Nobody Does It Better Read online

  “Yeah?” he called, pressing the button on the intercom.

  “Delivery!” Jeremy Scott Tompkinson shouted in his hoarse stoner voice. “Hurry while it's still hot!”

  Nate heard laughter and other voices in the background. Blair waited for him to tell them to get lost. Instead, he pressed the button to unlock the door and let them in.

  “I should get dressed,” Blair observed tersely. She slid out of bed and stomped into Nate's adjoining bathroom. How could he be smart enough to get into Yale, yet too dumb to understand that inviting his stoner friends up to their steamy love den would totally ruin the mood?

  Not that Yale had accepted Nate because of his smarts: the school needed a few good lacrosse players. End of story.

  At least Blair had an excuse to use the delicious L'Occitane sandalwood body shampoo the housekeeper stocked in Nate's shower. She toweled herself off with a thick navy blue Ralph Lauren towel, slipped on her flimsy pink silk Cosabella underwear, zipped up her blue-and-white-seer-sucker Constance Billard School spring uniform skirt, and buttoned two of the six buttons on her white linen Calvin Klein three-quarter-sleeve blouse. Braless and barefoot, it was the perfect my-girlfriend-just-got-out-of-the-shower-and-would-you-please-leave? look. Hopefully Nate's friends would get the hint, make like bees, and fuck off. She tousled her damp hair with her fingers and pushed open the bathroom door.

  “Bonjour!” A buxom, raven-haired, long-legged L'Ecole girl greeted Blair from Nate's bed. Blair had met the girl before at parties. Her name was Lexus or Lexique or something equally annoying, a sixteen-year-old junior who'd done some modeling as a child in Paris and was now working on perfecting the French hippie-slut look. Lexique, whose name was really Lexie, was wearing a lavender-and-mustard-yellow hand-dyed cotton wraparound dress that looked homemade but had actually been purchased at Kirna Zabete for four hundred and fifty dollars, and those ugly flat Pakistani sheep-herder sandals from Barneys that everyone but Blair seemed to think were so cool this year. Lexie's face was makeup-free, and she cradled an acoustic guitar in her skinny arms. On the bed beside her was a Ziploc bag full of pot.

  What a rebel. Most L'Ecole girls never go anywhere without a pack of Gitanes, red lipstick, and heels.

  “The boys are making bong hits on the roof,” Lexie explained. She strummed her thumb across the guitar strings. “Alors, want to jam with me till they get back?”

  Jam?

  Blair wrinkled her nose with even more emphasis than she had at the thought of getting a tattoo. She was so not into the whole getting-high, playing-guitars-and-laughing-at-your-friends'-totally-stupid-stoned-observations scene, and she really didn't want to hang out with this Lexique girl, who obviously thought she was the coolest French girl in New York. She'd rather watch Oprah reruns on Oxygen in her cat-pee-soaked room while her delusional mom wept over baby alpacas.

  Someone had stuck a stick of burning amber incense into the cork heel of one of Blair's new mint green Christian Dior espadrilles. She grabbed the stick of incense and jammed it into a porthole in one of Nate's beloved model sailboats on his desk. Then she laced up her shoes, buttoned a few more buttons on her blouse, and grabbed her vintage Gucci bamboo-handled tote bag. “Please tell Nathaniel that I've gone home,” she instructed briskly.

  “Peace!” Lexie saluted Blair with stoned gaiety. “Au revoir!” A tattoo of the sun, moon, and stars was printed on her shoulder blade.

  Hence Nate's sudden interest in tattoos?

  Blair stomped down the stairs and let herself out onto Eighty-second Street. It felt like summer already. The sun was still two hours from setting, and the air smelled of fresh-cut grass from nearby Central Park, and suntan lotion from all the half-naked girls hurrying home to their apartments on Park Avenue. A gaggle of eleventh-grade St. Jude's Nate-and-Jeremy-wannabes were hovering around the downstairs buzzer outside Nate's town house. One of them had a guitar slung over his shoulder.

  “Bien sûr. Come on up!” Blair heard Lexie call out to them over the intercom, as if she lived there.

  Nate's house seemed to draw all the stoner kids on the Upper East Side with some sort of spiritual magnetic pull. And Blair swore she didn't mind—really, she didn't—as long as she didn't have to sit around watching them all jam. After all she and Nate had been though, Blair knew it was going to be different this time. She and Nate were together spiritually, and now physically, too, which meant she could leave him alone, feeling perfectly confident that he wouldn't dream of cheating on her.

  She carried on down Eighty-second street toward Fifth Avenue, checking her cell phone for a message from Nate at every corner. Obviously he'd call any second now. Like all possessive, aggressive, obsessive girls, she liked to think Nate didn't have a life without her.

  Then again, if he didn't, she'd go completely nuts.

  Little Diva Gives Big Diva Some Sound Advice

  “They gave us five spreads,” Serena van der Woodsen explained as she flipped through the hot-off-the-press June issue of W magazine. “That's ten whole pages!” The world-famous fashion designer Les Best had just messengered the fashion magazine over to her apartment with a note that read, “As ever, you are fabulous, darling. And so's that dark-haired little hottie friend of yours!”

  The same supposed dark-haired little hottie, fourteen-year-old Jenny Humphrey, was desperately trying not to pee in her pants. Serena, the coolest senior girl at Constance Billard, and totally famous and beautiful model/Upper East Side girl-about-town, had actually asked her to hang out after school today. She was now sitting in Serena's huge, awesomely old-fashioned bedroom—her private sanctuary—on her bed, flipping through the latest issue of the coolest fashion magazine in the world, looking for pages featuring the two of them modeling the type of amazing designer clothes Jenny had always gazed at longingly in stores but never once dreamed she'd actually wear. It was so unreal she could hardly breathe.

  “Here, look!” Serena squealed, stabbing at the page with a long, slender finger. “Don't we look like badasses?!”

  Jenny leaned in closer to see, happily inhaling the sweet scent of Serena's custom-blended patchouli oil perfume. Across Serena's perfect lap lay a spread of the two girls dressed head-to-toe in Les Best couture, motoring down the beach in a dune buggy, the Ferris wheel at Coney Island rising up behind them, all lit up. The style of the picture was typical Jonathan Joyce—the über-famous fashion photographer who had shot the spread—totally natural and unposed, like he'd just happened upon these two girls riding their dune buggy on the beach at sunset and having the time of their lives. Indeed they did look like badasses in their crazy turquoise-and-black-striped leggings, turquoise leather vests over white bikini tops, and white leather knee-high go-go boots with teeny-tiny heels. Their hair was winged back, their nails were painted white, their lips were painted cotton candy pink, and peacock feathers dangled from their ears. It was all very retro eighties/futuristic/cutting edge, and absurdly cool.

  Jenny couldn't pull her eyes away. There she was, in a magazine, and for the first time ever her enormous chest wasn't the focal point of the picture. In fact the two girls looked so fresh and pure the picture was almost wholesome. It was beyond what Jenny could have hoped for. It was heavenly.

  “I love the look on your face,” Serena observed. “It's like you've just been kissed or something.”

  Jenny giggled, feeling very much like she had just been kissed. “You look pretty too.”

  Oops, look who has a major crush on Serena—just like everyone else in the universe!

  But Jenny's crush was deeper than most: she actually wanted to be Serena. And the thing Serena had that she still lacked was a questionable past—that alluring air of mystery.

  “Bet it seems like forever ago that you were kicked out of boarding school,” Jenny ventured boldly, her eyes fixed on the magazine.

  “I was worried I'd never get into a single college because of all that,” Serena sighed. “If I'd known I'd get into all of them, I'd never have applied to
so many schools.”

  Poor thing. If only we all had that problem.

  “Did you like boarding school?” Jenny persisted, turning to gaze up at Serena with her big brown eyes. “I mean, more than going to school in the city?”

  Serena lay back on the four-poster bed and stared up at the white eyelet canopy overhead. She'd been eight years old when she'd first gotten the bed, and she'd felt like a little princess every night when she'd gone to sleep. As a matter of fact, she still felt like a princess, only bigger.

  “I loved feeling like I had my own life, apart from my parents and the friends I'd known practically since I was born. I liked going to school with boys, and eating with them in the dining hall. It was like having a whole class of brothers. But I missed my room and the city, and weekends hanging out.” She pulled off her white cotton socks and threw them across the room. “And I know it sounds totally spoiled, but I missed having a maid.”

  Jenny nodded. She liked the sound of eating in a dining hall with a whole bunch of boys. She liked it a lot. And she'd never had a maid, so it wasn't as if she'd miss that.

  “I guess it was good preparation for college,” Serena mused. “I mean, if I actually decide to go to college.”

  Jenny closed the magazine and held it against her chest. “I thought you were going to Brown.”

  Serena pulled a down-feather pillow over her face and then pulled it off again. Was it really necessary to answer so many questions? All of a sudden she kind of wished she hadn't invited Jenny over. “I don't know where I'm going. I might not even go. I don't know,” she mumbled, tossing the pillow on the floor next to her socks. Her flaxen hair fanned out around her perfectly chiseled face as she gazed skyward with her enormous blue eyes. She looked so lovely, Jenny half expected a flock of white doves to flap out from underneath the bed.

  Serena grabbed the stereo remote from off her bedside table and clicked on the old Raves CD that she'd been listening to a lot lately. The CD had come out last summer and reminded her of a time when she was completely carefree. She hadn't been kicked out of boarding school yet. She hadn't thought about applying to college. She hadn't even started modeling yet.

  “What's so great about Brown?” she questioned aloud, although her brother Erik went there and would be totally pissed off if she decided not to go. Plus, she'd met a hunky Latin painter at Brown who was still totally in love with her. But what about Harvard, and that sensitive, nearsighted tour guide who'd also fallen in love with her? Or Yale and the Whiffenpoofs, who'd written a song for her? And there was always Princeton, which she hadn't even visited. After all, it was the closest to the city. “Maybe I should just defer for a year or two, get my own apartment. Model some, and maybe try acting.”

  “Or you could do both. Like Claire Danes,” Jenny suggested. “I mean, once you stop going to school, it's probably really hard to go back.”

  As if you'd know, Little Miss Helpful.

  Serena rolled off the bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror that hung on the back of her closet door. She'd rumpled her turquoise Marni peasant blouse, and her blue-and-white-seersucker Constance Billard uniform was hanging lopsidedly on her hips. That morning she'd been late as usual and had tripped running to school, losing her orange Miu Miu cork-heeled clogs and landing facedown on the sidewalk. Now the iridescent pink polish on the big toe of her left foot was chipped, and a purple-and-yellow bruise stood out on her right knee.

  “What a mess,” she complained.

  Jenny wasn't sure how Serena could even stand to look at herself in the mirror every day without 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, cowgirl.

  Serena's pink iMac beeped, indicating that she had just received 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: [email protected]

  From: [email protected]

  Dear Serena,

  Our sorority totally worships Les Best and some of us were at his New York 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 didn't she 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 extrawide supportive bra straps, guessing that she was about to be dismissed. “You know, my brother Dan is singing for the Raves now,” she announced. “His first 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 was she was getting in 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 at the gig with Serena—two gorgeous models out on the town in matching Les Best dresses—she'd completely outfamous 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 just 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 a 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 ranges, coming out in a breathy whisper, and his face looked soft and young and to
tally 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 now that 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 would both go to NYU next year and live happily ever after, Dan had moved in with Vanessa only a few days before. But their 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'd 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 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'd thought it 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 that he was a 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 Pistolcock and Better Than Naked, he felt like a geeky, squeaky little kid. He'd even asked Damian Polk why in hell the Raves wanted him to be their lead singer in the first place. Damian had replied simply, “It's all about the words, man.”

  Dude, just because he could write 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.