The Ivy

by Lauren Kunze

  Best wishes as always,

  Alexis Thorndike, Advice Columnist

  Fifteen Minutes Magazine

  Harvard University’s Authority on Campus Life since 1873

  Matt stared at Callie, watching her tug at her hair. She had The Q Guide in one hand and the Courses of Instruction in the other, which she would read with deep concentration for a moment before pausing to scribble some notes.

  “Thanks so much for coming over, Matt,” she said, glancing up and smiling while he tried to look like he’d been concentrating on his class hunt.

  “I’ve just been freaking out about this whole class thing!” she exclaimed, painfully aware that she had much bigger things to be freaking out about . . . much, much bigger.

  “I have no idea what I want to study,” she continued, determined to stay calm and pretend that everything was fine. As long as Evan keeps his word, nobody at Harvard will ever find out.

  “Worst of all, I’m the only one who hasn’t figured it out yet! Vanessa and Dana already declared their majors and Mimi’s just going to ‘go with the flow’ and ‘try not to flunk out’!”

  Hearing her name, Dana looked up from the Introduction to Neuroscience textbook she’d been poring over. The three of them were seated around the coffee table in the common room. Mimi was in her bedroom—probably taking a nap—and Vanessa, who subscribed to a far more literal interpretation of the term Shopping Period, had gone to Newbury Street to peruse the high-end, designer merchandise.

  “It’s not about the classes, Cal,” she’d explained patiently. “It’s about the clothes!” Still, Callie had elected to stay home. While it was fine for Vanessa, future art history major, to spend the day shopping, Callie had only enrolled in one class—Harvard’s mandatory writing seminar—and still had three more to choose.

  Flipping through the art history section, Callie wondered what people learned in classes like Buddhist Art in One Cave, Casts, Construction and Commemoration, or a mysterious-sounding course called simply The Thing. To Callie, these titles sounded fascinating and exotic, infinitely exciting—especially compared to high school. But, oddly enough, when she and Vanessa had been flipping through the guide the night before, Vanessa hadn’t even looked at the list. Instead, she couldn’t tear herself away from the psychology section, reading out class descriptions until Callie finally interrupted and asked, “Why don’t you just do psych?”

  “Mmm.” Vanessa had shrugged, tearing her eyes away from the description of Developmental Psychopathology. “It’s just not for me.”

  “Why not?” Callie said. “You seem excited about some of those classes. . . .”

  “Well, my mom and I already decided on History of Art and Architecture, so . . .” Vanessa looked completely miserable. The conversation had ended there.

  “So, Dana, I take it you’re doing neuroscience?” Matt asked, smiling at Dana, who was still reading her textbook intently.

  “Neurobiology, premed,” she replied, looking up quickly. She gave Matt a rare smile: the kind she reserved for men she found surprisingly bearable. This category included his roommate Adam, who, in her opinion, was aptly named after God’s original creation.

  True, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few complete sentences (what can one possibly say to a boy one finds exceptionally bearable?), but he had smiled while he held the door to C 24 for her after walking her home from church last Sunday morning. If only she hadn’t frowned and walked away when he’d said hello in the hall yesterday afternoon.

  Dana returned to her book. At the moment studying was priority. In addition to Introduction to Neuroscience she was also taking Life Sciences 1a, Physics 15, and Math 55—the leviathan of math classes that inspired more suicides than Black Tuesday back in ’29. She’d picked these classes ahead of time, purchased the textbooks in advance, and studied throughout the summer, determined not to fall behind before things even got started.

  Out of the corner of her eye Dana noticed the way that Matt was looking at Callie and frowned. According to Maxwell’s law of attraction, the prettier you are, the dumber you’re supposed to be. Yet there was Callie, a direct, unfair violation to the fundamental order of the universe. (Dana also fully understood Maxwell’s real paper about gravitational forces, “On a Paradox in the Theory of Attraction—something in which she took pride.)

  Shaking her head, Dana returned to her reading once more. Learning about a neuron’s action potential was the only action she needed to get during college, thank you very much.

  “So, Matt,” said Callie, “what do you think you’re going to take?”

  “Uhm . . . I’m still not really sure. . . .” he began, though Callie thought he had picked all four of his classes yesterday. Squinting, he tried to read her list of potential courses from upside down. “I was considering Social Analysis 10. Even though it’s a full year, that stuff should be pretty useful. You know, economy stuff.”

  “Social Analysis . . .” she said, looking down. “That’s right at the top of my list! We should take it together. It’d be so nice to have a friend in class.”

  Matt frowned when she said the word friend. “Sure, and, you know, maybe one day after class we could go grab dinner. . . .” he began, his insides starting to vibrate at the very thought—

  Actually it was his cell phone, ringing in his pocket.

  “Hello?”

  “Matty!” his mom’s voice boomed into his ear. “Matty, are you there? I haven’t heard from you in three days—I was starting to worry!”

  Blushing, Matt jabbed at the volume button on his cell phone. “It’s my mom,” he mouthed at Callie, making his way to the other side of the room.

  “Yeah, Mom, yeah . . . No, Mom, I’m fine, honest. . . . Yes, nothing to worry about . . . The dance?” he asked, shooting a sidelong glance at Callie. “It was all right. . . . No, nothing too crazy, just some binge drinking and bad decisions . . . NO, Mom, no, I was just kidding. . . .”

  He was silent for a while before he began again: “Mom, it’s great talking to you, but I really have to go. . . . I’m busy right now trying to pick my classes. No, Mom, I just really gotta go now. . . . Yes, I promise to call you tomorrow. . . . Every day . . . All right . . . What? No, I didn’t get your care package. . . . Well, yes, I got it. I just haven’t opened it yet. . . . Now? Really? Okay, okay, I have it in my bag. . . . Yeah . . . Thanks. . . . Bye . . . Love you, too. . . .”

  Exhausted, he hung up, sinking back onto the futon with a sigh. “My mom, she worries. . . .” he said, reaching into his backpack and pulling out a small brown package. “She wanted to make sure I opened this; it’s probably something perishable like homemade cookies. . . .”

  His face plummeted like a skydiver without a parachute as he opened the box to find not cookies but an array of colorful, assorted condoms. TROJAN, EXTRA LARGE, LUBRICATED, STUDDED, ULTRA THIN, SPERMICIDAL, SHEEPSKIN’

  He slammed the lid back down but not before Callie saw and started to giggle uncontrollably. Oblivious and exasperated, Dana grabbed her book and stalked off to her bedroom.

  “Wow,” Callie teased, unable to resist, “your mom must have a lot of . . . confidence in your . . . abilities.”

  “Yeah,” Matt muttered. “I mean no!” he cried as Callie tried to grab one of the condoms and he noticed the EXTRA LARGE label displayed prominently on the front. “I mean, no I don’t mean no. I just meant—”

  “I should go finish this up. . . .” he said, standing and waving some papers vaguely. He began backing out of the room.

  “Okay,” Callie said, still laughing. She reached for her Courses of Instruction. “Thanks so much for coming over; it was seriously helpful.”

  She smiled in a way that would have made his face turn bright red if he hadn’t already been blushing at full capacity. “Listen,” he blurted in a final, desperate attempt, “let me know what you decide about Ec 10. It’s at two P.M. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we could, like, do a lunch date before or something. . . .”


  “Yeah! Sounds great,” Callie replied, but she had already picked up The Q Guide and started skimming through its pages.

  Matt opened the door to the hallway, and the room swelled with the sound of high-pitched giggles. Callie’s head snapped back up just in time to see Gregory escorting yet another “BU Bottle Blonde” (nickname courtesy of Vanessa) toward his room.

  Bending over her book, Callie tried to pretend she wasn’t watching as Gregory paused, staring down into Matt’s care package. His face lit up. He dipped his hand into the box and removed a fistful of condoms.

  “Please tell Mrs. Robinson I said thank you.” He chuckled. As he held the door open for the girl, he turned toward Callie and, unmistakably, he winked.

  Callie accidentally tore a page in The Q Guide as she flipped it violently, the sound of squeals and shrieks fading as the door to C 24 swung shut.

  A minute later Vanessa burst into the common room, her arms laden with shopping bags. Callie kept her head down, hoping that Vanessa would take the hint.

  “Are you still agonizing over your classes, Cal? Seriously? It’s freshman year, it doesn’t even count! Now is the time to be experimental, to focus on the more important things in life. ”

  Callie made a point of turning the pages of The Q Guide as obviously as possible, skipping over Ethnic and European Studies to examine Government.

  “Anyway, you can stop worrying because I already picked your classes for you. We’re taking Justice: Mondays and Wednesdays at one.”

  “What?” said Callie sharply. “What field is that even in?”

  “Moral Reasoning, meaning it’ll count no matter what you end up studying. Plus, it’s way famous! I heard that sometimes fifteen hundred people enroll and they have to hold a lottery to see who gets in! And the professor, Michael Sandal, is like this crazy Communist who inspired that character Mr. Burns from The Simpsons!”

  “You mean Michael Sandel, the Communitarian?” Callie corrected her. “He is kind of famous . . . and I bet the course is good if that many people show up to take it. . . .”

  Vanessa let her bags, and her jaw, sink dramatically toward the floor. “Honestly, Cal, I cannot believe you sometimes! Who cares whether or not the class is good; it’s all about the environment, the people, and the vibe.”

  “What?” mumbled Callie. She picked up her day planner and verified that Mondays and Wednesdays at one o’clock were free.

  “Haven’t you realized that we have yet to go on a single date?” asked Vanessa. “Our romantic involvements thus far have been limited to getting dumped—that was you—random hookups, sleazy seniors, and don’t even get me started on Mimi’s nightly sexcapades. It’s completely unacceptable.”

  Callie was silent.

  “Anyway, what I’ve finally realized is this: we’ve been looking in all the wrong places: seniors, upperclassmen . . . it’s never going to work. We have to tap the untapped resources, discover the uncut diamonds in the rough. . . . We have to find us . . .”

  She paused dramatically.

  “A freshman.”

  Callie rolled her eyes.

  “Stop—I know what you’re thinking!” Vanessa continued. “Two weeks ago I was all for ‘upperclassmen only,’ too, but today I realized something. I was doing a little research”—and by research, she meant Facebook stalking—“and do you remember that guy I hooked up with the other night? Jeffrey?”

  “I think it was Jeremy.”

  “Whatever. I found out today that he has a girlfriend. She’s a senior, too, but get this: she is busted. And not just too-ugly- to-make-the-cheerleading-squad ugly, or got-cut-from-the-first-round-of-America’s-Next-Top Model ugly, but, like, ugly-you-look-deformed ugly.”

  Callie giggled, finally setting The Q Guide aside.

  “So I’m thinking, ‘What gives?’ He’s like, super hot, and his girlfriend looks like Marilyn Manson. Why stick with crotchety old Manson when you could have a youthful Monroe?”

  Callie thought that a “youthful Monroe” was a little generous for Vanessa, but she waited, intrigued nevertheless.

  “That’s when it hits me. Shovel-face over here must have started dating what’s-his-name during their freshman year, four years ago, before he realized he was hot! Before he even was hot. You have to catch them when they’re young and still at the bottom of the food chain, before they can appreciate their own potential, and then you raise them to adore you, to rely on you, to need you. Get it? It’s like a . . . it’s like a . . . fish farm! That’s it! Project Fish Farm. Don’t you see? Justice is the ideal pond.”

  Callie laughed as she pictured Vanessa going to class with an enormous net and lassoing a bunch of poor, pimpled, unsuspecting freshman boys and dragging them kicking and screaming to a giant pool of water surrounded by a tall, wired fence. Fish Farm: a boot camp for future husbands of the certifiably insane. Watching it would be better than watching reality TV.

  “Okay, you win,” Callie capitulated. “But if I take Justice with you, will you take Ec 10 with me?”

  “Investment strategies and future venture capitalists? Now you’re talking sense!”

  Callie shook her head and pulled out her study card, adding Justice underneath Ec 10 and Expos.

  “Great!” she cried, starting to relax. “Three down, only one more to go! Now listen to a description of this English class called the Nineteenth-Century Novel—”

  Callie stopped midsentence as OK barged into the common room, panting. His face shone with sweat. Frantically he wheeled around and bolted the lock on the door.

  “Well,” said Vanessa loudly, “I’m glad you could finally make it to our open house event. Would you like a special tour of the premises?”

  OK gave her a blank stare, apparently impervious to sarcasm. “Do you—” He paused. “Please pardon the imposition, but do you mind if I stay here for just a moment?”

  Callie and Vanessa exchanged a look. “Why?” asked Callie. “Is something wro—?”

  Loud clumping noises suddenly filled the room. It sounded like a stampede of wild animals had broken loose outside in the hall.

  “Oh, bollocks! Bloody hell!” OK cried, jumping up and darting across the room to stare out the peephole. He shrieked and then came scampering back. “I’m screwed! Absolutely, royally, screwed . . .”

  “Well, if you’re actually royalty like they say, I don’t suppose there’s any other way. . . .” Vanessa paused, listening to the voices that were coming from the hall.

  “Where is he?”

  “Which one’s his room”

  OK moaned and closed his eyes. “Hide me!” he pleaded.

  “First, tell us what’s going on,” Vanessa instructed.

  “I—well,” OK began, “I’m trying to give some people the slip.”

  “Which people?” asked Callie.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Fine,” said Vanessa, standing and heading toward the door. “Then we’ll just have to go outside and see for oursel—”

  “No!” cried OK, racing to block the door. Eyes wide, he looked from Vanessa to Callie. “It’s the paparazzi,” he whispered finally.

  “The paparazzi!” cried Vanessa, glancing in the mirror to check her hair.

  “Yes, the so-called ‘journalists’ who report the news back home and in London.”

  “Oh.” Vanessa’s face fell.

  “Here?” asked Callie. “But why . . . ?”

  “They believe I’m involved in some sort of scandal,” said OK. “But I haven’t actually got anything to do with it!”

  “What sort of a scandal?” Vanessa demanded.

  “Vanessa, clearly it’s private!” cried Callie.

  “Not anymore!” Vanessa exclaimed.

  OK sighed. “I suppose I owe you ladies an explanation. It’s about my girlfriend—my ex-girlfriend, actually—who is rather famous, or should I say infamous, back in Britain. We haven’t spoken since summer, but apparently she just eloped with some techno music singer and the tabloids
. . . the tabloids . . . ,” he trailed off with a groan.

  Vanessa’s lips parted in disbelief: “Are you telling me that your ex-girlfriend is Sissy from Sissy and the Space Cadets? She’s like Miley Cyrus’s British soul sister, only with less Disney and more pole dancing!”

  “So you’ve heard of her,” OK answered, nodding glumly. “Our relationship was terrific fun for a while, but in the end Father was right: she’s a bit too wild, even for me—always getting tattooed in the wrong place and photographed at the wrong time. . . . Anyhow, when it came time to end things she asked if I wouldn’t mind keeping up appearances for a while to spare her from the additional press. . . .

  “Then, next thing I know, she’s in Germany hosting an international music festival and promoting her new album alongside some bugger called Franz or Hans—”

  “Hans?” Vanessa interrupted. “Don’t you mean Hansel Eberhardt, the ‘Techno Prince of Europe’?”

  OK frowned. “He’s not actually a real prince, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Vanessa, “but he does really know how to wear a pair of tight, white pants!”

  “It must have been so hard on her,” Callie interjected. “First getting dumped and then having to deal with all the gossip and attention . . .”

  “Hard on her?” OK asked, staring at Callie. “She’s the one who tipped off the papers in the first place! Probably married the poor bloke just for a bit of extra attention. Wanted proper revenge, didn’t she? Well, she’s gotten it all right; that’s for certain. Won’t leave me bloody well alone—”

  There was a pounding at the door. Everyone froze.

  But then Mimi’s voice grew audible from the hall: “For the love of— LET ME IN! Who bolted the door?”

  OK moaned and made a beeline for the bathroom.

  As Vanessa opened the door, Callie caught a glimpse of several reporters crowding around on the other side of the hall.