The door to her bathroom was only half closed, and Serena could hear her friend retching inside.
“Blair, it’s me,” Serena said quietly. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be out in a minute,” Blair snapped, wiping her mouth. She stood up and flushed the toilet.
Serena pushed the door open and Blair turned and glared at her. “I’m fine,” Blair said. “Really.”
Serena put the lid down on the toilet seat and sat down. “Oh, don’t be such a bitch, Blair,” she said, exasperated. “What’s the deal? It’s me, remember? We know everything about each other.”
Blair reached for her toothbrush and toothpaste. “We used to,” she said and began brushing her teeth furiously. She spat out a wad of green foam. “When was the last time we talked, anyway? Like, the summer before last?”
Serena looked down at her scuffed brown leather boots. “I know. I’m sorry. I suck,” she said.
Blair rinsed her toothbrush off and stuck it back in the holder. She stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Well, you missed a lot,” she said, wiping a smudge of mascara from beneath her eye with the tip of her pinky. “I mean, last year was really . . . different.” She’d been about to say “hard,” but “hard” made her sound like a victim. Like she’d barely survived without Serena around. “Different” was better.
Blair glanced down at Serena sitting on the toilet, with a sudden sense of power. “Nate and I have become really close, you know. We tell each other everything.”
Yeah, right.
The two girls eyed each other warily for a moment. Then Serena shrugged. “Well don’t worry about me and Nate,” she said. “We’re just friends, you know that. And besides, I’m tired of boys.”
The corners of Blair’s mouth curled up. Serena obviously wanted her to ask why, why was she tired of boys? But Blair wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. She tugged her sweater down and glanced at her reflection one more time. “I’ll see you back in there,” she said, and abruptly left the bathroom.
Shit, Serena thought, but she stayed where she was. It was no use going after Blair now, while she was obviously in such a crappy mood. Things would be better tomorrow at school. She and Blair would have one of their famous heart-to-hearts in the lunchroom over lemon yogurts and romaine lettuce. It wasn’t like they could just stop being friends.
Serena stood up and examined her eyebrows in the bathroom mirror, using Blair’s tweezers to pluck a few stray hairs. She pulled a tube of Urban Decay Gash lip gloss from her pocket and smeared another layer on her lips. Then she picked up Blair’s hairbrush and began brushing her hair. Finally, she peed and rejoined the dinner party, forgetting her lip gloss on Blair’s sink.
When Serena sat down, Blair was eating her second helping of pudding, and Nate was drawing a small-scale picture of his kick-ass sailboat for Cyrus on the back of a matchbook. Across the table Chuck raised his wine glass to clink it with Serena’s. She had no idea what she was toasting, but she was always up for anything.
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
S SEEN DEALING ON STEPS OF MET
Well, we’re certainly off to a good start. You sent me tons of e-mail, and I had the best time reading it all. Thanks so much. Doesn’t it feel good to be bad?
Your E-Mail
hey gossip girl,
i heard about a girl up in New Hampshire who the police found naked a field, with a bunch of dead chickens. ew. they thought she was into some kind of voodoo shit or something. do you think that was S? i mean it sounds like her, right? l8ter.
–catee3
Dear Catee3,
I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. S is a big fan of chickens. Once, in the park, I saw her eat a whole bucket of fried chicken without stopping for air. But supposedly she’d been hitting the bong pretty heavily that day.
—GG
Dear GG,
My name starts with S and I have blond hair!!! I also just came back from boarding school to my old school in NYC. I was just so sick of all the rules, like no drinking or smoking or boys in your room. :( Anyway, I have my own apartment now and I’m having a party next Saturday—wanna come? :-)
—S969
Dear S969,
The S I’m writing about still lives with her parents like most of us seventeen-year-olds, you lucky bitch.
—GG
whatsup, gossip girl?
last night some guys I know got a handfull of pills from some blond chick on the steps of the metropolitan museum of art. they had the letter S stamped all over them. coincidence, or what?
—N00name
Dear N00name,
Whoa, is all I have to say.
—GG
3 GUYS AND 2 GIRLS
I and K are going to have a little trouble fitting into those cute dresses they picked up at Bendel’s if they keep stopping in at the 3 Guys Coffee Shop for hot chocolate and French fries every day. I went in there myself to see what the fuss was about, and I guess I could say my waiter was cute, if you like ear fuzz, but the food is worse than at Jackson Hole and the average person in there is like, 100 years old.
Sightings
C was seen in Tiffany, picking up another pair of monogrammed cufflinks for a party. Hello? I’m waiting for my invite. B’s mother was seen holding hands with her new man in Cartier. Hmmm, when’s the wedding? Also seen: a girl bearing a striking resemblance to S, coming out of an STD clinic on the Lower East Side. She was wearing a thick black wig and big sunglasses. Some disguise. And very late last night, S was seen leaning out her bedroom window over Fifth Avenue, looking a little lost.
Well, don’t jump, sweetie, things are just starting to get good.
That’s all for now. See you in school tomorrow.
You know you love me,
hark the herald angels sing
“Welcome back, girls,” Mrs. McLean said, standing behind the podium at the front of the school auditorium. “I hope you all had a terrific long weekend. I spent the weekend in Vermont, and it was absolutely heavenly.”
All seven hundred students at the Constance Billard School for Girls, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its fifty faculty and staff members tittered discreetly. Everyone knew Mrs. McLean had a girlfriend up in Vermont. Her name was Vonda, and she drove a tractor. Mrs. McLean had a tattoo on her inner thigh that said, “Ride Me, Vonda.”
It’s true, swear to God.
Mrs. McLean, or Mrs. M, as the girls called her, was their headmistress. It was her job to put forth the cream of the crop—send the girls off to the best colleges, the best marriages, the best lives—and she was very good at what she did. She had no patience for losers, and if she caught one of her girls acting like a loser—persistently calling in sick or doing poorly on the SATs—she would call in the shrinks, counselors, and tutors and make sure the girl got the personal attention she needed to get good grades, high scores, and a warm welcome to the college of her choice.
Mrs. M also didn’t tolerate meanness. Constance was supposed to be a school free of cliques and prejudice of any sort. Her favorite saying was, “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.” The slightest slander of one girl by another was punished with a day in isolation and a seriously difficult essay assignment. But those punishments were a rare necessity. Mrs. M was blissfully ignorant of what really went on in the school. She certainly couldn’t hear the whispering going on in the very back of the auditorium, where the seniors sat.
“I thought you said Serena was coming back today,” Rain Hoffstetter whispered to Isabel Coates.
That morning, Blair and Kati and Isabel and Rain had all met on their usual stoop around the corner for cigarettes and coffee before school started. They had been doing the same thing every morning for two years, and they half expected Serena to join them. But school had started ten minutes ago, and Serena still hadn’t shown up.
br /> Blair couldn’t help feeling annoyed at Serena for creating even more mystery around her return than there already was. Her friends were practically squirming in their seats, eager to catch their first glimpse of Serena, as if she were some kind of celebrity.
“She’s probably too drugged up to come to school today,” Isabel whispered back. “I swear, she spent like, an hour in the bathroom last night at Blair’s house. Who knows what she was doing in there.”
“I heard she’s selling these pills with the letter S stamped on them. She’s completely addicted to them,” Kati told Rain.
“Wait till you see her,” Isabel said. “She’s a total mess.”
“Yeah,” Rain whispered back. “I heard she’d started some kind of voodoo cult up in New Hampshire.”
Kati giggled. “I wonder if she’ll ask us to join.”
“Hello?” said Isabel. “She can dance around naked with chickens all she wants, but I don’t want to be there. No way.”
“Where can you get live chickens in the city, anyway?” Kati asked.
“Gross,” Rain said.
“Now, I’d like to begin by singing a hymn. If you would please rise and open up your hymnals to page forty-three,” Mrs. M instructed.
Mrs. Weeds, the frizzy-haired hippie music teacher, began banging out the first few chords of the familiar hymn on the piano in the corner; then all seven hundred girls stood up and began to sing.
Their voices floated down Ninety-third Street, where Serena van der Woodsen was just turning the corner, cursing herself for being late. She hadn’t woken up this early since her eleventh-grade final exams at Hanover last June, and she’d forgotten how badly it sucked.
“Hark the herald angels si-ing!
Glo-ry to the newborn king!
Peace on Earth and mercy mi-ild,
God and sin-ners reconciled.”
Constance ninth grader Jenny Humphrey silently mouthed the words, sharing with her neighbor the hymnal which Jenny herself had been commissioned to pen in her exceptional calligraphy. It had taken all summer, and the hymnals were beautiful. In three years the Pratt Institute of Art and Design would be knocking her door down. Still, Jenny felt sick with embarrassment every time they used the hymnals, which was why she couldn’t sing out loud. To sing aloud seemed like an act of bravado, as if she were saying, “Look at me, I’m singing along to the hymnals I made! Aren’t I cool?”
Jenny preferred to be invisible. She was a curly-haired, tiny little freshman, so invisible wasn’t a hard thing to be. Actually, it would have been easier if her boobs weren’t so incredibly huge. At fourteen, she was a 34D.
Can you imagine?
“Hark the heavenly host proclaims,
Christ i-is born in Beth-le-hem!”
Jenny was standing at the end of a row of folding chairs, next to the big auditorium windows overlooking Ninety-third Street. Suddenly a movement out on the street caught her eye. Blond hair flying. Burberry plaid coat. Scuffed brown suede boots. New maroon uniform—odd choice, but she made it work. It looked like . . . it couldn’t be . . . could it possibly . . . No! . . . Was it?
Yes, it was.
A moment later Serena van der Woodsen pushed open the heavy wooden door of the auditorium and stood in front of it, looking for her class. She was out of breath and her hair was windblown. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were bright from running the twelve blocks up Fifth Avenue to school. She looked even more perfect than Jenny had remembered.
“Oh. My. God,” Rain whispered to Kati in the back of the room. “Did she like, pick up her clothes at a homeless shelter on the way here?”
“She didn’t even brush her hair,” Isabel giggled. “I wonder where she slept last night.”
Mrs. Weeds ended the hymn with a crashing chord.
Mrs. M cleared her throat. “And now, a moment of silence for those less fortunate than we are. Especially for the Native Americans that were slaughtered in the founding of this country, of whom we ask no hard feelings for celebrating Columbus Day yesterday,” she said.
The room fell silent. Well, almost.
“Look, see how Serena’s resting her hands on her stomach? She’s probably pregnant,” Isabel Coates whispered to Rain Hoffstetter. “You only do that when you’re pregnant.”
“She could have had an abortion this morning. Maybe that’s why she’s late,” Rain whispered back.
“My father gives money to Phoenix House,” Kati told Laura Salmon. “I’m going to find out if Serena’s been there. I bet that’s why she came back halfway through term. She’s been in rehab.”
“I hear they’re doing this thing in boarding school where they mix Comet and cinnamon and instant coffee and snort it. It’s like speed, but it makes your skin turn green if you do it too long,” Nicki Button piped up. “You go blind, and then you die.”
Blair caught snippets of her friends’ chatter, and it made her smile.
Mrs. M turned to nod at Serena.
“Girls, I’d like you all to welcome back our old friend Serena van der Woodsen. Serena will be rejoining the senior class today.” Mrs. M smiled. “Why don’t you find a seat, Serena?”
Serena walked lightly down the center aisle of the auditorium and sat down in an empty chair next to a chronic nose-picking second grader named Lisa Sykes.
Jenny could hardly contain herself. Serena van der Woodsen! She was there, in the same room, only a few feet away. So real. And so mature-looking now.
I wonder how many times she’s done it, Jenny wondered to herself.
She imagined Serena and a blond Hanover boy leaning against the trunk of a big old tree, his coat wrapped around both of them. Serena had had to sneak out of her dorm without a coat. She was very cold, and she got tree sap in her hair, but it was worth it. Then Jenny pictured Serena and another imaginary boy on a ski lift. The ski lift got stuck and Serena climbed into the boy’s lap to get warm. They began to kiss and they couldn’t stop themselves. By the time they were done, the ski lift had started again and their skis were all tangled up, so they stayed on the chair and rode it downhill and did it again.
How cool, Jenny thought. Hands down, Serena van der Woodsen was absolutely the coolest girl in the entire world. Definitely cooler than any of the other seniors. And how cool to come in late, in the middle of the term, looking like that.
No matter how rich and fabulous you are, boarding school does have a way of making you look like a homeless person. A glamorous one, in Serena’s case.
She hadn’t had a haircut in over a year. Last night she’d worn it pulled back, but today it was down and looking pretty shaggy. Her boy’s white oxford shirt was frayed in the collar and cuffs, and through it, her purple lace bra was visible. On her feet was her favorite pair of brown lace-up boots, and her black stockings had a big hole behind one knee. Worst of all, she’d had to buy all new uniforms, since she’d thrown hers down the garbage chute when she’d gone away to boarding school. Her new uniform was what stuck out the most.
The new uniforms were the plague of the sixth grade, which was the year Constance girls graduated from a tunic to a skirt. The new skirts were made out of polyester and had pleats that were unnaturally rigid. The material had a terrible, tacky sheen and came in a new color: maroon. It was hideous. And it was this maroon uniform that Serena had chosen to wear on her first day back at Constance. Plus, hers came all the way down to her knees! All of the other seniors were wearing the same old navy blue wool skirts they’d been wearing since sixth grade. They’d grown so much their skirts were extremely short. The shorter the skirt, the cooler the girl.
Blair actually hadn’t grown that much, so she’d secretly had hers shortened.
“What the fuck is she wearing, anyway?” Kati Farkas hissed.
“Maybe she thinks the maroon looks like Prada or something,” Laura sniggered back.
“I think she’s trying to make some kind of statement,” Isabel whispered. “Like, look at me, I’m Serena, I’m beautiful, I can wear whatever I
want.”
And she can, Blair thought. That was one of the things that always infuriated her about Serena. She looked good in anything.
But never mind how Serena looked. What Jenny and every other person in the room wanted to know was: Why is she back?
They craned their necks to see. Did she have a black eye? Was she pregnant? Did she look stoned? Did she have all her teeth? Was there anything different about her at all?
“Is that a scar on her cheek?” Rain whispered.
“She was knifed one night dealing drugs,” Kati whispered back. “I heard she had plastic surgery in Europe this summer, but they didn’t do a very good job.”
Mrs. McLean was reading out loud now. Serena sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes, basking in the old familiar feeling of sitting in this room full of girls, listening to Mrs. M’s voice. She didn’t know why she’d been so nervous that morning before school. She’d overslept and gotten dressed in five minutes, ripping a hole in her black stocking with a jagged toenail. She’d chosen her brother Erik’s frayed old shirt because it smelled like him. Erik had gone to the same boarding school as Serena, but now he was away at college, and she missed him terribly.
Just as she was leaving the apartment, her mother caught sight of her and would have made her change her clothes if Serena hadn’t been so late.
“This weekend,” her mother said, “we’re going shopping, and I’m taking you to my salon. You can’t go around looking like that here, Serena. I don’t care how they let you dress in boarding school.” Then she kissed her daughter on the cheek and went back to bed.
“Oh my God, I think she’s asleep,” Kati whispered to Laura.
“Maybe she’s just tired,” Laura whispered back. “I heard she got kicked out for sleeping with every boy on campus. There were notches in the wall above her bed. Her roommate told on her, that’s the only way they found out.”