passing out in amazement at her own perfection. That anyone as perfect as Serena could have
issues was totally unfathomable. "I'm sure you'll figure it out," she told the older girl, becoming
suddenly distracted by a photo of Erik van der Woodsen, Serena's hot older brother, propped up on
Serena's bedside table in a silver Tiffany frame. Tall and lanky, with the same pale blond hair, cut
in a long shag framing his face, Erik was a male version of Serena. Same huge dark blue eyes,
same full mouth that turned up at the corners, same straight white teeth and aristocratic chin. In
the picture he was standing on a rocky beach, tan and shirtless. Jenny squeezed her bare knees
together. Those chest muscles, that stomach, those arms- oh! If boarding school was filled with
boys who were even half as gorgeous as Erik van der Woodsen, they could sign her up!
Easy there, cow girl.
Serena's pink iMac beeped, indicating that she'd just received an e-mail.
"Probably one of our fans." Serena joked, although Jenny thought she was serious. Serena went
over to her antique letter-writing desk, jiggled her mouse, and clicked on the latest e-mail
message.
To: SvW@vanderWoodsen.com
From: Sheri@PrincetonTriDs.org
Dear Serena,
Our sorority totally worships Les Best and some of us were at his show this spring, so you can
imagine how completely thrilled we were when we heard you were considering attending
Princeton this fall. And if you do go to Princeton, you have to become a Tri Delt. We already have
all these amazing fundraising ideas for this year, including a Les Best fashion show to benefit the
Wild Horses of Chincoteague, featuring us, the Tri Delts, as models! The best part is you won't
even have to pledge. Congratulations, Serena, you're already a sister! All you have to do now is
get your behind up to Princeton a few days early this August so you can get a good room in our
house.
We totally can't wait. Big kisses.
Your sis,
Sheri
Serena read the message again and then logged off, staring at the blank screen in shock. Pushy
sorority sisters were just about the last people she wanted to hear from, and anyway, wasn't
Princeton supposed to be sort of intellectual? She picked up the phone to call Blair and then
slammed it down again, realizing she'd completely forgotten that Jenny was even there. Jenny was
sweet and adorable and everything- but she didn't have, like, homework or a movie to go to or
something?
See, even perfect goddesses have a bitchy side.
Jenny slid off the bed and hitched up her extra wide supportive bra straps, guessing she was about
to be dismissed. "You know my brother Dan is singing for the Raves now," she announced. "His
fist gig with them is tomorrow night. I can put you on the special guest list if you want to come."
Jenny wasn't even sure if there was a special guest list. All she knew she was getting free because
she was Dan's sister. Dan thought he was so famous now that he was a member of a band with the
number one album on the East Coast, but if she showed up to the gig with Serena- two gorgeous
models out on the town in matching Les Best dresses- she'd completely out famous him.
Serena wrinkled her nose. She wanted to go to the Raves gig, she really did, but she and her
parents had already RSVPed yes to some Yale prospective students' get-to-know-you party
tomorrow night. She couldn't exactly make her parents go by themselves.
"I don't think I can," she explained apologetically. "There's this Yale thing I have to go to. But I'll
try to get down there if it finishes early."
Jenny nodded and stuffed the issue of W into her Gap tote bag, disappointed. She'd envisioned
making an entrance at the Lower East Side club with Serena. Never mind the Raves- they were
rock stars, big deal. She and Serena were supermodels- at least Serena was. Heads were
guaranteed to turn,
Guess she'll have to satisfy herself with being the lead singer's little sister. Like that would ever be
enough.
TALK ABOUT AN IDENTITY CRISIS
"Crack me like an egg!"
Daniel Humphrey glared at himself in his bedroom mirror and took a long drag on a half smoked
camel. A lame-voiced wimp in worn khaki-colored corduroys and maroon Gap T-shirt. Not exactly
rock'n'roll.
"Crack me like an egg!" he wailed again, trying to look angst-ridden, rebellious, and sickly cool
all at the same time. The problem was, his voice always broke when he went into the higher
ranged, coming out in a breathy whisper, and his face looked soft and young and totally
unthreatening.
Dan rubbed at his bony chin and thought about growing a goatee. Vanessa had always had a strong
aversion to facial hair, but what she thought was no longer relevant since they were no longer a
couple.
Almost two weeks ago at Vanessa's eighteenth birthday party at her apartment in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn, Dan had been discovered by the megapopular indie band the Raves. Or rather, his
poems had been. Thinking they'd both go to NYU next year and live happily ever after, Dan had
moved in with Vanessa only a few days before. Butt heir relationship had quickly deteriorated.
More depressed than usual, Dan had been sitting in a corner during the party, chugging Grey
Goose vodka straight out of the bottle. Meanwhile, the Raves showed up at the party and their lead
guitarist, Damian Polk, stumbled upon a stack of black notebooks filled with Dan's poetry.
Damian and his band members had gone crazy over the poems, insisting they would work
perfectly as lyrics. Their lead singer had just mysteriously quit- rehab anyone? - and so they
decided to ask Dan to be their front man. By then Dan was just piss drunk and thought the whole
thing was totally hilarious. Throwing himself into the task with drunken fervor, he'd stolen the
show, electrifying drunken partiers with his brazen performance.
He thought his was a one time deal, a way of distracting himself from the fact that he'd just broken
up with the only girl who'd ever loved him. The next day he discovered he was card-carrying
member of the band, and completely in over his head.
During rehearsals Dan found that his normally sober self was physically incapable of putting out
the same reckless energy that he'd had at the party, and, compared to the other band members, who
were all in their twenties and wore clothes tailor-made for them by avant-garde designers like
Pisolcock and Better Than Naked, he felt like a geeky, squeaky little kid. He'd even asked Damian
Polk why in the hell the Raves wanted him to be their lead singer in the first place. Damian had
replied simple, "It's all about the words, man."
Dude, just because he could write them didn't mean he could sing. But maybe if he looked more
like he could sing, he might actually convince people that he deserved to be in the band.
Dan shuffled through his messy desk drawers searching for the battery-operated beard trimmer
he'd bought last year during a week of experimenting with the length of his side-burns. He moved
on to his little sister Jenny's room, and finally found it under her bed, inexplicably rolled up inside
and old pink bath towel.
Little sister lesson number one: If you want to keep your shit, put a padlock on your door.
Not bothering to return to his own room, he went over to the mirror on the back of Jenny's closet
door and tugged at the outgrown Mr. Trendy Artiste haircut he'd gotten soon after he'd made his
switch from bohemian poet to gritty rock star, it was time for a change.
Eek! Doesn't everyone know not to try a new look the day before a big event?
The trimmer buzzed to life and Dan began shaving the back of his neck, watching the light brown
strands gather on the faded chocolate-colored carpet in mousy clumps. Then he stopped, worried
all of a sudden that a beard trimmer didn't have exactly the right sort of blades the shave one's
entire head with. It might leave weird red track marks all over his skull, or shave his head
unevenly so that it looked like his hair had been eaten rather than cut.
Sure he wanted to look hard-core, but not chewed-head hard-core.
He debated whether or not to continue. If he stopped now, the shaved parts could be completely
concealed by the rest of his hair until he bent over, and then, voila- a shaved neck. It was kinda
cool knowing the shaved part was there without being able to see it. Then again, an unnoticeable
hair-cut wasn't exactly the look he was going for.
He put the beard trimmer down, propped a Camel between his lips, and reached for Jenny's phone.
If there was one person who knew anything about shaving heads, it was Vanessa. She'd kept her
own head shaved sine the ninth grade, and, shunning the expensive salons like Frederic Fekkai
and Elizabeth Arden's Red Door that her coiffed classmates frequented, insisted on shaving it
herself. Secretly he's always thought she looked prettier with a little more hair, but she obviously
thought she looked great bald, he wasn't about to say anything.
"If this is about the apartment-share, I will be calling you once I've reviewed your online
application," Vanessa said robotically when she picked up.
"Hey, it's me, Dan," Dan responded brightly. "What's up?"
Vanessa didn't answer right away. She wanted to give Dan space to grow and blossom into the
next Kurt Cobain or John Keats or whatever the fuck he weanted to be, but breaking up with her
and kicking him out of her apartment hadn't been exactly been easy for her. The casual
lets-be-friends tone in Dan's voice made her heart feel like a deflated balloon.
"I'm kind of busy actually." She typed a bunch of nonsense into her computer to make it sound
like she was drastically preoccupied. "I have a lot of applications to go through- for the new
roommate- you know?"
"Oh." Dan hadn't been aware that Vanessa was looking for a roommate. Then again, with her older
sister Ruby gone on tour with her band, it would be kind of lonely and boring living all alone in
the apartment, especially without him to keep her company.
For a fleeting moment Dan was so overcome with regret he felt like grabbing a pen and writing a
tragic breakup poem using the words cut or shaved, but then his newly shorn neck began to burn
and prickle, and he remembered why he'd called Vanessa in the first place.
"I just had a quick question." He took several quick puffs of his cigarette and then absentmindedly
dropped it into a vase of daisies wilting on Jenny's desk. "You know when you shave your head?
Is there like, a certain kind of razor you use? Like a certain blade?"
Vanessa's first impulse was to warn him that with a shaved head he'd look like a skinny
seven-year-old leukemia patient who'd just been through chemo, but she was tired of protecting
him from his own mistakes, especially now that they were "just friends." "Wahl blade number ten.
Look, I gotta go."
Dan picked up his beard trimmer. It was from CVS and didn't have a blade size. Maybe he'd be
better going to a barber. "Okay. See you at my gig tomorrow night though, right?"
"Maybe," Vanessa replied breezily. "If I get this roommate thing figured out. Gotta go. 'Bye!"
Dan hung up and picked up the beard trimmer once more. "Crack me like an egg!" he shouted,
holding it in front of his chin like a microphone. He whipped off his t-shirt and struck out his pale,
skinny gut, trying to look saucily bored and rebellious, like a shorter, thinner, less-fucked-up Jim
Morrison. "Crack me like an egg!" he wailed, falling on his knees.
His dad, Rufus, suddenly appeared in the doorway, wearing a cigarette burned gray Old Navy
sweatshirt and the pink terrycloth headband that Jenny used to keep her hair back hen she washed
her face. "Good thing your sister's too busy to hang out with us after school anymore. She might
not be too thrilled to find you stripping in her room," he commented.
"I'm rehearsing." Dan rose to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. "Do you mind?"
"Go right ahead." Rufus stood in the doorway, scratching his chest fingering the unfiltered Camel
tucked behind his left ear. He was a work-at-home single dad, the editor of lesser-known Beat
poets and esoteric writers no one had ever heard of. "I think if you put the emphasis on every other
word, it might be more effective/"
Dan cocked his head and handed Rufus the beard trimmer. "Show me."
Rufus Grinned. "Okay but I'm not taking my shirt off."
Thank the Lord.
He held the beard trimmer away from his face as if worried that it might turn on by itself and buzz
off his famously unkempt beard. "Crack Me like an Egg!" he howled, his brown eyes gleaming.
He handed the trimmer. "Try it."
Of course Dan's dad had sounded just exactly the way Dan wanted to sound. He tossed the
trimmer on to Jenny's bed and pulled his shirt back on. "I have homework to do," he grumbled.
Rufus shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, I'll leave you alone." He winked at his son. "Decide where
you want to go next year yet?"
"No," Dan answered hollowly, then shuffled out of Jenny's roomand back into his own. His dad
was so gung-ho about the whole college thing, it was seriously annoying.
"Columbia's close!" Rufus called after him. "You could live at home!"
As if he hadn't already mentioned that a thousand times.
Alone in his room, Dan found a rubber band in his desk drawer and tied his hair up into a stubbly
ponytail, leaving the shaved part exposed. He picked up the beard trimmer again. "Crack Me like
and Egg!" he whispered, imitating his father as best as he could. He grimaced. There just wasn't
