of water had collected in the indentations of his collarbone. His arms and chest were covered with
tiny freckles and big muscles, and yes, he was even more good-looking in person than on his
albums covers.
"Hello," Serena greeted him, feeling uncharacteristically star struck. And how come no one told
her about the all-white dress code? Was she just supposed to know?
"Now I know why everyone said I had to meet you." He said automatically when he saw Serena.
Serena blushed at the compliment, but she couldn't think of anything to say. A rare occasion for
her- the van der Woodsens were bred to say the right thing at the right time at all times.
Jenny took Serena's hand and then Damian's, standing between them like a buxom flower girl at
an arranged marriage. "You have to show Serena your bedroom," she told Damian. She turned to
Serena. "His bedroom is so cool."
Yeah? How would she know?
Damian shrugged and starting walking into the living room, pulling Jenny and Serena along with
him. "Come, sit down. Kelly and Ping should be here any minute."
"Cool," Serena responded, although she had no idea who he was talking about. Kelly and Ping-
were they another band? A clown act? DJs?
"Yum. They have the best pad Thai ever," Jenny said, like she'd been eating from the SoHo Asian
eatery all her life.
"Yum," Serena agreed. What was wrong with her? She wasn't even hungry.
Jenny broke away from then and perched on some guy's knee. He had dark hair and dimpled
cheeks and was wearing white painters overalls, looking every bit like the Raves' drummer, Lloyd
Collins.
Cuz that's exactly who he was.
"Hi Serena," Lloyd greeted her in that taunting, cocky way of his. "I feel like we're sisters
already," he added, flapping his wrists and pretending to be Damian's long-lost gay twin.
"Damian just made a recording of me singing 'Happy Birthday to Me'. He's going to sample it on
the band's next track," Jenny announced gaily to anyone who was listening. "I can't wait for Dan
to hear it."
"Isn't he here?" Serena asked, looking around for the cloud of Camel smoke that usually engulfed
Dan Humphrey's head.
"Not yet," Damian replied, and Serena thought she detected a note of malice in his voice.
Dan and Serena had gotten together that fall, but it had been short-lived- just like all of her
relationships- and they hadn't exactly stayed in touch. But there were no hard feelings, and it
might be nice to hang out and be friends now that they were both graduating. She wondered where
eh was going to college next year, or if he was going to take some time off to tour wit the band.
"Cigar?" Damian asked, holding a box out to her. "They came in from Cuba last night."
"Breadstick?" Lloyd asked, flipping a breadstick up in the air like one of his drum sticks and
catching it in his teeth. "They're Italian and super crisp."
"No thanks," Serena responded quietly to both offers. Here she was, a notorious party girl at what
was bound to become a notorious party, yet she felt completely uninspired. Maybe the fact that
everyone thought she and Damian were already together was ruining it for her. Or maybe seeing
Jenny, the image of herself two or three years ago, was making her realize that she was ready to
try something new. Or maybe it was because these were the very last weeks of her senior year,
before the summer, and before Yale. She didn't care so much about meeting rock stars; she just
wanted to hang out with her friends.
Blair was at Vanessa's apartment in Williamsburg right now- probably wallpapering the bathroom
with little pink rosebuds or something- and there was no place Serena would rather be.
"Mind if I use your bathroom?" she asked.
Damian directed her through a set of white velvet drapes and down a long white corridor to a
white-tiled, mirror-ceilinged, marble-bathed bathroom. Serena closed the door, yanked her tube of
MAC Cherry Ice lip gloss from her back pocket, and smeared some on. Down the corridor, on the
other side of the white velvet drapes, came the sounds of the doorbell ringing and Kelly and Ping
delivering their Asian delicacies. She pushed opened the bathroom door again and hurried down
the corridor, slipping past the cluster of arriving caterers and out onto the steamy sidewalk once
more.
This from a girl known for dancing on the tables in bars throughout France? This from the girl
who'd had an unmentionable part of her body photographed and plastered on the sides of buses
and in subways all over the city? Ditching a party before it even got started?
Then again, it didn't really matter whether she stayed at the party or not. Whatever Serena did was
bound to make headlines.
THE ODD COUPLE
"So, this drawer is where we'll keep all our cleansers, moisturizers, toners, exfoliators, masks, and
makeup removers. All the bath gel is on the bottom drawer, closet to the tub. And see? That's an
Egyptian cotton bath rug to cover that icky gray linoleum tile." Blair pointed to the new
peach-colored rug that she'd just installed in Vanessa's bathroom.
Vanessa pulled open the drawers in the cracked, cream colored vanity beneath the bathroom sink.
Everything had been alphabetized and color-coded to Blair's control-freak specifications. Not that
Vanessa owned any beauty products herself. It was all Blair's stuff anyway.
"You can borrow whatever you want," Blair offered generously. She pulled out a tiny porcelain jar
of La Mer eye cream and started dabbing some under her eyes. "This stuff is amazing," she
declared, "I just wish it didn't smell like cold cream." She reached out and dabbed some under
Vanessa's eyes. One application wouldn't do much, but if she could get Vanessa to use it once a
day, in a week those eggplant-sized puffs would be totally gone. Maybe Vanessa would even let
her do a total makeover on her. They could go jeans shopping together at Bloomingdale's SoHo,
and even buy Vanessa a nice wig!
Nice try.
"Where's my shaver?" Vanessa grumbled, twisting her face away from Blair like a kid who hates
to have her face cleaned. "I have to re-shave my head like once a week, you know."
"Shavers?" Blair repeated cluelessly. She pointed to a bag of trash slumped against the door
outside the bathroom. "I think they might be in there." She grabbed an eyebrow brush from out of
the freshly organized drawer and ran it over Vanessa's prickly head stubble. "Have you ever
thought about maybe growing it-?"
"No!" Vanessa told her adamantly, swiping the eyebrow brush away. She dumped the bag of trash
out onto the peach-colored carpet, and rescued her electric shaver, placing it in the top vanity
drawer next to Blair's eyelash curlers.
"Sorry," Blair allowed. "I should have asked first."
"That's okay." Vanessa fingered the eyelash curlers curiously. "What the fuck are these anyways?"
Blair snatched them up eagerly and sat Vanessa down on top of the toilet seat. "Don't close your
eyes. And don't worry this doesn't hurt." She held the curlers an inch away from Vanessa's lashes,
squinting. Then she put them down again. "You know what?" she told her new roommate. "You
don't need these. Your lashes are think and curly." She squinted again, as if she couldn't quite
believe it. "In fact they're completely perfect."
Vanessa stood up and examined her eyelashes in the bathroom mirror, feeling extremely flattered,
although she'd never have admitted it. "Can we get something to eat now, god-dammit? We've
been redecorating all god-dammed day."
For once Blair had been so preoccupied, she hadn't even thought about food. Tonight would be her
first night in the apartment, and she'd spent the whole afternoon unpacking and organizing. What
did Vanessa usually do for dinner, she wondered. Cook?
The two girls wandered out of the bathroom and into the open kitchen, surveying the apartment
with their hands on their hips. Blair's mother's nursery decorator had sent a team of painters over
on Wednesday and Thursday while Vanessa was at school, and the whole apartment had been
redone in shades of celery green and dove gray- nothing too girly, so as not to offend Vanessa.
After school on Thursday Vanessa had discovered a set of used curtains at Domsey's that she could
actually tolerate, even though they were covered in exotic-bird-and-palm-leaf-print toile, because
they were black and white. And this morning the decorator ad scheduled a delivery of six
twentieth-century modern wooden chairs, a small oval dining table, a cool kidney bean-shaped
Noguchi glass coffee table, and two gray suede beanbag chairs, which Blair and Vanessa kept
moving around the living room just because it was fun.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I like it," Vanessa admitted.
"Really?" Blair asked cautiously. It was kind of a major transformation, and she wouldn't have
been surprised if Vanessa kicked her out before she'd even unpacked her Louis Vuitton suitcases.
"We could have a diner party." Vanessa mused. She walked over to the oval-shaped birch dining
table and readjusted the six funky birch swivel chairs surrounding it. "Except I don't have anyone
to invite."
Nobody did a party better than Blair Waldorf. Even if it was just a chic little bohemian Brooklyn
dinner party.
Blair whipped out her cell phone out of her James jeans pocket and speed dialed Serena's number.
"Unless you and that rock star are, like, in bed already, wanna come to dinner at my new place?"
"I'm already on my way over," Serena told her. "Sorry to disappoint you, though- I'm on my own."
Then Blair called Stan 5. "What took you so long?" he wanted to know.
And she called her stepbrother Aaron. "What are you cooking?" he asked suspiciously. "Should I
bring over some tempeh?"
Blair hadn't exactly worked out the food part. "We can order from Nobu." She put her hand over
the mouth piece. "Do they even have Nobu in Brooklyn?"
Vanessa waved a pizza menu in her face, and Blair saw that there was something called the
Cheeseless Paradise Pie under vegetarian selections. "Don't worry," she told her stepbrother. "I got
you covered."
"So what's Vanessa like exactly?" Aaron asked curiously.
Blair grinned devilishly. "That's for me to know and you to find out."
EVEN FRENCH GIRLS GET DISSED
"Allo?" Lexie's distinct French- accented English rang out over Nate's intercom. "Mayee I pleeze
come up?"
Locked in his room all week with a bong, playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on his Xbox,
Nate hadn't received any visitors except Jeremy, Anthony, and Charlie, who stopped by every now
and then to replenish his stash and fill him in on what was going on at school. His wing of the
house smelled like half-eaten burritos, spilled bong water, and pizza flavored Pepperridge Farm
goldfish- not that there was anyone around to smell it. After grounding him, his parents had taken
the Charlotte up the Hudson to visit friends in Kingston and to ensure that Nate didn't steal the
boat again before their benefit cruise. If only he hadn't messed things up with Blair, they'd have
had the whole house to themselves and could have had sex on top the grand piano in the living
room if they'd wanted.
Oh, well.
"I'm sick," he lied into the intercom. "It's really contagious. I've missed a whole week of school."
"It's okay, I'm sick too!" Lexie responded brightly. She coughed to demonstrate just how sick she
really was. "We can share our germs!"
What fun!
Nate had just heisted a Hummer, but when Lexie buzzed he'd gotten distracted and the cops had
gone right up his ass. He kicked the Xbox controls across the room and licked his bong-chapped
lips. His mouth felt like it was coated with pot-flavored road tar, and he hadn't changed his shirt in
how many days.
"I smell," he confided into the speaker. "Seriously, It's bad."
"We'll 'av a bath," Lexie told him gaily. "Buzz me in. I'll give you a mah-ssage, bay-bee," she
added, sounding even more French than she'd sounded only a moment ago.
Nate could tell she wasn't going to give up, and it wasn't like Blair wasn't cheating on him right
then too. Besides, Lexie was hot and obviously desperate for it, and he was seriously bored.
"Okay," he replied slowly, about to press the buzzer to let her in.
"Oh, I love you!" Lexie cried into the intercom.
Nate blinked slowly. Did she say love? He let his hand drop. Girls- all they ever seemed to do was
fall in love with him and get him into trouble. Blair, Serena, Jennifer, Georgie, and now this horny,
fake-accented, hippie French chick, Lexie.
Wait, is this like, another ephiphany?
The thing was, he was about to graduate and go off to Yale. He wanted to hang out with the girls
he'd grown up with and always known and loved. Not some new chick.
Especially not one who didn't even speak the same language.
"Look, I'm grounded," he said firmly. "Go home."
"Mais non!" Lexie wailed, starting to cry.
Mais oui.
WILL S OWN UP OR CHICKEN OUT?
The door to Vanessa and Blair's apartment stood open. Serena stepped inside, her freshly glossed
mouth agape at how changed it was since Vanessa's birthday party. Only a few weeks ago there
