The Ivy: Scandal (34 page)

Insider Ousted

“I
’m sorry, but I’m quite busy today—oh…it’s you,” said the clear, high voice from where its owner sat in a regulation wooden chair. Callie smiled, wondering where Mimi had so successfully hidden the coveted, ergonomic ‘throne’ of their campus’s about-to-be-overthrown queen bee:

Alexis Thorndike.

“Both of you together,” Lexi corrected herself, looking from Callie to Alessandra. Gregory was waiting just outside the offices so he could fill Grace in when she arrived. Lexi smirked. “I guess that means you think you’ve got it all figured out,” she said, sounding altogether unconcerned. “And I guess
you
,” she addressed Alessandra, “no longer care if the entire school learns that you’re a lying, name-faking, former little fatty with a revenge streak and a flair for penning anonymous FlyBy blog posts.

“Then again,” Lexi continued, kicking back in her chair, “I don’t suppose you’ll be here for much longer, so maybe you won’t mind.”

Alessandra glowered. “Is that so? What do you suppose the chances are of
me
getting kicked out for an article that was
your
idea in the first place?”

Callie’s pulse thundered and she forced herself to avoid looking at Alessandra’s purse.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lexi said sweetly.
“Sorry. I really wish I could have helped. But like I said, I do have a lot of things that need to get done today, so if you could please just see yourselves out—”

“No.” Callie shook her head. “We’re not going anywhere until you admit that you were responsible for the final two Ivy Insider installments.
You
called the cops on that Pudding party, and
you
leaked the club’s password so that the Punch Book would be published.
And
you blackmailed Alessandra to force her to do your dirty work!”

Lexi laughed. “What a delightful little story!” She clapped her hands. “But I’m afraid I did no such things. Though that bit about the blackmail is especially creative. I wonder, whatever gave you that idea?”

“How about
these
?” said Alessandra, holing up the photo and the flash drive.

Lexi’s expression momentarily darkened. But then she smiled. “If I was using those items to coerce you somehow, as you say, then why do you have them instead of me?” Her brown eyes danced. “Unless of course one of you admits to breaking into my office? I’d hate to think it was you,” she said to Callie, “and while you were strictly banned from the building, too. I wonder if that’s enough for the Ad Board to reconsider your expulsion even if Alessandra isn’t just covering for you with regard to the Insider articles. Or maybe the two of you broke in together, just like you’ve been collaborating this entire time?”

“It’s over, Alexis.” Grace shut the door and smiled grimly at
Callie. “Too many people know too much for you to get away with it this time.”

“As if it wasn’t already crowded enough in here already,” Alexis muttered, finally appearing, for the first time, unsettled. “Although I suppose being packed into a room full of girls is kind of like your dream come true?”

“That’s right,” Grace agreed. “Keep bullying me about my sexuality. It’ll make a great addition to all of your e-mails from freshman year. You know the ones I’m talking about—where you told me to give up my seat on the
Crimson
or you’d out me to the student body?” Grace glanced at Alessandra. “She might not have any written documentation of your efforts to blackmail her,” Grace continued to Lexi, “but you weren’t always so careful, were you? Even up until last semester you still put a few things in writing that you maybe shouldn’t have….” Grace turned to Callie. “Isn’t that right, Andrews?”

“Um…right!” said Callie. “She e-mailed me just before I left for Thanksgiving break with a certain video file in the attachment and then implied she’d see me
if
I ever came back!”

Grace nodded. “That sounds a lot like something that happened in a widely circulated article I read at the start of this semester. It was called ‘Sex, Lies, and Videotape,’ and in it an exceptionally brave freshman girl admitted not only to having her privacy violated when her ex-boyfriend filmed her in secret but that a certain unnamed upperclassman had been using knowledge of the tape to harass her all year and coerce her into doing various tasks.”

“What’s your point?” said Lexi icily.

“My point,” said Grace, “is that the administration’s main concern with the Punch Book going public and the final Insider installment is harassment. Bullying. Students picking on other students based on gender, physical appearance, socioeconomic status, and yes, sexuality.”

“Isn’t it too bad, then,” Lexi replied, “that
you
were the one who published it.”

“And yet you are the one with a proven record of harassment,” Grace countered, “and a long history of forcing other students to do your bidding with threats—from giving up a rightfully earned spot on the
Crimson
to giving up a guy or giving up on staying in school.”

Lexi stared Grace down for a full thirty seconds before declaring, “A few old e-mails taken out of context still won’t prove that I had any involvement in the Ivy Insider articles. Now please leave my office immediately before I am forced to call Dean Benedict and tell him that you three are threatening
me
.”

“By all means, make the call,” said Callie. “We were going to suggest that anyway. And while you have the dean on the phone, you can tell him the truth. How you caught Alessandra working on an Insider article here at the
Crimson
. How you told her that instead of quitting, like she offered, she should keep on writing about the topics you gave her. How first you were plotting to have only me kicked out of the Pudding, but then you eventually decided to give Alessandra the password to HPPunch dot com
and have her publish the Punch Book, knowing full well that both Grace and I would go down for it. Ready?” Callie finished, picking up the phone on Lexi’s desk.

“It’ll be her word against mine,” said Lexi, looking from the landline to Alessandra.

“Actually,” said Callie, “it’ll be your word against Alessandra’s—and Clint’s.” Callie swallowed. She had hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but they needed that confession. “That’s right,” she continued. “Guess who had one too many drinks last night and came over to my place? He couldn’t wait to tell me all about how he was through with you because he’d caught you blackmailing someone else and—figured out all the other things that you’d been up to…. Oh—my bad!” Callie cringed, pressing her advantage. “Did he forget to let
you
know that it was over before he started hitting on me? That does kind of sound like him, though, doesn’t it?”

Lexi finally cracked. “Clint would—
never
betray me to the Ad Board! He doesn’t have a clue why I was blackmailing Alessandra or that it was my idea to publish the Punch Book, and even if he did sense that something was up, he’d never turn me in because he’d be too afraid of losing his summer internship with my uncle!”

“Gotcha!” Alessandra exclaimed, pulling her iPhone out of her purse and hitting Pause. “Just in time, too,” she muttered, noticing that the available recording space had almost maxed out. “In some ways you really were a great mentor,” Alessandra said to Lexi, quickly saving the recorded file and e-mailing it to
Callie and Grace. “I learned a lot of things from you. Like how to record a conversation without the other person noticing. And how it’s always so important to back up your work,” she finished, tossing her cell into her bag as Grace’s and Callie’s beeped with the incoming message.

Lexi stared from one girl to the other, speechless. Finally her eyes settled on Callie. “Clint didn’t actually—”

“He did,” said Callie. “But you’ll have to get him to tell you exactly what happened—if he can remember. I hope you’ll manage to work things out,” she added wryly. “You two really do deserve each other.”

“You seem confused,” Grace jumped in, surveying Lexi’s stupefied expression. “So why don’t I tell you how it’s going to go down from here. First you’re going to recuse yourself from the Student-Faculty Judicial Board. Then you’re going to propose to Dean Benedict that, based on my exemplary behavior while on probation, he ought to restore me to my position as managing editor.”

Callie nodded. “You will go to the hearing tomorrow morning with Alessandra and explain that the final Insider installment was never her idea. And if you don’t—well, now we have our own ‘insurance.’ You can quietly tell the Ad Board what you did or we can publish the whole story publicly, so everyone at the paper will know how you achieved your hostile
temporary
takeover and everyone in the Pudding will know that you betrayed them. The choice is yours,” she finished before Lexi could protest.

“And,” said Alessandra, “just in case you ever get the urge
to blackmail someone else again, we’re going to be hanging on to this.” She patted her purse. “We hope it will inspire you to remember to be nice to COMPers in the future.”

“So—you’re letting me stay on the magazine?” Lexi asked, recovering her powers of speech.

“That’s not up to us,” said Grace. “It’s up to the administration. My guess is that the punishment will be less severe, though, because no one individual was responsible: it took all of us, with the obvious exception of Callie, to make this mess.”

“What about the Pudding?” Lexi turned to Callie.

“What about it?” asked Callie.

“Will you tell them that I was responsible for the publication of the Punch Book?”

“You can tell them yourself,” said Callie. “Or don’t. It doesn’t matter to me, because I’m not a member anymore. I quit.”

“You
what
?” said Lexi sharply.

“I quit,” Callie repeated. “I finally realized Alessandra was right: I
don’t
want to belong to a club with people like you in it, even if not everyone in it is like you.”

Alessandra smiled.

Lexi seemed to be biting back the urge to inform Alessandra that the only club that would accept her when Lexi got through telling everyone about the Insider articles was Weight Watchers.

In the meantime Grace had been eyeing all the new décor on the desk and walls. “Right,” she said, clearing her throat. “Well, then, since the hearing is tomorrow morning, I’ll expect all of your
stuff to be out of here by noon. Feel free to take the chair, too, since I seem to recall hearing something about how your Eames is missing.” Grace smirked, opening the door to the office. “Shall we?” she asked the other two.

Callie trailed after her and Alessandra and was almost out of the office when Lexi called to her, “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?” asked Callie, turning to face her.

“Why not expose me to the Pudding or try to have me expelled?” Lexi seemed genuinely confused. “I would destroy you with half as much.”

Callie shrugged and stepped out of the office. “Because I’m not you.”

“We won!” Callie screamed, leaping into Gregory’s arms.

“She confessed?” he murmured, twirling Callie through the air once before breaking away, glancing pointedly at Alessandra.

“She did,” said Grace, offering him her hand. “Thanks for hanging around out here and filling me in.”

“Absolutely,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’ll see you…around?” he added to Alessandra, who looked exhausted and eager to leave.

“Probably not at the Pudding,” she said ruefully. “Until tomorrow?” she added to Grace.

“University Hall at nine o’clock sharp,” said Grace, turning in the direction of her upperclassman house.

“I’ll be there,” Alessandra confirmed for Callie’s benefit before walking away, too.

“So,” said Gregory, turning back to Callie, “what now?”

“I was thinking of heading back to Wigglesworth,” she said, struggling to keep a straight face. “I’ve got a
lot
of catching up to do—you know, on studying? Like, for finals?”

“That’s funny,” he said. “So do I.”

“You do?” said Callie. “What a coincidence.”

“Come to think of it,” he said, taking her hand effortlessly and starting to walk, “I imagine your econ grade has suffered drastically during my absence. And how are you surviving Literary Theory now that you no longer have my notes to copy?”