The Ivy: Scandal (2 page)

6.
Make drastic changes to your physical appearance.
Wait—whoops—scratch this one. We all remember how that haircut
*
turned
out for Keri Russell’s character on college-based drama
Felicity
…. Wait, what’s that? You
don’t
remember? Oh yeah, right, cause that show—and its ratings—faded into oblivion as soon as she chopped off her hair.

My parting thoughts are these. When you’re beautiful and have it all (like Gregory and Alessandra), people will always try to kick you when you’re down. Why? Because they’re jealous. And when it comes to the most exclusive clubs on campus, haters always gone’ hate. Why? Because they’re jealous!

As expected, even though the club’s secure server was hacked and the club members’ privacy was breached, “popular” (oh, the irony) opinion on campus has cast the Insider as a champion of the non-belonging 80 percent (Occupy Final Clubs!). Sorry, Nerds, but your hero is not long for this world. While the Administrative Board has insisted on strict confidentiality regarding any suspects, there’s no doubt that a Student-Faculty Judicial Board hearing awaits the culprit, who almost certainly won’t be returning to campus next fall…or ever.

So scandal-magnets, keep your heads up and try to remember what Oscar Wilde said.

“There is only one thing in life that is worse than being talked about—

—And that is not being talked about.”

Alexis Thorndike

Interim Managing Editor @
The Harvard Crimson

The Nation’s Oldest Continuously Published Daily College Newspaper since 1873

Advice Columnist @
FM Magazine

Harvard University’s Authority on Campus Life since 1873

C
allie Andrews closed her eyes. Maybe I’m having a nightmare, she thought wildly, and in a minute I’m going to awake. My room will be clean. I’ll know who to trust. And as for the past seventy-two hours: gone—
poof!
—erased.

Her lids flew open.

Damn
.

Papers still covered every imaginable surface of her tiny bedroom in Wigglesworth dormitory. Annotated with highlights and sticky notes, they littered her twin bed and the desk beneath the window, spilling onto the small stretch of floor usually reserved for old soccer sweatshirts and dirty laundry. Various headlines confirmed the unfortunate reality of her present predicament.

But the mess wasn’t the worst of it. Matt Robinson, Callie’s first-ever friend at Harvard University, had also just raised his voice at her for the first time, ever.

“I cannot
believe
that you would even
suggest
that I had anything to do with this!” he continued, slamming the highlighter he’d been using on her desk.

“I don’t see what’s so hard to believe,” Callie replied, sounding out her words slowly like a foreigner speaking an unfamiliar tongue. “You were with me at the
Crimson
almost every day,” she stated. “You knew my log-in and my password—in fact, you practically set up my account. And it’s no secret that you hate the Final Clubs, and the Pudding, and everything that the elite campus societies stand for!”

Matt shook his head, appearing at a loss for words.

Callie held his gaze from where she’d perched on the edge of her bed, the comforter barely visible beneath the remnants of a crazed, three-day (and counting) paper chase to discover the true identity of “The Ivy Insider”: the anonymous blogger who had posted a series of critical “exposés” about the Hasty Pudding social club from the offices at the
Harvard Crimson
using Callie’s log-in name and password.

There it was in black and white, on the copies of the time-stamped log-in records that the Administrative Board had sent over that morning: “
candrews
” online during every single instance of an Insider posting. The times on the article printouts next to her knee, highlighted in pink, were a match.

Except that she hadn’t written the articles. And she had no idea who had, or how to prove her innocence in time for her Student-Faculty Judicial Board hearing in May. Unless—

Her head jerked up and she locked eyes with Matt: one, two,
three, four, and then five seconds passed before her face finally crumbled, all angry words and accusations giving way to a wail.

“I’m sorry!” she cried, burying her forehead in her hands. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” The words sounded squished through her wrists. “I wasn’t thinking. I can’t think anymore because I’m just—so—
screwed
!”

“It’s okay,” said Matt, sinking next to her. “And it’ll be okay.” Gingerly he patted her shoulder. “We’ll get this figured out.”

“Will we?” She lifted her head. “We’ve been going through this stuff for
hours
,” she said, gesturing at the papers, “and we still haven’t gotten any closer to figuring out who the Insider is or why they decided to frame me!” Swallowing, she took a deep breath. “All I’ve done so far is to accuse people, including the one—” Her voice broke. “The only person who’s been there for me from the very beginning…”

“Oh, stop,” said Matt. “You’re making me blush.” For once, though, he wasn’t blushing. In fact, he appeared utterly unruffled to be seated so close to Callie on her bed—a welcome change, as far as she was concerned, from the previous semester. These days, it seemed he had a new obsession: Grace Lee, Callie’s COMP director and the managing editor at the
Harvard Crimson
. Well, make that
former
COMP director and
former
managing editor, since, effective two days ago, the Ad Board had officially banned Callie from COMP and removed Grace indefinitely from her post at the helm of the school’s daily newspaper. The Ad Board had replaced Grace with Callie’s Number One Ivy Insider Suspect, otherwise known as:

Thorndike
¹
(
noun
)

1. The Campus Queen Bee

2. A Boyfriend Stealer
*

3. One who is renowned in the arts of blackmail, trickery, and coercion

4. Exclamatory expression usually uttered when something terrible has happened

Callie shuddered to think of the alternative: that somebody, somewhere out there, might hate her more than Lexi did. Lexi, who had taken extreme measures—including blackmailing Callie with a sex tape shot in secret by her Huge Mistake of a high school boyfriend, Evan—to keep Callie from joining
FM
magazine and dating Lexi’s ex Clint Weber. (Both endeavors had succeeded even though Callie had eventually escaped Lexi’s undue influence by preemptively exposing herself in an article written for the
Harvard Crimson
.)

“Who could possibly hate me
that
much?” Callie murmured aloud.

“What was that?” asked Matt.

“Nothing,” she muttered.

“Well, hang on a second,” said Matt. “I think you might be onto something. We need a fresh approach, right, so why not make a list of everyone who hates you!”

“Wow, sounds like fun,” said Callie.

“We’re going to need more paper,” Matt said with a mischievous smile.

“Gee, thanks a lot!” Callie called as he opened the top drawer of her desk and fished out a yellow legal pad.

“Number one,” he began, marking the page. “How about—”

“Alexis Thorndike,” she interrupted.

“This again?” Matt asked. Sighing, he handed the pen to Callie.

Under Alexis’s name Callie wrote:

She did it:

a. She hates me

b. Access to the Crimson offices

c. Wants me out of the Pudding

d. Wants to run the Crimson (?)

Taking the legal pad, Matt frowned slightly as he read. Then, grabbing the pen, he added:

She didn’t do it
:

a. Would never jeopardize the Pudding/her social status

b. Already stole back Sweater Vest (sorry…Clint)

c. Already kept you off FM magazine

d. Already compromised by blackmailing you w/ high school tape

e. Usually in the upstairs, not downstairs, offices

f. How’d she get your password?

g. Haven’t we already spent enough hours going over this already?

“Fine!” Callie snapped, looking up from the list. “We’ll move on.”

“Number two,” said Matt, scribbling a name on the pad, “Vanessa Von Vorhees.”

Callie grimaced. “I still don’t think—”

“Reasons why she did it,” Matt continued aloud as he wrote, ignoring Callie. “She might still resent you for violating her ‘man-dibs’ or whatever you kids call it these days, and ditching her on her birthday to join that stupid Pudding club without her, and stealing her diamond earrings and then blogging about how she’s the second coming of Satan on Earth—”

“Now hang on just a minute!” Callie yanked the yellow legal pad out of his hands, where so far Matt had only managed to get down “
She might still resent you
.” “I never stole her diamond earrings; she just used that as an excuse to trash my bedroom back when we were fighting, which is
why
I wrote the draft of an article about an
unnamed
‘roommate from hell’ intended purely for venting purposes
not
publication.”

“I’m not saying I blame you!” said Matt, holding up his hands. “You know she’s pretty high on the list of people that
I
—well, certainly have nothing nice to say about—”

“I know, I know.” Callie cut him off. “You two have your differences, and she and I certainly had a rough patch—okay, very rough,” she conceded at the look on Matt’s face. “But after I put my own membership on the line to get her into the Pudding, I don’t think she’s feeling left out anymore. And besides,” Callie added, thinking about the secret that only she knew, that Vanessa’s
parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, “you never know what kind of other things a person might be going through…private things that are just too painful to talk about.”

“Fair enough,” said Matt. “I mean, yeah, just think about how no one had any idea with Greg—”

“REASONS WHY SHE DIDN’T DO IT,” Callie said loudly, wanting desperately
not
to “just think about” anything having to do with
him
.

She didn’t do it:

a. No access to the Crimson

b. Why would she try to destroy the Pudding when all she wanted was to belong?