Scandal

by Lauren Kunze

  At least I definitely hope not.

  FOUR

  Eat, Party, Love

  * * *

  (Harvard) Society Pages

  All the gossip that’s fit to print*

  The toast of the weekend social scene was, quite obviously, the HPSC’s Annual Charity Date Auction. Almost everyone—with one notable exception—was there, but for those unfortunate few who missed it, a recap.

  The auctionees were called in alphabetical order, and luckily the bids grew increasingly higher as the night wore on, starting with a measly one hundred dollars and ending with a rousing thousand.

  Callie Andrews, the first auctionee, was seen canoodling with her purchaser, Bryan Jacobs, for the remainder of the evening. Looks like she’s moved on to her next upperclassman in the prestigious Fly Club for Gentlemen. The two new lovebirds haven’t even been on their date yet, and we hear she’s already referring to him as her “one and only.”

  Other notable auctionees included Alessandra Constantine (duh), Aaron Thomas (lacrosse hottie alert!), and Penelope Vandemeer (jet owner), who all stood tall on behalf of their club, the Hasty Pudding, even though all were anonymously slammed in the Pudding’s Punch Book by their (now) fellow veteran members. For these three, among others, agreeing to be auctioned on behalf of the club (in a pretty transparent attempt at image rehabilitation) was certainly charitable in more ways than one!

  (Incidentally, of the seven people questioned over the course of the evening, not one guessed the charity correctly. Gee, how embarrassing.)

  OK Zeyna was the highest-priced ticket item of the night, with Alessandra Constantine coming in a close second. No doubt her incredibly high-profile relationship held her back. Or maybe it was OK’s shirtless antics that sealed the deal for one lucky senior in particular, spotted leaving the party around the same time as everyone’s favorite “prince”…

  The auction wasn’t the only memorable event of the evening. Alexis Thorndike and Clint Weber, already on the rocks after the inevitable reconciliation, have returned to resume their roles as costars of the popular campus reality drama Breakups and Makeups in Prominent Public Places.

  Of course, nobody’s presence was of greater interest than a certain individual’s conspicuous absence. You could have heard the straw from a scorpion bowl drop after his name was accidentally called. And, as if the silence didn’t say it all, the evening’s very first auctionee could be overheard articulating what was on everyone’s mind, suggesting that Bolton might now be better suited as the beneficiary of the charity, and adding wryly that he “couldn’t afford [her].”

  And that’s saying something because, as previously stated, she sold for only a hundred dollars.

  * * *

  “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.

  “Of course he does,” said Callie, still giggling.

  Vanessa drew her lips into a pout. “Don’t make fun of me while I’m wearing suspenders—it’s too cruel.”

  Callie smiled. “Can I make fun of his poem, though?”

  “Why?” asked Vanessa. “Didn’t you like it? I thought it was very…sexy.”

  “Um, okay,” said Callie. “Hey, maybe you should write a poem asking him out!”

  “Keep your voice down!” Vanessa cried, glancing wildly at the door to the reading room. Then, digging her nails into
Callie’s arm, she dragged her to the end of the hall and down the stairs. They came to a halt in the building’s empty foyer in front of a wall covered with posters and flyers for various campus events.

  “Seriously,” said Callie, “you should just ask. But maybe not until after you change back into your normal clothes.”

  Vanessa sighed. “What if he says no?”

  “Then you’ll probably be totally bummed for a while, but at least you’ll know so you can stop obsessing and move on to the next…goatee-sporting, granola-breath graduate student that catches your eye? Either way, it’s better to put yourself out there and keep trying instead of just giving up like a ginormous loser.”

  Callie stared at the flyers on the wall, for plays at A.R.T., more readings at bookstores around the square, and an open invitation reminding students that there was still another month left before the deadline for spring submissions for the Advocate. Maybe I should take my own advice, it dawned on her. Yes, she had been burned, first by FM and then by the Crimson—but that didn’t mean that she should stop writing and give up entirely. On the contrary…

  “How about this?” said Callie. “If you agree to ask him out, then I’ll try to write a short story and submit it to the Advocate.”

  Vanessa’s panicked expression slowly gave way to a smile. “How very devious of you! Challenge accepted! If you promise to buy me a pint of Ben & Jerry’s when he says no and listen to me bawl my eyes out.”

  “Deal,” said Callie, extending her hand so Vanessa could shake it. “If he says no, then we can eat as much ice cream as you want and I’ll be right there to cry with you when the Advocate rejects my story.”