by Zoey Dean
But right now, she had to catch her United Airlines flight to Nova Scotia. She had a connecting
flight in Halifax to Nuuk. She'd brought copies of two books she couldn't wait to read, Good
Omens and Salem's Lot, or maybe she'd just sleep for the entire fourteen-hour flight. She was a
little sad she wouldn't see Myla before she left.
"We love you," Barkley said, his voice catching in his throat. He kissed her forehead,
loosening his grip and letting her go.
"'Bye, Jojo," Mahalo said. "Don't stay gone." He let go of Jojo's waist, and the other kids
followed suit.
Lailah pulled out of the hug, taking Jojo's face in her graceful hands. "We'll miss you so much,
Josephine," she said, a tear following the path of her graceful cheekbone. "We love you so
much."
"I love you too," Jojo sobbed, folding her parents in a hug one last time as David opened the
town car door. She got inside, watching her parents and the kids retreat to the stone steps of the
palacelike house.
She looked at the castle, the color of lemon meringue in the dimming evening sunlight. She
found the window to her room--with its white satin drapes--on the second floor. Maybe it
would be waiting for her if she ever came back.
"Goodbye," she whispered to the house, the rose garden, and her family, waving to her from
the front porch. David began to reverse in the long driveway, suddenly stopping.
Jojo looked into the rearview mirror. Charlie had just pulled the SUV in behind them, and
Myla extracted herself from the vehicle's back seat. She looked like an angel, in a wispy white
sundress and pearl-colored flats, the sparkly white Rittenhouse bag on her arm.
She strode, all business, up to the window of the town car and knocked impatiently.
"Open up," she demanded.
Jojo rolled down the window.
"Where the hell are you going?" Myla pulled her white sunglasses off, dropping them in the
bag. Her green eyes glimmered.
Jojo gritted her teeth. Had Myla snapped back to über-bitch on her last day here? "Um, to
Greenland, to go live with my real family. Remember?"
Myla folded her arms over her slim chest. "Yeah, but I thought that was a self-pity thing. Or
like how people say, 'I'll never drink again.'"
Jojo shook her head. "Nope, I'm outta here."Myla opened the door. She surveyed Jojo's nails, her Dutch Tulip Red chipped from packing.
She rolled her eyes. "Shut the hell up," she said, yanking Jojo by the arm. "The only place
you're going is to Elle, for a decent manicure. Do I have to teach you everything?"
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 peek of the New York Times bestselling novel by Cecily von Ziegesar
it had to be you
the gossip girl prequel and find out how it all began.
hey people!
Ever have that totally freakish feeling that someone is listening in on your conversations,
spying on you and your friends while you sip lattes on the ivory-colored steps of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, following you to premieres and parties, and just generally
stalking you? Well, they are. Or actually, I am. And the truth is, I've been here all along,
because I'm one of you. One of the Chosen Ones.
Don't get out much? Hair so processed it's fried your brain? Perhaps you're not one of us after
all and you have no clue what I'm talking about or who "we" are. Allow me to expound. 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, estates, and vineyards in
various exotic locations through out the world. We frequent all the best beaches and the most
exclusive ski resorts in Austria and Utah. We're seated immediately at the finest restaurants in
the chicest neighborhoods with nary 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
read so much about them in the tabloids, but who are actually completely boring compared to
the roles they play or the ballads they sing. There's nothing boring about me or my friends, and
the more I tell you about us, the more you'll be dying to know. I've kept quiet until now, but
something has happened, and if I don't share it with the world I'm absolutely going to burst.
the greatest story ever told
We learned in our 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 tale I'm about to tell is of the "someone mysteriously disappears" variety.
To be specific, S is gone. The steps of the Met are no longer graced with her blond splendor.We are no longer distracted in Latin class by the sight of her twirling her pale locks around and
around her long, slim fingers while she daydreams about a certain emerald-eyed boy.
But keep your panties on, I'll get to that in a moment.
The point is, S has disappeared. And in order to solve 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
began 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.
An epic such as this requires an observant, quick-witted scribe. That would be me, since I was
at the scene of every crime, and I happen to have an impeccable eye for the most outrageous
details. 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.
You know I love you,
like most juicy stories, it started with one boy and two girls
"Truce!" Serena van der Woodsen screamed as Nate Archibald body-checked her into a threefoot-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, fi fteen year-old boyness. He smelled like Downy and the L'Occitane
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 snowdampened, godlike curls as she spoke.
Nate sighed reluctantly, as if he could have spent the rest of the morning outside in the frigid
February meat locker that was the back garden of his family's Eighty-second-Street-just-offPark-Avenue Manhattan town house. He rolled onto his back and wriggled like Serena's longdead 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. Behind him rose the clean-looking limestone
prewar luxury buildings of Park Avenue's Golden Mile, with their terraced penthouses and
plate-glass windows. Still, nothing beat living in an actual house with an entire wing of one's
own and a back garden with a fountain and cherry trees in it, within walking distance of one's
best friends' houses, Serendipity 3, and Barneys. Serena frowned cautiously up at Nate,
worried that he was only faking her out and was about to tackle her again. "I really am cold,"
she insisted.
He flapped his hand at her impatiently. "I know. Come on."
She pretended to pick her nose and 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, Captain Archibald, was
a former sea captain-turned-banker, and his mother was a French society hostess. They were
basically never home, and when they were home, they were at the opera.
"Are you hungry?" Nate asked, following her across the gleaming white marble floor. "I'm so
sick of takeout. My parents have been in Venezuela or Santa Domingo or wherever for like
two weeks, and I've been eating 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 a messy lock of wavy golden
brown hair. "Maybe I'm going through some sort of midlife crisis or something."
Like his life is so stressful?
"It's Gra nn y Smith, silly," Serena informed him fondly. She opened a glossy white cupboard
and found an unopened box of cinnamon-and-brown-sugar Pop-Tarts. Ripping it open, 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 ...
"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 even 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 the packet and hopped up on the counter next to her. "No way," he responded
decisively. She couldn't leave. He wouldn't allow it.
"They want to travel more," she explained, the pink, perfect curve of her lower lip trembling
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 wrapped his arm around her sharply defined
shoulders."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 without thinking. 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. She shivered and her perfect,
still-tan-from-Christmas-in-the-Caribbean skin broke out in a rash of goosebumps. 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 slipped his lacrosse-toned arms around her long, nar row 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
perplexingly unpredictable. She'd laugh for hours if she spotted a cloud shaped like a toilet seat
or something 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, cobalt blue eyes, and wavy chestnut-colored
hair.Way back in fifth grade, Serena had told Nate she was convinced Blair had a crush on him.
He started to notice that Blair did sort of stick her chest out when she knew 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 to be best friends with two such
beautiful, impossible girls.
Like he would have been friends with them if they were awkward and butt-ugly?
He closed his eyes and breathed in the sweet scent of Serena's Frédéric Fekkai Apple Cider
clarifying shampoo. He'd kissed a few 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 can you kiss?
Before Vanessa filmed her first movie, Dan wrote his fi rst poem, and Jenny bought her first
&n
bsp; bra.
Before Blair watched her first Audrey Hepburn movie, Serena left for boarding school, and
before Nate came between them. . . . it had to be you
the gossip girl prequel
Available now in paperback
