The Ivy

by Lauren Kunze

  Ohhh right, Callie recalled, picturing the “Housing Assignment” e-mail she’d received over the summer listing the names and hometowns of her future roommates: Dana Gray from Goose Creek, South Carolina; Vanessa Von Vorhees from Manhattan, New York; and Marine Aurélie Clément, from a town in France whose name Callie could neither remember nor pronounce.

  “I see you have already met Gregory,” Mimi continued, smiling indulgently. “He is such an asshole, no?”

  “Watch it, french fry,” he retorted easily, “or my last cigarette’s going down the gutter.”

  “You would not dare!” Mimi gasped, hands flying to her cheeks in mock horror.

  Meanwhile Callie hovered over her boxes while her brain’s internal iPod Shuffle (Playlist: The Soundtrack of My Life) selected a song by The Clash: “Should I stay or should I go?”

  “Care to join us?” Mimi asked sincerely, or with an excellent imitation of sincerity.

  Callie stole a look at Gregory, but he ignored her.

  “No thanks,” she said, and then, as if her mother, longtime attorney-at-law for the California Public Health Department, were watching her, she added, “I don’t smoke.”

  Mimi shrugged and Gregory turned without so much as a sarcastic remark or even a glance in her direction, leaving Callie to wonder which unfamiliar sensation she liked the least: being embarrassed or being ignored.

  Frowning, she waited until they had disappeared down the stairs before bending over to drag her boxes along the floor. She lugged them across the hallway and came to an abrupt halt in front of room C 24. A metal drop box and a whiteboard with four names on it were bolted to the battered brown door: DANA, CALLIE, MARINE, & VANESSA.

  She stared at the names for a second, trying to conjure images of their owners. . . . There was Dana, the heavy metal goth rocker and terror of Goose Creek; Vanessa, the prim, bookish type who sometimes slept in the New York Public Library; and Mimi . . . well, clearly she was a Russian spy pretending to be a supermodel.

  Smiling a little, Callie breathed in, and then flung open the front door.

  “Hell-o-o! Anybody home . . . ?” she called.

  No response. Instead she was greeted by a tangled mess of furniture, half-empty boxes, and suitcases. Two of the suitcases were unremarkable and black, but they stood out amid a sea of luggage splashed with the label LOUIS VUITTON, which may as well have screamed “too much money” or “too much bad taste.” In the corner of the room under the windowsill sat three enormous, Old World European–style trunks covered with colorful labels.

  There was a tearing sound as the bottom of the INTIMATES box caught on something and split open: once again her underwear spilled out onto the floor.

  “Oops,” Callie muttered, laughing as she stared hopelessly at the ground. “Note to self: buy better boxes.” She paused. “Also: look into purchasing some sexier underwear. . . .”

  “Excuse me?” a severe-sounding voice demanded from behind her.

  “Ohmygosh—I’m so sorry—I had no idea somebody else was home!” Callie shrieked, wheeling around. A short, squat girl with slicked-back, plaited brown hair emerged from one of the bedrooms.

  “Neither did I,” the girl said stiffly, wrinkling her nose as she surveyed the mess. A formless figure was concealed beneath a conservative white blouse—buttoned to the neck—and a black, ankle-length woolen skirt, under which Callie detected pantyhose of the ancient dinosaur variety. The room behind her was meticulously clean, empty of any decor save for an enormous, wooden cross hanging on the wall above the bed. Squinting, Callie could make out the bold lettering on the sticker on the girl’s laptop: CHASTE FOR CHRIST: PREMARITAL SEX IS A SIN.

  “Greetings,” the girl said. “I am Dana Gray. You must be the one from California. Callie. Callie from California. My parents told me they might look like you. The ones from California, I mean,” she finished, eying Callie’s bare knees and arms. “I was wondering: do you come from the north or the south?”

  “South . . .” replied Callie, wondering wildly for a moment if Dana Gray from Goose Creek, South Carolina, knew that Dixieland was dead.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “Father told me that Southern California is the political salvation of the West, even though Hollywood is a cesspool of sin. Northern California is worse, though. There’s this place called Berkeley and it’s full of dirty . . .”

  “. . . hippies?” Callie asked, trying not to smile.

  “Yes! Hippies,” Dana said. “Dendrophiliacs,” she added in a whisper.

  There was an awkward pause, and then, just as Callie was about to ask Dana what she liked to do for fun down in Goose Creek, the front door burst open and in pranced roommate number three, who, by the process of elimination, could be none other than Vanessa Von Vorhees.

  Stilettos high enough to strike fear in the heart of a pigeon clicked rapidly across the floor, no doubt designed to make their owner’s legs look thin enough for her skin-tight “skinny” jeans. It wasn’t really working.

  But if her hips were a little generous, they were nothing compared to her chest, which looked even more buxom due to the word Juicy emblazoned across it in pink rhinestone lettering. Her long, strawberry blond curls bounced as she walked. In one hand she clutched the purse that matched her LV luggage; in the other, an iPhone that looked like an unfortunate superglue accident had left it permanently attached to her ear.

  “Oh my god, like, I know, right—wait—seriously? No—he didn’t!—wait, shut up—no, wait, seriously, shut—up!” she cried.

  Callie stole a glance at Dana, whose mouth had silently formed the word Juicy and then apparently gotten stuck.

  Paying them no heed, roommate number three flung open the door to her bedroom—nearly blinding them with a nauseating flash of pink, PINK, PINK!—and then bounded inside, chattering all the while: “You bitch! No, seriously, you are such a dirty whore! Oh, shut up, you know I love you. . . .” Slam went the door, the huge Marilyn Monroe poster on the back of it rattling ominously.

  Dana stood stock-still for a moment: eyes bulging and mouth opening and closing like a hungry goldfish. She experimented with making a smile, failed, and then also retreated to her room.

  Callie was wondering if she should knock and introduce herself so that she too could one day hope to earn an endearing nickname like “you bitch” or “dirty whore” when suddenly the girl popped her head back into the common room, one hand covering the mouthpiece of her phone.

  “Hi, sorry! I completely forgot to introduce myself. I’m Vanessa Von Vorhees, from New York. I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m in the middle of like, a super important phone call. You understand.”

  “Uhm, of course, I’m Ca—”

  Slam.

  Strangely the closed door had little impact on the noise level of Vanessa’s conversation.

  “. . . living with a pack of . . . yeah, no, of course not, ha-ha . . . The competition? Yeah, it’s looking pretty slim. . . . No, not totally hopeless. The non–Jesus freak is super blond and pretty hot, actually, but, uhm, can you say, fashion disaster? . . . LA, I think. . . . No, more like Elle Woods meets Trailer Park Boys . . .”

  Callie decided that she had heard enough. Abandoning her boxes with the rest of the suitcases in the middle of the floor, she opened the door to the bedroom on her left. The inside looked like it had been hit by a hurricane of fabric and jewelry. Strings of beads and bangles overflowed from an antique-looking trunk. The floor was littered with magazine cutouts, old copies of Tatler, and piles of books in foreign languages, packs of Virginia Slims, perfume bottles, and paintings waiting to be hung.

  Closing the door quickly before Mimi—whose room this surely was—could walk in and catch her spying, Callie crossed the hall and opened the door to the last empty bedroom: a space so tiny and bare that it had probably been uncomfortable even for the monk who lived there back in 1636.

  Home sweet home.

  Barely noticing the incredible view of Harvard Yard with its majestic brick b
uildings, winding walkways, and towering trees, she plopped down on the flimsy mattress of her twin bed and breathed an enormous sigh.

  At the beginning of the day when she’d stepped out of Logan Airport and hailed a cab, asking for “Harvard Square, please,” in her very best “grown-up” voice, she had felt nine years old rather than eighteen. On the morning of her ninth birthday her parents had surprised her with a brand-new writing journal. The leather was soft, the pages thick like parchment, and it was blank in a way that felt alive with possibility—like with the help of a pen she could make anything happen. Her nine-year-old self had stayed awake all night, fantasizing about the stories and plays she would write. Unfortunately, however, the journal had remained mostly blank, for that was also the year they had discovered that she was something of a ball-kicking prodigy, at which point writing had taken a backseat to soccer.

  Unable to sit still as the taxi navigated the streets of Boston, she had pressed her nose against the window, trying, for the sake of the driver, to limit the questions about Cambridge that were flying through her head at a million miles a minute.

  As they crossed Anderson Memorial Bridge, she had literally shrieked with glee at the sight of eight powerful figures rowing in unison down the Charles River. Their oars made strong, deliberate strokes, their uniforms marked by the distinct shape of a large, crimson H. Suddenly it had all started to feel real. Harvard. She was really here, really stepping through an ivy-encrusted archway carved into the face of a massive brick wall and whispering the words of the famous inscription as she passed through Dexter Gate: Enter to Grow in Wisdom.

  Right now, lying in her jail cell of a bedroom, she felt like the only wisdom she had procured thus far was the first-hand knowledge that there is such a thing as way too much underwear talk before teatime. That and she had a dynamite idea for a new sitcom called The Freak, the Foreigner, and the Fashionista. Why, yes, Oprah, my crazy college roommates were the inspiration—loosely, of course—for my new television sensation!

  It sounded more like a crappy MTV reality show than a hit sitcom . . . or actually more like her life. She groaned. She had only been at college for an hour and already it felt like a month. It was going to be a long year. . . . A long four years without any friends or at least a soccer ball and a functioning knee so she could kick it really, really hard.

  She was halfway through dialing Evan’s number when she remembered that he was busy all day with his fraternity initiation. “Needy girlfriend” was the last persona she wanted to project right now, so she set her phone aside and closed her eyes.

  They flew open as she heard a male voice calling from the common room: “Hello . . . is anybody in here?”

  Rolling over, she pulled a pillow on top of her head. The voice went away, but it was replaced by her dad instructing her: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

  Groaning once more, she forced herself off the bed. “Coming!” she called, opening her bedroom door.

  Hovering outside was a tall young man with glasses and a kind face.

  “Finally—another person in a T-shirt and jeans!” she blurted without thinking.

  At that, the boy broke into a huge, goofy smile. “You can say that again.” He chuckled, eyeing her with similar relief. “I must have missed the memo that said move-in day is supposed to be dress-to-impress.”

  She gasped, feigning serious offense. “You mean you’re not im-pressed by my box-moving finest?”

  “Oh, I’m impressed,” he said a little too genuinely as she stepped into the common room. “I’m Matt, by the way,” he added. “Matt Robinson.”

  “Hey, Matt; I’m Callie,” she said.

  “Callie Andrews, right?”

  “How did you—”

  She stopped midsentence as Matt held out a piece of clothing. It was her high school soccer sweatshirt: C. ANDREWS was written above her lucky number twelve. She must have dropped it earlier during the Great Underwear Debacle of 2010.

  Uh-oh . . . A lump was forming in the back of her throat. Swallowing, she stared at the floor. She was weird that way: if people were mean when she felt vulnerable, she got angry; whereas, one kind word or gesture in the same situation sent her to the verge of tears. Just the verge, though. She (or really, her dad) could almost always trick herself out of crying by trying to factor a three-digit number into primes, say, two hundred and forty-five, which is five times seven times—

  “Uh . . . I should probably get going,” Matt said, starting for the door.

  Nodding, she followed him, holding it open. He was halfway across the hall when he turned and offered, “I felt pretty homesick yesterday after my mom dropped me off, but it gets better fast. I’m right across the hall in C twenty-three if you need anything.”

  Callie smiled weakly but didn’t trust herself to speak.

  “In fact,” Matt continued, his gaze lingering on her shiny hair and glistening green eyes, “my brother who graduated last year gave us his gigantic flat screen. You’re welcome to come by and watch TV or movies anytime.”

  Now her grin was genuine, and Matt was openly staring, his suitcases sitting abandoned in the hall.

  “Thanks so much, I . . .”

  What the hell was I talking about?

  Gregory, sweaty and shirtless, was laboring up the stairs under the weight of a ginormous box.

  Callie stepped out into the hall, forgetting, along with the end of her sentence, that he was the devil incarnate.

  But then he opened his mouth: “Yo, Matt. If you feel like taking a break from flirting, let me know because your TV is a little heavy. Plus, you’re wasting your time anyway since apparently she’s got a boyfriend. . . .”

  Boyfriend—what boyfriend?

  I mean, put a shirt on, you jerk!

  Matt’s smile did not quite conceal his embarrassment. “See you later?”

  “Sure,” she said. She looked at Gregory. He ignored her.

  Whatever, she thought. It’s not like I’ll have to see him all the time or anything. At least he doesn’t live—

  Matt grabbed the other end of the box, and both boys walked into C 23: the suite directly across the hall.

  The door swung shut. The names on the whiteboard read: ADAM, MATT, OKECHUWUKU, and, in indelible ink, GREGORY.

  What fabulous luck.

  As Callie turned to go back into her own suite, she noticed something inside the door’s metal drop box that hadn’t been there before. It was a glossy magazine: completely black except for the words Fifteen Minutes, which were written across the top in white curly lettering.

  Curious, she grabbed it. Perching on an overturned box, a desert island in a sea of underwear, she opened the magazine and began to read.

  Dearest Froshlings: peons and future leaders of America,

  Move-in day is officially here . . .

  Chapter Two

  Orientation,

  OR THE WEEK OTHERWISE KNOWN AS “CAMP HARVARD”

  http://fm_homepage/advice/topics/freshman_year/blogspace

  Dear Alexis:

  I already finished moving in, but there’s still a week left before classes begin. We haven’t gotten any homework yet, so I’m at a loss for what to do!

  —Grays Resident, Class of 2014

  * * *

  Dear Quintessential Harvard Student:

  Welcome to “Camp Harvard”: the week you should use to gain that mythical knowledge they call “real life experience.” (FYI: in the real world Common Sense is typically defined as street smarts, not “an influential pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776.”) Now is the time to learn the definitions of some pop-culture, non-SAT vocab words like hangover and hookup. I imagine some of you will discover that booze and sex are almost as fun as solving differential equations and conjugating Latin verbs. . . .

  (And of course, for those of you who prefer to learn about sex in the classroom instead of doing the fieldwork yourself, stay tuned for the University Health Services’ “Practice Sex—Safely” initi
ative: a mandatory “wellness” seminar you’ll all be attending sometime this week.)

  —Alexis

  * * *

  Dear Alexis,

  I walked into the freshman dining hall and was surprised to see just as many cliques as there were in high school, if not more. Where do I sit? Where do I belong?!

  —Hurlbut Resident, Class of 2014

  Dear Ms. Identity Crisis:

  You are obviously one of those unfortunates who thought that college would be a golden opportunity to “reinvent” yourself free from the social disasters that characterized your high school experience. Oops, wrong! Instead of asking yourself where you belong in Harvard Society, ask yourself this: What did I score on my SAT? The answer will help you figure out where to sit in the dining hall: with the Recruited Athletes (lowest scores), the Affirmative Action Discretionary Slots (low scores), the Aristocracy (low scores; big donations), the Meritocracy (high scores; no donations), or the Asians and Indians (2400).*

  Additional opportunities for soul searching: this Thursday at 2 P.M. is the Annual Harvard Activities Fair, where you can sign up for information on an array of extracurricular activities. If that’s still not enough, visit Mental Health Services and their team of world-renowned therapists for free lollipops, happiness (Prozac), study buddies (Adderall), and advice.

  —Alexis

  *While there is a kernel of truth to most stereotypes, please take these with a grain of salt! ;)

  * * *

  Dear Alexis:

  What sort of schedule can we expect to have in the coming months?

  —Pennypacker Resident, Class of 2014

  * * *

  Dear Control Freak:

  Sunday–Thursday: Work, Class, Work, Nap, Work, Eat (if time), Nap, Work, Class, Sleep (4 hour maximum), Caffeinate, Class, Paper, Test, Work . . .