The Ivy: Scandal (33 page)

“I’m well aware of the negative aspects of the social clubs on campus,” said Callie. “And in a lot of ways, I agree with your
objections: to elitism, exclusivity, or choosing members based on superficial reasons like looks or wealth or athletic ability or private jet ownership or whatever. But that’s a stereotype, too, and it doesn’t apply to everyone in the Pudding or a Final Club.” Callie narrowed her eyes. “Why do I get the feeling like you’re avoiding my question?”

Alessandra pursed her lips.

“Fine,” said Callie, leaning back and folding her arms. “Save it for when it’s time to explain everything to the Ad Board tomorrow morning.”

Alessandra’s panicked expression returned in an instant. “I can’t go,” she whispered.

“You can and you will,” said Callie. “One way or another, they need to know the truth, and I think it’d be better if they hear it from you rather than Gregory, who can confirm that you’ve been using him for information all semester and that you threw away that unpublished draft in his…bedroom”—Callie flinched—“while studying one Sunday afternoon.”

Alessandra was shaking her head.

“And,” Callie pressed on, “if that’s still not enough, I can call Matt, who was there that day at the
Crimson
when my computer at the front of the offices suddenly logged me out—right after you arrived and said hello and then went to work in the back of the offices and at the same time that the Insider article about the Freshman Fifteen party at the Pudding was posted.”

“What if they vote to have me expelled?” Alessandra asked in a tiny voice.

Callie frowned. “I guess you should’ve thought of that before you published the last article.”

“But I didn’t—”

“Didn’t what?” asked Callie.

Alessandra clapped her hands over her mouth. She looked terrified.

“What is it?” Callie demanded. “What are you not telling us?”

The tears had started to flow again. “I’m not the one who—can’t tell you or—” Alessandra broke down, burying her face in a handful of Kleenex.

“What can’t you tell us?” asked Gregory, in a voice that could have coaxed honey from a bear or the corset from Queen Victoria.

Alessandra blew her nose loudly, still shaking her head.

Callie leaned forward suddenly. “Gregory—I know you were the source for all the Pudding articles, but what did you tell her about Gatsby? Did you see her after you left early, or were you texting her while it was happening?”

Gregory thought for a minute. “No,” he eventually said. “She told me she had to work late that night. I didn’t see her until the next day when she came over to study and edit her pieces for COMP. And the only person I communicated with over the phone at that party was…my dad. I’d caught him using my trust fund. And I’d guessed what he was up to. So I confronted him—and that’s when you walked in. Or
fell
in, I should say.”

Callie nodded slowly, racking her brain. A memory seemed to be struggling to surface, like a voice calling to her through the fog
on the other side of a soccer field. “I remember wondering why you didn’t bring Alessandra as your date for the evening. But you were busy helping Clint carry in the champagne, so I asked Lexi where she was instead. And she said—” Callie gasped. “She said that ‘Alessandra had
Crimson
business that night’!” Callie turned to Alessandra. “How did she know? How did she know that you would be there?”

“Don’t.” Alessandra’s voice was muffled through the tissues. “Please…”

But there was no stopping now. “How did you get the password to HPPunch dot com? Gregory: is there any way she could have found it by going through your bedroom or your phone?”

“I doubt it,” he said. “I never wrote it down anywhere. In fact, I never even logged in to the site.”

Callie nodded again, flooded with that half-satisfying, half-dreadful feeling: she’d been right all along. (Well, half right, in any event.) “It wasn’t your idea to write the last Ivy Insider article, was it, Alessandra?” she stated flatly. “It was Lexi’s.”

Alessandra let out a wail. “
She blackmailed me!
”

Gregory looked at Callie, stunned. Even Callie felt her jaw drop a fraction of an inch, for hearing it out loud was a lot different than suspecting the entire time.

“She caught me in the act!” Alessandra continued, “and was going to turn me in and expose me to the club!” She raised her head, her face splotchy and red. “But then, when she found out I’d been using
your
username and password, she said she had a better idea.”

“Of course,” Callie muttered. “How could she pass up an opportunity to take down me and Grace in one fell swoop?”

Alessandra nodded. She seemed finally to be all cried out. “At first she just wanted you kicked out of the Pudding. That’s why she called the cops on her own party for the Freshman Fifteen—so the members would later think you did it. But then…like you said, she saw an opportunity and she couldn’t resist.”

“She knew Grace would publish the Punch Book unedited, didn’t she?” asked Callie, marveling at Lexi’s mastery in spite of herself.

Alessandra nodded. “And she convinced me that you deserved to take the fall because you were a serial boyfriend stealer and were still after…you know…even though you were with Clint.” Alessandra swallowed. Gregory sat perfectly still.

“But I didn’t realize until later that you could be expelled—I swear,” said Alessandra. “And when I found out what had happened a few weeks after the Ad Board first called you in, I went to her and told her I couldn’t go through with it.” Alessandra clasped her hands together and stared at her fingers. “That’s when she explicitly threatened me. Turns out, she recorded our conversation in which I confessed to being the Insider and saved it to a flash drive. If I tried to tell the Ad Board that you didn’t do it, I would go down instead.”

Callie gaped. “But didn’t you have similar proof of her involvement? Text messages? E-mails? Anything?”

“She’s too smart for that.” Alessandra sighed. “Even her texts
from Gatsby giving me the blow by blow for that unpublished article just sound like updates from a friend who subbed in as my…boyfriend’s plus-one for the night.”

“But—” Callie sputtered. “But what about the final article?”

“She didn’t write it.” Alessandra shook her head. “She just gave me her password and told me what to do. I had my reservations, but…”

“But you did it because…” Callie said slowly, “you were mad at me?”

“Not just that.” Alessandra hesitated. “I also did it because I was mad…at the Pudding.”

Clearly, thought Callie. But
why
?

“I didn’t transfer here from USC,” Alessandra said finally.

“What?” said Callie.

“I took last semester off, but the year before that I was enrolled at Harvard…as a freshman.”

Callie glanced at Gregory, who also seemed too shocked to speak. Alessandra went on. “My full name is Alessandra Garcia-Constantine. Growing up, I thought Alessandra was too flashy—too much of a ‘hot girl’ name—so I always went by Alessan instead. And shortly before I came to Harvard, my father made a rather large—rather public—donation; so I decided to drop the second half of the hyphenate in order to make a fresh start in college. Even though my mother—and her last name—had been the bane of my existence growing up, there were…reasons it was a lot less likely that people would put two and two together.”

“Yes?” Callie encouraged, though she was starting to get a sense of where this was going.

“During the fall of my freshman year someone
did
put two and two together—and that someone was in the Pudding. They figured out that the famous supermodel had a daughter enrolled, and so, without ever having met me, they punched me.

“That first event was a disaster,” Alessandra recalled, glancing at the now nearly empty box of tissues like she might need another one at any moment. “Even in a brand-new dress I stood out like a…whale in a wading pool. Literally. Nobody could figure out who I was, or why I was there, so I spent the second half of the evening hiding in the coatroom with a tray of cupcakes…which is where I was when I overheard two members laughing about me: saying how they wouldn’t have ‘enough room’ to describe ‘that mistake’ in the Punch Book.”

Callie stole a peek at Gregory, expecting him to look uncomfortable. “I remember you saying that in high school you used to be ‘curvier,’” he prompted, ever so gently.

Alessandra nodded glumly. “As you probably both guessed by now—that was a major euphemism. I was the world’s fattest, ugliest supermodel’s daughter, and even though people weren’t usually
mean
about it, everyone always looked at me—and my mother—like they were just
so
sorry I’d gotten the short end of the genetic stick.”

She cleared her throat. “I spent the rest of my freshman year trying to stay as invisible as possible. And it worked: I made almost
no friends—and no enemies to make soul-crushing comments about my weight either. But by the end of it I was seriously depressed. Something had to be done. So I asked my parents to send me away to one of those ‘camps.’ It took more than six months, but afterward I looked like—well, like I do today. I even started using ‘Alessandra’ again.

“Before coming back to school, I decided to test-drive the new me at a New Year’s party at the Ritz—where we met,” she said, turning to Gregory. “A bunch of other Pudding people were there that night, too. I couldn’t believe it—not one of the upperclassmen recognized me, and they all couldn’t stop gushing about how I ‘just had to join’ their club. So I told them I’d just transferred mid-semester—from USC, which was easy enough to post online along with recent photos—and that I would be
just thrilled
to consider their society. That’s when the idea for the Insider articles first came to me. And from then on, everything went according to plan for a while…until I started falling for you,” she murmured to Gregory.

“I guess I wasn’t a very good boyfriend,” he said. “If I’d been better, you might have felt like you could tell me more…about you.”

Alessandra shrugged. “I could see that you were trying. And I knew you didn’t have a lot of practice, so I was flattered that I was the one who’d finally inspired you to make an effort.”

Callie tried to keep her expression neutral.

“But I also eventually figured out that you didn’t love me—that you were in love with someone else. It was those texts on your
phone that did it. ‘I think about you every day. It’s like I’m going crazy. I know you think I could never change but maybe, for you, I could.’” Alessandra frowned. “The fact that you never sent them only made it worse somehow. It made them seem more honest: obviously you weren’t just using a line to coax some girl into bed. I’m talking about you, by the way,” she said, grimacing at Callie.

“I’m sorry,” Gregory said to Alessandra again. “I didn’t know I—felt that way. Or maybe I did know but had given up and was trying to move on because I didn’t think my feelings would ever be returned….”

Callie wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him exactly how she felt—over and over and over again—but instead she sat on her hands.

“I forgive you,” said Alessandra. “I only hope…that maybe one day you can forgive me?” She looked at Callie.

“I’m sorry that you had such a terrible experience at the Pudding, and about…everything else,” Callie said eventually. “And as for the Insider thing: I’ll forgive you in the morning if I’m still around to do it.”

“You will be,” Alessandra affirmed. “I’ll tell the board everything—that it was all me.”

“And let Lexi get away with it?” Callie yelped. “No way!”

“What choice do I have?” asked Alessandra. “I can’t exactly prove her involvement, and if I implicate her, I’m positive she’ll make good on her threats: to publish in the
Crimson
the whole story of who was
really
behind the Ivy Insider and why—complete with an old photo she managed to track down.”

Callie’s eyes went wide.

“What?” asked Alessandra.

“Stay here,” Callie cried, leaping to her feet. “I’ll be right back!” she yelled over her shoulder before dashing out into the hall. Running into her bedroom, she grabbed the photo that she’d tacked onto the right-hand side of the bulletin board. Then, she threw open the bottom drawer of her desk and pulled out the USB flash drive labeled C, A—INSURANCE. In thirty seconds she was back inside the common room of C 23, panting, thankful that she didn’t have to stop and explain anything to anyone since they were all out at various libraries, studying for exams.

“What is it?” Alessandra asked again.

“Is this the photo, and is this the flash drive?” Callie said, shoving both onto Alessandra’s lap.

“How did you—”

“
I
broke into her office during the Lampoon break-in and I took them,” said Callie.

Gregory raised an eyebrow at her.

“What—like you never did anything wrong in your life?” she asked him.

“This is my ‘impressed’ face,” he deadpanned.

Callie held back a smile.

“No wonder she didn’t tell me that other items in her office were missing when I wrote that
Crimson
article,” Alessandra mused. “What a sneaky little b—”

“Text her,” Callie interrupted. “Find out where she is and tell her that you need to talk, right now.”

“She’s in her office at the
Crimson
,” said Alessandra a moment later, looking up from her phone.

“Yeah, well, it won’t be her office much longer,” said Callie. “Come on,” she added, compelling the other two to stand. “And Alessandra: make sure your iPhone has a working recording app.”

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