper East Side? Does her name have some inexplicable Dutch-sounding nonsense or roman numeral suffix or prefix: Van, Von, Jr., the III, the IV, the V?

2. Could she survive a month without wearing the same shoes twice?

3. Does she lose her diamonds as casually as you sometimes misplace your socks?

4. Does she have crazy eating habits: starving herself during the day and eating everything in sight at night—only to purge it later?

5. Is she a slob, content to live in her own filth and blame it on those around her?

6. Does she carry a rope ladder and climb it in social situations? And a knife with which to stab you in the back?

7. Does she sometimes speak in a pitch so high that only dogs can hear—particularly when screaming into her iPhone?

8. Does she lie to your face? Is she more two-faced than Two-Face?

9. Is she single because she can’t even manage to find any real girlfriends, let alone a boyfriend?

10.Does she own any articles of clothing that say P
RINCESS
or J
UICY
? How about S
POILED
B
RAT
or M
ONEY
C
AN’T
B
UY
G
OOD
T
ASTE
?

I’m afraid if you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have a monster roommate situation on your hands. Do not panic, for you are not alone. After all, I wrote the book (so to speak), because the girl who inspired the criteria above is not just
The
Roommate from Hell. She’s
my
roommate from hell.

Callie stopped writing abruptly and stared at the page in front of her, breathing heavily.

It was by far the most toxic thing she had ever written, and yet it had been wholly necessary, for the act of writing had been the equivalent of sucking the venom from her veins. Better to spit the poison out onto a Microsoft Word document that would never see the light of day than let it rot her from the inside. Or worse, explode at a random moment and infect those around her or drive her to say something to Vanessa that could never ever be unsaid—though lord knows she deserved it.

And so, thus purged in her own way, Callie saved the piece to the COMP Drafts folder on her desktop: a computer file locked in a vault; another one of her dirty little secrets.

T
ap tap tap tappity-tap-tap-tap, tap tap tap tappity-tap-tap-tap
a pencil eraser rapped rapidly on a desk.

Clack-clack-clackity-clack
typed thousands of keys on hundreds of keyboards as fingers flew, scrambling to finish final papers.

Whirrrr . . . whirr . . . beep, beep, beep
went the communal printers as they groaned under the strain, spitting out study guides as fast as they could go.

Gnash, gnash, gnash, bubble, bubble, POP! Gnash, gnash, gnash, bubble, bubble, POP!
jaws clicked and teeth gnashed nervously as gum expanded into bubbles and then exploded.

Ring, riiing, riiiiiing—oh shit, sorry. Du-du-du-du-DU-du-du-du-DU-DU-DU-du—SORRY, sorry. From the wiiiiinddoooow, to the WALLL, ’till sweat drips down my—FRACK, sorry—get low, get low—where is it?—get low, get low—found it! Sorry.

BE QUIET.

This is a
library
.

We’re trying to study.

QUIET, PLEASE.

Badabing!

Gchat from Mimi Clément:

Mimi: What kind of underwear are you wearing?

Callie: Go away, I’m studying.
Badabing!

Badabing!
Mimi: MANDATORY discussion group for our Justice final paper topics, remember? 2
nd
-floor balcony
allons-y maintenant
! Greggers and OkeeDokee = already there.

Callie: Vanessa?
Badabing!

Badabing!
Mimi: She is in the group. Too late to kick her out.

Callie: Ugghhh.
Badabing!

Badabing!
Mimi: You made your bed. Now if you want to lie in it, you have to unmake it.

Callie: That makes no sense!
Badabing!

Badabing!
Mimi: It makes perfect sense!

Callie: Ha. You’ve lost it.
Hoot-hoot. Badabing!

Badabing!
Mimi: Stop stalling.
Nous sommes EN RETARD.

Callie shut the lid of her laptop—which was situated directly across from Mimi’s laptop, behind which Mimi was seated at an oak table on the first floor in the main reading room of Lamont Library.

The Justice paper topics discussion group was, unfortunately, like group members Bolton and Von Vorhees, entirely unavoidable. “Fine,” Callie spat, glaring at Mimi. “Let’s go.”

Together, they mounted the stairs to the second-floor balcony: an area reserved for group projects since talking—quietly—was permitted. Like a box seat at the opera, it also afforded an excellent view of the entire main reading room below.

True to Mimi’s word, most of the other inhabitants of Wigglesworth Entryway C, second floor, were already there. Dana and Adam sat off to one side, sharing a single study carrel, heads bent together, whispering furiously. Matt, Gregory, and OK were all in a row, crowded around one side of a small rectangular table. Matt hunched over his textbook, his left knee bouncing up and down, keeping time with his pencil, gnawed so thin it could snap at any moment. Callie took the chair opposite him. He sighed as his glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them back up. A moment later they slid down again.

Deliberately avoiding eye contact with Gregory, Callie looked down the table at OK while Mimi sat across from him. He seemed calm—entirely
too
calm in fact, almost as if he’d been dipping into Mimi’s little orange prescription bottle and the medication was working as pharmacists had originally intended because—it dawned on Callie—OK might actually have ADHD. He made a mark on the legal pad next to him, looking for all the world like taking notes was something he really did do on a daily basis.

“OK,” said Callie, “that textbook looks like you bought it yesterday.”

“Correction,” he retorted without looking up, “I
opened
it yesterday. Pretty interesting stuff!”

“Sorry it took me so long,” a voice said from over Callie’s shoulder. There was a loud thunk as Vanessa set five sugar-free Red Bulls on the table next to an enormous Halloween-size bag of mini-Snickers. “Fuel,” she explained, sitting. “There’s one can for each of my friends . . . and you, Matt.”

“Thanks,” said Callie, popping open a can before Vanessa could protest and downing it in one gulp. Yeccch—the taste was worse than stale grape medicine.

“That wasn’t for you,” Vanessa hissed at Callie. “I
said
there were only enough for my
friends
—”

“She can have mine,” Gregory cut her off without looking up from his computer screen.

Vanessa snorted, taking an indignant, ladylike sip of her drink. Callie turned, intending to say that a sugar-free Red Bull was the
least
Vanessa could do given the A-bomb she’d dropped on Callie’s bedroom, but when she really looked at Vanessa, she completely lost her train of thought. Vanessa appeared even messier—if possible—than the disaster Callie had spent half of the other day cleaning.

After Vanessa had spent months waking up an hour before class to secure every strawberry-blond strand with curlers and mousses and flat irons and god knows what else, her hair had finally defeated her. She had piled it atop her head in a greasy mess. Her skin was breaking out, or perhaps it had always been that way and today she hadn’t had time to apply all seven layers of her mineral-based makeup. And if her clothing could be read as a barometer for her nerves, the stress was clearly maxing out at unheard of levels. Vanessa had donned her sweats that said J
UICY
across the rear and—horror of all horrors—a hooded sweatshirt: two items that had once been declared “illegal outside of the common room” unless one wanted to look, according to Vanessa, like a sloppy eighth grader auditioning for
The Real Housewives of Shady Hills Rehabilitation Center
.

“So . . .” said Mimi, glancing from Vanessa to Callie, “Justice paper topics? Anyone?”

“Remind me what the choices are again?” asked Callie.

“‘Is torture ever justified?’” Matt read off a list.

“No,” said Callie at the same time that Vanessa said, “Yes.”

“Of course
you
would think that it’s okay to violate a basic human right,” said Callie, “kind of like the right to
privacy
, or
property
—”

“Actually,” Matt began, “the Founding Fathers changed Locke’s right to property to the pursuit of happiness in the second paragraph of the Decl—”

“Excuse me if I don’t see anything wrong with electroshocking a known terrorist every once in a while when it could save the lives of
millions
,” Vanessa cut in, “because he has information about an imminent attack!”

Gregory looked up, his frown morphing into a smirk. “Do you think they’re going to fight?” he murmured, nudging Matt.

“This is good, no?” Mimi interjected. “This is what we are supposed to be doing—discussing the arguments for and against . . . Next topic?” She looked pointedly at Matt.

“Affirmative action,” Matt read. “‘Is it true that you can’t really claim credit for your upbringing?’”

Vanessa shrugged. “Some people are just born—”

“Born
what
?” Callie interrupted. “Better? Just because they have more money or more diamond earrings to lose—”

“I was going to say ‘born with more privileges,’” Vanessa snapped. “But yes, some people
are
better—better friends, for example, or—”

“I think what Vanessa is trying to say,” Gregory cut in smoothly, “is that it matters less what advantages you were born with and more what you do with them later.”

“You’re arguing in favor of a meritocratic approach?” asked Matt, incredulous. “But what about Rawls’ veil of ignorance and his claim that things like talent and intelligence are just as much accidents of birth as race or socioeconomic status?”

“I was actually thinking more along the lines of an Aristotelian argument: that people are better suited to places in society based on their specific talents. Or I could take a Kantian stance that—”

Gregory was silenced by a collective groan. Callie yawned. “I yawn”—yawn—“every time”—stretch—“I even
think
about”—she yawned again—“metaphysics.”

Gregory smiled.

Callie shook herself and stared back down at her computer.

“Can’t . . . Kant.” said Matt, laughing. “Get it?”

Mimi looked at him blankly. “
Can’t, Kant,
” he repeated, his laughter turning silent and slightly hysterical.

“Oh, we get it,” said Vanessa. “It just isn’t funny.”

“You’re funny. Funny-
looking
,” Matt muttered, cracking up all over again.

“How old are you, twelve?” Vanessa shot back, her hands nonetheless flying to her hair.

“Sorry,” Matt muttered, pulling himself together. “So, uh, when confronted with this question about the accident of birth—”

“The answer,” OK interrupted, “is one egg, one sperm, and one broken condom.”

Matt dissolved, once more, into giggles.

“Speaking of Kant,” said Mimi, ignoring Matt and OK and addressing Gregory, “there is another paper topic that seems to pit him against Aristotle: ‘Is there a difference between what is right and what is good? Is it ever wrong to tell the truth?’”

“Well,” said Gregory, “Aristotle’s notion of ethics strikes me as a fundamentally practical one—”

“Practical ethics,” Matt interrupted. “Practical ethics, practical ethics, ethical practices . . . Have you guys ever noticed that if you say a word over and over again it loses its meaning?”

Callie stared. “Uh, when was the last time you slept?”

“Day before yesterday,” Dana called from her study carrel, snapping to attention.

“Shh . . . ” Adam cooed, massaging her back.

Dana picked up her book and resumed her frenetic muttering.

Mimi sighed. “You were saying?” she prompted Gregory. “Kant and Aristotle’s central tenets of ethics?”

Gregory nodded. “While Kant believed in a categorical imperative that dictates it is
always
wrong to lie, Aristotle’s ethics fundamentally involved finding a way to tell the truth about what is just”—he paused, looking at Callie—“and what is beautiful.”

Callie felt the heat rising in her cheeks.

“I can’t do it!” Dana burst out suddenly, throwing her head down on the desk.

“Yes you can,” Adam reassured her.

“But I have an exam.” She moaned.

“Not until late next week,” he reminded her, taking her hands. “Now breathe: in and out . . . in . . . and out . . . ”

Gregory cleared his throat. “Kant believed in always doing what is best,” he continued, “but for Artistole—”