You Know You Love Me

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  It looks like Daddy came through with the goods, but B’s still going to have to wait until April to see if she got in, just like the rest of us. The suspense is killing me!

  Your E-Mail

  Q: Dear GG,

  I’ve heard a few thing about all the films entered in the school film festival. (I go to Constance, too.) Anyway, I think B should win. I’m serious. I know her film sounds kind of repetitive, but it’s supposed to be like this very cool MTV video effect. I’m in her film class and she’s the best at editing, so I bet it’s pretty cool. S doesn’t even know how to turn on a camera, and Vs films are always so pretentious. That’s it.

  —RainyDay

  A: Dear RainyDay,

  I thought B’s film sounded pretty out there, but I’m willing to take your word for it. It’s up to the judges to decide on Monday. And the losers are bound to vent their disappointment in some outrageous fashion. I can’t wait!

  —GG

  Sightings

  J and Vshopping at Domsey’s in Williamsburg. V actually bought a vintage little black dress. She must be serious about showing D that she cares. B and A bumping into her mother, his father, and their wedding planner on the way into their building on Seventy-second Street. B did not look happy. D, S, N, and friends piling out of Grand Central on Sunday afternoon. All six looked pretty hungover, but what’s new?

  ONE LAST THING

  It’s Thanksgiving time, time to give thanks for what we have. So … thank you for all the nice leather pants at Intermix and the amazing leather car coat I got at Scoop. Thank you to every boy I know and those I haven’t met yet for getting cuter and cuter with age. And thank you everyone for constantly misbehaving and always giving me something to talk about.

  More soon.

  You know you love me,

  gossip girl

  and the winner is…

  Mrs. McLean, the Constance Billard School headmistress, had given the edict that the upper-school girls would be excused from their last two classes on Monday to attend the senior film festival. Grades seven through twelve filed into the auditorium and took their seats. A large white screen hung from the ceiling over the stage. The contestants sat in the front row, Blair, Vanessa, and Serena among them. Arthur Coates, Isabel’s famous actor father, stood at the podium, ready to give a speech and introduce the films.

  Serena sat at the end of the front row near the window, watching smartly dressed passersby parade across Ninety-third Street. Her nails were already chewed ragged, and she’d worried a tiny run in her black tights into a major run that traveled from her ankle up to her thigh.

  Of course, she still looked good. She always did.

  But Serena was nervous. This was her one extracurricular project. Winning the competition was the only way for her to show colleges that she was more than just a girl who got kicked out of boarding school because she couldn’t be bothered to get back in time for the first few weeks of classes, or a girl whose grades were less than spectacular. She wasn’t a total screwup. She was creative. She had substance. She had taste.

  And if they couldn’t see that, then fuck ‘em. … Right?

  Vanessa was nervous, too, although she didn’t let on. She sat slumped in her chair, digging X’s into the top of her black three-ring binder, glaring over the tops of her Doc Martens at the auditorium’s wood floor. She didn’t care if Ruby and Clark didn’t get her film. Jenny said she liked it. And even if the story hadn’t really worked out the way she’d wanted it to, and the chemistry between Marjorie and Dan had been less than sizzling, the cinematography was excellent. Even before she started making the film, she’d counted on winning the competition. It was going to clinch her early acceptance to NYU.

  Blair felt sick to her stomach for a variety of reasons. She’d been calling, e-mailing, and IMing Nate ever since she’d gotten back into the city on Saturday afternoon, and he hadn’t replied. Last night she’d almost stormed over to his house to see what the deal was, but then her mother had dragged her to a tasting at the St. Claire Hotel to decide on food for her wedding. As if Blair could give a fuck whether the quenelle was too fishy or the salad dressing was too oily. After they had settled on four courses, she’d had to listen to her mother and the party planner have an inane discussion about whether or not the flower arrangements should be high or low—long-stemmed or short-stemmed. High meant people would have trouble seeing over them. Low meant they wouldn’t look as impressive. They settled on in-between, as if that weren’t the most obvious call in the world.

  When she got home, her father had left a message on her machine asking how his Bear’s Yale interview had gone. Blair didn’t call him back. The memory of her lousy interview clung to her like a bad-smelling shadow, and she refused to discuss it with anyone. Talking about it would be like admitting defeat, and Blair wasn’t ready for that yet. Instead, she sent her father a perky e-mail telling him all about how her interviewer was fascinated with wine and had been trying to add a wine management minor to the curriculum for years. She left out any mention of the actual interview, telling him only that a donation would secure her ‘already pretty sure’ place at Yale. With a few lines, she had her father dying to donate his entire estate. She was a master of persuasion.

  Today the film competition brought another chance for her luck to change.

  It had to change. It just had to.

  “Thank you for coming,” said Mr. Coates, smiling his notoriously ravishing smile. He had starred in a TV show in his teens, had a platinum album in his twenties, and made all sorts of sexy music videos. Now he was a movie star and did Pepsi ads. “Today I’m pleased to present the next generation of new talent in the film industry.”

  He went on to give a little talk about the history of women in film. Marilyn Monroe. Audrey Hepburn. Elizabeth Taylor. Meryl Streep. Nicole Kidman. Julia Stiles.

  Then he introduced the first film: Serena’s. The lights were dimmed and the film began to roll.

  Nervous butterflies flitted inside Serena’s stomach as she watched her film for what seemed like the hundredth time. Even so, the film seemed to hold up. In fact, she began to feel kind of proud of it.

  “Um. Can you say weird?” Becky Dormand whispered to her posse of juniors.

  “Oh my God. How slutty does she look in that dress?” Rain Hoffstetter whispered to Laura Salmon in the back row, where the seniors were sitting.

  “And you could totally see her naked boob in the dressing-room mirror,” Laura whispered back.

  When the picture faded to black and the lights came up, the audience applauded. It wasn’t crazy, wild, screaming applause, but it was solid. Somebody whistled and Serena craned her neck to locate the whistler. It was Mr. Beckham, the film teacher. She wasn’t even one of his students.

  “I heard she didn’t even make the film herself,” Kati Farkas whispered to Isabel Coates. “She paid this famous director to do it for her.”

  Isabel nodded. “I think it was Wes Anderson,” she said.

  Next, Mr. Coates introduced two more films. First, there was Carmen Fortier’s conversation with her ninety-four-year-old grandmother, which was mostly about the merits of watching Sesame Street, and didn’t seem to make much sense. Next was Nicki Button’s tour of her country house in Rumson, New Jersey, which was boring as hell, especially when she recited the names of all the stuffed animals she had collected over the years. Fluffernutter. Larry. Bow Wow. Horsie. Ralph. Pigsy-fucking-Wigsy.

  Like, Who the hell cared?

  The Constance girls clapped politely, and then Mr. Coates introduced Vanessa’s film.

  The minute Marjorie’s frizzy red-headed form appeared on the big screen, Vanessa began giggling nervously. She rarely laughed or even smiled in public, but Marjorie was just so ridiculous she couldn’t help it. Her whole body was shaking, and she had to look away. Next to her, Blair Waldorf crossed her legs in that bitchy way of hers and shot Vanessa a nasty glance. Then the camera moved lovingly over Dan’s crumpled form and Vanessa stopped
laughing. God, he was beautiful.

  The room was quiet for a moment after the film ended. Then Jenny began to clap from where she sat with the rest of the ninth-graders. Mr. Beckham whistled loudly, and the room erupted in applause.

  “Way to go, Marjorie!” a few sophomores shouted.

  “That condom thing was really gross,” Kati whispered to Isabel in the back of the room.

  “What the hell was that?” said Laura.

  “That girl is seriously deranged,” said Rain.

  Finally it was Blair’s turn.

  Blair clutched her PalmPilot to her chest as Audrey Hepburn ate her croissants over and over. In the back of the room her friends danced in their seats to the music and clapped loudly when the film was over.

  “That was cool,” Isabel told Kati. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Totally,” Kati agreed.

  “That was okay,” Becky Dormand whispered to her friends. “I mean she probably didn’t have that much time to work on it now that she’s so busy filling out applications to like, every college on the East Coast.”

  “I heard that even if she gets into Yale, she has to defer her admission for a year so she can get like, some intense therapy,” another junior girl said.

  “You mean because of the thing with her stepbrother? I heard they’ve been sleeping together ever since he moved in,” Becky said.

  “Gross!” the other girls exclaimed.

  Finally Arthur Coates stood up with a white envelope in his hand. “You know, there are no really winners or losers,” he began.

  Blair swallowed nervously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just open the frigging envelope.

  “And the winner is …”

  Heavy pause.

  “Serena van der Woodsen!”

  Complete silence.

  Then Vanessa stood up and wolf-whistled like her sister had taught her. She was disappointed, but Serena’s film was good, and fuck it—she was proud to have been a part of it. When she saw Vanessa, Jenny stood up, too, clapping loudly. Then Mr. Beckham stood and shouted, “Bravo,” and the rest of the school joined in.

  Serena walked up to the podium in a daze of happiness and accepted the award—two tickets to Cannes and three nights at a five-star hotel during the film festival in the spring. She hesitated, pushing her shimmering blond hair behind her ears and leaning into the microphone.

  “I’d like two other girls to come up here,” she said. “Vanessa Abrams and Jennifer Humphrey. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

  Vanessa stuck her tongue out at Jenny from across the auditorium and then went up to the podium to join Serena. After all, she had done all the camera work. She deserved some fucking credit for making this whole thing possible.

  Serena shook Vanessa’s hand and handed her a plane ticket. “Thanks,” she whispered. “I want you to have this.”

  Jenny crawled excitedly over her classmates’ knees and joined Serena and Vanessa at the podium. Serena kissed her on the cheek and pressed the other plane ticket into her hand. “You’re awesome,” Serena said. Jenny blushed: she’d never stood up in front of an audience before.

  This isn’t happening, Blair thought. She sat stiffly in her chair and closed her eyes to drown out the applause. She was sleeping. It was only three in the morning. Monday hadn’t even started yet. There were hours to go until she would step proudly up to the podium wearing her lucky lilac-colored cardigan and accept the prize from Mr. Coates.

  Sorry.

  Blair opened her eyes. Serena was still beaming annoyingly at the audience.

  And Blair was still starring in the most depressing movie ever made. The movie that was her life.

  tortured romantic can’t say no

  “I won!” Serena cried.

  Dan kicked at a broken Snapple bottle on West End Avenue and clutched his cell phone to his ear. “Won what?” he said, trying not to sound interested.

  “The senior film festival,” Serena burbled excitedly. “They liked it! I can’t believe it. Vanessa even said I should think about applying to art schools. I could be a filmmaker!”

  “Good,” Dan said. He couldn’t think of a more appropriate response. Every time he heard Serena’s voice or even thought about her, he felt like he was being tortured.

  “Anyway, I just wanted you to know, since you’ve seen the film and everything,” Serena said.

  No response.

  “Dan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just making sure you were still there. Anyway,” she rattled on, “I have to do all this wedding stuff this weekend, so I may not be able to get together. But you’re still coming to the wedding with me, right?”

  Dan shook his head. Tell her no, his mind ordered him.

  “You promised,” Serena reminded him.

  “Sure,” he said. His heart won out every time.

  “Cool,” said Serena. “Okay, I’ll call you later. ‘Bye.”

  She clicked off. Dan sat down on the bottom step of someone’s stoop and shakily lit a cigarette. Was he overreacting? Could it be that he had it all wrong? Maybe Serena did care, at least a little bit.

  It was something to hope for.

  And something to torture himself over.

  j just tastes better

  “So Brown was good?” Jenny asked Nate. They were sitting beside the boat pond in Central Park, watching little boys sail their toy boats past lazy ducks and floating leaves. Nate was holding her hand and it felt so nice Jenny didn’t care whether they talked or not.

  “Uh-huh,” Nate said. “I mean, I still have to do well this term and write my essay and all that shit. But I really hadn’t been thinking about school next year at all, you know? And now I’m kind of psyched.” He held Jenny’s hand up in front of his face and examined her tiny fingers.

  Jenny giggled. “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. It’s good to see you, though.” Nate smiled at her. “Jennifer,” he said. “I was thinking about you all weekend, and now here you are.”

  “Me too,” Jenny said, smiling shyly. Again, she wondered if Nate was going to kiss her.

  “I felt kind of bad before when we were in the park,” Nate continued. “You know, when my friends showed up?”

  Jenny nodded. Yes?

  “There was something I wanted to do,” Nate said. “And I should have just gone ahead and done it.”

  Yes, yes!

  Nate pulled her toward him. They both kept their eyes open, smiling as they kissed.

  Jenny had kissed two boys during a kissing game at a party once, but kissing Nate was the best moment of her entire life. She felt like she was going to explode with happiness.

  Nate was surprised at how well she kissed. It definitely felt better than when he kissed Blair. Jennifer just tasted better. Like a sugar donut or a vanilla shake.

  He pulled back, still gazing at Jenny’s flushed and happy face.

  Jennifer didn’t know about Blair, and Blair didn’t know about Jennifer. He’d been ignoring Blair’s calls and basically pretending she didn’t exist, but how long could he keep that up? Sooner or later Nate was going to have to talk.

  He just wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

  sour milk pedicures

  After some light shopping in the Chanel store on the ground floor, Eleanor Waldorf and her bridesmaids rode the elevator up to the Frederic Fekkai BeautÉ de Provence spa on Fifty-seventh Street. Blair, her mother, Kati, Isabel, Serena, and Blair’s aunt Zo Zo were all there for their milk-and-honey foot and hand treatments, their sea mud facials, and, of course, to chat about the wedding. Afterward, they were having lunch at Daniel, Eleanor Waldorf’s favorite restaurant. Blair’s aunt Fran was meeting them there, forgoing the pedicure because she hated people to touch her feet.

  The spa was like a busy restaurant, except it smelled like Frederic Fekkai shampoo and hair gel instead of food. It was big and bright, and employees rushed to and fro, servicing women in the beige hospital-type gowns that they wore to protect their clothes
. Every one of the women had the same platinum and strawberry-blond highlights in her hair. It was the trademark hair color of the Upper East Side.

  “Ciao, mes cheries!” cried Pierre, the skinny Japanese boy who worked in reception. “I’ve got three of you in pedicures while the other three are having your facials. Follow me, follow me!”

  Blair didn’t quite know how it happened, but she soon found herself seated between Serena and her mother with her hands and feet soaking in bowls full of warm milk and honey, while Kati, Isabel, and her aunt were having their facials in another section of the spa.

  “Doesn’t this feel nice?” Blair’s mother cooed, sinking back in her chair.

  “My milk smells off,” said Blair. She wished she’d told her mom she’d meet everyone at the restaurant, as Aunt Fran had done.

  “I haven’t had a pedicure since the summer,” said Serena. “My feet are so nasty I wouldn’t be surprised if they turned my milk sour.”

  Iwouldn’t be surprised either, Blair thought bitterly.

  “How do you want your nails?” her mother’s manicurist asked as she massaged her fingers.

  “I like them rounded, but not pointy,” her mother advised.

  “I like mine square,” Serena told hers.

  “Me too,” Blair said, although she hated to say she liked anything Serena did.

  Blair’s manicurist slapped her wrist playfully. “You’re so tense. Relax” she said. “Are you the bride?”

  Blair looked at her blankly.

  “No, that’s me,” her mother answered cheerfully. “It’s my second time,” she whispered, winking annoyingly at the manicurist.

  Blair felt her muscles tense up even more. How in hell was she supposed to relax?