“What about drama? Your English grades are quite good, you must like drama,” Ms. Glos suggested. “They’ve only been rehearsing this one for a little over a week. It’s the Interschool Drama Club doing a modern version of Gone With the Wind.” She looked up again. “How ’bout it?”
Serena jiggled her foot up and down and chewed on her pinky nail. She tried to imagine herself alone on stage playing Scarlett O’Hara. She would have to cry on cue, and pretend to faint, and wear huge dresses with corsets and hoop skirts. Maybe even a wig.
I’ll never go hungry again! she’d cry dramatically, in her best Southern-belle voice. It might be kind of fun.
Serena took the flyer from Ms. Glos’s hand, careful not to touch the paper where Ms. Glos had touched it.
“Sure, why not?” she said. “It sounds like fun.”
Serena left Ms. Glos’s office as the final class of the day was getting out. Gone With the Wind rehearsal was in the auditorium, but it didn’t begin until six so that the students who did sports right after school could still be in the play. Serena walked up Constance’s wide central stairwell to the fourth floor to retrieve her coat from her locker and see if anyone wanted to hang out until six. All around her, girls were flying past, a blur of end-of-the-day energy, rushing to their next meeting, practice, rehearsal, or club. Out of habit, they paused for half a second to say hello to Serena, because ever since they could remember, to be seen talking to Serena van der Woodsen was to be seen.
“Hey Serena,” Laura Salmon yelled before diving down the stairs for Glee Club in the basement music room.
“Later, Serena,” Rain Hoffstetter said, as she slipped past in her gym shorts, heading for soccer practice.
“See you tomorrow, Serena,” Lily Reed said softly, blushing because she was wearing her riding breeches, which always embarrassed her.
“Bye,” Carmen Fortier said, chewing gum in her leather jacket and jeans. She was one of the few scholarship girls in the junior class and lived in the Bronx. She claimed she couldn’t wear her uniform home or she’d get beaten up. Carmen was headed to the Art of Floral Design Club, although she always lied to her friends in her neighborhood and said she took karate.
Suddenly the hallway was empty. Serena opened her locker, pulled her Burberry coat off the hook, and put it on. Then she slammed her locker shut and trotted downstairs and out the school doors, turning left down Ninety-third Street toward Central Park.
There was a box of orange Tic Tacs in her pocket with only one Tic Tac left. Serena fished the Tic Tac out and put it on her tongue, but she was so worried about her future, she could barely taste it.
She crossed Fifth Avenue, walking along the sidewalk that bordered the park. Fallen leaves scattered the pavement. Down the block, two little Sacred Heart girls in their cute red-and-white checked pinafores were walking an enormous black Rottweiler. Serena thought about entering the park at Eighty-ninth Street and sitting down for a while to kill time before the play rehearsal. But alone? What would she do, people-watch? She had always been one of those people everyone else watches.
So she went home.
Home was 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-glove building next to the Stanhope Hotel and directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The van der Woodsens owned half of the top floor. Their apartment had fourteen rooms, including five bedrooms with private bathrooms, a maid’s apartment, a ballroom-sized living room, and two seriously cool lounges with wet bars and huge entertainment systems.
When Serena got home the enormous apartment was empty. Her parents were rarely home. Her father ran the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather had founded in the 1700s. Both her parents were on the boards of all the big charities and arts organizations in the city and always had meetings or lunches or fundraisers to go to. Deidre, the maid, was out shopping, but the place was spotless and there were vases of fresh cut flowers in every room, including the bathrooms.
Serena slid open the door to the smaller of the lounges and flopped down on her favorite blue velvet armchair. She picked up the remote control and pressed the buttons to open the TV cabinet and turn on the flat-screen TV. She flipped through the channels impatiently, unable to focus on anything she saw, finally settling on TRL, even though she thought Carson Daly was the most annoying man alive. She hadn’t been watching much TV lately. At boarding school, her dormmates would make popcorn and hot chocolate and watch Saturday Night Live or Jackass in their pajamas, but Serena preferred to slip away to drink peach schnapps and smoke cigars with the boys in the chapel basement.
But what bothered her most now was not Carson Daly or even the fact that she was sitting alone in her house with nothing to do, but the thought that she might spend the rest of her life doing just that—watching TV alone in her parents’ apartment—if she didn’t get her act together and get into college! Why was she so stupid? Everyone else seemed to have their shit together. Had she missed the all-important “it’s time to get your shit together” talk? Why hadn’t anyone warned her?
Well, there was no point in freaking out. She still had time. And she could still have fun. She didn’t have to become a nun just because she was joining the Interschool Drama Club, or whatever.
Serena clicked the TV off and wandered into the kitchen. The van der Woodsens’ kitchen was massive. Glass cabinets lined the walls above gleaming, stainless-steel counter tops. There were two restaurant stoves and three Sub-Zero refrigerators. An enormous butcher-block table stood in the center of the kitchen, and on the table was today’s pile of mail.
Serena picked up the mail and sifted through it. Mostly, there were invitations for her parents—white square envelopes printed with old-fashioned typefaces—to balls, benefit dinners, fundraisers, and auctions. Then there were the art openings—postcards with a picture of the artist’s work on one side and the details of the opening on the back. One of these caught Serena’s eye. It had obviously been lost in the mail for a little while, because it looked beaten up, and the opening it announced was beginning at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, which was . . . right now. Serena flipped the card over and looked at the picture of the artist’s work. It looked like a close-up black-and-white photograph of an eye, tinted with pink. The title of the work was Kate Moss. And the name of the show was “Behind the Scene.” Serena squinted at the picture. There was something innocent and beautiful about it, and at the same time it was a little gross. Maybe it wasn’t an eye. She wasn’t sure what it was. It was definitely cool, though. There was no question about it; Serena knew what she was doing for the next two hours.
She flew into her bedroom, whipped off her maroon uniform, and pulled on her favorite pair of black leather jeans. Then she grabbed her coat and called the elevator. Within minutes she was stepping out of a taxi in front of the Whitehot Gallery downtown in Chelsea.
The minute she got there, Serena grabbed a free gin martini and signed the guest list. The gallery was full of twenty-something hipsters in cool clothes, drinking free martinis and admiring the photographs hanging on the walls. Each picture was similar to the one on the postcard, that same close-up black-and-white eye, blown up, all in different shapes and sizes and tinted with different colors. Under each one was a label, and on every label was the name of a celebrity: Kate Moss, Kate Hudson, Joaquin Phoenix, Jude Law, Gisele Bundchen, Cher, Eminem, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Elton John.
French pop music bubbled out of invisible speakers. The photo-artists themselves, the Remi brothers, identical twin sons of a French model and an English duke, were being interviewed and photographed for Art Forum, Vogue, W, Harper’s Bazaar, and the New York Times.
Serena studied each photograph carefully. They weren’t eyes, she decided, now that she was looking at them blown up. But what were they? Belly buttons?
Suddenly Serena felt an arm around her waist.
“Hello, ma chèrie. Beautiful girl. What is your name?”
It was one of the Remi brothers. He was twenty-six years old and five
foot seven, the same height as Serena. He had curly black hair and brilliant blue eyes. He spoke with a French and British accent. He was dressed head to toe in navy blue, and his lips were dark red and curved foxily up at the corners. He was absolutely gorgeous, and so was his twin brother.
Lucky girl.
Serena didn’t resist when he pulled her into a photograph with him and his brother for the New York Times Sunday Styles section. One brother stood behind Serena and kissed her neck while the other knelt in front of her and hugged her knees. Around them, people watched greedily, eager to catch a glimpse of the new “it” girl.
Everyone in New York wants to be famous. Or at least see someone who is so they can brag about it later.
The New York Times society reporter recognized Serena from parties a year or so back, but he had to be sure it was her. “Serena van der Woodsen, right?” he said, looking up from his notepad.
Serena blushed and nodded. She was used to being recognized.
“You must model for us,” one of the Remi brothers gasped, kissing Serena’s hand.
“You must,” the other one agreed, feeding her an olive.
Serena laughed. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?” Although she had no idea what she was agreeing to.
One of the Remi brothers pointed to a door marked Private across the gallery. “We’ll meet you in there,” he said. “Don’t be nervous. We’re both gay.”
Serena giggled and took a big gulp of her drink. Were they kidding?
The other brother patted her on the bottom. “It’s all right darling. You’re absolutely stunning, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. Go on. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Serena hesitated, but only for a second. She could keep up with the likes of Christina Aguilera and Joaquin Phoenix. No problem. Chin up, she headed for the door marked Private.
Just then, a guy from the Public Arts League and a woman from the New York Transit Authority came over to talk to the Remi brothers about a new avant-garde public art program. They wanted to put a Remi brothers’ photograph on the sides of buses, in subways, and in the advertising boxes on top of taxis all over town.
“Yes, of course,” the Remis agreed. “If you can wait a moment, we’ll have a brand new one. We can give it to you exclusively!”
“What’s this one called?” the Transit Authority woman asked eagerly.
“Serena,” the Remi boys said in unison.
social awareness is next to godliness
“I found a printer who will do it by tomorrow afternoon and hand deliver each of the invitations so they get there by Friday morning,” Isabel said, looking pleased with herself for being so efficient.
“But look how expensive it is. If we use them, then we’re going to have to cut costs on other things. See how much Takashimaya is charging us for the flowers?”
As soon as they were finished with their Wednesday after-school activities, the Kiss on the Lips organizing committee had convened over French fries and hot chocolate in a booth at the 3 Guys Coffee Shop—Blair, Isabel, Kati, and Tina Ford, from the Seaton Arms School—to deal with the last-minute preparations for the party.
The crisis at hand was the fact that the party was only nine days away, and no one had received an invitation yet. The invitations had been ordered weeks ago, but due to a mix-up the location of the party had to be changed from The Park—a hot new restaurant in lower Chelsea—to the old Barneys building on Seventeenth Street and Seventh Avenue, rendering the invitations useless. The girls were in a tight spot. They had to get a new set of invitations out, and fast, or there wasn’t going to be a party at all.
“But Takashimaya is the only place to get flowers. And it really doesn’t cost much. Oh, come on, Blair, think how cool they’ll be,” Tina whined.
“Yes, it does,” Blair insisted. “And there are plenty of other places to get flowers.”
“Well, maybe we can ask the peregrine falcon people to pitch in,” Isabel suggested. She reached for a French fry, dunked it in ketchup, and popped it into her mouth. “They’ve barely done anything.”
Blair rolled her eyes, and blew into her hot chocolate. “That’s the whole point. We’re raising money for them. It’s a cause.”
Kati wound a lock of her frizzy blond hair around her finger. “What is a peregrine falcon anyway?” she said. “Is it like a woodpecker?”
“No, I think they’re bigger,” Tina said. “And they eat other animals, you know, like rabbits and mice and stuff.”
“Gross,” Kati said.
“I just read a definition of what one was the other day,” Isabel mused. “I can’t remember where I saw it.”
GossipGirl.net, perhaps?
“They’re almost extinct,” Blair added. She thumbed through the list of people they were inviting to the party. There were three hundred and sixteen all together. All young people—no parents, thank God.
Blair’s eyes were automatically drawn to a name toward the bottom of the list: Serena van der Woodsen. The address given was her dorm room at Hanover Academy, in New Hampshire. Blair put the list back down on the table without correcting Serena’s address.
“We’re going to have to spend the extra money on the printer and cut corners where we can,” she said quickly. “I can tell Takashimaya to use lilies instead of orchids and forget about the peacock feathers around the rims of the vases.”
“I can do the invitations,” a small, clear voice said from behind them. “For free.”
The four girls turned around to see who it was.
Oh look, it’s that little Ginny girl, Blair thought. The ninth grader who did the calligraphy in our school hymnals.
“I can do them all by hand tonight and put them in the mail. The materials are the only cost, but I know where to get good quality paper cheap,” Jenny Humphrey said.
“She did all our hymnals at school,” Kati whispered to Tina. “They look really good.”
“Yeah,” Isabel agreed. “They’re pretty cool.”
Jenny blushed and stared at the shiny linoleum floor of the coffee shop, waiting for Blair to make up her mind. She knew Blair was the one who mattered.
“And you’ll do it all for free?” Blair said, suspiciously.
Jenny raised her eyes. “I was kind of hoping that if I did the invites, maybe I could come to the party?” she said.
Blair weighed the pros and cons in her mind. Pros: The invitations would be unique and best of all, free, so they wouldn’t have to skimp on the flowers. Cons: There really weren’t any.
Blair looked the Ginny girl up and down. Their cute little ninth-grade helper with the huge chest. She was a total glutton for punishment, and she’d be totally out of place at the party . . . but who cared?
“Sure, you can make yourself an invitation. Make one for one of your friends, too,” Blair said, handing the guest list over to Jenny.
How generous.
Blair gave Jenny all the necessary information, and Jenny dashed out of the coffee shop breathlessly. The stores would be closing soon, and she didn’t have much time. The guest list was longer than she’d anticipated, and she’d have to stay up all night working on the invitations, but she was going to the party; that was all that mattered.
Just wait until she told Dan. He was going to freak. And she was going to make him come with her to the party, whether he liked it or not.
gone with the wind gone awry
Two martinis and three rolls of Remi brothers’ film later, Serena jumped out of a cab in front of Constance and ran up the stairs to the auditorium, where the interschool play rehearsal had already begun. As always, she was half an hour late.
The sound of a Talking Heads song being played jauntily on the piano drifted down the hallway. Serena pushed open the auditorium door to find her old friend, Ralph Bottoms III, singing Burning Down the South, to the tune of Burning Down the House, with a completely straight face. He was dressed as Rhett Butler, complete with fake mustache and brass buttons. Ralph had gained weight in t
he last two years, and his face was ruddy, as if he’d been eating too much rare steak. He was holding hands with a stocky girl with curly brown hair and a heart-shaped face—Scarlett O’Hara. She was singing too, belting out the words in a thick Brooklyn accent.
Serena leaned against the wall to watch, with a mixture of horror and fascination. The scene at the art gallery hadn’t fazed her, but this—this was scary.
When the song ended, the rest of the Interschool Drama Club clapped and cheered, and then the drama teacher, an aged English woman, began to direct the next scene.
“Put your hands on your hips, Scarlett,” she instructed. “Show me, show me. That’s it. Imagine you’re the teen sensation of the Civil War South. You’re breaking all the rules!”
Serena turned to gaze out the window and saw three girls get out of a cab together on the corner of Ninety-third and Madison. She squinted, recognizing Blair, Kati, and Isabel. Serena hugged herself, warding off the strange feeling that had been stalking her since she’d come back to the city. For the first time in her entire life, she felt left out.
Without a word to anyone in the drama club—Hello? Goodbye!—Serena slipped out of the auditorium and into the hallway outside. The wall was littered with flyers and notices and she stopped to read them. One of the flyers was for Vanessa Abrams’s film tryout.
Knowing Vanessa, the film was going to be very serious and obscure, but it was better than shouting goofy songs and doing the Hokey-Pokey with fat, red-faced Ralph Bottoms III. Vanessa’s tryout had started an hour ago, on a bench in Madison Square Park, but maybe it was still going on. Once again, Serena found herself running for a cab, headed downtown.
“This is how I want you to do it,” Vanessa told Marjorie Jaffe, a sophomore at Constance and the only girl who had shown up to try out for the role of Natasha in Vanessa’s film. Marjorie had curly red hair and freckles, a little pug nose, and no neck. She chewed gum incessantly, and she was completely, nightmarishly, wrong for the part.