Nothing Can Keep Us Together

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  Almost.

  “Actually, I’m moving to the Yale Club—at least until I figure out what I’m doing this summer,” she announced into the phone, smiling down at her perfectly manicured coral pink fingernails as if this had been her plan all along.

  “Is that so?”

  Blair looked up from her overstuffed black Barneys shopping bags full of shoes. Vanessa was standing in the open doorway to the apartment, hands on her pale, round hips, wearing a black wifebeater T-shirt and black cotton Hanes underwear. That scraggly boy Blair thought Vanessa had dumped for good was standing behind her, wearing only a pair of gray Fruit of the Looms, while the rest of his worn-too-often-to-ever-come-clean clothes were bundled in his arms. A huge grapey bruise stood out on his throat, just below his Adam’s apple.

  Ew—a hickey!

  “It’s the one with the graffiti all over the door. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes,” Blair instructed Chuck before hanging up. She put her hands on her hips, trying to think of a nice way to tell Vanessa that she was out of there. It was amusing being friends with the shaven-headed girl everyone in her class thought was so weird, and Blair genuinely liked Vanessa for her no-bullshit approach to everything and her dark, sarcastic sense of humor. But as graduation approached, Vanessa had grown slightly manic—asking Blair to paint her toenails on an almost nightly basis and even getting Blair to try that stupid brush-on hair-highlighting kit with her. Thank God it had only been temporary. Vanessa seemed to crave company, so if two-timing Blair’s stepbrother, Aaron, with this straggly Dan guy made her happy, Blair honestly didn’t care. She personally was through with men. In just a few short minutes, Vanessa would have the apartment all to herself again—she could go ahead and have a full-fledged orgy if she wanted to.

  “Someone’s coming to pick me up,” she said in lieu of an explanation.

  Vanessa had just been caught cheating on Blair’s stepbrother, Aaron, with Dan, who was supposed to be history. Most people would have acted at least slightly sheepish in such a situation. Not Vanessa. She blinked her big brown eyes accusingly at Blair. “You’re leaving? How come? Are you pissed at me?” She cocked her shaved head and corrected herself. “I mean, more than usual?”

  To call Blair and Vanessa the Odd Couple was an under-statement. Blair had been raised by a team of nannies and had attended preschool at Park Avenue Presbyterian, just like all the other children from the best Upper East Side families. Vanessa had been raised by her hippie artist parents in Vermont and been homeschooled until the age of ten. She’d moved to Williamsburg to live with her older sister, Ruby, at the age of fifteen and had spent her first two summers working double shifts at the local Kinko’s copy shop to earn enough money to buy her first digital video camera. Blair had spent her summers playing tennis on her father’s estate in Newport, Rhode Island, or helping Serena filch bottles of Stoli out of the liquor cabinet in Serena’s Ridgefield, Connecticut, country house. Blair modeled herself after Audrey Hepburn, and her favorite color was bright pink. Vanessa modeled herself after no one, except maybe the great Swedish avant-garde filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, and wore only black. They couldn’t have been more different.

  “No.” Blair shrugged, allowing a small smile to play on her foxlike face. “Why would I be mad?”

  Vanessa padded into the kitchen and retrieved one of the waterlogged tofu pups Aaron had left in the pot on the stove, eating half of it in one bite. She’d developed a taste for them since hooking up with Aaron. “Want one?” she offered both Blair and Dan, waggling it at them like a chewed-on finger.

  Gee, thanks.

  “I’m good,” Dan mumbled, fumbling with his rumpled pants.

  Blair flapped her hands at the tofu pup, the half-naked Dan and his icky hickey, the dingy-despite-its-new-coat-of-paint apartment, and all of Williamsburg outside. “It’s just not me,” she tried to explain.

  Vanessa nodded slowly. Ever since Blair had found Serena and Nate colluding in the pool house bathtub at Isabel Coates’s Hamptons beach house, she’d been acting a little manic. “Are you sure the Yale Club will even take you? It’s not like you’re an alumna yet.”

  Blair shoved an armload of jewel-toned Juicy Couture tracksuits into her already-heaving duffel bag. She used to be so sensitive about the subject of Yale, but that was before she got in. “My dad’s a member. They’ll take me or he’ll kick their asses.”

  Vanessa was still watching her. Blair could hear the ticking of the electric clock on the old stove. “Oh. I almost forgot.” She picked up the Browns of London shopping bag she’d lugged all the way home from school.

  Not that she’d actually walked all the way.

  “I got you a dress for graduation. It was too perfect, and I figured you didn’t know where to buy anything that isn’t black. I even have the perfect shoes you can have to go with it.”

  Vanessa tugged the white-tissue-wrapped bundle out of the bag and shook out the dress. Even though it was white, it was awesome. Sort of Morticia-Addams-meets-Bride-of-Frankenstein. Of course, she didn’t have the heart to tell Blair that Aaron had proposed they leave town before graduation even happened.

  And we thought she’d forgotten all about that.

  Vanessa stood on one foot and scratched the back of her calf with the black-painted toenails of her other foot, still holding the dress. She was already freaking out about graduating and what lay ahead, and now this. “Shit. This is sad.” She threw her arms around Blair. “I’m going to miss you.”

  Blair hugged her back. “Look, we’re practically the same height,” she murmured gently, giving Vanessa’s doughy half-naked body an affectionate squeeze. “We’ll totally be next to each other in the graduation lineup.”

  Vanessa smiled and wiped away a stray tear. She pointed to one of the myriad pairs of Manolo stilettos scattered on the dusty wooden floor. “Not when you wear those.”

  “Well, you can always borrow a pair,” Blair offered gently. The two girls laughed, and in an instant all was forgiven. Even the loud sex with Aaron last night and the random sex with Dan on the roof in what was supposed to have been Blair and Vanessa’s special spot. If that was what she needed to do to fend off pregraduation jitters, then so be it.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Dan announced, even though neither of the girls was paying any attention to him.

  Vanessa picked up the black jean skirt Blair had discarded on the floor and pulled it over her butt without even attempting to button it. Then she slung the handles of one of the Louis Vuitton duffel bags and two of the Barneys bags full of shoes over her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll help you carry your bags downstairs.”

  Chuck was waiting on the corner behind the wheel of his new silver convertible Jag—an early graduation present. The car looked completely incongruous with the funkily rundown neighborhood. He popped open the trunk and the girls dropped Blair’s bags inside.

  “I left some other stuff for you in the closet.” Blair gave her classmate a quick hug. “See you tomorrow in English.”

  Vanessa hugged her back. “See you tomorrow, bitchface,” she answered tenderly.

  Blair watched the graffitied door slam closed behind her as Vanessa went inside. Then she opened the Jag’s passenger-side door.

  “I heard that back in the forties all the alums used to keep prostitutes at the Yale Club,” Chuck announced as Blair reached for her seat belt. “And they didn’t even have a ladies’ room.” He pulled away from the curb and slipped his hand over Blair’s bare knee. “I knew it would never last. You’re a boy’s girl, not a girl’s girl.”

  Blair shoved his hand away and rolled her blue eyes in annoyance. Chuck was and always would be a slimeball, tolerated only because he and Blair and the rest of their ilk had all been born at Lenox Hill Hospital at Seventy-seventh and Park and had all gone to nursery school together. They’d attended dancing school together and vacationed with their families in St. Barts. Their parents were on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum and the Metropolitan Opera, and
they all spoke the same unspoken language. But unlike his other Upper East Side cohorts, Chuck had failed to get into any of the private colleges he’d applied to. His parents were sending him to a random military academy in northern New Jersey instead. So it was easy to understand why he was so critical of the Yale Club: He was a teensy bit jealous.

  You think?

  Justin Timberlake’s new CD was playing on the Blaupunkt car stereo, and Blair turned it up as loud as it would go. Chuck put his hand on her knee again as they approached the Williamsburg Bridge. She picked it up and put it on the gearshift. Had Chuck confused her with a slut like Serena, who had no morals and would fool around with a boy just because he was good-looking and she was vaguely horny? “Drive,” she ordered. “Just drive.” She folded her hands primly in her lap. She wasn’t like that.

  Oh, wasn’t she?

  Gossipgirl.net

  Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

  hey people!

  Don’t know much about nothing but s-e-x

  Finals are next week and no one seems to care. Instead of staying in and memorizing time lines for AP American history or irregular conjugations for French, everyone’s staying in, ordering Chinese food, and going to bed … with a friend. We’re such a predictable bunch. But what better way to get rid of prefinals and pregraduation stress?

  Did someone mention gifts?

  Graduation—the actual ceremony, I mean—is really for the parents. The gifts we get for graduating make sitting through it totally worthwhile. Let’s guess what some of our favorite people are asking Mom and Dad for.…

  B: She claims to be over men, but what she really wants is a new hunky boyfriend. One that wouldn’t cheat on her with her best friend at a party in a bathtub.

  V: An alternative-boy calendar so she can keep them all straight.

  N: A lifetime supply of Kleenex with a nice blue plaid Ralph Lauren Kleenex-box holder.

  D: A used Hyundai, a driver’s license … oh, and a life.

  S: A hobby other than stealing her best friend’s boyfriend. Whatever happened to her modeling/acting career, anyway?

  J: Wait, she’s not graduating. But she still needs a school to go to next year.

  Something we all want: a single gigantic, fantabulous party for everyone to go to. None of that irritating never-get-to-finish-your-drink party-hopping business. Let’s just find the perfect venue, invite everyone, have the time of our lives, and never leave.

  your e-mail

  Q:dear GG,

  my little brother is in the ninth grade at st. jude’s and he heard that N is going to a shrink. supposedly he has to, like, regress back to being a baby so his shrink can figure out why he’s such a pothead. that’s why he’s crying all the time.

  —nformed

  A:Dear nformed,

  Forgive me for asking, but doesn’t this regression technique also cause N to wet his pants? Ew. Poor guy!

  —GG

  Sightings

  N kissing S demurely on the cheek outside her apartment building at Eighty-second and Fifth. Were her parents watching, or is he, like, the only boy in the entire universe who can actually resist her, even though she’s supposedly his girlfriend? Maybe he had soggy pants and he had to hurry home and change? B and C blasting music in traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge. His arm was around her and she was petting his monkey. Now there’s a relationship that could work! V spraying her rooftop love den with air freshener and rearranging the fur throw pillows. With so many guys to pick up after, it must be hard to keep things tidy and smelling fresh. And was that a pair of boys’ tighty-whiteys we saw her toss off the roof to the street?! J in a New Hampshire hardware store trying to talk her dad out of buying a wheelbarrow for D as a joke graduation present instead of a car. Don’t think he’d appreciate the joke. K and I trying on every pair of white flats Ferragamo makes. Is someone going to tell those girls that wearing matching shoes is tacky? Hey look, I just did!

  Remember, graduation is really for the moms and dads. So why not wear that frilly Laura Ashley dress with the enormous white bow over the butt that your mom has been saving for you since you were ten and then reap the rewards. Can you spell B-M-W, anyone?

  Excuse my greed.

  You know you love me.

  gossip girl

  S demonstrates how to be naughty and nice

  “Mr. Beckham?” Serena called, tugging open the first of four heavy black curtains that led into Constance Billard’s darkroom. “Mr. Beckham, is it okay if I come in and talk to you for a minute?”

  Serena heard a stool squeak. “Sure thing, come on in,” Constance Billard’s only film teacher called back. “Careful with the curtains.”

  Classes were over for the day, and a quiet hung over the school, broken only by the laughter of a few stray girls or the click of a teacher’s heels. Serena had stayed behind to see if she could remedy the whole senior-class-speaker situation. Not that she’d definitely get it, but she’d taken enough away from Blair already. Becoming senior class speaker would just be one more thing she got without really wanting it.

  Like a certain green-eyed boyfriend?

  She slipped inside the darkroom, making sure the curtains swung closed behind her to block out every bit of light. A special red darkroom lamp glowed overhead, but it was still hard to see. Goosebumps appeared on Serena’s bare arms and legs. The darkroom always gave her the chills.

  Mr. Beckham was the only cool young male teacher at Constance. Except he thought he was cooler, younger, and better looking than he actually was. Fancying himself an artist, he wore chunky black rectangular glasses and tight black long-sleeved Club Monaco T-shirts that showed off his gym-toned chest. He spiked his dark blond hair with gel and inserted the odd French word whenever he could.

  “Ah, Serena,” he exclaimed, pushing away the poppy-seed bagel with cream cheese he’d been snacking on. He spread his arms out wide. “Quelle pleasure!”

  Serena fiddled with the button on the waistband of her light-blue-and-white seersucker spring uniform skirt and shifted from foot to foot. Why was talking to a teacher outside of class always slightly embarrassing?

  Especially when you suspected the teacher had a teensy-weensy crush on you.

  “Um, I just wanted to thank you for nominating me for senior speaker,” Serena told him. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and began gnawing on its already chewed-on pearly pink nail.

  Note to all: Only ridiculously beautiful people can get away with this sort of behavior without grossing everyone else out.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “I just wanted you to know that I crossed myself off the list of nominees.” She moved on to her ring finger, which hadn’t been chewed on since breakfast. “I’ve never been that good at making speeches.”

  Plus, Blair is the only other person nominated, and she really wants to do it, and I’m afraid if I get it she might murder me in my sleep.

  Mr. Beckham took off his glasses and began to clean them with the bottom of his black T-shirt, revealing a bare patch of surprisingly buff stomach. Serena tried not to stare and wondered fleetingly if he was gay. His bare skin seemed totally indecent, like he was flashing her or something.

  “You know why I nominated you, n’est-ce pas?” he asked, looking searchingly at her in the red darkness as he continued to clean his glasses.

  Mais oui. Because you have le hots pour elle?

  “Well …” Serena began, searching for an excuse to turn and flee. There was suddenly something creepy and unsanitary about the fact that Mr. Beckham had been eating a bagel while developing film. She wondered if he was addicted to the chemicals or something.

  Mr. Beckham put his glasses back on and sat back on his metal swivel stool. “Serena, I’ve been watching you since I came here, back when you were only in seventh grade. And I know it sounds corny, but you really lit up my darkroom.” He stopped to clear his throat, clearly too nervous to
think of any words in French. “If I weren’t your teacher, I’d …”

  He’d … pour fixer all over her and lick it off? Some advice: Run, girl, run!!!!

  Serena was pretty sure she didn’t want to hear anything more. “Um, Mr. Beckham? Sorry, but I really have to go. I just wanted to say thanks for being so supportive.” She held up her hand and waved stiffly, even though he was sitting right in front of her. “I guess I’ll see you at graduation,” she added with faux cheerfulness. Then she turned to push her way through the heavy curtains again.

  “Wait.”

  Her stomach filled with dread and she shivered again in her thin white baby tee. She could hear voices outside in the hallway. Someone would hear her if she yelled loudly enough. She turned around. “I really do have to go.”

  Mr. Beckham slipped off his stool and walked toward her. “May I …” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Would you mind if I just … gave you a petit, petit kiss?” he asked quietly, pinching together his thumb and forefinger to demonstrate just how small the kiss would be.

  Serena hesitated, reluctant to turn this into a huge deal but eager to get rid of him. She could just say no and leave. Or she could freak out and run up to Mrs. M’s office and turn him in. Or she could let him give her a little tiny kiss to remember her by and then just forget about it forever.

  She shrugged her bony shoulders and turned to offer up her smooth, delicately sun-freckled cheek, making it quite clear that Mr. Beckham wasn’t about to get any lip action.

  He took a step forward and placed a careful kiss in the middle of her cheek, like a stamp. “Tant pis,” he breathed wistfully and then flung open the darkroom curtains, as if to let her know that he had no intention of molesting her any further.

  Guess he didn’t care much about exposing his film.

  “Adieu, Serena.”

  In the hall just outside the darkroom, Mrs. M stood dressed in her favorite red, white, and blue Talbots linen pantsuit with Ms. D’Agostino, the mousy freshman Spanish teacher, who was holding a gold metal tin full of chocolate truffles. “Ooh, you little she-devil!” Mrs. M cooed delightedly as she popped a truffle into her mouth. Then she noticed Serena and her brown eyes grew wide, like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar.