Blair narrowed her blue eyes, glaring icily at Isabel’s reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. “Tell me what?”
Isabel tucked a few stray brown hairs behind her ears, then frowned and ripped out the hair clip, starting all over again.
Blair thought her cutoff jeans and ripped red Juicy T-shirt made her look tacky and desperate, like Paris Hilton.
“That Lord Marcus guy is married,” Isabel told her matter-of-factly, wincing with effort as she tried to get her ponytail completely smooth and lump-free.
Blair smeared Chanel Stroppy lip gloss over her lips for the seventh time in five minutes. She was so mad, she thought she just might throw up after all. “Bullshit.”
Isabel rolled her curly-lashed brown eyes and sighed as if she were already totally bored with the subject matter. “Well, almost. He’s engaged. He’s been engaged since he was, like, ten years old. You know, like Lady Diana and Prince Charles?”
Blair spun away from the mirror, her fists clenched tightly to keep from strangling Isabel’s ostrichlike neck. “And where exactly did you hear that?”
Isabel shrugged her shoulders maddeningly. “Everybody knows. It’s, like, a fact.”
Depending on your definition of the word fact.
“That’s the stupidest—” Blair was about to try and defend Lord Marcus’s honor, but she stopped herself. They were young, they were in love—who cared what anyone thought? Even if there was some boring girl back in England that Lord Marcus was supposed to marry, she probably looked like Queen Victoria and sat on her fat ass in her castle eating crumpets all day, wondering why Lord Marcus never called.
Isabel smiled at her reflection, finally satisfied. “I just thought you should know.” She shrugged her shoulders and then cocked her overwaxed eyebrows at Blair. “Wanna come have a cigarette with us?” she offered, as if they were all still thirteen years old and only smoked in groups.
“No.” Blair pushed past her and out the bathroom door. She peeked into the insanely crowded lounge, but the chair where she and Lord Marcus had been sitting together was now occupied by Nate’s loud, stoned, skinny friend Jeremy and some skanky French girl trying to teach him how to blow heart-shaped smoke rings. Lord Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Blair fingered the Bvlgari pearl choker and teetered down the hall to the elevator.
All night she’d wanted to get Lord Marcus alone in his suite. Now was her chance.
D rethinks his summer plans
Dan’s cigarette hand shook violently as he watched his sister disappear into the men’s room, followed by that arrogant stoner prince of the Upper East Side, Nate Archibald. Jenny seemed to be getting bolder and more self-assured as the year progressed, while he seemed to be regressing back to the girl-less, friendless loser he’d been up until this year. She’d even wrangled her way into boarding school way after admissions for next year were closed, while he’d whittled his options down to nothing.
The music was really loud now, and Vanessa and Serena had inspired half the room to get up and dance. Vanessa had kicked off her wedge-heeled shoes, baring her black-polished toes and pale, deeply arched feet. Dan loved to kiss the arches of her feet. He could write sonnets about the arches of her feet. But that was back when Vanessa didn’t drink or dance or wear white or anything but black jeans, black kneesocks, and Doc Martens. She seemed so different now—if he were to write a poem about her, he wasn’t sure where he’d begin.
Vanessa danced over to him and snaked her arms around his neck. Her pale skin was slick was sweat and her eyelids were heavy from all the vodka she’d consumed. “I do love you, Dan. I really do,” she breathed hotly into his ear before shimmying away again, her whole body aglow. Dan stared after her, honestly believing that she did love him. She just didn’t need him with her—not all the time. She was too busy shedding her lumpy black cocoon and transforming into a shimmering, white-winged moth.
But he’d already deferred his admission at Evergreen. What was he supposed to do now?
Lighting a Camel, he thought about barging into the men’s room to rescue Jenny just for old times’ sake and because such a noble act might make him feel better, but he was sick of always being the responsible older brother. Why couldn’t someone rescue him for a change?
Okay.
“Son? Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Dan dropped his cigarette on the burgundy-and-gold oriental carpet, nearly jumping out of his faded blue Vans sneakers in surprise. It was his dad, in his favorite purple cotton sweatpants and black Mets T-shirt, looking ruddy-cheeked from too much red wine.
“I guess,” Dan responded slowly. The music in the lounge was absurdly loud. Dan led Rufus outside. Out on Vanderbilt Avenue, the air was steamy and the sidewalks glittered black. Across the street, Grand Central Station looked like a giant relic of the city’s past. A metallic blue ’77 Buick Skylark—another relic from the past—was parked outside the Yale Club, looking completely out of place. Two skinny L’École girls were sitting on the curb having a fight over who was prettier or who smoked Gauloises with more panache. Behind them, their gold Gucci toe-ring sandals lay discarded in a pile. Suddenly they started kissing.
“Jesus,” Rufus muttered, tugging on his matted salt-and-pepper beard, which resembled a used Brillo pad.
“What, Dad?” Dan whined impatiently. It was kind of embarrassing standing outside the party with his father. He felt like he was eleven years old.
Rufus tucked his hands inside the stretched-out waistband of his purple sweatpants and Dan flinched at how unattractive the gesture was.
“After you left you got a call from some raving Greek professor at Evergreen. First he was going nuts about how you were supposed to sleep in his hammock and eat grape leaves with him, but then he started waxing philosophical about how kids your age can’t differentiate between sex and love. Apparently he’s quite an expert on the subject.
“Anyway, I talked to him for a while, and what it came down to was, he’s going to make them hold your place open for the fall a) because I asked him to and b) because he was supposed to be your advisor and he wants you to help him with his book and c) because we both like you, even though you’re a knucklehead.”
Dan resented his dad’s fond, vaguely patronizing tone. “You can’t tell me what to do,” he countered, crossing his hands over his chest and sounding younger by the minute. “You can’t.”
“That’s true,” Rufus agreed. He gestured toward the funky vintage Buick parked outside the Yale Club. “But I already got you the car. The least you could do is let me teach you how to drive it this summer and then get the hell out of here.”
Dan had read about epiphanies and written about epiphanies, but he’d never actually had one. He’d gotten into nearly every college he applied to. He’d had a poem published in the New Yorker. And what was he going to do next year—work at a bookstore or wait tables to keep busy while Vanessa was in class?
“I could take the summer to work things out,” he allowed, unwilling to let his father think he could be that easily persuaded. He and Vanessa could spend the summer hanging out whenever she wasn’t busy working on that movie and he wasn’t busy driving around in that … chick magnet. Who knew? Maybe there’d be other girls to love besides Vanessa—all he had to do was get his license and drive out west to find out.
Rufus reached out to clap him on the back, but Dan opened up his arms and gave his dad a hug. “This party was kind of lame anyway,” he confessed.
Rufus grunted and led him over to the car, which was basking in its own coolness under a streetlamp near the curb. “Then how ’bout I give you your first driving lesson?”
Aw. Don’t you just love happy endings?
Sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll
Jenny latched the door to the handicapped stall in the men’s room, unsure of whether to take off her clothes or fish the tab of E out of her purse. There was an impatient flare to Nate’s nostrils but she wasn’t sure which he wanted first, sex or drugs.
Sh
e unzipped her black LeSportsac with the white Persian cats on it and clicked open her matching change purse. “Here it is.” She removed the tiny piece of Saran Wrap with the pill inside and carefully began to unfold it.
Nate peered over her shoulder. “Do you want to take it or should I?”
Jenny didn’t want it, and he obviously did. “You take it.” She held out her palm and Nate pinched the tab between his thumb and forefinger. He opened his mouth, closed his eyes, and stuck out his tongue, pressing the tab onto it before opening his eyes and closing his mouth again. Like that, he didn’t look very hot, but Jenny was still intent on hooking up with him. This was her swan song, her last chance to forge her own memories and be remembered.
Oh, she’d be remembered all right.
“Does it taste like anything?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“Nope.” Nate smiled. The more time he spent alone with Jennifer, the more he felt like his old self again. All she wanted was a little no-obligation, no-expectations end-of-the-year fun before she took off for boarding school or wherever the hell she was going this summer, and that was his specialty. He bent down and kissed her carefully on the lips, like he was biting into something that was still too hot to eat. “But you do.”
Jenny loved the idea that she was using Nate, and the fact that he wanted her to use him gave her even more of a thrill. He stroked her curly brown hair and she tilted her chin up and gazed into his stunning green eyes. “Remember when I fell so in love with you?”
Nate smiled again and kissed her again. He did that for a while, smiling and kissing, smiling and kissing, like he was lapping up a delicious ice cream cone.
“You’ve got skin like … like … petals,” Nate remarked as the E began to take effect. He rubbed the tip of his nose against her temple. “Grr.”
Jenny giggled. It felt completely amazing to be this close and comfortable with Nate again. He was absurdly handsome, and being kissed by him felt really, really, really good. But Nate was beginning to trip, and she didn’t want to lose her virginity to a boy who thought he was a Labrador puppy. She wouldn’t.
Well, at least she has that much integrity.
Still, this was her last crazy night out before she flew to Prague for the summer. She wasn’t quite ready for it to end.
Nate rubbed his chin against her carefully plucked dark brown eyebrows, and she lifted her chin to catch him in another long, hungry kiss. Her brother was always moaning about how much his life sucked. But she couldn’t have disagreed more. It wasn’t like she’d planned for life to be this thrilling. It just was; it really was.
Nothing like a little mystery
“Marcus, darling?” Blair called tentatively through the molded white wooden door to Marcus’s suite. She’d never actually called him “darling” out loud before, but it was becoming her favorite endearment. “Are you in there?”
She considered stripping down to only her Bvlgari pearls right there in the hallway, but the Yale Club was booked solid, and what if some bow-tie-wearing Yale professor saw her naked tonight and then she wound up having him in Intro to Law or another one of her freshman classes next year?
Well, it would certainly make the class more interesting.
“Marcus?” Blair pressed her ear against the door, listening for him. Nothing. She tried the knob. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open a few inches and stuck her head inside. “Marcus?” Still nothing. She pushed the door open all the way.
The drawers of the suite’s antique oak armoire had been pulled open and a damp towel lay strewn on the bed. The air was heavy with steam and the scent of Marcus’s Carolina Herrera for Men cologne. The closet door stood open. The cedar suit hangers were all bare. Marcus was gone.
Whoops.
Blair sat down heavily on the bed, feeling very much like the jilted but beautiful heroine in one of the epic films in her head that she’d temporarily stopped watching. She’d forgone her enormous Jackie O sunglasses, her signature Hermès head scarf, and her Burberry tea-length trench coat, because the heroine who was in love and part of a couple didn’t need them. Now she wanted them back.
How had this happened? Was her only purpose in life to serve as a fuck-over mat for boys like Nate and Lord Marcus to wipe the soles of their lying, cheating Church’s of London shoes on?
Her stomach churning, she stood up and rushed next door to her own suite, fully intending to make herself sick as soon as she reached the toilet. Propped up on the bureau was a large cream-colored envelope with the words My Darling B scrawled on it in Marcus’s swirly script, and a small black velvet box with the word BVLGARI printed on it in gold. Blair resisted opening the box and tore open the envelope. Inside was a note from Marcus written on a matching cream-colored Crane’s note card with LORD MARCUS BEATON-RHODES printed on it in Yale blue ink, along with a British Airways plane ticket.
Blair remained standing as she devoured the note, trying to ignore the small explosions in her stomach, like soap bubbles popping.
Dearest darling Blair, Bee, my bumblebee,
How could I have known when I planned a brief visit to New York after I finished up at Yale that I would meet a girl and fall in love? And not just any girl—you. It would be impossible to describe my feelings, so I dashed out and bought you two little somethings to go with the necklace. Promise me you’ll wear them all when I see you next, which should be only a few weeks away if you’d be so kind as to get your gorgeousness on the flight I so presumptuously booked a ticket for—first class, of course. It’s in two weeks, which gives you ample time to buy a whole new wardrobe, have a series of facials or tanning treatments, or whatever you do to keep yourself looking as stunning as you always do. Sorry for running out on you like this, but it’s your graduation-from-high-school party, the only one you’ll ever have, and I didn’t want to put a damper on it by saying good-bye. All right, I’m off. Please come to England. I shall miss you.
Love for always,
Marcus
Blair snatched the black velvet box off the white-painted bureau and pried it open. Two perfect, enormous round pearls glowed back at her, each dangling from a gold cursive B—the earrings to match the necklace. She ripped out her boring pearl studs and put in the Bvlgaris.
Bee. My bumblebee.
It seemed highly doubtful that Marcus was engaged to some overweight, big-nosed, blue-blooded duchess if he’d bought Blair a plane ticket to travel to England to meet his mum. Judging from his impeccable stationery, Lord Marcus was a bona fide lord, too. And judging from the note and the plane ticket and the pearls, he truly loved her.
Opening the top drawer of the bureau, she tucked the plane ticket alongside her favorite black La Perla demicup bra.
Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing like a mysterious departure to pique a girl’s interest.
You know you love me
Serena’s pale blond hair was matted with sweat and her yellow Tocca dress clung to her skin like wet tissue paper. She’d been dancing for an hour and she could barely stand up. Vanessa was leaning against the wall, chugging from a bottle of Perrier, her cheeks red with exertion. Serena joined her, grabbing the water out of her friend’s hand and pouring it down her throat.
“You haven’t seen Dan, have you?” Vanessa asked breathlessly. Now that she was finished dancing, it might be fun to find a quiet nook in the club somewhere and make out with Dan for a while.
“Nope,” Serena remarked. The two girls surveyed the room, their eyes stinging with the salt from their sweat. A group of gray-uniform-wearing tenth-grade boys from some Catholic school were making a human pyramid with Chuck Bass on top, even though he weighed as much as all of them combined. One of the L’École girls had taken off her halter top and was dancing by herself in the corner, smoking a joint and strumming a guitar, a sun, moon, and stars tattoo standing out on her shoulder blade.
“This party is weird,” Vanessa observed.
“Have you seen Nate?” Serena asked. She vaguely remembered arri
ving with him, but she hadn’t seen him since. She squinted, half expecting to find Nate weeping at the bar, but she couldn’t see him anywhere.
Blair stepped away from the bar, a fresh flute of bubbling champagne in her hand and a fresh cigarette dangling from the antique ebony-and-mother-of-pearl cigarette holder between her glossed lips, looking like a character out of an old movie. Serena pushed herself away from the wall and went over to her.
“I love your pearls.”
Blair decided not to spit in Serena’s face or scratch her dark blue eyes out. “They’re from Marcus.”
Serena nodded, about to say something about what an amazing guy Marcus was, but she was distracted. “You haven’t seen Nate, have you?”
Blair took a long sip of champagne and blew smoke into the air. She’d been busy accepting gifts from her mysterious royal beau. She didn’t have time to keep track of Nate’s erratic whereabouts. “Not really.”
Serena scanned the room with her eyes. “He’s been acting strange,” she remarked, chewing on her thumbnail. “Don’t you think so?”
Again, Blair really didn’t have an opinion on the subject. The moss green sweater was where she’d left it, folded on a chair nearby. “I guess,” she allowed.
That tiny big-chested ninth grader Jenny Humphrey stepped out of the alcove where the men’s room was, her curly dark hair slightly askew and her mouth red and swollen, as if from too much kissing. She paused and held out her hand, as if to a child. Then Nate appeared, looking happily disoriented. Jenny put her arm around his waist, and he turned and kissed her eagerly on the mouth, as if her lips were made of chocolate or something.
“Oh!” Serena exclaimed, as if she’d been pinched. She blinked her dark blue eyes, trying to ascertain whether she was truly hurt or just surprised. It had never felt right, her and Nate being together. And it would be better to be single this summer so she could focus on the film. At least now she wouldn’t have to bother breaking up with him. Not that they’d ever really been together.