Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  As far as Dan was concerned, Barneys was full of assholes, down to the dude who opened the door for him, smiling in the cheesiest way possible. But Jenny loved it, and even though she had never been there, she seemed to know everything about the place. She knew not to bother with the lower floors, which were full of designer clothes she could never afford, and headed straight to the top floor Co-op. When the elevator doors rolled open, she felt like she had died and gone to heaven. There were so many beautiful dresses hanging on the racks it made her salivate to look at them. She wanted to try them all on, but of course she couldn’t.

  When you’re a 32DD, you’re kind of limited. And you definitely need help.

  “Dan, will you go ask that woman to help me find this in my size?” Jenny whispered, fingering a purple velvet empire-waist sheath with beaded straps. She pulled out the price tag. Six hundred bucks.

  “Whoa,” Dan said, looking at the price over her shoulder.

  “Shut up. I’m just trying it on for fun,” Jenny insisted. “I won’t buy it.” She held the dress up to herself. The bodice would barely cover her nipples. Jenny sighed and put the dress back on the rack. “Would you please ask that lady if she’ll help me?”

  “Why can’t you ask?” Dan shoved his hands in his corduroys and leaned against a wooden hat rack.

  “Please?”

  “Fine.”

  Dan strode over to a haggard-looking woman with frosted blond hair. She looked like she’d been working in department stores her entire life, only taking one vacation a year in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Dan imagined her chainsmoking Virginia Slims down on the boardwalk, worrying about how the girls back at the store were managing without her.

  “Are you lost, young man?” the woman asked. Her name tag read MAUREEN.

  Dan smiled self-consciously. “Hello. My sister over there needs help.” He pointed at Jenny, who was studying the price tag of a red silk wraparound dress with ruffles on the sleeves. Jenny had taken off her jacket and was wearing a too small white tank top.

  “Certainly,” Maureen said, striding purposefully toward Jenny.

  Dan stayed where he was, glancing around the room and feeling completely out of place. Behind him, he heard a familiar voice.

  “I look like a nun, Mom, I swear. It’s just completely wrong.”

  “Oh, Serena,” another voice said. “I think it’s darling. What if you just unbutton the collar a bit. There. See? It’s very Jackie O.” Dan spun around. A tall, middle-aged woman with Serena’s coloring was standing half in, half out of a curtained dressing room. The curtain was slightly parted, and Dan could just see a bit of Serena’s hair, her collarbone, her bare feet with the toenails painted dark red. His cheeks burned and he bolted for the elevator.

  Last night—knife in hand—

  sidewalk stank of piss and fear.

  I sleep perchance to dream.

  “Hey Dan, where’re you going?” Jenny called over to him. Her arms were already piled high with dresses while Maureen flicked efficiently through the racks, giving her all sorts of advice about support bras and the latest figure-enhancing underwear. Jenny had never been happier.

  “Gonna check out the men’s stuff,” Dan mumbled, glancing nervously toward the side of the store where he’d spotted Serena.

  “Okay,” Jenny said gaily. “I’ll meet you down there in forty-five minutes. And if I need your help, I’ll call you on your cell.”

  Dan nodded and leapt onto the elevator as soon as the doors opened. Down in the men’s department, he shuffled over to a counter and spritzed his hands with Gucci cologne, wrinkling his nose at the strong, Italian male scent. He looked around the intimidating, woody department store for a bathroom where he could wash it off. Instead, he found a mannequin in full evening dress and, beside it, a rack of tuxedos. Dan fingered the luxurious material of the jackets and looked at the labels. Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Yves Saint Laurent, Armani.

  He imagined stepping out of a limo wearing his Armani tux with Serena on his arm. They’d stroll down the red carpet leading into the party, music thumping all around them. People would turn and say “Oh,” in hushed voices. Serena would press her perfect mouth to Dan’s ear. “I love you,” she’d whisper. Then Dan would stop and kiss her and pick her up and carry her back to the limo. Screw the party. They had better things to do.

  “Can I help you, sir?” A salesman asked.

  Dan turned abruptly. “No. I—” He hesitated and looked at his watch. Jenny was going to take forever upstairs, and why shouldn’t he, now that he was here? He picked up the Armani tux and held it out to the sales guy. “Can I try this on in my size?”

  All that cologne must have gone to his head.

  The salesman taught Dan how to tie a perfect bow tie before leaving him alone in the dressing room to admire his reflection. He looked older and cleaner and super sharp. Amazing how a tuxedo could instantly turn you into James Bond. Dan posed in front of the mirror, pretending to whip out a gun and fire at foreign double agents.

  “Friggin’ silk fucking bow ties,” he heard a familiar assaholic voice intone from the next dressing room. “I hate these fucking things.”

  Dan pressed his back against the dressing room wall, holding his pretend gun aloft. So Chuck Bass was still alive. If only he had a real gun.

  “Fuckingchristshitmotherfucker!” the asshole continued to swear.

  Dan took a deep breath, parted the velvet curtain, and stepped out of his dressing room.

  “Hey, is that you, Chuck?” he called cheerfully. “It’s Dan, your classmate? I could probably give you a hand.”

  Jenny and Maureen had completely scoured the racks, and Maureen had filled a dressing room with dozens of possibilities in assorted sizes. The problem with Jenny was she was only a size two, but her chest was a size twelve at least. Maureen thought they’d have to compromise and go for a six, letting it out in the bust and taking it in everywhere else.

  The first few dresses were a disaster. Jenny nearly busted the zipper of one trying to unsnag it from her bra. And the next one didn’t even make it over her boobs. The third one was completely obscene. The fourth one fit, sort of, except it was bright orange and had a ridiculous ruffle running across it, like someone had slashed it with a knife. Jenny poked her head out of the curtain to look for Maureen. Next door, Serena and her mother were just heading out of their dressing room to the cashier’s desk.

  “Serena!” Jenny called out without thinking. Serena turned around and Jenny blushed. She couldn’t believe she was talking to Serena van der Woodsen while wearing a bright orange dress with a stupid ruffle on it.

  “Hey Jenny,” Serena said, beaming sweetly down at her. She walked over and kissed Jenny on both cheeks. Jenny sucked in her breath and gripped the curtain to steady herself. Serena van der Woodsen had just kissed her.

  “Wow, crazy dress,” Serena said. She leaned in to whisper in Jenny’s ear. “You’re lucky you don’t have your mom with you. I got suckered into buying the ugliest dress in the store.” Serena held the dress up. It was long and black and completely gorgeous.

  Jenny didn’t know what to say. She wished she were the kind of girl who could complain about shopping with her mother. She wished she were the kind of girl who could complain about a beautiful dress being ugly. But she wasn’t.

  “Is everything all right, dear?” Maureen strode over and handed Jenny a strapless bra contraption to try on with her dresses.

  Jenny took the bra and glanced at Serena, her cheeks burning. “I’d better keep trying this stuff on. See you Monday, Serena.”

  She let the curtain fall closed, but Maureen pulled it open a few inches. “That looks nice,” she said, nodding approvingly at the orange dress. “It suits you.”

  Jenny grimaced. “Does it come in black?”

  “But you’re too young for black,” Maureen said, frowning. She swept into the dressing room and yanked up the dress’s back zipper, which was only partially zipped.

  T
he dress had no give and no room to spare. Jenny felt like she was being squeezed from all sides, suffocated, tortured. She glared suspiciously at Maureen’s reflection in the mirror. How did she know this Barneys saleswomen wasn’t a total psychopath? For all she knew Maureen could be the freakish murderer responsible for all the killings she’d read about online.

  She pulled away from Maureen’s abusive hands and yanked the orange dress off over her head. “Thanks for your help,” she said, stuffing the dress and the horrible flesh-colored strapless bra device into Maureen’s arms. She pushed the saleswoman out of the dressing room and closed the curtain in her face. “I’d like to finish trying these on in private, please.”

  Whipping off her bra, she reached for a black stretch satin dress she’d picked out herself. She pulled the dress on and felt it ooze all over her in a comfortable yet sexy way. It even had hidden pockets.

  In case she needed to carry a weapon?

  When she looked up, little Jenny Humphrey had vanished from the dressing room. In her place was a gorgeous goddess who looked like she could fire real bullets out of her sizable breasts.

  Down in men’s evening wear, Dan was hoping Chuck would deign to speak to him, given that Dan was wearing a very expensive Armani tux.

  Chuck yanked open his dressing room curtain. A tan leather eye patch with the letters C.B. monogrammed on it in gold covered his right eye. Dan couldn’t believe it. That’s all the ambulance had been for—Chuck had hurt his eye?

  “The Barneys guy just taught me how to do this.” Dan gestured toward Chuck’s lamely tied bow tie, which was dark purple silk and had a black tag dangling from it that said Yves Saint Laurent. “It’s actually pretty easy,” he added, trying and failing to keep the condescension out of his voice. Chuck’s family probably employed nannies or slaves to tie his bow ties for him, which was why he didn’t know how to do it himself.

  Chuck shrugged his shoulders and stuffed his hands into his sleek YSL tuxedo pockets. “Go ahead. It’s not like it could look any worse.”

  Dan reached out and yanked on the purple silk bow tie until it untied and dangled loose from Chuck’s white tuxedo shirt neck. He moved behind Chuck and put his arms around him to retie it.

  The boys faced the mirror. Dan glared at their reflection. Chuck’s hair was slicked back in a particularly annoying fashion and with Dan’s arms around Chuck’s neck it looked like they were hugging.

  “First you make a loop,” he instructed. “Then you make another loop, wind it around, and push it through—”

  “Like this isn’t totally gay,” Chuck commented with a smirk.

  Dan ignored him. “Then you pull it tight.” He tightened the bow tie and kept on tightening and tightening it. He stood on tiptoe and tightened it some more.

  Taut silk round your neck.

  Let’s hope that was your last breath.

  No one knows I’m here.

  “Hey,” Chuck gasped. “Hey!”

  The salesman parted the curtain and poked his head into the dressing room.

  “You boys okay?”

  He frowned when he saw Chuck’s red face and Dan’s look of guilty consternation. The bow loops of the tie were Minnie Mouse huge.

  “Oh dear, let me.” The salesman swept in and untied the purple bow.

  Chuck doubled over and sucked in his breath. “Fucking idiot asshole!”

  But Dan, foiled again, had already vanished.

  she’s come undone

  “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

  Blair threw her laptop across her room, smashing it against her closet door. Shoes toppled willy-nilly from the shoe rack. Kitty Minky jumped off his pillow and hid under the bed. Blair ripped off her red velvet Natori dressing gown and threw that across the room too. If she had to read one more word about how famous the Remi brothers were now that they were dead, and how valuable their portraits were going to be, she was going to throw herself out her penthouse window, and the corpse would be anything but pretty after those foul, totally unendangered birds were done pecking at it.

  But that would be giving Serena exactly what she wanted.

  Blair’s old Barbies dangled from their nooses, blond and dead and sad. She’d tied them to the chandelier over her bed so she could lie beneath them, plotting and scheming with morbid dedication. But killing her Barbies had given her no more satisfaction than killing the Remi brothers. She couldn’t rest until Serena was dead and gone and out of her life. In fact, Blair was so completely obsessed with murdering Serena that she thought she might have to kill Serena not once, but twice, just for the thrill of it.

  Coming soon, a new society lifestyle cookbook: The Joy of Killing.

  Blair pulled on a pair of stretchy black Topshop leggings and a murderously soft black Tse cashmere tunic. Then she began to search for just the right weapon to execute the execution of her former best friend.

  The penthouse was deliciously deserted. Eleanor and Cyrus were away until Sunday, and her little brother, Tyler, was at a friend’s house. Tyler had taken fencing a few years back. She padded into his room and began to dig in his stinky little brother closet for his old fencing foil. The foil was tucked behind a hockey stick and a golf club. It was disappointingly bendy and not sharp enough at all. That would never do.

  She moved on to her mother’s medicine cabinet. The shelves were laden with a shocking number of prescription bottles with names that she vaguely recognized as potentially harmful—Valium, Percocet, Ambien, Xanax—but she didn’t want to kill Serena with pills. She wanted to kill her in cold blood.

  And so it went. Blair spent the entire day wandering from room to room, plotting Serena’s dire end with any number of fire pokers, letter openers, nail scissors, the cook’s meat carving and bread slicing collection, the maid’s ironing equipment, and the nail gun and electric drill that were stashed in the hall closet for uses unknown.

  She was in the living room, standing in the window and passing from hand to hand a Japanese sushi knife she’d found in the pantry, when she spotted a blond girl down below on the street, turning off Fifth Avenue and entering the park.

  A day’s worth of adrenaline pumped through Blair’s veins. Not bothering with a coat or her bag, she headed for the elevator, sushi knife in hand.

  No one seemed to mind the sight of a half-crazed almost-seventeen-year-old girl brandishing a large, sharp knife, brunette mane flying, as she ran after her prey.

  “Serena!” Blair shouted, chasing the blonde up a tree-lined path headed north.

  The girl glanced behind her and started to run.

  Blair ran faster. She’d been pent up in the house all day. It felt good to run. They ran down the path and through a field and over a bridge and up another steeper path through the woods. As the gap between them closed, Blair raised the knife up, bracing for the kill.

  But the girl kept running and running, all the way to the obelisk behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the path ended abruptly. She had nowhere to go.

  The blonde turned back toward Blair just as Blair swung the knife, holding it in both hands for extra head-chopping power. Serena was born on Bastille Day. It seemed especially fitting for her to lose her head; although a guillotine would have been best.

  The girl’s head separated from her neck with a satisfying slicing sound. Her body fell, while her head soared through the air, landing with a splash in a puddle at the base of the stone obelisk. Blair stared at it as she caught her breath. The hair was long and blond, but the staring, terrified eyes were a muddy brown, not navy blue. The head wasn’t Serena’s, but at least she’d had a good workout.

  Beheading works all the muscle groups.

  Blair knew this spot well. Each May, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, the Constance Billard girls marched down Fifth Avenue to picnic at Cleopatra’s Needle, as the obelisk was called. Their art teachers made them sketch it, their history teachers made them write reports about it, and their gym teachers used it as the halfway mar
k for relay races.

  The obelisk was the oldest man-made object in Central Park, one of a pair of obelisks commissioned by an Egyptian pharaoh back in 1500 BC. It had taken workers one hundred and twelve days to move it from the banks of the Hudson River, where it was delivered by ship from Egypt, to its spot on Greywacke Knoll in Central Park. People came from all over town to watch the raising of the obelisk by the light of two huge bonfires on a snowy night in January 1881. The other obelisk was in London. Blair had gotten extra credit in fifth-grade History for taking a picture of it and e-mailing it to her teacher.

  Twilight was setting in and the park was pungent and peaceful. Blair looked up at the looming, pearly expanse of the Met. A host of vultures peered down at her from their perch on the roof ledge. With so much to feed on lately, the birds were content to wait until Blair had gone before claiming their bloody prize.

  Blair headed back down the path toward home. She’d be back here soon enough. Tomorrow her family and her friends and their families would all gather for the annual fall brunch beside the reflecting pool in the Sackler Wing of the museum, where the Temple of Dendur was housed. Her family had been benefactors of the museum for over a century. In fact, the Arms and Armor collection had been donated in the Waldorf name. The Arms and Armor collection happened to be right next door to the Temple of Dendur.

  As she walked a slow, wicked smile spread across Blair’s face.

  Enjoy your eggs Benedict, S. It may be your last meal.

  an ellipsis

  That evening Vanessa Abrams patrolled Madison Square Park, filming more background shots for her remake of Natural Born Killers. She sighed, weary of the same old Manhattan sights—a bum with his penis out, a three-legged dog, a little boy selling yellow boxes of stolen peanut M&M’s. She needed more stuff like the body outside the pizzeria and the drowned girl in the darkroom. If she got enough footage she could turn the whole movie into a documentary and forget about casting it altogether. She’d call it Naturally Born Killers: A Sickeningly Addictive High School Movie Without Music, a Prom, Cars, or Blue Jeans.