I Like It Like That

by Cecily von Ziegesar

  She shocked us by selling her favorite show pony for drug money, and he shocked us by appearing, all greased up, in a European aftershave commercial. Now they're at it again. G and C were arrested last night for prancing around on a public road, in the buff. It was later discovered that both were under the influence of all manner of substances and that they had also stolen a ski patrol toboggan, which was returned by authorities to ski patrol headquarters. Both parties were released on bail this morning and were flown home to Greenwich and New York, respectively, by private jet. It is rumored that both the Wood River Police Department and the Sun Valley Ski Patrol have already received substantial “anonymous” donation checks to keep quiet about the matter. G is already back at Breakaway, where she has earned a lifetime membership. C has been grounded, which means he may no longer use his family's suite at the Tribeca Star Hotel or his mother's chauffeur-driven town car. Poor baby. It has also been rumored that a very beautiful model/Upper East Side schoolgirl was involved in the incident, but she managed to avoid the police and escape. Later that evening, a mysterious handsome local boy escorted her back to her hotel. That's our girl!

  Sightings

  V looking longingly at the film cameras in the window of 49th Street Photo, like a kid at the window of a pet store. Poor thing can't wait till her parents go home. B and E and a bunch of Sun Valley Ski Patrol guys having a beer at a local bar in Ketchum, Idaho, with—believe it or not— no apparent sexual tension. I've heard this can happen to girls once they … you know. They lose their need to flirt. J creeping around the Upper East Side again, hiding behind trees. What's her deal, anyway? S and her brother, E, tearing up the slopes on their own in Sun Valley.

  Your e-mail

  Q: Dear GG,

  I have known a certain boy my whole life and I'm pretty sure I've been in love with him all that time, I just never realized it. He was with my best friend and now he's with another friend of mine, although I'm pretty sure that's close to being over. I need to find out if he feels the same way about me, but I'm not sure what to do.

  —lost

  A: Dear lost,

  You know what I do when I'm not sure what to do? Grab him. Just kiss him and everything will fall into place from there. If he feels the same way, you'll know. And if he doesn't, you'll know. Good luck, sweetie.

  —GG

  Q: Dear Gossip Girl,

  I love your page. You are a cool girl. I want to find out your name, because I think you may be the same girl I just met skiing. I might never meet you again because I live very far from America, but I will always love you from afar.

  —Jan

  A: Dear Jan,

  I have a feeling we did meet, a long time ago. And even if I'm not the girl you're talking about, you have my permission to love me from afar. But let's keep it that way, okay?

  —GG

  See you back at school next week. It might actually be kind of nice to sleep in our own beds again.

  You know you love me.

  gossip girl

  It's the thought that counts

  When the downstairs buzzer rang, Gabriela and Ruby were making yeast-free, sugar-free, organic whole-grain-and-wild-berry energy bars in the kitchen area of Vanessa and Ruby's small apartment, while Vanessa and Jordy helped Arlo tie the daffodils that he had stolen out of the local park onto the fishing net he'd found and dragged home. Supposedly, the daffodils represented hope, although Vanessa wasn't exactly sure what the fishing net itself was supposed to represent. The net was scratchy and was cutting up her hands, and Jordy was annoying her with the way he was suddenly all interested in her parents and their work. He'd even taken his shoes off when he came inside, just like they did, and he was wearing a beaded peace-sign necklace that he'd probably stolen out of a box of his mom's old things. Needless to say, the sound of the buzzer was a welcome signal to Vanessa to drop what she was doing and run.

  “I'll get it!” she shouted, stuffing a daffodil into Jordy's helpful hands. She hurried over to the intercom. “Hello?”

  “Postal service with a package, ma'am.”

  Vanessa buzzed the postman in. He reached the top of the stairs and handed over a box. It was addressed to her, and Dan's name and address were written in the upper left hand corner.

  She closed the door and sat down on the floor, tearing open the package with her teeth. Inside, wrapped in newspaper, was a bright pink plastic spaceship with three plastic little girls standing on top of it. The little girls had matching black pigtails and matching green plastic dresses. She turned the toy over and flicked the power switch to on, then set the toy down on the floor. A crazy Japanese dance song began to play as the girls on the spaceship whirled around and around and little plastic lights flashed on and off at their feet. It was tacky and horrible—superfantastically so.

  “What on Mother Earth?” Gabriela exclaimed, coming over to look. “Who would send you such a thing?”

  That wonderful boy you thought I might marry one day?

  “I like it,” Vanessa declared. “It's so bad, it's good.”

  Jordy walked over with a garland of daffodils draped around his neck. He frowned down at the thing like it was supposed to make sense. “What is it?”

  “It's just a thing,” Vanessa replied, the ideas for her next film already stacking up in her brain. “Hey, could you come down here for a minute?” she asked, thinking of Jordy's nose. He bent down eagerly and she closed one eye, cupping her fingers around the other eye to form a camera-lens view of his astounding nose, the crazy pink spaceship toy whirling and flashing in the background.

  Sounds like an Oscar winner already.

  “Stay right there.” Vanessa sprinted toward her room to retrieve her camera from the closet. If she was fast, her parents wouldn't even notice what she was doing.

  “Hold it,” she whispered, holding the camera to her eye as she zoomed in on Jordy's nose, making sure to leave the peace-sign necklace and the daffodils out of the frame. “Okay, got it.” She turned the camera off and tossed it into her black book bag by the door. From across the living room, her father was watching her curiously, the flashing lights from the toy setting his eyes aglow. She headed back into her room to gather some more supplies. From now on, she'd have to take the spaceship and the camera with her wherever she went, capturing whatever crazy thing she fancied, the spaceship being the only constant, forever in the background.

  “Can I stand up now?” Jordy asked when she came back. He was still kneeling awkwardly in front of the spaceship, his eyes woozy from listening to its insane song over and over.

  Vanessa grabbed the toy and switched it off, tucking it and her extra batteries and lenses into her bag. “Yeah, you can go,” she told him absently.

  Meaning she had no use for him anymore.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Ruby shouted at her from the kitchenette.

  Vanessa could already tell from Ruby's tone of voice that her sister knew exactly what she was up to. She laced up her Doc Martens and pulled the black windbreaker she'd bought at the army-navy store on over her head. “Out,” she shouted back as she banged through the door, her father's eyes burning curious holes into her back as she went.

  The answer may be written on the bathroom wall

  Petite mignonette, sweet coquette

  I taste your cookies, your bread

  You fill my plate

  On his last day at work before school started again, Dan stood in front of the toilet in the Red Letter men's room reading and rereading the words he'd written on the scrap of paper that had disappeared from his desk a week ago. He'd found the other poem he'd written using that same last line—you fill my plate—and he'd intended to reword the line in this new poem. But it was his fleeting glimpse of Elise holding a baguette that had inspired the poem, and both his interest in her and his interest in finishing the poem had completely diminished.

  Did that have anything to do with a certain e-mail he might have received recently?

  The redundant l
ine was not the main reason he couldn't stop staring at the words on the bathroom wall. The words he was staring at weren't even his. Whoever had copied his fragment of a poem onto the wall had written underneath it, Note to self: See above for how not to write.

  Okay, so what he'd written was sappy and girly and didn't make much sense. He'd be the first to admit that. But insulting someone's writing so deliberately was just downright … mean and immature. It was like talking trash about your mother: Only you were allowed to do it.

  “Bastards,” Dan muttered under his breath as he flushed the toilet. He dug a black Sharpie out of his back pocket and began to scrawl next to his poem.

  Notes on how not to be an asshole:

  1. Don't steal stuff from people's desks, especially when they don't know you well enough to think it's funny.

  2. Never assume a poem is finished. In fact, never assume anything, because when you ASSuME, you make an ass out of u and me.

  3. Go fuck yourself, because no one else will.

  He stuffed the pen back into his pocket, washed his hands, and kicked open the door, almost trampling over Siegfried Castle.

  “Kid,” Mr. Castle addressed him in his awkward German accent. “I am haffing some calls about checks zat never arrived. But you mailed zem yourself last veek. Wusty just called to say Mystewy Cwaze is trapped in Helsinki because Wusty can't wire her traveling money.”

  Dan walked over to his desk and picked up his black messenger bag. He was tempted to tell Sig Castle that Mystery's check was on its way to Helsinki via the Hudson River, but he didn't want to get fired—he wanted to quit.

  Mr. Castle had followed him to his desk and was staring him down with his mean German eyes.

  “Why don't you find someone else to be your slave,” Dan hissed. He climbed on top of his chair to read the words written in the red horizontal line that was painted around the room. Red Letter, Red Letter, Red Letter, was all it said, over and over. “That's real creative,” he added, hopping off the chair. And then he walked out.

  Within thirty seconds of his leaving, his cell phone rang obnoxiously in his back pocket. Dan knew without looking at it who was calling.

  “Fuck me, kid. NO ONE, I mean NO ONE, quits a job at Red Letter!” Rusty Klein shouted at him. “You're supposed to be ABSORBING the aura of literary genius. You're supposed to DO AS YOU'RE TOLD. You're just an APPRENTICE, for chrissakes. You can't QUIT!”

  Dan strode up Seventh Avenue South with the phone pressed against his ear, determined not to let Rusty ruin the tingly feeling of triumph coursing through his body. “Sorry, but I don't really get what mailing people's mail or buying caviar or making photocopies has to do with writing good poems.”

  Rusty was silent—at least for a moment. “Hop in a cab, doll. I'll meet you at the Plaza in ten. I think I know how to handle this.”

  Dan stood at the head of the stairs down into the subway at Fourteenth Street. He thought about how Rusty had tried to talk him into taking a break from school to write a memoir, which was so totally not what he wanted to do. He wanted to go to college to have new experiences and learn how to write better, and he didn't need an agent to do it. “That's okay, I think I can handle it myself. Actually, I think I can handle me myself. At least for a while, anyway.”

  Rusty didn't answer right away. He could hear the phones ringing and her assistant, Buckley, frantically answering them. Dan waited for her to shout something at him about how he didn't know what was good for him, but instead she just said, “You're sure about this?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said firmly. “Thanks.”

  “Well, fuck me. Have a good one, then.”

  “You too,” Dan said earnestly before hanging up. Rusty Klein was crazy and intimidating and kind of a bully, but he would miss her all the same.

  He ducked into the donut shop behind him and ordered an extra large black coffee and a jelly donut, dialing Vanessa's number as he waited. His hands shook as he carried the huge, hot cup of coffee outside. He set it on the ground, lit a cigarette, and waited as the phone rang and rang.

  “Hey,” he said when her machine picked up. “I sent you something. I was wondering if you got it.” He took a long drag on his cigarette, trying to think of what else to say. “It's Dan, by the way. Hope you're okay. Um … bye,” he added, and hung up.

  Well, it wasn't exactly “Sorry and let's get back together,” but at least it broke the ice.

  Sometimes the truth bites

  Leo was standing in front of the black metal gate, waiting for her. “Hey,” Jenny said, her cheeks flushed with the notion that she had invited herself over.

  Leo fumbled with the lock on the gate. He nodded at the bike learning against the metal trash cans in the entryway. “Dad rides that around the park a few times every morning. He's really fit for his age.”

  Jenny had never even heard Leo mention his father. She'd always imagined him fatherless and lonely in his mother's huge pink-and-white Park Avenue spread, watching TV and brushing that spoiled dog of hers with a gold hairbrush while his mom was out spending the millions she'd received in the divorce settlement on designer dog jackets and dinners with younger men.

  “Hey guys, I'm home,” Leo called into the apartment as he opened the door. “Here,” he told Jenny, taking her black parka and hanging it over his. “Come on.”

  Jenny followed him down the dark, narrow hallway. The apartment smelled of stale popcorn and Pine-Sol. The white paint on the walls was cracked and peeling, and the plain burgundy rug was worn and linty. It reminded her of her house, only worse.

  “Mom, Dad, this is Jennifer, the girl I've been telling you about.”

  Jenny's jaw almost dropped to her new red suede Steve Madden retro sneakers when she got a glimpse of Mr. and Mrs. Berensen. They were wearing matching gray sweat suits and eating microwave popcorn, their feet propped up on a glass-topped rattan coffee table as they watched TV in their tiny, dark living room. Mrs. Berensen was petite, with short white hair and bright blue eyes surrounded by tiny smile wrinkles. Mr. Berensen was at least eighty, with white hair, long, bony limbs, and a tanned, leathery face. They were both so skinny, they looked like they lived on a diet of only popcorn and water.

  “It's really nice … to meet you,” Jenny faltered. She stepped forward to shake their hands.

  “Oh, aren't you a doll,” Mrs. Berensen declared.

  “We were just watching some old James Bond flick,” Mr. Berensen said. “Sit down and watch if you like.” He grunted as he shifted over on the burgundy velour couch to make room for them. Jenny didn't know how he could possibly make it around the park on a bike. It looked as if he was going to keel over and die right there.

  “That's okay.” Leo touched Jenny's elbow. “Come on, I'll show you my room.”

  Jenny bit her lip as she followed him into the adjoining room. She hated herself for feeling disappointed. Why should she care if Leo wasn't a prince living in an exclusive doorman building on Park Avenue?

  Because a guy's gotta have something more than a sweet disposition and a cute chipped tooth!

  Leo's room was even more depressing than the rest of the apartment. Just a single bed pushed up against the wall, with some kind of synthetic yellow-and-green-plaid coverlet on it that looked as if it belonged in a motel circa 1979, plain white walls, a linty brown rug, and a scratched wooden desk with a giant Mac on it. The computer was very definitely the newest, most expensive thing the Berensens owned.

  Jenny perched on the edge of the bed and sneezed violently. She was having an allergic reaction to this entire situation.

  Who wouldn't?

  Leo sat down on his stiff wooden desk chair and jiggled the mouse until the computer sprang awake. “This is what I do most of the time I'm not in school or with you.”

  “Oh?” Jenny wondered if he was about to show her some weird chat room he went to to pretend he was somebody else.

  “Come here and I'll show you.”

  Reluctantly she stood up and went over to look
, expecting to have to read through a bunch of annoying e-mails. Instead, it was a painting, an exact replica of Marc Chagall's Birthday, with some little flourishes that were all Leo's own.

  “You did that?” Jenny asked, when she had found her voice. It was very good.

  “Yeah, but it's not finished yet. I have to do something about the windowpane. It's a little too bleak.” He started opening menus of color palettes and shading techniques. “I could outline it in gold. …” He glanced up at Jenny. “What do you think?”

  Jenny walked back to the bed again because there was nowhere else to sit. She bounced up and down on it a few times in an effort to clear her head. “I really thought you lived in that fancy apartment on Park. I thought Daphne was your dog.” She stopped bouncing, looked down at the rug, and swallowed.

  “I guess I sort of wanted you to think that. That's why I took you there.”

  Jenny looked up. Leo looked a lot less dashing and handsome slumped at his desk chair in his hideous room. “But Elise said she heard you were at that benefit at the Frick. And you have that nice leather jacket.” She tucked her hands under her thighs. “I thought that's where you lived,” she repeated.

  Leo shook his head. “I walk Henry for Madame T after school. She invites me to things like the party at the Frick and gives me memberships to the museums 'cause she knows I like art and her kids are all grown. It's pretty nice of her, actually.”

  Jenny nodded. Why was it so hard to accept what she already knew? Leo was just a normal boy who walked dogs after school.

  And had really old parents and lived in a really dark, depressing apartment. Sure he was into art and so was she, but there had to be more … something.

  Suddenly she scooted off the bed and lunged for the phone. “Let's do something crazy and romantic! We can steal a bottle of wine from your parents and take it to the park and sit out under the stars and get drunk!”

  Leo looked dumbstruck. “Maybe you're the mysterious one,” he remarked with a confused smile. “My parents don't have any wine, and besides, it's a school night. I have to cook dinner and do my homework. You're welcome to stay and eat with us.”