Gossip Girl, Psycho Killer

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  “You can have the rest,” she belched and pushed her chair back. “Excuse me.”

  Outside the Met the ambulances were just arriving. There would be quite a commotion once they figured out that Serena van der Woodsen was dead.

  Blair clacked away on her soiled mules to the ladies’ room where she could stick her finger down her throat and hide from security.

  Some lady.

  hey people!

  I thought S looked cute in her picture in the Sunday Times Styles section. Although her teachers probably weren’t thrilled to see her double-fisting martinis on a school night. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of over the whole thing. I mean, isn’t it enough that we have to see that picture of her every time we use public transportation? Obviously you’re not over it yet, though.

  YOUR E-MAIL

  q:

  hey gg,

  i went to the show at the gallery and looked for ur picture. very sexy. i like ur column too. u rule.

  —Bigfan

  a:

  Dear Bigfan,

  As long as you are not a stalker, I guess I’m flattered.

  —GG

  q:

  Dear Gossip Girl,

  When I saw S’s picture in the paper, I had an idea!! Are you S? If you are, you are very sneaky. Also, my dad loves you and wants you to write a book. He’s got lots of connections. If you tell me who you are, he can make you famous.

  —JNYHY

  a:

  Hey JNYHY,

  You are very sneaky yourself. And not to brag or anything, but I’m already kind of famous. Infamous is more like it. All the more reason for me not to tell you who I am.

  —GG

  SIGHTINGS

  D returning a gorgeous Armani tux at Barneys and renting a much less gorgeous one at a formal store. His sister J buying underwear at La Petite Coquette, although she chickened out on the thong. N buying a big bag of pot in Central Park. Tell me something new. B in the J. Sisters salon getting waxed, buffed, and shined. And S? S has gone missing. Not in school, not anywhere. There certainly were a lot of ambulances at the Met yesterday. Say it isn’t so…?

  MUSEUM NEWS FLASH

  First, a valuable seventeenth-century Indian dagger with a very sharp blade forged of watered steel and a hilt made of engraved gold encrusted with emeralds remains missing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recently ransacked Arms and Armor collection. Know anyone with a thing for emeralds or sharp knives?

  Secondly, the Frick, that famously beautiful old home of industrialist Henry Clay Frick on Seventieth and Fifth, now a museum and home to so many of our best parties, has been renamed the Katherine Farkas and Isabel Coates Memorial House in honor of our slain sisters. Can’t wait to raise a toast to them on Friday!

  TWO QUESTIONS

  First: If you knew about a party that you weren’t invited to, wouldn’t you go, just to piss people off? I would.

  Second: If you’d made up your mind to go to the party, wouldn’t you want to really rub people’s noses in it by appearing out of nowhere looking completely gorgeous and stealing everyone’s boyfriends? Definitely.

  But who knows what S will decide to do, if she’s even with us anymore. That girl is full of surprises….

  At least I’ve given us all something to think about while we’re getting our pedicures, plucking our eyebrows, and concealing our blemishes and stab wounds.

  See you at the party!

  You know you love me,

  s, the resurrection

  “Ugly, ugly, ugly,” the tall blonde muttered, wadding her new black dress into a ball and tossing it onto her bed.

  A gorgeous black crepe de chine Tocca dress? Come on, how ugly can it be?

  All week long she’d been in an induced coma at Clinic Schloss Mammern in Switzerland, healing. The wound was sealed, but Serena still felt only half-there, a ghostly shadow of her former self, a girl people had known once, but couldn’t quite remember anymore. And for the first time in her entire life, she felt ugly and awkward. Her eyes and hair looked dull, and her beautiful smile and cool demeanor had been roped off until further notice.

  Now it was Friday, the night of the Kiss Me or Die party. And the question she couldn’t answer: to go or not to go?

  It used to be, before fancy parties like this, Serena and her friends would spend half the night getting dressed together—-swilling gin and tonics, dancing around in their underwear, trying on crazy outfits. But tonight she rummaged through her closet alone.

  There was the pair of jeans with the rip in the leg where she’d snagged them on a barbed wire fence in Ridgefield. There was the white satin dress she’d worn to the Christmas dance in ninth grade. Her brother’s old leather jacket. Her moldy tennis shoes that should have been thrown out two years ago. And what was this? A red wool sweater—Nate’s. Serena held it to her face and smelled it. It smelled like her, not him.

  Toward the back of the closet was a black velvet flapper dress that Serena had bought with Blair at a vintage store. It was a dress to wear while drinking and dancing and lounging around decoratively in a huge house full of people having a good time. It reminded Serena of the good-time gal she’d been when she bought the dress—her old self, the girl she’d been up until two weeks ago. She let her robe drop to the floor and slipped the dress on over her head. Maybe it would give her back some of her power.

  Barefoot, she padded into her parents’ dressing room, where they were getting ready for their own black tie affair.

  “What do you think?” Serena asked, doing a little twirl in front of them.

  “Oh, Serena, you’re not wearing that. Tell me you’re not,” her mother exclaimed, fastening a long rope of pearls around her neck.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Serena demanded.

  “It’s an old ratty thing,” Mrs. van der Woodsen said. “It’s just the sort of dress my grandmother was buried in. Besides, it droops in the back. Your scar shows.”

  “What about one of those outfits you bought with your mother last weekend?” Mr. van der Woodsen suggested. “Didn’t you buy anything to wear to the party?”

  “Of course she did,” Mrs. van der Woodsen said. “She bought a lovely black dress.”

  “That makes me look like the Bride of Frankenstein,” Serena said grumpily. She put her hands on her hips and posed in front of her mother’s full-length mirror. “I like this dress. It’s got character.”

  Her mother sighed disapprovingly. “Well, what’s Blair wearing?”

  Serena stared at her mother and blinked. Under normal circumstances she would have known exactly what Blair was wearing, down to her underwear. And Blair would have insisted on going shoe shopping together, because if you bought a new dress, you had to have a pair of new shoes. Blair loved shoes.

  But last weekend Blair had almost killed her.

  “Blair told everyone to wear vintage,” she lied.

  Her mother was about to respond when Serena heard her phone ring in her bedroom. Was it Nate calling to apologize? Blair? She raced down the hall in her bare feet, scrambling to pick it up.

  “Hello?” she said breathlessly.

  “Yo, bitch. Sorry I haven’t called in a while.”

  Serena took a deep breath and sat down on her bed.

  “Hey,” she said. Erik didn’t know about Switzerland. About her almost dying. Her mother wanted as few people to know as possible.

  “Saw you in the Styles section last Sunday. You are crazy, aren’t you?” her brother laughed. “What did Mom say?”

  “Nothing. It’s like I can do whatever I want now. Everyone thinks I’m like, ruined or something,” Serena fumbled for the right words.

  “That’s not true. Hey, what’s up? You sound sad.”

  “Yeah.” Serena’s lower lip started to tremble. It wasn’t a tantrum brewing this time, but actual tears. “I sort of am.”

  “How come? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. There’s this party I’m supposed to go to that every
one’s going to. You know how it is,” she began.

  “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Erik said gently.

  Serena propped her pillows against the headboard of her bed and wriggled under her comforter.

  “It’s just that no one’s talking to me anymore. I don’t even know why, but ever since I’ve been back it’s been like I have Mad Cow disease or something.” One by one, the tears began to fall.

  “What about Blair and Nate? Those guys must be talking to you,” Erik said. “They’re your best friends.”

  “Not anymore,” Serena said quietly. Tears were streaming freely down her face now. She picked up a pillow and dabbed it against her cheeks to stem the flow.

  “Well, you know what I say?” Erik asked.

  Serena swallowed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “What?”

  “Fuck ’em. Totally. You don’t need them. You’re like, the coolest chick in the Western Hemisphere. Fuck ’em, fuck ’em, fuck ’em.”

  “Yeah,” Serena responded doubtfully. “But they’re my friends.”

  “Not anymore. You just said so yourself. You can get new friends. I’m serious,” Erik said. “You can’t let assholes turn you into an asshole. You just have to fuck ’em.”

  It was a perfect Erikism. Serena laughed, wiped her runny nose on a pillow, and threw it across the room. “Okay,” she said, sitting up. “You’re right.”

  “I’m always right. That’s why I’m so hard to get ahold of. There’s a huge demand for people like me.”

  “I miss you,” Serena told him, chewing on her pinky nail. Her knuckles were still sore and bruised from last weekend.

  “Miss you too,” Erik said.

  “Serena? We’re leaving!” she heard her mother call from out in the hall.

  “Okay, I better go,” Serena said. “Love you.”

  “Bye.”

  Serena clicked off. On the end of her bed was the invitation to the Kiss Me or Die party that Jenny had made for her. She snatched it up and tossed it in her wastepaper basket.

  Erik was right. She didn’t have to go to some stupid benefit just because everyone else was going. They didn’t even want her there. Fuck ’em. She was free to do what she pleased. Besides, if she went to the party she and Blair would just try to kill each other again, and she was sort of tired of that game. Enough was enough. It was time to move on.

  She carried her phone over to her desk and shuffled through a pile of papers until she found the Constance Billard School student directory, which had arrived in the mail on Monday. Serena read through the names. She wasn’t the only one skipping the party. She could find a new friend.

  Serena dialed a number and the phone began to ring. She ducked down beneath her bed and pulled out the violin case. Snapping it open, she withdrew the bloody hunting knife.

  the red or the black

  “Hello?” Vanessa said, picking up the phone. She was getting ready to go out with her sister. Right now she was wearing a black bra, black jeans, and her Doc Martens. She didn’t have any clean black shirts left. Her sister was trying to convince her to wear a red one.

  “Hi. Is this Vanessa Abrams?” a girl’s voice said on the other end of the phone.

  “Yes. Who’s this?” Vanessa stood in front of her bedroom mirror and held the red shirt up to her chest. She hadn’t worn anything but black in two years. Why should she start now?

  Please?

  “It’s Serena van der Woodsen.”

  Vanessa stopped looking at herself and threw the shirt on her bed. “Hey. I thought you were dead. Where the fuck’s my knife, bitch?”

  “That’s why I’m calling. I’d like to return it.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vanessa said, trying to figure out why Serena van der Woodsen of all people would be calling her up on a Friday night. Didn’t she have a ball to go to or something? Some fête?

  “I could bring it over now. Tonight. If that’s okay.”

  “Sounds good.” Vanessa frowned down at the pale roll of flab above her waistband. She sucked her stomach in. “Although I’m going out pretty soon.”

  “Okay.” Serena paused. She didn’t seem very eager to hang up the phone.

  “Hey, isn’t tonight that big party at the Frick or whatever the fuck they’re calling that place now?” Vanessa said. “Aren’t you going?”

  “Nah,” Serena responded. “I wasn’t invited.”

  Vanessa nodded, processing this information. Serena van der Woodsen wasn’t invited? Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all.

  “Well, do you want to come out with us tonight?” Vanessa offered before she could stop herself. “Me and my big sister are going to a bar here in Williamsburg. Her band is playing. It’s sort of a headbanging slam-fest type thing. People always get hurt or arrested or trampled to death.”

  “Sounds great!” Serena cried. “I’ll bring the knife.”

  Vanessa gave her the address of the Five and Dime—the bar where her sister’s band played—and hung up the phone.

  Life was so strange. One day you could be picking your nose and plotting to blow up your school with everyone in it, and the next day you could be inviting Serena van der Woodsen to hang out and talk knives. She picked up the red shirt, pulled it on over her head, and looked in the mirror. She looked like a tulip. A tulip with a stubbly black head.

  “Dan will like it,” her sister Ruby told her, standing in the doorway. She handed Vanessa a tube of dark red lipstick. Vamp.

  “Well, Dan’s not coming out tonight.” Vanessa smirked at her sister. She dabbed on the lipstick and rubbed her lips together. “He has to take his little sister to some fancy ball.”

  She checked herself out in the mirror once more. The lipstick made her big brown eyes look even bigger, and the shirt was kind of cool, in a loud, look-at-me way. She stuck out her chest and smiled invitingly at her reflection. Maybe I’ll get lucky, she thought. Or maybe not.

  “I have a friend coming to meet us,” she told Ruby.

  “Boy or girl?” Ruby asked, turning around to check out her butt in the mirror.

  “Girl.”

  “Name?” said Ruby, rubbing hair gel into her thick black bangs.

  “Serena van der Woodsen,” Vanessa mumbled.

  “The girl whose picture is all over town?” Ruby said, clearly delighted. “The girl who may or may not have murdered those twin artists?”

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Vanessa said.

  “Thought she’d kicked it,” Ruby said.

  As if any legend ever really dies.

  kiss me or die

  “What fantastic flowers,” chirped Becky Dormand, a junior at Constance. She kissed Blair on both cheeks. “And what a hot dress!”

  “Thanks, Beck.” Blair looked down at her simple dark green satin Prada gown. The emerald-encrusted dagger she’d stolen from the Met was strapped to her thigh, concealed beneath the ankle-length gown. Call her paranoid, but ever since her battle with Serena inside the Arms and Armor collection she’d decided to stay armed, just in case.

  You never know when your best friend is going to rise from the dead and stab you in the back.

  A waiter walked by with a tray of champagne. Blair whisked a flute off his tray and downed it in a matter of seconds. It was her third so far.

  “I love your shoes,” Blair said. Becky was wearing black high-heeled sandals that laced all the way up to her knees. They went perfectly with her short black tutu dress and her super-high ponytail. She looked like a ballerina on acid.

  “I can’t wait for people to open the gift bags,” Laura Salmon squealed.

  “I can’t believe we put glow-in-the-dark condoms in them,” Rain Hoffstetter giggled. “And those little pen knives! Are we crazy?”

  “Not that you’ll be needing them,” Laura quipped.

  “How do you know?” Rain huffed.

  “Blair?” Blair heard someone say in a tremulous voice.

  Blair turned around to see little Ginny Humphrey standing behind her, looking like a hu
man Wonderbra in her black stretch satin dress.

  “Oh, hello,” Blair said coolly. “Thanks again for doing the invitations. They really came out great.”

  “Thanks for letting me do them,” Jenny said. Her eyes darted around the huge room, which was throbbing with people and music and smoke. Black three-foot-high candles in tall glass beakers trimmed with peacock feathers and fragrant white orchids flickered everywhere. Jenny had never been to anything this cool in her life. “God, I don’t know anyone here,” she said nervously.

  “You don’t?” Blair wondered if Ginny thought she was going to talk to her all night.

  “No. My brother Dan was supposed to come with me, but he didn’t really want to, so I just let him drop me off. Actually, I do know one other person,” Jenny said.

  “Oh,” said Blair. “And who is that?”

  “Serena,” Jenny chirped. “Have you seen her?”

  Just then, a waitress brandished a platter of sushi under Blair’s nose. Blair grabbed a chunky tuna roll and shoved it into her mouth. The dagger dug into her thigh. It might be fun to kick off the party by slitting Ginny’s throat.

  “Serena’s not coming,” she said, chewing hungrily. She’s dead, she added smugly to herself. And you will be too, very soon, little Ginny. Just as soon as I eat a few more of these delicious hors d’oeuvres.

  Jenny snagged two flutes of champagne from a waiter’s tray. She frowned as she handed one to Blair. “I know Serena’s been out sick, but I didn’t think she’d miss the party.” She paused to take a tiny sip of champagne. Blair looked sort of angry for some reason. Maybe she should stop talking before something bad happened.

  Blair burped queasily. The worshipful way Ginny talked about Serena was making her nauseous. She’d have to wait to kill her until after she vomited.