Vanessa had met Dan when they’d both gotten trapped in a stairwell, locked outside of a dumb party in tenth grade, and they’d been good friends ever since. Over the past year, Vanessa and Dan had spent a lot of time together, and Vanessa had developed a terrible crush on him. But Dan had had eyes for only one girl: Serena van der Woodsen.
Vanessa was lucky Clark had found her, and she was trying to get over Dan, but it was hard. Every time she saw his scruffy, pale face and his trembling, almost birdlike hands, she felt giddy. Dan, of course, was completely oblivious. He just went on being nice to Vanessa or completely ignoring her when Serena was around, which didn’t make it any easier.
Dan’s sister, Jenny, worked with Vanessa on Rancor, Constance Billard’s student-run arts magazine, for which Vanessa was editor in chief. Jenny was a talented calligrapher and photographer, with a great eye. Jenny and Vanessa had also helped Serena with her film—because she had asked, and because no one could ever say no to Serena. But Jenny had no interest in being Vanessa’s friend. She was an oddball and a major fashion disaster, and not the type of girl Jenny aspired to be.
“Can you make Irish coffee?” Dan asked. It was his favorite drink because it was mostly made of coffee.
“Sure,” Clark said.
“I’ll just have a Coke,” Jenny said. She didn’t really like the taste of alcohol, except for champagne.
“So are we going to watch Serena’s movie, or what?” Dan said, swiveling back and forth on his bar stool.
“We have to wait until Serena gets here, stupid,” Jenny said.
Vanessa shrugged. “I’m pretty filmed out anyway,” she said. “That’s all I’ve been doing for the past three weeks.”
She’d been staying up late every night to work on her film for the Constance Billard senior film festival. It was also the film she’d planned on sending to NYU along with her application. Vanessa’s dream was to go to NYU next year and major in film. She wanted to be a famous director of cult masterpieces like The Hunger and Ghost Dog, but her latest effort had turned out to be kind of a disaster.
The story of her film was borrowed from a scene in Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Dan played the lead alongside a gum-chewing Constance sophomore named Marjorie, who had no acting talent whatsoever. Vanessa had decided to use Marjorie instead of Serena, even though Serena was perfect for the part, because she couldn’t stand to watch Dan moon over Serena rehearsal after rehearsal. What a mistake. It was a love scene, and Dan and Marjorie had no chemistry at all. It almost made Vanessa want to laugh when she watched it, except that she was usually already crying. That’s how bad it was. She hoped the film festival judges would concentrate on the quality of the cinematography, which was her strong point, and not on the dialogue or the acting, which sucked.
Serena’s film, on the other hand, had turned out to be the most austere and cerebral piece of art Vanessa had ever encountered. She could barely stand to watch it. And the most maddening thing about it was that it was completely unintentional. Serena had no clue what she was doing, but somehow the film had turned out to be completely riveting. It was pure genius. Of course part of the reason it was so good was that Vanessa had done most of the filming. She couldn’t believe she’d actually helped Serena make the frigging thing without taking any credit for it at all.
Dan looked at his watch for the fiftieth time that minute. He was practically peeing in his pants he was so anxious.
“Jesus. Why don’t you just call her?” Vanessa snapped impatiently. Jealousy brought out the worst in her.
Dan had programmed Serena’s number into his cell phone weeks ago. He pulled the phone out of his coat pocket and stepped off his stool, pacing back and forth as he waited for her to pick up. Finally the answering machine came on. “Hey, it’s Dan. We’re in Brooklyn. Where are you? Give me a call when you get a chance. Okay. ‘Bye.” He tried to make his voice sound nonchalant, but it was nearly impossible. Where was she, anyway?
He went back to his bar stool and climbed on. A steaming glass of Irish coffee sat on the bar in front of him. It was topped with a tower of whipped cream, and it smelled awesome. “She wasn’t home,” he said, then blew into his drink before taking a gigantic gulp.
Serena was riding up in the elevator on her way home when she realized her mistake. With her in the elevator was an elderly woman in a mink coat, clutching the Styles section of the Sunday Times. It was Sunday. Serena was supposed to be in Brooklyn, going over the final cut of her film with Vanessa and Jenny. And she was supposed to be there an hour ago.
“Shit,” Serena muttered to herself.
The woman in the mink glared at her before stepping off the elevator. In her day, young girls living on Fifth Avenue didn’t wear blue jeans or swear in public. They attended cotillions and wore gloves and pearls.
Serena could do the gloves-and-pearls thing, too. She just preferred blue jeans.
“Shit,” Serena said again, tossing her keys on the table in the foyer. She hurried down the hall to her room. The answering machine light was flashing. She pressed the button and listened to Dan’s message.
“Shit,” she said for a third time. She hadn’t been expecting Dan to be there, too. And she didn’t have Dan’s or Jenny’s cell phone numbers, just their number at home, so she couldn’t call back.
Deep down, she knew why she’d probably forgotten to go to Brooklyn. She hadn’t wanted to watch her film again, especially not in front of other people. It was the first one she’d ever made, and she was a little insecure about it, although Vanessa seemed to think it was truly awesome.
It wasn’t a typical sort of film. It was kind of like a film about making a film when you don’t have any actors and don’t know how to use the equipment. Like a documentary within a documentary. Serena had loved making it: she just wasn’t sure it would make any sense to anyone who didn’t know her. But Vanessa had been so enthusiastic Serena had gone ahead and entered it in Constance Billard’s senior film festival. First place was a trip to the Cannes Film Festival in May, a prize donated by Isabel Coates’s famous actor father.
Serena had already been to Cannes many times, so she didn’t really care about the prize. But it would be cool to win, especially since both Blair and Vanessa had entered and they were both in the advanced senior film-studies class, while Serena had no experience at all in film.
Serena found her Constance Billard class list on her desk and dialed Vanessa’s home number. “Hey, it’s Serena,” she said, when the answering machine picked up. “I completely forgot that we were meeting today. Sorry. I’m such a loser.’ Anyway, see you in school tomorrow, okay? ‘Bye.”
Next, she dialed Dan’s home number.
“Hello?” a gruff voice answered.
“Is this Mr. Humphrey?” Serena asked. Unlike Serena and most of the people she knew, Dan didn’t have his own phone line.
“Yes, what do you want?”
“Is Dan there?” she asked. “This is his friend, Serena.”
“The one with the golden arms and raspberry lips? The one with wings for hands?”
“Excuse me?” Serena said, taken aback. Was Dan’s father insane?
“He’s been writing poetry about you,” Mr. Humphrey said. “He left his notebook on the table.”
“Oh,” Serena said. “Well, can you tell him that I called?”
“Of course,” Mr. Humphrey said. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted.”
“Thanks,” Serena said. “‘Bye.” She hung up and began chewing on her thumbnail, a bad habit she had picked up last year at boarding school. The idea of Dan writing poetry about her made her even more nervous than the idea of him watching her film. Was Dan way, way, way more into her than she’d thought he was?
Um, yeah. He was.
“I don’t think she’s coming,” Jenny said, yawning. “She was probably out really late last night or something.” Jenny liked to think of Serena as a goddess of the night, out at all hours swilling champagne and dancing on tables.
Until recently, that would have been true.
“I’d still like to see her film, though,” Dan said, brushing his shaggy hair from his eyes and grinning slyly at Vanessa. “Do you think we could go over to your place and watch it?”
Vanessa shrugged. “I’d rather not. I’ve watched it like four hundred times.” The real truth was she couldn’t stand to sit and watch Dan drool over Serena like a lovesick puppy. It was too unbearable.
“I think you should wait until Serena says it’s okay,” Jenny told Dan. “I mean, how do you know she wants you to see it?”
“She won’t mind,” Dan said.
Vanessa hated the giddy anticipation shining in Dan’s eyes. He couldn’t wait to see Serena’s film. She handed him her keys. “I’m going to hang here with Clark. You guys can go watch the film if you want. It’s on the VCR in Ruby’s room. Don’t worry, Ruby’s away for the weekend.”
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t want to watch it without Serena,” she insisted.
Dan took the keys and stood up. He was disappointed Serena hadn’t shown up herself, but no way was he going to miss this. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll watch it alone.”
Jenny swiveled from left to right on her bar stool, watching her brother leave and nursing her Coke.
“Hey, do you have Peterson for American history this year?” Vanessa asked Jenny, in an attempt to start a conversation. “People are always making shit up about how she’s this big drug addict, but we had a student-teacher conference once, and she told me all about this shaky hand disease she has. It was actually really cool of her to tell me about it. She’s awesome.”
Jenny kept swiveling her stool. “We don’t do American history until next year,” she said flatly. She didn’t know why Vanessa was being so nice to her all of a sudden.
Vanessa had expected a warmer welcome. “So you have European history? Sorry, I can’t remember anything about, ninth grade,” she said.
“Yeah,” Jenny responded. “It sucks.” She hopped off her bar stool and fumbled with the buttons on her Diesel jean jacket. “Um, I think I’m going to grab a cab home. See you later.”
“’Bye,” Vanessa replied. So much for trying to be nice. She wished she could just dump Dan and his rotten little sister from her life altogether. To distract herself, she watched Clark’s butt as he bent over to stock the bar fridge with more bottled beer.
“Hey boyfriend,” she yelled at him. “I’m lonely.”
Clark looked over his shoulder and blew her a kiss.
Thank God for Clark, Vanessa thought. If only he were more …
If only he were Dan.
j plays ball with the big boys
“Can you let me off here?” Jenny asked.
Her cab driver had taken the FDR uptown after the Williamsburg Bridge and was trying to cross over to the West Side at Seventy-ninth Street, but traffic was terrible and they’d been stopped at the same light for ten minutes. Jenny watched the fare on the meter go up and up while they stood still. She could have bought three new M•A•C lip glosses for what this cab ride was costing her. Finally she couldn’t stand it anymore. It was a beautiful autumn day: she could walk.
She paid the driver and stepped onto the sidewalk at Seventy-ninth and Madison and headed west, toward Central Park. The November afternoon sun was low in the sky and Jenny squinted as she hurried across Fifth Avenue and into the park. Autumn leaves scattered the walkways, and the air smelled of burning firewood and hot dogs from the street vendors. Jenny kicked along the walkway with her hands stuffed into her jacket pockets, looking down at her light blue Pumas and brooding about her brother. Did he know how lame he was being? It was as though he’d completely lost his personality and was devoting every waking minute to worshipping Serena. Jenny also knew for a fact that Dan had been writing mopey, sad-ass poetry about Serena, because she’d caught him doing it.
When I cut myself shaving, I think of your teeth on my lip, and the pain becomes pleasure.
That was the line she had managed to read before Dan had snatched his notebook away. It was worse than pathetic.
The useful thing about Dan getting together with Serena was that now Jenny could walk up to Serena in school and just start talking to her, even though Serena was like, the coolest senior in New York and Jenny was a lowly ninth-grader. But if Serena ever found out how pathetically lovesick Dan was, she would run away screaming. What if Serena got so sick of Dan she wouldn’t even want to talk to Jenny anymore? Dan was going to ruin everything.
Jenny wove her way through the park, not caring which direction she was walking. She reached the edge of Sheep Meadow and stepped onto the grass.
A few hundred feet away a group of boys were playing soccer. Jenny couldn’t take her eyes off them—one of them in particular. His hair shone dark honey-gold in the sunlight as he dribbled the ball nimbly past his friends and shot it into the makeshift goal made up of the boys’ sweaters and backpacks. His skin was tanned, and the muscles on his bare arms made Jenny want to hug herself.
Suddenly the soccer ball came sailing through the air. It landed and bounced to Jenny’s feet.
She stared at it, heat creeping into her face.
“Go on, kick it!” one of the boys shouted. Jenny looked up. It was the golden boy, standing only thirty feet away, hands on his hips, his green eyes sparkling. His cheeks were flushed pink and his forehead was beaded with sweat. Jenny wanted to taste it. She’d never seen a boy look so good, or felt the way she did looking at him.
Pulling her eyes away, she concentrated on the ball, biting her lip in concentration as she drew her foot back. Then she kicked the ball as hard as she could.
Instead of rocketing back into the stretch of grass where the boys were playing, it shot straight up into the air above her head. Jenny clapped her hand over her mouth in utter mortification.
“Got it!” the golden boy shouted, sprinting toward her. The ball fell out of the sky and he headed it back to his friends, the muscles in his neck flexing magically. He stopped and turned to Jenny.
“Thanks,” he said, panting. He was standing so close Jenny could smell him. He offered his hand. “I’m Nate.”
Jenny stared at his hand for a second, then reached out and took it. “I’m Jennifer,” she said. Jennifer sounded so much older and more sophisticated than Jenny. From now on, she promised herself, she was going to be Jennifer.
“Want to come hang out with us for a while?” Nate asked as they shook hands. Jennifer had such a sweet face, and she’d tried so hard to kick the ball, well, he couldn’t resist.
“Um …,” Jenny said, deliberating. As she did, Nate noticed Jenny’s chest. Man, was it ever huge. He couldn’t let her get away, not without Jeremy and the other guys getting a chance to check her out.
Boys: they’re all the same.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re all good guys. Promise.”
Jenny glanced at the other three boys, making sure that Chuck Bass wasn’t among them. Jenny had drunk a little too much champagne at a big fancy party a few weeks ago and had let a boy named Chuck Bass dance her into the ladies’ room. All he did was kiss her, although he’d have done much more if Serena and Dan hadn’t come to her rescue. Chuck hadn’t even bothered to ask Jenny’s name. What an asshole.
But Chuck Bass wasn’t there.
Jenny shrugged. “Okay,” she said. She couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d heard of a Nate from parties and school gossip, and she was sure this had to be the same Nate. He was the most beautiful boy on the Upper East Side, and he had just asked her to hang out! It was as if she’d walked into the other side of the wardrobe and entered a world of fantasy-come-true, leaving her lame, lovesick brother and his stupid-ass poetry far, far behind.
Nate led Jenny over to his friends, who had stopped playing ball and were sitting on the grass, drinking blue Gatorade.
“Guys, this is Jennifer,” Nate said, with a happy smile on his face. “Jennifer, this is Jeremy, Charlie, and Anthony.”
“Come. Join us,” Anthony Avuldsen said in his classic stoner voice. His hair was light blond and his nose was sprinkled with adorable freckles. His arm muscles were even bigger than Nate’s, but Jenny preferred Nate’s.
“We were just about to light up,” Charlie Dern said, brandishing a little pipe. His head was a mess of unruly brown hair, and he was monumentally tall. Sitting cross-legged, his knees were practically up to his ears. In his lap was a little plastic baggie full of pot.
“You don’t mind, do you, Jennifer?” Nate asked.
Jenny shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, even though she was a little nervous. She’d never smoked pot before. “Of course not,” she said.
She and Nate sat down on the grass with the other boys. Charlie lit the pipe, inhaled deeply, and passed it to Nate.
Jenny studied the way Nate held the pipe. She wanted to try it, but she didn’t want them to know it was her first time.
Nate’s cheeks were full of smoke as he passed the pipe to Jenny. She cupped it in her left hand and brought it to her lips, just as he had done. Nate lit the bowl for her, flicking the lighter a few times before it caught. Then she inhaled. She could feel the smoke filling up her lungs, but she wasn’t sure what to do with it.
You Know You Love Me Page 6