You're the One That I Want (17 page)

Meaning that it was a gift to Blair, too.

Blair looked up from her digital camera. She and Serena hadn't spoken since their unfortunate college-acceptance-letter opening party, and it was pretty obvious that the generous baby gifts Serena and Nate had sent to her mom were meant as peace offerings. But Blair had never been one to forgive and forget easily.

The first bell rang and the tightly packed group of girls moaned and began to dissipate, collecting their books and pens and gum and hairbrushes and whatever else they'd need to make it through the day, while still hanging around to lis-ten to Serena and Blair face off.

Serena stayed where she was, hugging her knees and watching Blair rearrange her school stuff in her too-small-for-hooks baby blue Fendi backpack. "She's beautiful," Serena told Blair earnestly.

Blair allowed her a smug half-smile. Yes, Yale was beautiful. "How'd last weekend go?" she demanded. "Where do you think you want to go?"

It was a trick question. If Serena said Yale, Blair would shoot fire out of her eyeballs and burn her to the ground. If she said another school, she'd be lying, since she still hadn't made up her mind. But Yale was closest to the city, and it had Lars and the Whiffenpoofs, and that uptight New Englandness that reminded her of home. Plus, how much fun would it be if she and Nate and Blair were friends again and all went there together?

She scooted her butt across the plush red carpet towards I (lair and began to explain.

"Actually I fell in love. With all of them. Every school." She blushed as she tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I fell in love with my tour guides. They were all boys and I hey were so--

Blair held up her hand and rolled her eyes. Did anyone or anything ever change? "I don't want to know." Actually, she did, but she knew Serena would eventually tell her anyway.

"And what about you?" Serena asked curiously. "How'd it go at Georgetown?"

Blair rolled her eyes again and touched her hair self-consciously. "You don't want to know."

Serena shrugged her shoulders. "It doesn't matter. You're going to get into Yale anyway," she stated confidently.

The second bell rang but the other girls dawdled, watch-ing Serena and Blair out of the corners of their eyes as they pretended to drink out of empty cappuccino cups.

"I heard Serena got a huge modeling contract for next year so she's going to give Blair her spot at Yale. Blair just has to pretend to be her," Kati Farkas whispered to Isabel Coates.

And who will Serena pretend to be? Kate Moss?

"I heard she and Blair are going to take their babies to Yale with them and start a lesbos-with-babies support group," Isabel hissed back.

"Oh my God. I totally saw Serena at my mom's gyno yes-terday," Laura Salmon volunteered. "I'm waiting for my mom, and then I hear Serena telling him how she'd gotten all these diseases from the guys she slept with this weekend. Ew!"

"Wait, I thought they were fighting," Kati pointed out. "Look, they're hugging."

Each girl turned to gape over her shoulder as Serena and Blair took hold of each other. "Nate's been calling, like, ten times a day every day to ask about you," Serena murmured as she pressed her cheek against Blair's.

Blair bit her lower lip. "He sent Yale some really cute stuff."

"You know he loves you," Serena said, even though she didn't need to. "And we're all so much happier when we're not fighting."

"Yeah," Blair admitted. But Nate was going to have in prove it to her on his own.

Not that she'd be that hard to win over.

glindathegoodwitchandhermunchkinhelper

"Can I sit here?" Elise asked Jenny at lunchtime on Friday.

"I don't know why you'd want to," Jenny grumbled. Ever since her ghastly picture had appeared in that magazine, she'd been creeping around with her head down, avoiding public places at all costs. Just being in school at all was excruciating. But her father had forced her to go, and now she was parked at her usual beside-the-mirror table, glaring at her reflection.

"I brought you an ice cream sandwich." Elise sat down across from her and pushed the ice cream toward Jenny.

Jenny pushed it away. She was on a food strike. "I'm not hungry. Actually, I was about to leave," she added grouchily. So Elise was making an effort to be friends again? Honestly-- she wasn't in the mood.

Elise drizzled honey from a plastic packet into a teacup, begin-ning the little tea ceremony she'd had with herself every day at lunchtime since she and Jenny started fighting. "Just sit with me a little while," she begged in a voice verging on desperate.

Jenny knitted her eyebrows together. "Why should I?"

Elise stirred her tea and took a careful sip. "I don't know." She glanced around the room, as if looking for someone. "Because I asked you to?"

Jenny sighed heavily and stood up. "Look, I'm going up to the computer lab, okay?" At least up there she could hide from everyone's vicious stares while she pretended to send e-mails to all the friends she didn't have. "See you later."

Elise grabbed her arm. "Wait. Sit down. Just one more minute."

Jenny pulled her arm away. "What's your problem?" Elise's freckled face turned beet red. "I just--" Then Serena plunked her beautiful ass down at their table and Elise let out a huge sigh of relief. "I thought I was going to have to sit on her to keep her down here," she grumbled.

"What's going on?" Jenny demanded. So now Elise and Serena were, like, working together to sabotage her life even worse than it had already been sabotaged? That was just peachy. Serena pulled a stack of magazines from out of her bag, "Before you say anything, can I just show you the stuff Jonathan Joyce has done?" She rifled through the magazines, and started pointing out pictures. "There. And there. And how cool is this?

Jenny stared glassy-eyed at the photos. Models frolicking on a bed wearing little or no makeup, old T-shirts, and baggy men's trousers. A girl with her legs tucked up underneath her, drinking a glass of milk. A man kissing his dog. A stew-ardess asleep in an airport lounge with a pilot's coat draped over her. There was nothing provocative about the pictures. They were just plain good.

"He wants to shoot us on the merry-go-round in Central Park on Saturday," Serena continued. "The clothes are awesome-- Jonathan's already got a whole rack of stuff he and I picked out together." She beamed at Jenny. "And the best part is, whatever we wear on the shoot, we get to keep."

Jenny didn't know what to say. Sure, it sounded exciting, and the keeping-the-clothes thing was definitely a plus, but how did she know it wasn't just another degrading look-at-the-girl-with-the-big-boobs stunt?

"I have a birthday party to go to in Williamsburg on Saturday," she protested lamely.

"But that's not till nighttime," Elise countered. "I could come with you to the shoot, and I could shout or blow a whistle if I think your integrity is being compromised."

Leave it to Elise to put it into the type of clinical terms she'd read in one of her mom's self-help books. Jenny crossed her arms over the part of her integrity that was most often compromised.

"I made him promise not to shoot us in anything too revealing," Serena added. "He's really only interested in our faces anyway."

Jenny examined her reflection in the mirrored wall in front of her. She had a good face, and this famous guy wanted to take a picture of it. What was the big deal?

She took a deep breath. "Okay. I'll do it."

"Yippee!" Serena hugged her tightly. "It's going to be awe-some, you'll see!"

The other girls eating in the lunchroom looked on curi-ously. "Maybe Jenny's agreed to donate the fat tissue from her boobs for Serena's implants," Mary Goldberg hazarded.

Or maybe Serena had found the perfect way to avoid the gang of Ivy League suitors coming to the city to see her on Saturday! gossipgirl.co.uk

topics previous next post a question reply Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

HEY, PEOPLE!

What's this about a party?

So it's in Brooklyn and the people throwing it are basically not the type of people we see socially, but there's not much else going on this weekend, and a party isn't made by the people who throw it: it's made by the people who go. So I say, let's go, and get everyone we know to go, and make it rock. You dig?

Your e-mail

Dear GG,

I go to Georgetown and I heard that so many people used Georgetown as their safety this year that the school is doing all this stuff to get people to come there. Like they're sending this group of girls up to New York this weekend to recruit all the kids that got in.

--gshock

Dear gshock,

Does this particular group of girls happen to have dyed blond hair and shaving scars on their legs?

--GG

Dear GG,

I am in the ROTC program at Yale, which means my tenure here is sponsored by the army, and I'm in basic training at the same time. The officer in charge of my program got a letter from this girl who said she was wait-listed at Yale, but she would join the program if they promised her a spot. So the program officer decides to send me down to NYC to meet her. She wrote on this weird stationery with shoes all over it and put a picture of her baby sister in the letter. Her baby sister's name is Yale. Sounds like a nutjob, huh?

--armygurl

Dear armygurl,

You don't know what you're in for. My advice: Wear your helmet.

--GG

Sightings N in FAO Schwarz, trying to decide between a life-size stuffed horse and a crib entertainment center that plays DVDs and MP3s. It's nice that he's so generous and all, but this is getting ridiculous. S and J in Bendel's, shopping to their hearts' content while J's friend E dutifully schlepped the bags. B introducing her new baby sister to Barneys' shoe department, where everybody knows her name. Ten handsome boys on the New Haven line singing a song from West Side Story. That ferret-toting friend of V's buying a duffel bag full of booze in a Williamsburg liquor store. Guess someone's getting ready to party hardy? D sitting alone in a Williamsburg diner late at night, writing. A birthday poem for V, perhaps?

Don't forget, and don't forget to tell everyone you know not to forget--tomorrow night is all about behaving badly in Brooklyn.

See you there!

You know you love me,

gossip girl and he didn't think anyonewouldcome

"Happy birthday." Dan handed Vanessa the poem he'd writ-ten for her and leaned against the door frame. "I wanted to give you this before anyone gets here."

"Don't say, 'If anyone is coming,'" Vanessa warned. "They'll come." She leaned over the bathroom sink, squinting at her reflection as she applied Tiphany's purpley-black lipstick to her lips. Then she sat down on the toilet and began to read the poem out loud.

a list of things you love:

black

steel-toed boots

dead pigeons

dirty rain

irony

me

a list of things I love:

cigarettes

coffee

you and your apple-white arms

but the thing about lists is they tend to get lost

"Thanks," Vanessa said. She folded the piece of paper and nicked it into the drawer in the vanity under the sink where Kuby kept all her hair goop and makeup.

It was kind of a weird response to a poem that was sup-posed to be bittersweet.

"Jesus, dude, you need to start taking happy pills," Tiphany muttered from out in the hall. "How can you write your girlfriend a birthday poem that sounds so melancholy?" She nudged Dan out of the way, grabbed the tube of lipstick from off the sink, and smeared some on her lips. "Roses are red, violets are blue." She pulled Vanessa upright and kissed her on the cheek, leaving a smudgy, purpley-black imprint. Then she kissed her on the other cheek. "Babe, you look hot with lips all over you!"

The two girls giggled and checked each other out in the mirror. Tiphany was wearing a black silk camisole borrowed from Ruby's closet. "Nice shirt," Vanessa noted.

"Nice pants," Tiphany said back. Vanessa had borrowed Ruby's zebra-striped pajama bottoms and they actually kind of worked with a black denim miniskirt, a black T-shirt, and combat boots. Very Blondie meets the Sex Pistols.

Dan wandered away, wishing Tiphany hadn't been her usual rude self and eavesdropped on his poem. So what if it wasn't all happy and cheerful and fun? It was still a love poem. And there was a message in it, if only Vanessa had taken the time to listen.

"I was thinking tonight might be a good night for a little piercing," Tiphany announced.

Vanessa glanced at her in the mirror. Tiphany's ears weren't even pierced. "Really? Like where?"

Tiphany grinned and wiggled her eyebrows ominously. "Not me, silly. You!"

The downstairs buzzer rang repeatedly and Tiphany grabbed Vanessa's arm and tugged her out of the bathroom. "I invited some people. You don't mind, do you?"

"Of course not," Vanessa said, glad to get away from the topic of piercing.

Dan buzzed them in and a moment later a troop of enor-mous guys in dusty, paint-smeared coveralls stomped into the apartment in their work boots.

"Hey boys." Tiphany dragged her army-issue duffel bag across the living room and opened it up. It was full of pint bottles of Grey Goose vodka. "This is my construction team. They don't speak much English." She handed each guy a bot-tle and then cracked one open herself. "Time to get happy!"

Dan went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of bad coffee. The construction guys smelled like paint thinner and were probably all psychopaths, just like Tiphany. But if they didn't speak English, he wouldn't have to talk to them, which was a good thing.

Vanessa didn't mind a bunch of strange guys in her house as long as they behaved themselves. At least now it felt more like a party. She went over to the stereo and put on Ruby's band's ER. Because it was her birthday she kind of missed her sister.

"'Prick my finger, kiss my ass!'" Ruby's voice howled from out of the speakers.

"Serena! I just met a girl named Serena!" a more melodic group of voices echoed from outside the apartment.