Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  “I don’t feel sorry for you.” Nikos was heartbreakingly handsome, and worse, he knew it; Cady couldn’t let him fish for compliments and win. “You’re not completely disappointing in person, and my name is annoying, too. People always think it’s Katie. Sometimes I think only my closest friends and family know my real name.”

  “You should go by Cadence.”

  She took a sip of her soda. “Maybe someday.”

  “No, I’m serious. Cady is cute, but it’s for a little girl. And look at you.” His gaze was steady and assured. “You’re all grown up, Cadence.”

  They held eye contact for a beat longer, until the frisson made them both look away, pleasurably embarrassed. Nikos spoke first.

  “For now, I think you need to put this Facebook stuff out of your mind, focus on your own agenda. It’s Sunday night, you must have work.”

  Cady groaned. Tomorrow was Monday—the mere thought brought her down to earth. “I have a paper due Tuesday. I haven’t even chosen a topic. I am so screwed.”

  “Tell you what, I’ve a pile of problem sets to grade for the math class I teach, they’re up in my room. I’ll get my things together, you finish your strange little supper, and I’ll meet you back here. We can work together in the dining hall till they force us to relocate. Sound good?”

  Cady agreed, and he left her alone. The dining hall had almost emptied out by now, the few who remained were just hanging out. Her stomach growled. She lifted the top bun of her veggie burger, which, she had to admit, didn’t look so appealing now that it was cold. She replaced the bun, and her eyes traveled to the peanut butter and chocolate thing that lay untouched. She picked it up, and, with a last glance of skepticism, took a bite.

  Pardon me, but you’re eating my black and tan.

  24

  Cady quickly swallowed and put it back it in its exact former position on the plate, like a thief restoring the objects of a victim’s home.

  Well, goodness, it’s yours now. I don’t want it after your mouth touched it. It’s contaminated.

  She recognized that tone—a mixture of childishness and superiority—Robert.

  The black and tan is my own culinary invention. I make one every day. I would’ve made one for you if you’d only asked nicely.

  You made me make this?—the realization sent a chill down Cady’s spine. While her mind was elsewhere, his consciousness had reigned over hers.

  So? What do you think?

  Robert’s casual question broke through the spiraling anxiety. She took a bite. It wasn’t bad.

  “Are you done?” A woman dressed in the gray and black Dining Services uniform appeared at Cady’s left shoulder.

  ‘Are you finished.’ Robert corrected.

  Thankfully, the woman didn’t hear his reply, nor did she wait for Cady’s, “If not, keep the plates, but we’re trying to get the trays up and cleaned.”

  “I’m finished, but I’ll take it, I don’t mind.” Cady pushed her chair back from the table and asked where to bring it, and the woman pointed her in the right direction.

  You could have let her take it, Robert said, as she walked across the room.

  That’s not her job.

  Where are the waiters?

  It’s a dining hall, not a restaurant.

  Don’t be silly, all of the dining halls have formal wait staff. Robert sounded genuinely confused.

  Cady slid the tray into a vertical conveyor marked by a goofy, handmade sign that read “The Tray-o-later” and imagined a more elegant past.

  She was walking back to the table when Robert added, I overheard you talking about your brother, Eric.

  She instantly perked up—Did you know him? Did you ever speak to him?

  I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him. Is he my year?

  Cady sank back into her chair. —No. He’s dead.

  Oh, dear. I’m sorry. How’s your mother?

  How do you think? What makes you ask that?

  I had a baby brother who died. He was only an infant, I myself was barely ambulatory, so I wouldn’t presume to know your pain. But my brother’s death changed my mother, and thus changed me. She kept me in a protective cocoon, utterly sheltered. So when I left my cosseted existence for boys’ camp at fourteen, she might as well have thrown me to the wolves.

  She wanted to listen to him, but she had to be smarter about covering for these episodes in public spaces. Cady pulled a book from her bag and laid it open on the table. At least it would look as if she was doing something sane. She wondered how much time she had before Nikos got back.

  Although many things came easily to me as a child, relating to boys my age was never my forte. I couldn’t help it, I related better to adults. I was always a teacher’s pet.

  The same was certainly true of Eric, Cady thought.

  “Cutie” was the mildest name they called me. I was regularly roughed up. I never retaliated. Firstly, violence is against my personal ethos, and secondly, I calculated that most physical confrontations, I’d lose—I wasn’t so tall as I am today. So I ignored them and hoped they’d get bored and leave me alone.

  Cady kept her eyes lowered to the pages of her open book, but she was listening intently.

  I was precocious, but naive. I learned the facts of life from some fascinating reading material a counselor had—lad mags. Accustomed to my curiosity being rewarded, I wrote about it in a letter home. My mother called the camp director, who in turn instigated a campuswide crackdown on pornography, and I was branded a traitor.

  I was asleep in my bunk when some boys shook me awake and dragged me outside my cabin. One pulled my shirt up over my head so I couldn’t see a thing, and they marched me, stumbling, through the woods at midnight. We finally stopped and they shoved me down. As soon as my hands and knees touched the frozen floor, I knew where we were. The icehouse.

  She felt the chill in her teeth as Robert continued.

  I was stripped naked. The ringleader was holding a pail of something, I feared it was water, but that was wishful thinking. It was green paint. Two boys held my arms back so I couldn’t cover myself. Then a sucker punch to the gut to make me double over, and they threw paint on my …

  His voice trailed off, but he didn’t need to say it—the hot flush of embarrassment Cady felt on her cheeks told her exactly how he was humiliated.

  They said it was to find the other boys ‘like me.’ And then they left me there, naked, locked in from the outside. I spent all night in that icehouse.

  That’s horrible.

  I suppose my bunkmate told them. He was probably my only friend, and he was the only one who knew about my letter.

  He betrayed you.

  Or he simply let it slip. There are such things as unintended consequences. But it did change me. And it taught me a valuable lesson:

  It takes only an error to father a sin.

  Cady got goosebumps. She had heard those words before … at the whispering wall outside Sever. So that had been Robert speaking to her, not Nikos.

  A stack of papers slapped down on the table in front of Cady, making her jump.

  “Two sections, totaling thirty-three students, each with a four page problem set, equals one hundred thirty-two pages for me to grade by tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. Can I do it?” Nikos collapsed into the chair across from her, lolling his head back and his arms out to each side in a gesture of utter helplessness.

  Cady tried to push Robert’s story out of her mind. “Sounds tough.”

  “It’s not for me. This is Math Xa, it’s kid stuff.”

  “I thought all the teaching assistants were grad students.”

  “They are, usually. But occasionally professors employ advanced undergrads, especially for subjects like maths.”

  “But aren’t you a physics major?”

  “Physics ‘concentrator’
in Harvard-speak. Like ‘teaching fellow,’ hence TF. If we aren’t needlessly different, how would people know we’re so elite?” He uncapped a red pen with glee.

  “Before you get started.” Robert had given Cady an idea. “I was thinking more about Eric. What about his academic rivals? He must have had them. If he was going out for the Bauer Award.”

  “He didn’t end up submitting.”

  “Yeah, but no one could’ve predicted that. And Prokop, this hotshot professor, picks him as her advisee.” Robert’s story echoed in her mind. “Eric was a teacher’s pet, people don’t like that, they get jealous. So maybe that’s a lead on who did this. Who does Prokop advise now?”

  “Me.” Nikos chuckled.

  “Oh.” Cady blushed. “I didn’t realize.”

  “My Bauer project required experimental research this summer, Prokop was the best suited to the material, so I switched. But I know I’d have Eric’s blessing. He and I always made each other better.”

  “No, I know, of course. But someone who wasn’t his friend, someone who might have resented him, can you think of anyone like that?”

  Nikos puffed out his cheeks and blew out a sigh. “No one in particular comes to mind. The Physics department isn’t as crass about its competitiveness as say, the Maths department, those animals actually tear up each other’s notes, but there is a hierarchy in Physics. I wouldn’t say Eric was top dog, but he was a darling of the department.”

  “Was he Prokop’s darling?”

  “She chose him to advise out of many, she’s in demand, like you said, so she certainly believed in him.”

  Cady took a shaky sip of her water, unsure of how much to share. “I went to one of her lectures to talk to her about Eric. She said she felt really bad when she had to dismiss Eric as her assistant. But then I talked to Matt, his roommate, and he told me that Eric called her ‘Mika,’ that they spent a ton of time together, and, get this—that she didn’t fire him, he quit.” Cady waited for a shocked reaction, but Nikos’s affect remained flat, so she pushed on. “And when he quit, Prokop showed up at their room begging him to talk to her.” Still nothing. “C’mon, how often do professors make house calls?”

  Nikos shrugged. “She was likely disappointed he was quitting his project for the Bauer, as I was. And as for the ‘Mika’ thing, a lot of people refer to professors by their first names in conversation, it’s a form of posturing to seem like you’re on their level. You don’t say ‘Professor Lemke is advising me,’ instead you say, ‘Peter and I are working on …” It doesn’t necessarily mean much.”

  “But how do you explain her lying about firing him?”

  “Isn’t it more likely that Eric was lying about quitting?” Nikos said gently. “She was advising him on the Bauer, after he refused to submit, it didn’t make sense for her to keep him on as a research assistant. “

  It was the same conclusion Cady had first come to, and it sounded even more sensible coming from Nikos, but she couldn’t deny that in her gut, she believed Matt. “But what if there was another reason Prokop would want to keep Eric around?”

  “Like what?”

  Cady leaned over the table. “Matt thought Eric had a crush on Prokop. Is it possible that, maybe, she reciprocated those feelings?”

  Nikos leaned in to meet her. “Like an affair?”

  Cady raised her eyebrows.

  A great guffaw burst from Nikos as his body rocked back in the chair. “Unless Prokop has a fetish for awkward gingers, I don’t think your brother was getting a piece of the faculty’s Hitchcock blonde. Nabbing a professor, especially one like that, calls for some serious finesse, a pro. Eric was brilliant, but he was not a pro.” Nikos laughed again, this time drawing the attention of a few people sitting nearby.

  Cady sat back, peeved. “I think it’s in the realm of the possible. And something like that might’ve made someone jealous of Eric. But I don’t know, you were his friend, you probably have a better sense.”

  “Honestly, I can’t see it. Bedding Prokop would’ve been the greatest coup since Napoleon. If Eric had pulled that off, he would’ve told me. The bragging rights would be irresistible.”

  Cady frowned. Eric had never been one to brag. “Okay, so maybe not an affair. But something went south between them. Something personal.” She sat back in thought. “Matt made it sound like Eric cared more about Prokop’s research than anything he was working on for his Bauer submission. If she’s your adviser now, that research assistant job must be yours too, right? What’s she working on?”

  “No, actually, I’m her advisee but not her assistant. She can help me with my research, but I’m not allowed work on hers, because I’m a ‘foreign national.’ Is America great again yet? I’ve been meaning to ask.”

  “Are you being serious?”

  “Yes, her current research is restricted. It’s funded by the U.S. government, and the federal grant stipulates that no ‘foreign nationals’ can participate. Last time I checked, Britain was an ally, but it’d be politically incorrect to say what they mean, which is, ‘No Arabs, No Chinese,’ so they discriminate against all of us equally.”

  “They’re afraid of what—spies?”

  “I’m a bit short to play James Bond, but I have the accent, and I can wear the shit out of a tuxedo.”

  “So her work is top secret.”

  “Well no, it’s not that exciting. This is still a university. So, generally speaking, I know that she’s refining the method of using wave particles to scan freight for uranium or nuclear material. She’s been researching related topics in particle physics for the last decade, she’s preeminent in the field, it’s no secret. But the specific technology that she’s developing is proprietary, so the details are classified. That way some other country or company can’t swoop in and piggy back on all the research, that’s the expensive part.”

  Cady’s thoughts swarmed like bees around this new information. Eric had been working on restricted government research with Prokop—it sounded like the beginning of one of Eric’s paranoid theories. Cady could imagine how such a scenario might’ve exacerbated Eric’s paranoia, made him even more difficult to work with, maybe that necessitated Prokop firing him. Or what if he broke one of the rules, compromised the research somehow? Maybe that’s why Prokop cared enough to come to his room, maybe she lied about firing him to cover her own liability. But one question remained: why would Prokop want a paranoid schizophrenic working on sensitive material in the first place?

  “But I would like to amend one of my previous statements,” Nikos broke through her thoughts. “I can think of one person who might have had knives out for him, I forgot her because she’s a joint-concentrator in Physics and Comp Sci. Her name is Lee Jennings. I believe she did submit for the Bauer competition, although I doubt she stands a chance.”

  “Comp Sci—computer science?”

  “That’s right. For someone like her, I’m sure hacking Facebook is child’s play.”

  “Oh my God, it has to be her. Should we go to the Ad Board?” One minute ago she hadn’t had any idea who Lee Jennings was, now she wanted this person who hurt her brother punished.

  “And say what? You suspect she created a false Facebook account?”

  “She was harassing a mentally ill student at his most fragile time. Hacking his social media could have exacerbated his paranoia and his depression. We still don’t know what exactly pushed him over the edge. It takes only an error to father a sin.”

  “Is that a Chinese proverb or something?” He chuckled. “Look, I hear you. If it was her, and we don’t know for sure, but if it was, she should be ashamed of herself. But Cadence, she’s a petty loser, a nobody. She’ll get hers when I destroy her in the Bauer competition.”

  “How do you spell her name?” Cady had her phone out, already looking her up on Facebook. “Never mind, got it. Ugh, her profile picture is private.” Cady navi
gated around what little wasn’t blocked by the privacy settings. But she was tagged in one group affiliation. “She’s in ROTC for the Navy?”

  “Perhaps, yes, I’ve seen her around campus in fatigues. I thought she was just butch.”

  ROTC for all of the branches remained a very small group on Harvard’s campus, Cady only knew two people in her Freshman class who were members, and they were both men. In her mind, it only added to Lee’s strange, threatening mystique. She navigated to the NROTC group page and looked through their pictures. Lee was easy to spot as one of the few women. Seeing her in uniform triggered Cady’s memory. “Oh my God, I think I know this girl. She’s in my French class.”

  “Perfect, next time you see her, you can shout J’accuse!”

  “Don’t joke.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m only trying to make you laugh.”

  Cady opened another Safari window on her iPhone and looked up Lee’s room in Harvard’s student directory. “She lives in Kirkland N-42. Where’s that?”

  “It’s part of the Kirkland annex, but Cadence, why are you looking up her room? You’re not seriously thinking of going over there.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s mad! You don’t know if she had anything to do with it.”

  “So, I’ll ask her.” Cady bristled at his judgmental tone.

  “You said yourself you have French class with the girl, so sleep on it, let yourself cool off a bit. And really think if this quest for revenge is worth your time. You can’t go backward. Eric wouldn’t have wanted you to spend your freshman year fighting small battles for him.”

  “You don’t know what he would’ve wanted.”