“No, no, everything’s fine.” Nate stood and slammed his door shut behind him. “We’ll have to do something about the car, I guess.” He frowned.
Blair adjusted her bag and perched on the still-warm hood of the hunter-green Aston. Nate looked more than distracted. He looked like he was going to throw up. Was there any chance he knew about the letter? Or could Serena have called him while he was in the restroom? Was that why he’d taken so long? Blair fidgeted impatiently.What was the holdup? “Nate, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“What? No,” Nate answered, stuffing the keys in his pocket. “We’re really doing this, right?”
“We’re really doing this!” Leaving her bag on the hood of the car, Blair scurried around to where Nate stood and threw herself into his arms. A white seagull swooped down onto the parking lot. “You seem worried.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just . . . thinking is all.”
Don’t hurt yourself.
Inhaling Nate’s delicious scent—his deodorant, a hint of the lavender soap from Serena’s parents’ master bathroom, the ocean smell that had somehow already made it into his shirt—Blair closed her eyes. “Don’t worry, Natie. It’s summer. And we’re together.That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
Nate pulled away just far enough to look at her face. She smiled up at him, hoping for a moment that they’d get ship-wrecked somewhere and that they’d never have to see Serena again. They’d live in a bamboo hut, forage for food, and be naked all the time. Who needed clothes when they had each other?
She must be out of her mind.
“You’re right. Fuck it. Fuck everything and everyone else.” Then he bent down and pressed his delicious mouth to hers. “Let’s get out of here.”
Be sure to send a postcard.
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
You know what’s totally lame? Happy endings. Seriously. Like when I’m at the movies and see some plucky, determined girl finally land her leading man—whom I knew for the past two hours she’d end up with anyway—I just want to claw her eyes out. Real life is actually terribly messy and complicated and nothing ever just ends. . . . I mean really, if you’ll allow me get all philosophical about it for a minute, every ending is really just another beginning, isn’t it? Okay, I’ll shut up now.A NOVEL BY Cecily von Ziegesar
So while B and N may be sailing off into the sunset, something tells me this story is far from over. Especially when there are so many questions waiting to be answered. Like:
Will B tell N about the letter from S? Will S find N and tell him on her own? Will B throw her overboard if she does?
Will D really make out with another boy? Again. Will they go even further?!
Will V really cheer him on if he does?
And realistically how long can those two stay roommates and not bed-mates? Maybe he’s bi after all.
Then of course there’s the biggest question of all: Who am I? I know you guys are totally jonesing for more dirt on me, so here’s an interesting tidbit about yours truly (Don’t say I never give you anything!): I just can’t keep a secret. I mean, except for the secret of who I am, of course. But secrets like the one S has been keeping all these years? Hats off to her! I can understand fooling your friends and even your family, but if you can manage to keep me in the dark, well, bravo! So what else is she hiding? I have a feeling there’s a lot more to be discovered here. . . .
I know you’re dying for answers. Well, me too. And you know I always get what I want.
You know you love me.
gossip girl
Once upon a time on the Upper East Side of New York City,
two beautiful girls fell in love with one perfect boy....
Turn the page for a sneak peek of
it had to be you
the gossip girl prequel
and find out how it all began.
by the #1 New York Times bestselling author
Cecily von Ziegesar
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
Ever have that totally freakish feeling that someone is listening in on your conversations, spying on you and your friends, following you to parties, and generally stalking you? Well, they are. Or actually, I am. The truth is, I’ve been here all along, because I’m one of you.
Feeling totally lost? Don’t get out much? Don’t know who “we” are? Allow me to explain. We’re an exclusive group of indescribably beautiful people who happen to live in those majestic, green-awninged, white-glove-doorman buildings near Central Park. We attend Manhattan’s most elite single-sex private schools. Our families own yachts and estates in various exotic locations throughout the world. We frequent all the best beaches and the most exclusive ski resorts. We’re seated immediately at the nicest restaurants in the chicest neighborhoods with-out a reservation. We turn heads. But don’t confuse us with Hollywood actors or models or rock stars—those people you feel like you know because you hear so much about them, but who are actually completely boring compared to the parts they play or the songs they sing. There’s nothing boring about me or my friends, and the more I tell you about us, the more you’re going to want to know. I’ve kept quiet until now, but something has happened and I just can’t stay quiet about it. . . .
the greatest story ever told
We learned in our first eleventh-grade creative writing class this week that most great stories begin in one of the following fashions: someone mysteriously disappears or a stranger comes to town. The story I’m about to tell is of the “someone mysteriously disappears” variety.
To be specific, S is gone.
In order to unravel the mystery of why she’s left and where she’s gone, I’m going to have to backtrack to last winter—the winter of our sophomore year—when the La Mer skin cream hit the fan and our pretty pink rose-scented bubble burst. It all started with three inseparable, perfectly innocent, über-gorgeous 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 cautio
usly 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 they werehome, 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 some-thing 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 more incentive,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 Frédéric 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, who canyou 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 Pia
na 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?”