The Ivy: Rivals (27 page)

Chapter Fifteen
What Happens on the Island . . .
. . . Stays on the Island

T
he bonfire that would have made Callie’s former leader of Girl Scout Troop #47, Westwood, California, Chapter proud blazed against the orange sky, casting flickering shadows over the pale sand as the sea grew a darker and darker shade of blue in the wake of the setting sun. Callie, Mimi, and Vanessa sat side-by-side facing the flames atop some blankets Mimi had also “borrowed” from the hotel.

“If I ever am stuck on a desert island I am bringing you,
ma petite
Girl Scout!” Mimi cried, gesturing at the fire and patting Callie jovially on the back. “And let us not forget
vous, Monsieur Bouteille, aussi
!” she finished, brandishing the bottle of tequila.

“Hey!” Vanessa screamed, whacking. “What about
me
?”

“What skills do you have?” Mimi turned to her, pretending to look serious. “Your iPhone
applications ne sont pas utiles ici
. . . in the wild.”

Pouting, Vanessa grabbed the bottle and took a swig. “No matter where I am, I can always find food.” She sniffed indignantly.

“
Mais oui, c’est vrai! Et si tu ne pouves pas trouver de la nourriture, nous pouvons toujours tu mangez! D’accord,
you may accompany me to my island.”

“Did you just threaten to eat me?” Vanessa demanded.

“Uh-oh,” Callie interrupted, frowning and turning the now-empty bottle upside down. “No more . . .”

“C’est fini!”
Mimi cried, throwing herself back on the blanket. “All of it is over. Tomorrow we must return. . . .”

Callie and Vanessa groaned.

“Mais ce soir nous sommes come des dieux!”
she finished, leaping to her feet.

“English, please?” Callie requested.

“Tonight we must live like gods,” Mimi said, suddenly grave.
“Et alors ... prends ça!”
she yelped, slipping off her tank top and tossing it onto the sand.

“Mimi.” Vanessa giggled. “Did you forget that our bathing suits are back at the villa?”

“Alors quoi?”
Mimi challenged her. “This is how we do it at home in France.” Then, to their surprise, she slipped off her skirt as well and started running toward the water’s edge. “Are you duckies coming or no?” she cried over her shoulder.

“It’s ‘chickens’!” Callie shouted after her automatically. She turned to Vanessa.

Vanessa shrugged and stood up, pulling her sundress over her head. “Everyone else is at Vick’s and it’s too dark to see anything now anyway,” she said giddily. “Come on, hurry up!”

Quickly Callie obeyed, and soon they were sprinting down the final stretch of beach to join Mimi in the ocean.

An hour later they were lying flat on their backs in the sand by the fire, wrapped in blankets and staring at the cloudless nighttime sky.

“This is the best,” Callie said with a happy sigh. “I don’t know why anyone would ever want a boyfriend if she had you guys.”

“Awww!” said Vanessa, cuddling closer under the blankets.

Mimi giggled.
“Que tu vas devenir une lesbienne?”

Callie gazed thoughtfully up at the stars. “If sexuality
were
a choice, then maybe I
would
become a lesbian, given my fabulous track record with men . . . though I don’t suppose being gay is any easier. Let’s see now,” she continued, rolling over woozily and still feeling the effects of the tequila. “Lemme just get this straight. My first boyfriend, who I thought I loved, made a secret sex tape of us and showed it to the whole soccer team, followed by his fraternity. My second boyfriend, who I also thought I loved, cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend, who used that same sex tape to blackmail me and otherwise ruin my life. Am I stupid?”

“You forgot the part where you had sex with the biggest man-whore at Harvard!” Vanessa exclaimed gleefully.

“I am stupid!” Callie cried, smacking herself. “Only a stupid . . . head would manage to get herself dumped in an e-mail and
then
get herself dumped while handcuffed to you!” she finished, collapsing into giggles on top of Vanessa’s shoulder.

“That’s right, I was there,” Vanessa said, patting Callie’s hair. “And it was
ugly
,” she added, addressing Mimi.

“Who needs boys!” Callie erupted, sitting up suddenly. Raising an imaginary glass, she said solemnly, “I hereby swear to renounce henceforth from now to the ends of eternity all members of the male persuasion—”

“Including Matt,” Mimi interjected.

“Including Matt, who is also a boy, despite the fact that he is nice and has very soft hands, very soft . . . and yes, so henceforth until the sands of time, we swear—”

“Yes,
we
!” Mimi echoed, raising a second imaginary glass.

“Forever and ever and ever and—”

“I MISS TYLER!” Vanessa wailed suddenly.

“Oh jeez,” Callie muttered, throwing herself back on the blanket. “You just had to go there, didn’t you . . .”

“Sorry!” Vanessa moaned. “But it’s true!”

“I miss Dana,” Mimi said thoughtfully after a moment.

“Really?” Callie and Vanessa asked in unison.

“Oui,”
said Mimi. “We have done the bonding while I was sick of being the Berlin Wall and then also the third wheel of the tricycle.”

“Tricycles
need
three wheels to function,” Callie pointed out.

Mimi waved her hand dismissively. “Well,
que diriez-tu
?”

“Yes,” Vanessa agreed. “Callie: who do you miss? Cl—I mean The Lying, Cheating Bastard? It’s okay if you do a little. We won’t judge—even though I still can’t believe that you allowed him to speak to you. . . .”

“I don’t think I really do—miss him,” Callie mused. “I did at first—back when I went through his e-mails and wanted to stay together more than anything when I thought I was crazy and he was perfect, but now . . .” She shrugged. “I miss my mom, mostly, and my dad, and my best friend from home, Jessica, and . . .”

“And?” Vanessa prompted.

“And . . . Gregory, I guess,” Callie blurted. “Though I know that doesn’t make any sense because I never even had him in the first place.”

“Well, now, whose fault is that?” Vanessa chastised her.

“Um . . . mine?”

“Exactly,” Vanessa agreed. “By the way, there’s something that I’ve been
dying
to ask you about for months but couldn’t because I was too busy hating your guts: whatever happened after Gregory told you about that whole note mix-up?”

“What note mix-up?”

“You know, like, the note,” Vanessa said. “The one you wrote to me in response to what I wrote to you that Gregory somehow found and thought was meant for
him
. . .”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Callie. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“Yes,” Mimi echoed. “This is very confusing.”

“The note!” Vanessa repeated, growing frustrated. “You know, ‘Sorry for Harvard-Yale, it was all a huge mistake, you’re a terrible person, blah blah blah . . .’”

“Oh!” said Callie. “That note. You saw that? I thought I threw it away. Whoops. Sorry,” she added sheepishly. “I was only responding to your, ah, ‘Manifesto.’”

“No, no,
no
,” said Vanessa, shaking her head. “The point is that I
didn’t
see it—well, not until much later at the end of J-term, anyway—and that Gregory found it and thought it was addressed to
him
instead.”

“Huh?” said Callie, her brows knitting together.

“I think she is quite drunk,” Mimi muttered to Callie.

“I’m not drunk!” Vanessa hiccupped. “I am drunk! But I know what I’m talking about. Okay.
You
wrote a note to me saying all this stuff about Harvard-Yale and our fight and whatever, but that same note got accidentally delivered to
Gregory
, who I’m pretty sure thought that all that stuff applied to him.”

“What?” Callie asked dumbly. “What stuff? This isn’t making any sense—”

“Ugh!” Vanessa cried. “You
know
, stuff about screwing things up with the room dynamic and with Clint, and how you didn’t want to be friends, and . . . oh yeah, I think at the end there was something like, ‘Let’s just stay as far away from each other as possible’—or something.”

Suddenly Callie sat straight up. “Oh . . . my . . . god . . .”

“What?” Mimi demanded, her eyes darting between Callie and Vanessa.

“So . . . so when he said we should stay away . . . and he said
I said
it first . . . only I didn’t say . . . and the threesome . . . the threesome that was
after
,” Callie muttered, staring vacantly ahead of her into the now pitch-black night, save for the dull glow of the dying fire.

“After
what
?” Mimi cried.

“The paper!” Callie exclaimed. “That worn-out piece of paper he was holding the night he found me in the pub . . . said he needed to talk to me . . . Oh my god. Vanessa!” she snapped suddenly. “You said you saw this, this
note
during J-term?”

“Yes,” Vanessa said, nodding. “I was over in the boys’ room and I found it, and then Gregory and I had a very similar conversation to the one we’re having now—”

“Oh my god,” Callie said for a third time. “And then he came to me with it but before . . . asked if I was happy . . . I
was
happy. . . . I thought I was happy. . . . I have to go!” Callie cried, leaping up and showering the other two with sand.

“WHAT is going ON here?” Mimi erupted. “You are making me be the tricycle again!”

“Wait!” Vanessa called after her. “Where are you—”

“I have to find Gregory!” Callie yelled. “I have to find him and tell him—OW!” she screeched suddenly, tripping over something in the darkness.

“Are you okay?” Mimi shouted.

“. . . yes . . .”

“For heaven’s sake, come back!” Vanessa ordered.

Limping, Callie returned to the blanket and sat down between her roommates.

“Mais qu’est-ce qui se passe?”
Mimi implored once more.

“Callie likes Gregory, and Gregory likes—or maybe
liked
, sorry—Callie, only they were both too stupid to tell each other directly and then everything got needlessly complicated,” Vanessa explained for Mimi’s benefit.

“Oh,” said Mimi. “That is all? But I already knew that!”

“Yes,” Vanessa agreed. “You and everyone else who lives on our floor.”

“
Ow,
” Callie whimpered, cradling her injured toe. “I have to tell him,” she repeated meekly, less sure of herself now.

“Maybe you should wait until the morning,” Vanessa suggested, “when you’re sober.”

“
Oui,
” Mimi agreed, “and when he is not in bed with somebody else.”

Ah, right. Alessandra. Callie’s face fell.

“At least give yourself some time to think it over first,” Vanessa offered gently. “I mean, would knowing what you know now
really
have changed your mind back then? Not that we were on speaking terms or anything, but you seemed pretty happy with Clint.”

“I was . . .” Callie admitted. Vanessa had an excellent point.
Would
knowing about the miscommunication with the note have been enough to change her mind? Probably not, she finally decided. She had made her decision because she believed, based on everything Gregory had done—regardless of what had been said, accidentally or on purpose—that he needed to change.

And maybe he finally had . . . except that maybe now it was too late. . . . But maybe not . . .

Lying back on the blanket, Callie yawned. “I’m sleepy,” she said.

“Moi aussi,”
Mimi concurred, pulling the blankets up close under her chin.

“Me”—yawn—“too,” Vanessa chimed in, curling up next to Callie in the fetal position. “Positive . . . ly . . . ex . . . hausted . . .” she managed through more yawns. The last flames of the fire had finally snuffed out.

“Should we . . .” Callie started, but before she could finish the thought, they were all fast asleep.

“There they are: I see them! Look—over there!”

Callie’s eyelids fluttered. In her dream she could hear Matt yelling from somewhere far away. Yawning, she rolled over. Her body collided with another large mass, soft and warm—

“Ge-roff me.” Vanessa groaned, shoving her.

“Callie! Vanessa! Wake up! Wake up!”

“Mimi!”
The voice of OK had now entered her dream.
“Get up—we’re late!”

“WAKE UP!” dream-Matt suddenly boomed.

Callie’s eyes flew open.

Real-Matt was standing over them, a look of panic on his face.

“Oh, shit,” Callie muttered.

“We—oh my god—we overslept—we—did we miss the plane?” Vanessa screamed, leaping upright.

“Not yet,” said OK, who had just arrived at a run. “But we need to go—now.”

“Mimi,” Callie started, gathering the blankets. “Mimi, wake up!”

“Merde,”
they heard her mutter finally. OK pulled her to her feet.

No one said a word while they raced back to the villa, where Matt and OK did their best to aid the girls with any final packing necessities. Drawers slammed; doors opened and closed; heads popped under the beds and behind the shower curtains to check for any lingering bikini tops or toiletries until at last the last zipper zipped and they found themselves at the front door, luggage assembled and ready to go.

“Good-bye, Villa Whale,” Callie murmured as they flew up the stone pathway back to the main resort. And: hello . . . reality.

Reality was, unfortunately, one solitary taxi van pulling out of the rounded driveway in front of the main resort.