The Ivy

by Lauren Kunze

  “Oh mon dieu, girls,” cried Mimi, waving a copy of Tatler as she slipped into the room. “Have you seen this article? ‘The Secret Heartache of an African Prince,’” she began. “‘Okechuwuku Zeyna, one of Nigeria’s brightest stars, was recently devastated by the news that longtime girlfriend—or so he thought—Sissy Seraphina had been married to Sexy Hansel frontman Hansel Eberhardt, in Berlin the previous weekend. Her new album, Two Princes, is set to drop this month. Sources say that Okechuwuku, a first-year at Harvard University, was overheard vowing to duel his usurper in a fight to the—’”

  “Mimi he’s—” Callie began.

  “Here,” Mimi finished as OK emerged from the bathroom.

  Vanessa giggled and tossed her hair. Turning toward Callie, she silently mouthed, “Candidate!”

  Project Fish Farm had begun.

  Chapter Five

  Big Fish

  “PROCRASTINATION IS LIKE MASTURBATION: IT’S FUN FOR A WHILE, BUT IN THE END, YOU’RE ONLY SCREWING YOURSELF.”

  —ANONYMOUS

  https://www.BoredatHarvard.net//BoredatLamont

  User106608: Soo bored, and so freaking horny. Anyone up for

  a rendezvous in Pusey stacks?

  User231709: Gay or straight?

  User106608: Gay, obvi

  User231709: Meet outside fifth floor bathrooms in five minutes . . .

  User519410: Anyone have notes for LS1A today? Accidentally

  slept in.

  User726311: Sure, what’s your e-mail?

  User836708: Party at the Spee tonight! Hot sweaty Eurotrash,

  ++ass&cocaine

  User957309: You’re not even in the Spee, you stupid fag

  User725409: Just saw Lexi and Clint fighting on the steps

  AGAIN—anyone know what their status is?

  User836708: Not sure but he’s one sexy slice of man candy;

  praying he’ll do us all a favor and come out of the

  closet already . . .

  User892712: Ha-ha, fat chance.

  User462710: I hear she’s a bitch.

  User592807: Alexis Thorndike is the BEST dressed person on

  campus. Wouldn’t miss her weekly column for

  the world!

  User948711: Anyone see a copy of Tatler this week?

  User038711: Are you talking about the Sissy Seraphina thing? I think

  that guy lives in my dorm.

  User982611: I <3 Sexy Hansel!!! Hansel Eberhardt is HOTT!

  User746209: Gawker picked up the story too. First Danica

  Bennington and now this . . .

  User652412: Gawker search: Marine Aurélie Clément—you won’t

  be sorry.

  User836708: This is Marine speaking and I’m here to tell you to shut your silly American faces or I will bust out of

  rehab and steal cocaine from a stripper in Ibiza—again!!

  User528407: You people are pathetic. Don’t you have anything

  better to do than gossip shamelessly about other

  peoples’ lives?

  User652412: Don’t you have anything better to do, you fucking

  hypocrite?

  User746209: Hear, hear!

  Sanders Theatre is a stately, cavernous arena located in the western wing of Memorial Hall. The stage in the middle of the main room is surrounded by a mahogany semicircle of balconies and pews, adorned on either side by statues of famous colonial Americans dating back to the early nineteenth century. Refracted light shines in muted, colorful hues from the stained glass window above the balcony, illuminating the Latin inscriptions engraved on the wall above the stage.

  This is the place where orators like Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King Jr. delivered speeches to change a nation; where some of the world’s most renowned musicians have traveled from afar to grace the stage; where eminent academic and literary figures have gathered to share their knowledge and insight with the younger generations.

  This is also the place where students in the later stages of adolescence go to gawk, flirt, sleep, whisper, twitter, poke, surf the web, and even—on occasion—to learn.

  Welcome to Justice with Professor Michael J. Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, Mondays and Wednesdays at one P.M. Section times TBA; open to Freshmen–Seniors.

  Callie wiggled uncomfortably in her seat, trying not to wrinkle the brand-new, never-been-worn Marc Jacobs sundress that Vanessa had insisted she borrow for their first day of class. Because they had arrived with less than two minutes to spare—Vanessa’s fault, in Callie’s opinion, for forcing her to change; Callie’s fault, in Vanessa’s opinion, for her naive failure to cooperate—they were sitting all the way up in the balcony, right behind—to Callie’s horror; to Vanessa’s delight—a large group of JAQs (Jewish American Queens), PSPs (Prep School Princesses), and WASPs (predatory, flying, stinging insects).

  The PSPs were instantly recognizable in their miniskirts and frilly blouses or variants of The Uniform: that classic, East Coast private school look that consists of designer jeans, polo shirts, and pearls. Every movement sounded like money.

  Vanessa, her blue headband harmonizing with her Ralph Lauren polo and navy Longchamp shoulder bag, was a perfect clone.

  “Hi!” she cried, addressing the girls in a tone that made Callie cringe. “What’s up, guys?”

  Some of them merely turned, the charms on their timeless, silver Tiffany bracelets clinking, and faced forward once more, but a few greeted Vanessa by name and asked how she was doing. Callie couldn’t remember any specific faces from The Dining Hall Debacle of the Decade (or so it was being called on Twitter) and wondered if any of them could recognize her.

  Sure enough, the girl seated directly in front of Vanessa frowned as her gaze traveled from Callie’s plain shoulder bag down to the “ten-dollar, bargain-bin flats” that Vanessa had tried, and failed, to talk her out of wearing.

  “I like your dress,” the girl said suddenly. It didn’t sound like a compliment. Callie was trying to decide whether or not to say thank you when the girl added: “I’m Anne. What’s your name?”

  “Callie. Callie Andrews.”

  “And I’m her roommate, Vanessa Von Vorhees!” Vanessa chimed in, pinching Callie on the thigh in a way that clearly said I told you so about the dress.

  Seriously? thought Callie. She found it hard to believe that people actually cared about this stuff. Why should it matter what she wore to class—or, for that matter, ever?

  “Freshmen, right?” said Anne with an appraiser’s eye.

  “Right,” said Callie.

  “By the way,” Vanessa added as Anne started to turn back around, “I absolutely adore your dress! Who’s it by?”

  As Anne replied, Callie’s eyes began to wander around the room.

  Most of the other first-years were clustered in the front rows closest to the stage. Callie spotted Mimi sitting next to OK among a crowd of people who looked distinctly foreign. OK had edged as close to Mimi as possible. Any closer and he’d be sitting on her lap.

  Glancing to her left, Callie was startled to find Gregory staring back at her. Before she could look away, he gave a deceptively friendly wave and then mouthed: “I caught you!”

  He was surrounded by a seersucker-and-loafer-wearing entourage whose attire indicated that if your pastel-colored polo featured an alligator or a man on horseback, you were welcome to join their Gentlemen’s Club. It would have looked much more fitting if they were holding mint juleps instead of MacBooks, betting on horses rather than waiting for class to begin.

  Turning around quickly before Gregory could fathom new ways to embarrass her, she caught sight of a bunch of people in the very back of the balcony wearing gray sweatpants and sweatshirts featuring the Harvard Department of Athletics logo. What would have happened if she hadn’t busted up her knee? Would she be cracking jokes with the athletes instead of hovering on the outskirts of the prep school crowd, faking it miserably in
Marc Jacobs?

  Down on the stage a man who did bear a striking resemblance to The Simpsons character Mr. Burns began tapping the microphone and clearing his throat.

  Vanessa pulled her MacBook out of her purse. “Time to start taking notes!”

  Surprised, Callie followed Vanessa’s example and removed her laptop from her bag. Quickly she logged into her e-mail while Professor Sandel discussed the logistical aspects of class. There were no new updates from Evan. Suddenly, a chat box materialized:

  Vanessa: look at my computer screen!

  Callie looked. Vanessa had navigated to the Facebook profile for Anne Goldberg, class of 2012. As Callie squinted at the photo, recognition dawned: this was the same girl who had complimented her dress and was currently seated directly in front of them. That’s not creepy . . . no, not at all.

  Vanessa: i knew it! she’s anne GOLDBERG, she went to Deerfield. she’s in the pudding!

  Callie: the pudding? what’s the pudding?

  Vanessa: you’ve never heard of the PUDDING? really Cal what would you do without me? will explain after class. what a find!

  Callie watched Vanessa tab back over to Facebook and click the Add as Friend button on Anne Goldberg’s profile. Callie saw “The Pudding” listed as one of Anne’s activities.

  What could it be? she wondered, annoyed that Vanessa wouldn’t tell her. A Jell-O appreciation society?

  It was just like Vanessa to dangle information without offering an explanation. Callie decided that ignoring her would be the best punishment. She deliberately closed the Gchat box into which Vanessa was typing “check out those hotties to our right i think i recognize the one sitting next to grego—” and opened Microsoft Word, tuning in to Professor Sandel, who was patiently explaining to a horrified-looking first-year that the John Locke he was referring to was not a character on the popular ABC TV show Lost.

  As Sandel settled into his lecture, Callie’s fingers flew across her keyboard, eager to record every word:

  “Five people are tied to a train track,” he postulated, “and the train is coming full speed ahead. You can’t do anything to untie them, but you do have the option to pull a lever that will divert the train onto a different track. There is only one person tied to this alternative track. What do you think is the ‘right’ thing to do?”

  “Pull the lever!” someone shouted from the third row.

  “Why?” Sandel asked with a crafty smile.

  “Because it’s better for one person to die than five.”

  “Ahh . . . how utilitarian of you. But now let me ask you this. Instead of standing near a lever that can switch the direction of the train, you are standing on a bridge above the tracks. There is a very large lady standing next to you on the bridge, and you can choose to push her down onto the tracks, which will also stop the train and save five peoples’ lives. Do you do it?”

  This time the speaker hesitated. One of the boys sitting near Gregory piped up: “Yeah! Push her off!”

  Sandel laughed. “But wouldn’t you feel guilty about pushing her? Doesn’t that intuitively seem more ‘wrong’ than simply pulling a lever?”

  “No, she’s fat,” the boy muttered so only the balcony could hear.

  “What was that?” asked Sandel.

  “I said: No, it shouldn’t matter if you feel worse about pushing her off than you would about pulling the lever, because saving five people’s lives is still the right thing to do.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is that the right thing to do is to always sacrifice the one person in order to save the five?”

  “Yes,” said the boy confidently, smiling at his peers.

  “And this larger woman . . . what if she were your mother instead?” Sandel finished triumphantly. The grin faded from the boy’s face.

  Turns out, there is such a thing as a highbrow “yo mama” joke.

  “That’s what I thought,” said Sandel. “Community often trumps utility. Now if you would all turn to page nine of Bentham’s Principles of Morals and Legislation . . .”

  There was a rustle of pages as people—upperclassmen, mostly—began searching for their texts. Callie turned to Vanessa, intending to ask if she had known they were supposed to buy the books ahead of time. Vanessa was still typing furiously, but her notes had nothing to do with Professor Sandel’s lecture.

  Instead Vanessa was working on an Excel spreadsheet:

  Callie watched in awe as Vanessa would look up, glance around the room, identify a freshman *fish* of interest, and then locate her newest target on Facebook. She would scan his profile, examine his list of friends, take notes on her spreadsheet, and then finally click the Add as Friends button if he satisfied her criteria.

  Once again it was difficult to decide if Vanessa was insanely funny or simply insane. With effort Callie tore her eyes away from Vanessa’s computer screen and tried to focus on her own, but it was considerably harder to concentrate on the lecture now that she knew what Vanessa was doing. She wondered if the list were in order: had Vanessa put Gregory in the number one spot on purpose, or was that simply a coincidence?

  She glanced over in his direction and found him, once again, staring back at her.

  Is he a mind reader? Quickly she bowed her head low over her laptop, willing herself to focus. . . .

  Callie’s shoulders slumped with relief when a chiming clock announced the end of the hour: class had been very interesting but not entirely because of the lecture. She stood to leave, tugging anxiously at her borrowed dress. The plan: return to her room as soon as possible and change before the dress gets wrinkled or ruined.

  Vanessa, however, had a different agenda. “Come on, Cal, we have to go to Lamont Library—time to do some work!”

  “Lamont?” asked Callie. “Why would we go to a library on the first day of class? He didn’t even assign any homework!”

  “Not homework, silly. Project Fish Farm. I overheard some people saying that everybody hangs out at Lamont—or rather, Club Lamont.”

  “Everybody hangs out at the library?”

  “It is Harvard,” Vanessa replied.

  The steps of Lamont were swarming with students taking advantage of the weather while it was still warm, smoking, sipping iced lattes, or standing on the grass under the oak trees and chatting. Mimi, OK, and Gregory were already there, entangled in a circle of sunglasses and smoke. Mimi’s voice came drifting above the crowd, asking to bum a cigarette; Callie watched as three overeager boys scrambled to oblige. OK emerged victorious, sliding the cigarette smoothly between her lips, but then not so smoothly burning his fingertips in his haste to offer her a light.

  Just as they were approaching the group, Gregory threw his head back in laughter at somebody’s joke. The smile lit up his entire face. Callie froze, her feet having temporarily forgotten how to make forward motion.

  “Hi, guys!” said Vanessa. “Gregory, OK, Adrian, Logan . . . Mimi.”

  “Salut, ça va?” said Mimi. “Did you guys enjoy the class?”

  “Cassie here looked like she was absolutely riveted,” said Gregory before either Callie or Vanessa could answer. “She just couldn’t take her eyes off of the professor. Could you?”

  “It’s CALLIE,” said Callie, the feeling flooding back into her toes.

  “Oh, you know Callie, she loves class; it was so nerdtastic the way she kept taking notes all during the lecture,” Vanessa began blabbering. She was still talking when Callie grabbed her arm and yanked her inside the library.

  “Hey! Just because he can’t remember your name,” Vanessa snapped as they swiped their IDs and headed past the security guard and into the lobby, “doesn’t mean you have to get all huffy about it!” They passed a circulation desk on their left and, behind a set of double glass doors on the right, a bustling café. Vanessa’s ceaseless yammering continued as they walked down a large aisle with books, tables, and study alcoves. “. . . because, you know, he and I, we have this connection that simply cannot be denied—”

  Va
nessa stopped talking abruptly as a hundred heads looked up in unison.

  They had accidentally wandered straight into the main reading room. For a moment all eyes were on them.

  “Sorry,” Vanessa mouthed, gripping Callie’s hand. Tiptoeing, they backed out of the room. Those who had looked up lost interest quickly—returning to their iTunes, instant messenger, or the intrigues of anonymous gossip sites; whispering, poking, poker tournaments, high-stakes games of footsie, and/or fabricated romances built on furtive, or lingering, glances. In short, every activity possible with one exception: studying.

  Still gripping Callie’s hand, Vanessa dragged her back toward the set of double glass doors that were flanked by the sign LAMONT CAFÉ. Here, students could order a cappuccino and the daily dish of gossip for two dollars and fifty cents. Talking permitted—but Inside Voices, please.

  At the moment every table was occupied save one. Vanessa slung her shoulder bag across it, marking their territory. “Sit,” she ordered, and Callie obeyed, taking the chair by the window with an excellent view of both the café and the grassy area outside the library in front of the stairs. Through the glass she could see Mimi and OK hanging out but no sign of—

  “I’ll be right back,” said Vanessa.

  “Mmm,” Callie murmured, leaning back in her chair as far as she could without tipping over. Still no visual on Gregory. Not that she cared.

  Turning, she saw Vanessa in line at the counter, waiting to order a drink. Two tables to her right, Callie recognized Anne Goldberg and several other girls she’d seen in Justice. However, all eyes at the table were focused not toward Anne but on the striking brunette seated directly to her left.

  Alexis Thorndike.

  What is it about her? Callie wondered, leaning forward to get a better look. Brown curls were held aloft from Alexis’s face by a delicate headband, pale, thin wrists visible from beneath the tapered sleeves of a navy blue blazer layered atop a fluttery white blouse.

  Callie glanced down at her own outfit. The colors of her dress suddenly seemed too bright; creases were forming at the tops of her thighs, and she could feel the fabric sticking slightly to the chair beneath her. She looked back at Alexis who, raising her eyes at the exact same moment, caught Callie staring.