innocent, ?bergorgeous fifteen-year-olds. Well, they?re sixteen now, and let?s just say that two of
them are not that innocent.
If anyone is going to tell this tale it has to be me, because I was at the scene of every crime. So
sit back while I unravel the past and reveal everyone?s secrets, because I know everything, and
what I don?t know I?ll invent, elaborately.
Admit it: you?re already falling for me.
Love you too . . .
gossip girl
the best stories begin with one boy and two girls
?Truce!? Serena van der Woodsen screamed as Nate Archibald body-checked her into a
three-foot-high drift of powdery white snow. Cold and wet, it tunneled into her ears and down her
pants. Nate dove on top of her, all five-foot eleven inches of his perfect, golden-brown-haired,
glittering-green-eyed, fifteen-year-old boyness. Nate smelled like Downy and the Kiehl?s
sandalwood soap the maid stocked his bathroom with. Serena just lay there, trying to breathe with
him on top of her. ?My scalp is cold,? she pleaded, getting a mouthful of Nate?s snow-dampened,
godlike curls as she spoke.
Nate sighed reluctantly, as if he could have spent all day outside in the frigid February meat
locker that was the back garden of his family?s Eighty-second-Street-just-off-Park-Avenue
Manhattan town house. He rolled onto his back and wriggled like Serena?s long-dead golden
retriever, Guppy, when she used to let him loose on the green grass of the Great Lawn in Central
Park. Then he stood up, awkwardly dusting off the seat of his neatly pressed Brooks Brothers
khakis. It was Saturday, but he still wore the same clothes he wore every weekday as a sophomore
at the St. Jude?s School for Boys over on East End Avenue. It was the unofficial Prince of the
Upper East Side uniform, the same uniform he and his classmates had been wearing since they?d
started nursery school together at Park Avenue Presbyterian.
Nate held out his hand to help Serena to her feet. She frowned cautiously up at him, worried that
he was only faking her out and was about to tackle her again. ?I really am cold.?
He flapped his hand at her impatiently. ?I know. Come on.?
She snorted, pretended to pick her nose and wipe it on the seat of her snow-soaked dark denim
Earl jeans, then grabbed his hand with her faux-snotty one. ?Thanks, pal.? She staggered to her
feet. ?You?re a real chum.?
Nate led the way inside. The backs of his pant legs were damp and she could see the outline of
his tighty-whiteys. Really, how gay of him! He held the glass-paned French doors open and stood
aside to let her pass. Serena kicked off her baby blue Uggs and scuffed her bare, Urban Decay
Piggy Bank pink?toenailed feet down the long hall to the stately town house?s enormous, barely
used all-white Italian Modern kitchen. Nate?s father was a former sea captain-turned-banker, and
his mother was a French society hostess. They were basically never home, and when theywere
home, they were at the opera.
?Are you hungry Nate asked, following her. ?I?m so sick of takeout. My parents have been in
Venezuela or Santa Domingo or wherever they go in February for like two weeks, and I?ve been
eating burritos, pizza, or sushi every freaking night. I asked Regina to buy ham, Swiss, Pepperidge
Farm white bread, Grammy Smith apples, and peanut butter. All I want is the food I ate in
kindergarten.? He tugged anxiously on his wavy, golden brown hair. ?Maybe I?m going through
some sort of midlife crisis or something.?
Like his life is so stressful?
?It?s GrannySmith, silly,? Serena informed him fondly. She opened a glossy white cupboard and
found an unopened box of cinnamon-and-brown-sugar Pop-Tarts. Ripping open the box, she
removed one of the packets from inside, tore it open with her neat, white teeth, and pulled out a
thickly frosted pastry. She sucked on the Pop-Tart?s sweet, crumbly corner and hopped up on the
counter, kicking the cupboards below with her size-eight-and-a-half feet. Pop-Tarts at Nate?s.
She?d been having them there since she was five years old. And now ... and now ...
Serena sighed heavily. ?Mom and Dad want me to go to boarding school next year,? she
announced, her enormous, almost navy blue eyes growing huge and glassy as they welled up with
unexpected tears. Go away to boarding school and leave Nate? It hurt too much to even think
about.
Nate flinched as if he?d been slapped in the face by an invisible hand. He grabbed the other
Pop-Tart from out of the packet and hopped up on the counter next to Serena. ?No way,? he
responded decisively. She couldn?t leave. He wouldn?t allow it.
?They want to travel more,? Serena explained. The pink, perfect curve of her lower lip trembled
dangerously. ?If I?m home, they feel like they need to be home more. Like I want them around?
Anyway, they?ve arranged for me to meet some of the deans of admissions and stuff. It?s like I
have no choice.?
Nate scooted over a few inches and put his arm around her. ?The city is going to suck if you?re
not here,? he told her earnestly. ?You can?t go.?
Serena took a deep shuddering breath and rested her pale blond head on his shoulder. ?I love you,?
she murmured, closing her delicate eyelids. Their bodies were so close the entire Nate-side of her
hummed. If she turned her head and tilted her chin just so, she could have easily kissed his warm,
lovely neck. And she wanted to. She was actually dying to, because she really did love him, with
all her heart.
She did? Hello? Since when?!
Maybe since ballroom-dancing school way back in fourth grade. She was tall for her age, and
Nate was always such a gentleman about her lack of rhythm and the way she stepped on his
insteps and jutted her bony elbows into his sides. He?d finesse it by grabbing her hand and
spinning her around so that the skirt of her puffy, oyster-colored satin tea-length Bonpoint dress
twirled out magnificently. Their teacher, Mrs. Jaffe, who had long blue hair that she kept in place
with a pearl-adorned black hairnet, worshipped Nate. So did Serena?s best friend, Blair Waldorf.
And so did Serena?she just hadn?t realized it until now. Serena shuddered and her perfect skin
broke out in a rash of goose bumps. Her whole body seemed to be having an adverse reaction to
the idea of revealing something she?d kept so well hidden for so long, even from herself.
Nate wrapped his lacrosse-toned arms around her long, narrow waist and pulled her close,
tucking her pale gold head into the crook of his neck and massaging the ruts between the ribs on
her back with his fingertips. The best thing about Serena was her total lack of embarrassing flab.
Her entire body was as long and lean and taut as the strings on his Prince titanium tennis racket.
It was painful having such a ridiculously hot best friend. Why couldn?t his best friend be some
lard-assed dude with zits and dandruff? Instead he had Serena and Blair Waldorf, hands down the
two hottest girls on the Upper East Side, and maybe all of Manhattan, or even the whole world.
Serena was an absolute goddess?every guy Nate knew talked about her?but she was mysterious.
She?d laugh for hours if she spotted a cloud shaped like a toilet seat or something equally
ridiculous, and the next moment she?d be wistful and sad. It was impossible to tell what she was
thinking most of the time. Sometimes Nate wondered if she would?ve been more comfortable in a
body that was slightly less perfect, because it would?ve given her moreincentive ,to use an SAT
vocabulary word. Like she wasn?t sure what she had to aspire to, since she basically had
everything a girl could possibly want.
Blair was petite, with a pretty, foxlike face, blue eyes, and wavy chestnut-colored hair. She let
everyone know what she was thinking, and she was fiercely competitive. For instance, she always
found opportunities to point out that her chest was almost a whole cup size larger than Serena?s
and that she?d scored almost 100 points higher than Serena on the practice SAT.
Way back in fifth grade, Serena had told Nate she was pretty sure Blair had a crush on him. He
started to notice that Blair did stick her chest out when he was looking, and she was always either
bossing him around or fixing his hair. Of course Blair never admitted that she liked him, which
made him like her even more.
Nate sighed deeply. No one understood how difficult it was being best friends with two such
beautiful, impossible girls.
Like he would have been friends with them if they were awkward and buttugly?
He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scent of Serena?s Fr?d?ric Fekkai Apple Cider
clarifying shampoo. He?d kissed lots of girls and had even gone to third base last June with
L?Wren Knowes, a very experienced older Seaton Arms School senior who really did seem to
know everything. But kissing Serena would be . . . different. He loved her. It was as simple as that.
She was his best friend, and he loved her.
And if you can?t kiss your best friend, whocan you kiss?
upper east side schoolgirl uncovers shocking sex scandal!
?Ew,? Blair Waldorf muttered at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of her closet
door. She liked to keep her closet organized, but not too organized. Whites with whites, off-whites
with off-whites, navy with navy, black with black. But that was it. Jeans were tossed in a heap on
the closet floor. And there were dozens of them. It was almost a game to close her eyes and feel
around and come up with a pair that used to be too tight in the ass but fit a little loosely now that
she?d cut out her daily after-dinner milk-and-Chips-Ahoy routine.
Blair looked at the mirror, assessing her outfit. Her Marc by Marc Jacobs shell pink sheer cotton
blouse was fine. It was the fuchsia La Perla bra that was the problem. It showed right through the
blouse so that she looked like a stripper. But she was only going to Nate?s house to hang out with
him and Serena. And Nate liked to talk about bras. He was genuinely curious about, for instance,
what the purpose of an underwire was, or why some bras fastened in front and some fastened in
back. It was a big turn-on for him, obviously, but it was also sort of sweet. He was a lonely only
child, craving sisterhood.
Right.
She decided to leave the bra on for Nate?s sake, hiding the whole ensemble under her favorite
belted black cashmere Loro Piana cardigan, which would come off the minute she stepped into his
well-heated town house. Maybe, just maybe, the sight of her hot pink bra would be the thing to
make Nate realize that he?d been in love with her just as long as she?d been in love with him.
Maybe.
She opened her bedroom door and yelled down the long hall and across the East Seventy-second
Street penthouse?s vast expanse of period furniture, parquet floors, crown moldings, and French
Impressionist paintings. ?Mom! Dad? I?m going over to Nate?s house! Serena and I are spending
the night!?
When there was no reply, she clomped her way to her parents? huge master suite in her noisy
Kors wooden-heeled sheepskin clogs, opened their bedroom door, and made a beeline for her
mom?s dressing room. Eleanor Waldorf kept a tall stack of crisp emergency twenties in her
lingerie drawer for Blair and her ten-year-old brother, Tyler, to parse from? for taxis, cappuccinos,
and, in Blair?s case, the occasional much-needed pair of Manolo Blahnik heels. Twenty, forty,
sixty, eighty, one hundred. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, two hundred. Blair counted out the bills,
folding them neatly before stuffing them into the back pocket of her peg-legged Seven jeans.
?If I were a cabernet,? Blair?s father?s dramatically playful lawyer?s voice echoed out of the
adjoining dressing room, ?how would you describe my bouquet
Excusez-moi?
Blair clomped out of her mom?s dressing room and reached for the chocolate brown velvet
curtain hanging in the doorway of her dad?s. ?If you guys are in there together, like, doing it while
I?m home, then that?s really gross,? she declared flatly. ?Anyway, I?m going over to Nate?s, so
Her father, Harold J. Waldorf, Esquire, pulled aside the velvet curtain, dressed in his cashmere
tweed Paul Smith bathrobe and nothing else, his nicely tanned, handsome face looking slightly
flushed. ?Mom?s out looking at dishes for the Guggenheim benefit. I thought you were out. Where
are you going exactly
Blair stared at him. He wasn?t holding a phone, and if her mom was out, then who the fuck had
he just been talking to? She stood blinking at him with her hands on her hips, tempted to peek
inside his dressing room to see who he was hiding in there.
Does she really want to know?
Instead, she stumbled out of the master suite, clomped her way across the penthouse, grabbed her
blood orange? colored Jimmy Choo treasure chest hobo, and ran for the elevator.
Outside it was breathtakingly cold, and fat flakes fell at random. Usually she walked the twelve
blocks to Nate?s house, but today Blair had no patience for walking?she had just discovered that
her father was a lying, cheating scum-bag, after all, and a cab was waiting for her downstairs. Or
rather, a cab was waiting for Mrs. Solomon in 4A, but when the hunter green uniform?clad
doorman saw the terrifying look on Blair?s normally pretty face, he let her take it.
Besides, hailing cabs in the snow was probably the high-light of his day.
The stone walls bordering Central Park were blanketed in snow. A tall, elderly woman and her
Yorkshire terrier, dressed in matching red Chanel quilted coats with matching black velvet bows in
their white hair, crossed Seventy-second Street and entered the Ralph Lauren flagship store.
Blair?s cab hurtled recklessly up Madison Avenue, past Agn?s B. and Williams-Sonoma and the
Three Guys coffee shop, where all the Constance Billard girls gathered after school, and finally
pulled up to Nate?s town house.
?Let me in!? she yelled into the intercom outside the Archibalds? elegant wrought-iron-and-glass
front door as she swatted the buzzer over and over with her hand.
s moves out
?I?m going to 169 East Seventy-first Street,? Serena van der Woodsen said to the cabbie as she
slid into the taxi?s black vinyl backseat. She rolled down the window and let the warm late
