The Ivy: Scandal (10 page)

“I
need a favor.”

“Yeah, what else is new?” Callie said without bothering to look up from the Ec10 problem set spread out across her desk as Vanessa slipped into her room.

“Two favors, really,” Vanessa continued. Callie heard her bed springs creak, meaning Vanessa had probably sat down. Refusing to turn around, Callie continued working, hoping that her roommate would take the hint.

“The first thing I need is for you to take a break from working and this Insider detective obsession thing, and come with me to an event. It’s literary; you’ll like it!”

“Mmm,” Callie grunted, turning to the final page in her problem set.

“And the second thing I need,” Vanessa continued, oblivious, “is for you to tell me what you think…of my new outfit.”

“Vanessa,” Callie said, throwing down her pencil, “I really don’t have time for th—”

Her mouth hung open and she stared at Vanessa. Her roommate, whose signature style involved sporting designer labels as conspicuously as she could, had morphed from New Money Manhattan Diva into Grungy Brooklyn Hipster. She wore a red-and-black-checkered flannel shirt tucked into tight black jeans ripped along the thighs and knees. A pair of black suspenders
matched the frames of her oversized hipster glasses and the fedora perched atop her head.

“What on earth are you wearing?” Callie demanded, rotating in her desk chair.

“You like?” Vanessa asked, tugging at the sleeves of her shirt.

“It’s definitely different…. But you look…cute?” Crazy, but cute.

“I know, right!” Vanessa smiled.

“Urban Outfitters?” Callie asked, naming one of Harvard Square’s staple clothing suppliers.

“Please,” said Vanessa, widening her eyes dramatically, “don’t make me talk about it.”

Callie laughed. “So what’s brought on this sudden—er—change?”

“Well,” said Vanessa, “I’ve really been getting into EPL these past few weeks….”

“Oh jeez,” Callie started. “Please do not try to tell me that just because you read Mimi’s
tabloids
about all the crazy English Premier League WAGs making their husbands get hair implants or having sex with other players on the team, you suddenly understand soccer!” Callie glanced at the photo of Gregory on her bookshelf, remembering their impromptu, thirty-second soccer scrimmage the night of Pudding elections, which, thanks to an interruption from Clint, had basically ended before it had even begun. Kind of like our entire relationship, she thought bitterly.

“Uh,
no
,” Vanessa was saying, “though I am impressed that
you’ve learned to use the acronym for Wives and Girlfriends in a sentence. I was talking about the book
Eat, Pray, Love
. Essentially, if you replace the
Praying
part with
Partying
, then the scenario becomes highly applicable to our lives.”

Here we go again, thought Callie, steeling herself for one of Vanessa’s epic speeches.

“Much like us, Julia Roberts has been through a bad breakup.”

“Isn’t the author named Elizabeth Gilbert?”

Vanessa shrugged. “Movie, book, it’s all the same these days. Anyway, Julia tries to heal the pain of her divorce with James Franco. Except it doesn’t work. You would think, as any sane woman would, that James Franco,” Vanessa continued, lifting the photo of Gregory off of the bookshelf and holding it up, “heals everything. But you would be wrong. James Franco just creates even more problems than you had when you started,” she declared, tucking the photo in between two books. “Meaning that it’s time to forget
James Franco
and start focusing on
you
, and your own personal spiritual journey to self-actualization and independence.”

Callie laughed. “Is your mom’s kabbalah instructor back from vacation or something?”

“Callie!” Vanessa admonished. “I’m being serious!” Her smile faded as she placed a hand on Callie’s shoulder. “I worry about you, you know? It seems like all you do these days is go to class, do your homework, and then spend every other waking moment obsessing about that bulletin board,” she said, tilting her head at the wall, “or obsessing about…you know, James Franco. Don’t
you think it’s time to take a break from all the conspiracy theories and do something else for a change? Something extracurricular and—well, I don’t know—fun?”

Callie sighed. “I had an extracurricular activity. It was writing, remember? But I got cut from
FM
magazine and suspended from
Crimson
COMP, so now…”

“So now
so what
?” said Vanessa. “You don’t need to be part of a paper or a magazine to keep writing! You can write anywhere, about anything, and there are plenty of other publications out there besides the
Crimson
and
FM
. Which brings me to my next favor.” Vanessa’s lips curled into a sly smile. “I need you to come to an event with me at the
Harvard Advocate
that starts in approximately fifteen minutes.”

The Harvard Advocate was one of the oldest literary magazines in the country, and boasted many famous alumni and contributors, including T.S. Eliot, Norman Mailer, e. e. cummings, Jack Kerouac, and Tom Wolfe.

Callie shook her head. “There’s no way I’m COMPing another editorial board ever again. Even if I weren’t emotionally and literally exhausted and even if the
Advocate
didn’t have an even more exclusive editorial department than the
Crimson
or
FM
, I still couldn’t do it because it’s too late: this semester’s round of COMP is nearly over! And as for next year…” Callie swallowed. I might not be here next year.

To Callie’s surprise, Vanessa grinned. “Yes, but
anyone
can submit poems or fiction or essays or whatever whenever they want! Meaning, all you’d have to do is bang out one little short story and
you’re in! Published! Wildly successful! People are fighting for your autograph in the streets! Men want to sleep with you, women want to sleep with you, and babies stop crying when you touch their tiny foreheads.”

“I don’t think writing a short story is as easy as you’re making it sound,” Callie remarked. “And I don’t have anything prepared….”

“Oh,” said Vanessa, “I didn’t mean that you should submit something today. The deadline for their spring issue submissions isn’t for another month!”

“Well, than wha—”

“Today you and I will be attending…wait for it…a poetry reading!”

“A poetry reading?”

“Yep,” chirped Vanessa, “so get your purse and let’s get going.”

Callie cast around her room, searching wildly for an excuse. She glanced down at her problem set, but she still had plenty of time to finish before the Friday due date. “I—uh—is that why you’re dressed so—”

“Can I borrow these?” Vanessa interrupted, holding up Callie’s tattered Converse.

“Um, I guess,” Callie replied, watching Vanessa pull them onto her feet. After all, if it weren’t for Vanessa and Mimi, who knows how many parties she might have attended barefooted and looking more homeless than Ke$ha or the people on HipsterOrHomeless.com.

“Come on,” said Vanessa, grabbing Callie’s hands and yanking her to her feet. “It’ll be fun! And adventurous! And if it sucks, we can leave after twenty minutes.”

“Promise?” asked Callie, finding herself in the common room. Damn you, Vanessa.

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Vanessa declared, bending over a pile of papers on the coffee table. “Now I just need to find that Admit Two Eventbrite printout,” she muttered, sifting through the mess.

“What’s that?” Callie asked, spying a page that looked like it had been torn out of the latest issue of
FM
.

“This? Oh, nothing,” Vanessa said quickly, snatching the article headed “(Harvard) Society Pages” off the table and crumpling it into a ball. “Ah, there you are!” she added, grabbing the printout for the poetry invite.

“It didn’t look like nothing,” Callie called, following Vanessa to the door.

“Trust me,” said Vanessa, turning to face her, the hand that held the article hovering over the trash. “You do not want to read this.”

“Why not?” asked Callie, planting her hands on her hips.

Vanessa sighed. “It’s a highly questionable, factually inaccurate recap of the Charity Date Auction, and I think”—she cringed—“that reading it would probably only upset you.”

“Wh—oh.” Callie frowned. “Let me guess. The
FM
editors go on and on about…
James Franco
and his undying love for Perky Boobs.”

“Among other things,” said Vanessa.

“Well then, by all means!” Callie cried, seizing the article from Vanessa and tossing it into the trash herself.

“Bravo!” Vanessa clapped her hands. “Way to take control and end the obsessing!”

Callie rolled her eyes. “To the Advocate?”

Vanessa linked arms with Callie. “Let the adventure begin!”

“The adventure” turned out to be far more painful than Callie ever could have anticipated. Eighteen minutes of sitting on folding chairs inside the reading room on the second floor of the little white house on South Street listening to fellow students share their feelings—often in rhyme—felt more like eighteen hundred hours. Callie wiggled in her seat, searching through her purse for her phone. Suppressing a curse when she remembered that it was still broken, she reached out and pinched Vanessa, who sat next to her.

“
Shh
,” Vanessa hissed, smacking Callie on the knee even though she’d been looking just as bored as Callie felt.

“But I didn’t say anything,” Callie whispered back.

Fortunately, the girl standing at the front of the room reading hadn’t heard them from where they sat all the way near the back and continued to drone on about “lonely unicorn tears.”

Nudging Vanessa, Callie pointed to the clock on the wall: nearly twenty minutes had passed.

“Just one more reader,” Vanessa pleaded softly as the student at the front said thank you and the audience of roughly thirty students began to snap.

Callie snapped her fingers as loudly and as close as possible to Vanessa’s face.

“I said just one m— Oh look, there he is!” Vanessa murmured, suddenly rapt with attention.

Callie looked. A guy whom she had never seen before was shuffling to the front of the room. His outfit, on the other hand, was highly familiar, right down to the suspenders and probably-not-prescription glasses. Callie, too shocked to say anything to Vanessa, simply stared as he stated:

“This is an erotic poem that I wrote about a complete stranger.” He cleared his throat and then pulled a crumpled napkin from his pocket.

“The world spins…so fast.

Why can’t we feel it?

All I feel is you

And me

And Me in you and yet

We drift

Away.

Like planets, in the galaxy.

No gravity.

Just gravitas.”

He let the final
s
linger as he stared around the room, seeming to lock eyes with everyone. “Thank you,” he said finally.

Vanessa snapped so furiously that it seemed like her fingers might pop off at any second.

Callie watched the boy who, tall and skinny and brunette,
might actually be cute under all that plaid, take his seat. Then, turning, she glared at Vanessa.

“You—me—outside, now,” she said, without bothering to lower her voice.

“But—” Vanessa protested. Several heads turned. Giving up, Vanessa followed Callie out into the hall.

Once the door to the reading room had swung shut, Callie folded her arms, an accusatory expression in her eyes. “Is there something you’d like to say to me?”

“Um,” said Vanessa. “Thank you for coming? It was fun?”

“No, it wasn’t!” said Callie. “But what’s even
more
annoying is the way you tricked me here with all that BS about spiritual journeys to independence and self-actualization when all you really wanted was to stalk a cute hipster boy!”

Vanessa held up her hands. “Okay. I admit that this might have had something to do with the
love
portion of our spiritual journey—”

Callie snorted. “I thought the whole idea was to be
less
boy-crazy.”

“Is is, but—well—I like him! But we don’t have anything in common! So there isn’t any other way except—what’s a non-creepy term for
stalking
?”

“Why don’t you just ask him out?”

“I can’t!” Vanessa insisted.

“Why not?”

“Because then I’d have to dress like this all the time!”

Callie started to giggle. “How did you meet this guy, anyway?”

“We haven’t exactly met, per se,” Vanessa admitted grudgingly. “But he works at Café Gato Rojo,” she explained, naming the artsy beatnik coffee house inside Harvard Yard.