wearing pink Senior Spa Weekend t-shirts and matching oversized pink Gucci sunglasses. "You
won't tell on us, will you?"
Serena had to admire Jenny's audacity. She seemed to specialize in being naughty. She put her
fingers to her lips. "I won't tell," she promised, although there were only forty girls in the entire
senior class, so it wasn't like no one would notice the two uninvited freshmen.
Jenny grinned and then dragged Elise below decks to score a bottle of champagne and Lord knows
what else. No doubt the two girls were going to get a lot naughtier as the night progressed.
"Honestly, I've given up," Dan sighed as he watched his sister and her friend disappear in a flurry
of bubblegum pink. He hadn't been invited either but had tagged along with Jenny to make sure
she didn't do anything too illegal. He leaned against the railing a lit a Camel, waiting patiently for
Vanessa to notice him.
The familiar scent of Camel smoke wafted past her nostrils and Vanessa spun around to find Dan
grinning shyly at her, his scruffy hair and loose, rust-colored corduroys billowing in the breeze, it
was so unlikely that either of them would be sailing on a yacht to the Hamptons, or that she'd
actually be wearing a pink T-shirt that she burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?" Dan demanded. Vanessa looked so happy right now it made him a little sad to
know that it had nothing to do with him.
Aaron came back with her drink and a beer for himself. When he saw Dan and Vanessa talking he
immediately handed the beer to Dan. "I'll get another one," he told them accommodatingly.
Dan couldn't believe it- even their heads matched.
Vanessa just stood there with a goofy smile on her face, waiting for Aaron to come back. Her
happiness was infuriating, even to her. "Sorry," she apologized to Dan. "I don't know what's the
matter with me."
Dan took a sip of his beer and pointed at her mouth. "Is that lip gloss?" he demanded with stunned
amusement.
Vanessa giggled. "Nars Sticky Toffee Pudding, to be exact. I borrowed it from Blair."
They stared at one another, each waiting for the other to throw out a critical witticism about what a
disgusting display of wealth and uselessness the party was. But the truth was they were both there
for the same reason. Despite the fact that they had spent years trying to set themselves apart, these
people were their peers, and despite all the dissing and dismissing, they actually enjoyed being
included in the fun.
The Sunkist-orange ball that was the sun slid behind a horizontal wisp of cloud. The water was
shiny green and flat as glass. Aaron returned with his beer and nonchalantly kissed Vanessa on the
cheek. "You look pretty," he told her quietly.
Dan wondered if he had ever told Vanessa she looked pretty, but it was a little late for regrets.
"Nice job getting ditched by the band," jeered an annoyingly familiar voice. Chuck Bass was
listing toward Dan from the bow of the boat, looking drunk and slightly seasick in a baby blue
linen sailor suit with the cuffs rolled up to the knees, his white monkey clinging to his shoulders,
obviously terrified of falling into the water.
Chuck was so obnoxious there was no point in getting pissed off. Besides, Dan was overjoyed to
be a normal kid again instead of a huge rock star. He offered his hand to his monkey-toting
classmate and smiled matter-of-factly. "Thanks, man."
"The Raves are so over anyway, dude." Aaron remarked. "I give them one more album and then
they're gone."
"Right on." Chuck shook Dan's hand, like they'd been friends forever. "So where are you headed
next year anyway, son?"
Son?
The Raves were a New York band and Dan had heard that Chuck was going to military school
somewhere in northern New Jersey. It would be good to get as far away from both of them as
physically possible.
"Evergreen," he announced, as if he'd always known it. "It's way out in Washington State."
"Nice." Chuck yawned, already bored with the conversation. "Has any seen Serena? I heard she
was dating an eighty-five-year-old Yale trustee. What a whore."
Vanessa snorted in disgust and left the boys to their own devices while she went off to find Blair
and Serena. She needed a little girl time to go wit her pink T-shirt.
The rest of her classmates were clustered near the bow, half-listening to the music while they
clutched the rail and tried to keep from puking into the frothy waves of Long Island Sound. The
sun was less intense now and the breeze had picked up. a few girls covered their arms with
pashminas or royal-blue-and-gold charlotte sweatshirts borrowed from the crew, but most of the
passengers were too tipsy to feel the chill. Behind them the Manhattan skyline bobbed and
shimmered like a miniature silver paradise inside a crystal Tiffany paperweight globe.
Serena and Blair were huddled together on a blue-and-gold-pinstriped cushion at the base of one
of the masts, sharing a bottle of Heineken. "I can't believe we're about to graduate." Serena sighed
and let her head fall on Blair's shoulder.
"Thank God," Blair replied unsentimentally. "I just wish I knew where the fuck I was going next
year."
Serena sat up, wondering if she should take this opportunity to tell Blair that she'd decided to go to
Yale. But seeing as how they were on a boat, she didn't want to get thrown overboard.
Vanessa came over and lay down with her head in Blair's lap. "Stop talking about people, bitches,"
she told them, lazily closing her eyes.
"You need more lip gloss," Blair observed. She pulled a Lanc?me Juicy Tube from her Earl Jeans
skirt pocket and carefully painted it all over Vanessa's lips.
"Thanks, Mom," Vanessa muttered, keeping her eyes closed.
Serena laughed and let her head fall back against the mast. Funny how this close to graduation all
the jaggedly cut puzzle pieces that never looked like they'd fit suddenly fit together so well.
Maybe she and Blair would both wind up going to Yale and rooming with each other. They'd be
bridesmaids at Vanessa and Aaron's wedding; they'd meet a set of brothers and marry them, live on
the same Fifth Avenue block, send their kids to the same school- friends forever.
But there was someone missing. Someone who'd always been a major piece of the puzzle in his
own lovably fucked up, cheating way.
"I wish Nate were here," Serena mused.
Blair screwed the top back on the lip gloss and began absentmindedly massaging Vanessa's pale
forehead. "Sometimes I wonder if we're better off without him," she confessed. After all, wasn't
Nate the cause of almost every fight the two girls had ever had?
Serena squinted her eyes and scanned the deck once more. She'd looked all over for him.
But she'd never thought to look up.
Way, way up, above their heads, at the very top of the mast, Nate crouched in the crow's nest,
watching them. It was lonely and a little cold up there, but he'd brought along a six-pack and a few
joints for company, and as soon as they docked in Sag Harbor and his parents and their friends had
disbanded to their Hamptons manses, he'd climb down like Spider-Man and surprise everyone.
From up there the girls in pink T-shirts looked almost interchangeable. Even that bald chick might
have been hot with a little hair. He lit a fresh joint, suddenly overcome by how much he missed
them, because he loved them- he loved them all.
GIRLS GO GAGA FOR GIRL-ONLY SLEEPOVERS
In warm weather the Hamptons had their own peculiar smell of salt, new leather, sun block, and
money. Huge modern houses hunkered near white sand beaches, flanked by pools and black
Mercedes SUV's. Little girls in petit Bateaus bikinis rode their scooters into town for gelato. Sleek
show horses cantered elegantly along the roadside behind pristine white post-and-rail fences. Like
a giant country club, the Hamptons was the type of place where only those how belong, belong.
But of course all our girls belong.
"Head count!" Isabel Coates and Kati Farkas barked as the girls in Constance Billard's senior class
stepped out of the fleet of silver town cars outside Isabel's parents Southampton weekend home
and filed into the courtyard. The house was an L-shaped one-story modern glass structure
designed by Philippe Starck, with a private beach and a helicopter landing pad on the roof. In the
crook of the L was a courtyard containing a floodlit pink-tiled swimming pool and a pink stucco
pool house. Around the pool stood forty white plastic chaise lounges, a pink Senior Spa Weekend
towel draped on the back of each one. Beside the pool, a white tent had been set up, with a buffet
table covered in a pink tablecloth, and a full bar with pink Senior Spa Weekend cocktail napkins.
It was almost like a wedding, except without the wedding.
Jenny Humphrey and Elise Wells skirted the line to avoid the head count and dashed across the
courtyard and into the pool house.
"Hey," Rain Hoffstetter whispered shrilly to Laura Salmon. Rain and Laura were both wearing
giant pink Kate Spade sun hats, and the brims of their hats kept banging against each other. "What
are they doing here?"
"Who?" Laura Salmon demanded, squinting from underneath her hat.
"Help yourselves to cocktails and canapés!" Isabel shouted through a bullhorn, loving every
minute of her boss-of-everyone role. Even though it wasn't nearly as good as a school as Princeton,
Isabel had decided to go to Rollins next year with Kati- much to her parents' chagrin- because
Rollins had offered her a position as residence advisor in one of the freshmen women's dorms, and
it would be her job to boss everyone around, including Kati, for an entire year.
"There's a steam room in the pool house. Only six at a time, please," she continued, her wide
mouth pressed against the bullhorn. "There are movies in the screening room, and the pool is
heated, so you can swim all night if you want to. Our high-protein, high-energy breakfast is at
seven tomorrow morning, and the first Origins facial is at eight, so we'll need our beauty rest.
There are queen-sized mattresses set up in every room. Three to a bed, girls- it's gonna be cozy!"
The air buzzed with the sounds of girls gathering at the bar or drifting into the house to have a
pillow fights on the silk sheeted beds or raid the Origins gift bags that weren't supposed to be
opened until tomorrow. A few brave girls stripped down to their underwear or changed into a
bathing suits and cannonballed off the diving board and into the pool, while the lazy ones gathered
in Mr. Coate's screening room and sprawled on the brown leather chairs while the open credits of
'The Great Gatsby', starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, rolled past on the giant screen.
Blair, Serena and Vanessa sat on the edge of the pool with their legs dangling into the water. "This
is fun," Vanessa said in an attempt to be upbeat. She wondered how Serena and Blair kept their
legs so tan. Hers were positively corpselike by comparison.
"Hey you guys!" Jenny cracked open the glass door to the pool house and beckoned to them from
inside. She'd stripped down to a towel, and on her head was a white diamond-studded bathing
turban, and old Hollywood-style relic Mrs. Coates wore in the pool to keep her hair from getting
wet. "You gotta check out the stream room!"
Blair wasn't exactly fond of the two wannabe-senior freshmen, but she wasn't about to pass up a
chance to steam off a few unwanted pounds. "Okay, but I get to wear the turban," she announced,
leading the way to the pool house. She snatched the turban off Jenny's head and put it on. On
Jenny it had looked ridiculous, but on Blair it was sort of regal.
Only true divas can get away with wearing turbans.
Jenny handed them each a giant white Egyptian cotton towel and the girls stripped down to
nothing, all pretending not to ogle Serena's beyond-perfect body, but ogling it anyway. Secretly
they each hoped to discover some hidden pocket of cellulite that she'd been hiding under her
uniform all these years, but she was as slim-hipped and perfect as they'd feared.
"Supposedly Mr. Coates is a major pothead," Serena told them as she pulled off her pink T-shirt,
oblivious to their stares. "That's why he only does voice-overs for commercials now instead of
movies. He's smoked so much he can't remember his lines."
"I know," Jenny agreed. "Look." She unscrewed the head off an innocent-looking white marble
bust of Apollo and pulled a giant bag of pot from inside it.
The three seniors stared at her. What was little Jenny Humphrey doing unscrewing the heads off of
busts, anyways?
"Not that I want any," Jenny told them innocently. "Elise found it by accident."
All of a sudden Aaron's bald head bobbed past the window, and all the girls squealed hiding their
naked bodies underneath their towels. It looked like he might have swum partway to get there. His
clothes were wet and there was salt crusted on his cheeks.
Vanessa decided to hide from him for awhile, just for fun. "Quick, get in the steam room! Now!"
Jenny threw open the door and they dodged inside. The steam room was about the size of Serena's
walk-in closet, lined entirely in white tile, with two levels of steps upon which to sit. Through the
steam they could just make out Elise, huddled on a white-tiled step in the corner, her body
wrapped in a huge white towel and a long silver cigarette holder with a joint hanging from it
dangling out of her mouth.
"Elise is getting stoned," Jenny informed them. She hoisted herself up on the lower step and
