The Ivy (4 page)

“It’s not even that sunny today!” Callie cried. Vanessa looked cute, but as Mimi might say,
C’est ci too much!

“Callie dear,” Vanessa retorted, “the sun never sets on cool.” She paused. “So, what are you going to wear?”

“Uhm . . .” Callie stared down at her jeans and simple cotton T-shirt. “This?”

“You’re kidding. No, you’re not kidding,” Vanessa corrected herself. “Callie, you can take back a lot of things in this world, but you can never take back a first impression. Now, hurry up and change so we can leave before Lady Madonna sees us!”

Callie felt stupid following Vanessa’s advice but wondered if there wasn’t a little something to it. After all, who knows who a girl might run into at the Activities Fair?

A wave of guilt washed over her as Gregory’s face swam through her imagination. “Asshole,” she muttered quietly, hoping that if she said it every time she inadvertently pictured his face then eventually, like Pavlov’s dog, she would come to associate one with the other. “Asshole, asshole, asshole,” she breathed. Then, satisfied, she glanced at her phone.

No missed calls. Well, how on earth could she expect her mind
not
to wander when she hadn’t heard from her boyfriend in . . . one, two, and now three and a
half
days. Maybe the brothers had locked him in a dungeon. Or while cleaning a fungus-ridden toilet, he had accidentally fallen in.

W
HERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?!
, she texted as she traded her jeans for a green camouflage-print skirt. She put on lip gloss—cherry ChapStick counts, right?—gave her hair an extra brush, and returned to the common room, where Vanessa was ready and waiting.

Vanessa jumped up immediately. “Come on!” she ordered. “Mimi already snuck out without us!”

Callie hesitated, standing outside Dana’s door. “Maybe we should—”

“No time!” Vanessa interrupted, grabbing her hand and pulling her out of the room. “Let’s hit the road!”

It was Indian summer in Cambridge, and the air felt warm as they stepped outside. Harvard Yard: an architect could draw your eye to buildings that had been erected as early as the eighteenth century; a botanist might describe the majesty of the trees and tell you exactly which week the yellowy green leaves would fade into the crimson golds of fall; and an annoying Crimson Key Society tour guide could tell you all about the amusing quirks of the student body—how they run naked and screaming across the winding walkways right before their final exams, and believe that it’s vital to have sex in Widener Library and pee on the foot of the John Harvard statue before they graduate.

But that’s all wash. To the average Harvard freshman (oxymoron—ha!), every musty old brick building looks like every other musty old brick building, every tree the same as its neighbor, and every confusing pathway just another opportunity to get utterly and completely lost.

“I thought you said you knew where we were going!” Vanessa cried, halting in front of a large statue of a man with a big golden foot. Some Japanese tourists were snapping pictures and rubbing the foot for good luck. Hey, isn’t that the same foot that your annoying tour guide told you . . . Oooh, bad idea.

“Did I?” asked Callie, raising her eyebrows. It was entirely possible she had proclaimed as much without thinking.

“Excuse me, you there!” Vanessa called suddenly, and Callie’s stomach plummeted as she watched her detain a tall, handsome upperclassman.

Biting her lip, Callie tried to shrink into the ground, reminded powerfully of the month Jessica had taken “revenge” on her for spending too much time with Evan by stopping every guy that crossed their path and demanding,
Excuse me, but have you met my friend Callie Andrews? She’s a cheerleader, and she can do the splits!

“We were wondering,” Vanessa pressed on sweetly, flirting like a pro, “if you could point us in the direction of the Activities Fair? We’re only freshmen, and my friend Callie Andrews here has gotten us very, very lost.”

Callie smiled ruefully.

To her surprise the handsome stranger smiled back, breaking into an enormous grin when she met his eyes. His shaggy, light brown hair ruffled in the early autumn breeze.

“Not to worry, Callie Andrews and friend,” he said, speaking only to Callie. His voice had a slightly southern lilt: relaxed and charming, just like his smile.

“It’s Vanessa,” Vanessa said.

“Vanessa,” he repeated. “It just so happens that I’m heading there right now, and it would be my pleasure to escort you . . . both.”

Vanessa beamed and started chattering away as they began to walk. Callie kept silent, stealing a sidelong glance at their escort and noticing how when he smiled, tiny crinkles formed around the corners of his eyes.

“I was in Wigglesworth when I was a freshman, too,” he explained while Vanessa nodded eagerly. “You’re really lucky, you know,” he added, glancing over his shoulder at Callie. “They say it’s the best freshman dorm on campus.”

Callie blushed.

“You should have seen her the other day,” Vanessa said. “She was just too cute! Jumping around asking everyone if ‘Wigglesworth’ didn’t sound
just like it was straight out of
Harry Potter!”

Callie’s eyes narrowed, and she waited for the upperclassman to look at her like she was an overgrown eleven-year-old. Instead, if possible, his smile grew even wider. “I love
Harry Potter
.”

I love you, too. I mean . . . “I love it, too!” Callie cried.

“Hmm.” Vanessa shrugged. “Maybe the two of you should get together and read it sometime. . . .”

Callie froze. Keep feet planted on ground, she instructed herself.

“I’d love to . . .” the upperclassman started.

You would?

“. . . but unfortunately my girlfriend gets very jealous.”

Girlfriend? What girlfriend! Oh, Callie realized. Jealous? she wondered. Did that mean he viewed Vanessa’s proposal as a
date
rather than an unpaid baby-sitting venture or—

“Too bad.” Vanessa interrupted her thoughts. “Well, thanks for walking us over!” she added, at which point Callie realized they had arrived. Hundreds of booths and swarms of students were everywhere, and giant Welcome banners flanked the Yard.

“No problem,” he said. “I’d stay and show you two around, but they need me over at the squash booth. You should stop by later—you know, if you’re interested in signing up for the sport.” Then with a wave he was gone.

“Holy moly, what a
fox
!” Vanessa exclaimed all too audibly at his retreating back.

“Vanessa . . .” said Callie.

“And that voice! I wonder where he’s—”

“Vanessa!”

“What? He, like, totally loved you!”

“No he didn’t. He—”

“He totally wants to geek out with you and have babies named, like, Harry, Ron, and Hermione!”

“Does not!” Callie shrieked. “Hey wait—I thought you said
Harry Potter
is for kids.”

Vanessa shrugged. “I dabble. Anyway, I cannot
believe
that I forgot to ask his name. No worries, though; we’ll find him on Facebook. Until then I shall call him . . . Foxy McFoxerson.”

“You. Are. Too. Much,” Callie said, laughing in spite of herself.

“I know, right?” said Vanessa. “Now, come on,” she added, linking their arms. “Let’s go get active!”

Callie spent the next twenty minutes enjoying Vanessa’s keen “social commentary.”

At a table for the Harvard Business Club: “Those are the banker boys, and we call
those
their Crackberries!” Vanessa said, pointing out the young men in suits and their pet BlackBerries.

At the Harvard International Club, where girls dressed in colorful hijab danced to exotic Middle Eastern music: “Don’t sign up—you might as well be signing your name to the No Fly List.”

“Vanessa, isn’t that a little—”

“No, seriously, they fax the sign-up sheet straight to the CIA!”

Across the way at Women in Business, after Vanessa had grabbed a cupcake from a metallic tin on the table: “See how they’re positioned directly across from the Harvard Business Club? Yeah, this club’s not real. It’s a front for a covert dating service,” she decided, watching the girls in pink lipstick and heels recline in their lawn chairs.

Callie laughed. “Seriously,” she agreed, noting that three of them wore bikini tops. “Do you think they know the difference between the NASDAQ and a strawberry daquiri?”

“Oooh—good one,” said Vanessa.

They passed booths for Intramural/Club Teams (“High school athletes from small towns who weren’t good enough to get recruited, even by the Ivy League,” Vanessa explained), the
Harvard Lampoon
(“Imagine fifty Woody Allens together in a room!”), and the
Advocate
, a literary magazine, where emaciated men were loitering around in tiny shirts and jeans tighter than Vanessa’s J Brands. (“Give it up, Callie,” Vanessa instructed, misinterpreting her roommate’s interest in the magazine as interest in its members. “They’re much more likely to be into their own deep, existential pain—or each other.”)

Off in the distance Callie spotted Gregory standing near a table advertising the Harvard squash team, smoking a cigarette like it was the only antidote to an otherwise excruciating boredom.

Who does that? Callie wondered irritably. Serious athletes don’t smoke!

She looked around, searching, perhaps, for the coach who was letting him get away with it. Instead she found someone else: “Foxy McFoxerson,” standing right next to Gregory and smiling while he encouraged others to sign up.

They made quite a pair, and Callie took an involuntary step toward them. Vanessa grabbed her arm and started whispering fervently in her ear.

Apparently Callie wasn’t the only one interested in racket sports.

“Gregory Brentworth Bolton is the sexiest man alive,” Vanessa gushed. “Did you see him carrying his boxes the other day?
Shirtless
? Wow. I love him. I know I say that about everyone, but in this case I mean it. I seriously, seriously love him.” Vanessa blew a long sigh through pursed lips.

“He’s definitely cute,” Callie admitted, “but he seems like such an asshole.”

“Yeah . . . a
sexy
asshole.” Apparently in Vanessa’s mind this was an additional attribute. “Our dads used to work together at Goldman Sachs, but Gregory and I never actually had a chance to meet. And now he’s living next door—it’s destiny, don’t you think?”

“Uh—sure.” Callie nodded, wondering why she was suddenly feeling so irritated.

“It gets even better,” Vanessa continued, beaming with delight. “I Googled
all
of our neighbors, and it looks like Oke-Chihuahua, or however you say it, is some sort of Nigerian royalty. I couldn’t find anything on the other two, but maybe they’ll surprise us!”

Speaking of “the other two,” Callie noticed Matt standing to their left at a table decorated with a huge, impressive banner: T
HE
H
ARVARD
C
RIMSON
.

“Ick, school paper,” Vanessa muttered, but Callie was barely listening. At the table immediately adjacent, a sign—glossy black with white lettering—caught her eye: F
IFTEEN
M
INUTES
M
AGAZINE
. A large group of freshmen clustered in front of the table, overseen by a girl with alabaster skin and thick, chestnut curls. She smiled, glowing like the sun: the center of the universe as they orbited around her.

Vanessa was quick to supply some further information: “That’s Alexis Thorndike,” she whispered in a deferential tone tinged with what sounded strangely like fear. “She’s a junior, grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and is a board member of every club or organization that you could possibly imagine. She is also five feet seven inches tall, hates seafood, and refuses to sleep on anything less than five hundred thread count sheets.”

“How do you know all this?” Callie asked, whispering, too, in spite of herself.

“Facebook. Now, listen carefully: if she likes you, the doors to Harvard’s social scene will open with welcoming arms, but if you get on her bad side . . .” Vanessa’s eyes widened as if the thought were too unbearable to be spoken aloud. Callie wanted to laugh, but as she gazed at Alexis, she couldn’t help but feel strange stirrings of apprehension and awe.

“Let’s sign up,” she urged, rushing to join the line.

“What? But I hate writing—I suck at it!” Vanessa protested, trailing behind her nevertheless.

“That may be”—Callie shrugged—“but you never know until you try.” (Translation:
I’m too afraid to sign up alone
.)

“You know what?” said Vanessa, starting to nod. “This could be an excellent opportunity to meet some new people.” (Translation:
I accept you as my interim friend on the way to bigger and better things.
)

The girls exchanged a saccharine smile as they stood waiting to add their names to the list.

Ten minutes later Callie and Vanessa were following a mob of people headed toward Annenberg, their freshmen dining hall. After standing in line forever and enduring a series of awkward introductions, finally they stepped inside.

The dining hall was huge: it could easily seat over a thousand people. High ceilings and stained glass windows gave the impression that they were entering a great British-style hall. Callie recognized no one.

Vanessa excused herself and headed over to the counter where they kept the vegetarian options—her self-proclaimed “diet strategy” of the week. (“But I
do
care about the animals, too. When I was twelve my pet bunny and I were really very close.”)

Suddenly alone, Callie grabbed a tray and filled it with lumpy, colorless food. Not for the first time in the past several days, she missed her mother. Especially her cooking.

Returning to the seating area, she scanned the room, searching for Vanessa. She was surprised to see that, just like in high school, all the football guys were sitting together flinging food at one another with their forks and completely unaware that they were being imitated by the theater people seated nearby.

To her right she spied Matt with some students she assumed had also signed up for
The Harvard Crimson
. A few tables farther off, Mimi, looking miserable, sat surrounded by other internationals. Straight ahead, Callie spotted Gregory with some of the other kids who came from New York City. Several girls sat nearby, leaning over and interrupting one another to attract his attention. They must be who Vanessa had referred to as the “Jewish American Queens,” or JAQs (because Jewish American
Princesses
go to
Princeton
, Vanessa had explained). Callie stared for a moment, taking in their patterned wool skirts, matching blazers, and pearls.