Nobody Does It Better (5 page)

Dear Seniors,

We are so excited for next Friday, which as you know is Senior Cut Day, now known as the first day of SENIOR SPA WEEKEND!!!! Yes, it's a school day. Unfortunately we'll be too busy getting ready for our hot-stone facials and seaweed body wraps to remember to show up! Please don't be worried about getting into trouble- not that you really are. Senior Cut Day is an ancient Constance
Billard
School
tradition, and no one's ever been expelled or even punished for it.

So here's what's happening.

Thursday night at 6:30 P.M we'll board the Archibald family's big sailboat, which is docked at Battery
Park
City
. The Archibalds are having their annual benefit cruise to the Hamptons
, and they have generously offered us a ride. As soon as we dock in Sag Harbor, we'll be picked up by a fleet of limos, which will whisk us off to Isabel Coates's totally amazing beach house, where the biggest, bestest girls-only slumber party will take place. NO BOYS ALLOWED. In the morning we'll have breakfast by the pool, catered by... TBA (we're working on getting the chef who helped Julia Roberts lose all that weight after having her twins). After that, a day of treatment brought to us by Origins. And everyone will get an Origins gift bag valued at three hundred dollars to take home wither totally refreshed and revitalized new self!

Dress: Resort casual. Towels, hairdryers, bath, and beauty products galore will be supplied. No dogs, please even if they are really small. And NO BOYS!

Let's heard it for an amazing weekend of bonding with the girls!

Big Smoochies!!

Love,

Your classmates Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates

P.S We put a suggestion box in the senior lounge, so your ideas are welcome, not that we haven't already planned the most perfect day!

P.P.S Two, four, six, eight, only one month till we graduate!!!

Gossipgirl.net

SOME RECENT OBSERVATIONS

THE CASTAWAYS

I honestly don't know what's gotten into a certain group of people lately. I mean is it okay to just, like, disappear?? Apparently a bunch of boys we all know and love (at least most of the time) have hijacked a very large, well-appointed sailboat and are headed into the Atlantic. It could be just another senior prank, except that half the boys on the boat are juniors. It's kind of random time to take off, especially when all of us girls could use a little entertainment. Just who do they think they are- Christopher Colombus?

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

They have their choice of guys, but for whatever reason, models can't get enough of guys with guitars. Rumor has it the latest couple of the moment is a certain blond-haired Fifth Avenue
-dwelling senior girl and the lead guitarist from the Raves. How, when, and where they met is a complete mystery, but talk about a perfect couple!

TO GAP OR NOT TO GAP?

Don't even try to pretend it was someone else: I saw you sneaking into the Gap on Eighty-sixth and Madison and actually trying on a plum-colored Juicy Couture terrycloth zip-up hoodie in the kids' section. Okay, I'm a snooping bitch. But the reason I'm ratting you out is I tried the very same hoodie on, and, unlike you (although I know you wanted to), I bought three of them! Why not? They're cute, and we're going to need lots of terrycloth cover-ups to wear après le pool this summer. Plus we'll probably spill Campari or crème de menthe or something equally devastating all over ourselves, so we'll need more than one. Besides, terrycloth is terrycloth, and what better way to show off your white new jacquard Gucci bikini than with a cute plum-colored hoodie? Think of it as a get-out-of-jail-free card: you're still not allowed to buy jeans there - heaven forbid- but you can now have my permission to purchase certain necessary items at the Gap.

YOUR E-MAIL

Q: Dear GG,

Are you ever going to tell us where you're going to college next year? Have you even decided?

-qrs

A: Dear qrs,

That's for me to know and you to find out. But let me ask you this- do I strike you as the indecisive type?

- GG

Q: Dear GG,

I heard Damian Polk from the Raves used to live in the same building as that blond model you're always talking about. They've known each other since they were babies and they used to hook up in the elevator in the middle of the night, while the =doorman was napping.

-ob-v-us

A: Dear ob-v-us,

That's a great story, but I heard Damian's family lived in Ireland
until he was thirteen. Hence his funny accent and the reason why he's always seems a little drunk.

-GG

Q: Dear GG,

I run the crew on a sailboat that belongs to a prominent New York
family. The son, who I hear has been in lots of trouble before, took off in the sailboat yesterday evening and hasn't returned. I'm afraid his ass will be grass whenever he gets back, because his dad is kind of tough.

-captain

A: Dear captain,

His ass is already grass, for more reasons than that!

-GG

SIGHTINGS

S and an unidentified blond hunk- possibly her brother or possibly that guitarist from the Raves- at the Central Park Zoo, feeding left-over sushi from lunch at Nicole's to the sea lions. B buying two La Perla nighties at Barneys. She seems to have developed an addiction to lingerie, but what else can one wear while lounging alone in a Plaza Hotel suite, waiting for one's boyfriend to turn up. D at Yellow Rat Bastard on lower Broadway, trying on every hat in the store. V purchasing a new lip ring - ew! - at a piercing place in Williamsburg
. J in Barneys Co-op trying on every pair of Seven Jeans in the store ignoring the salesperson's suggestion that she'd have better luck finding jeans that fit in Bloomingdale's children's department. K and I at Jackson Hole again, scheming again. N- not. Where in the hell is N anyway?

Don't worry I'll find him.

You know you love me,

Gossip Girl

“How come no matter what I wear I always look like a cartoon character” Jenny complained to her friend and Constance
Billard
School classmate Elise Wells. It was Saturday night and they were getting ready for Dan's gig with the Raves at Funkiton, a new music venue in revamped fire station on Orchard Street. Jenny glanced at Elise. “And you always look so normal.”

The two girls regarded their reflection in the full-length mirror on the back of Jenny's closet door. Jenny was wearing a stretchy red top with cap sleeves and a plunging U-shaped neckline that made her breast look gargantuan. She was barely five feet tall, and her very first pair of seven jeans had always been too long for her when she bought them at Bloomingdale's, so she had the lady at the dry cleaner's on Broadway and Ninety-eighth shorten them about ten inches. Now she noticed that the purposely “antiqued” spot on each leg where her knee was supposed to be fell at mid-shin. The only acceptable part of Jenny's body was her head. She liked her big, far-apart brown eyes, her clear whiter skin, her red lips, and her curly brown hair with its straight, severe nags across the forehead. As Serena once told her, she looked like a Prada model- with oversized breast implants and stumps for legs, although Serena would never have said that part.

Elise's body was totally the opposite. She was seven inches taller than Jenny, with long skinny legs, long skinny arms, and a flat chest. Nothing was ever too tight on her, except maybe in the belly region, which had sort of a doughnut roll around it. But that was easily hidden beneath a shirt. There was really nothing Jenny could do to hide her chest. Then again, Elise was covered in Freckles- there were even freckles on her eyelids- she had chin length straw-yellow hair that was so thick and so coarse, she could barely fit it into a rubber band.

Well nobody's perfect. Except for maybe a very select few of us.

“Let's trade tops,” Elise suggested. She pulled off her black V-neck T-shirt and handed it to Jenny.

“Okay,” Jenny responded dubiously, and pulled off her red one. Elise's shirt was from Express, and hers was from Anthropologie, which was slightly nicer, but Jenny didn't want to hurt Elise's feelings by saying anything. Besides the results were astronomical. Jenny's chest looked almost modest in the black top, and the red top made Elise's hair gleam with strawberry highlights neither of them had ever known she had.

“I bet Serena van der Woodsen doesn't even look at herself before she goes out,” Jenny declared. She dropped down on her knees and started crawling around the room. “She probably doesn't even have to try stuff on, except for maybe shoes.”

Elise put her hands on her hips. “What are you doing?”

“Wearing in the knees on my jeans,” Jenny replied, still crawling. “Did you hear about Serena and Damian from the Raves?”

Elise nodded. Everyone had heard.

Jenny crawled across the matted pink carpet to her closet to select a pair of shoes. Of course, Serena never had to crawl around like a dog in an attempt to make her jeans look normal. “I don't know how she does it.” She pulled her new Michael Kors gold toe-ring sandals and slid them on. Her dad said the sandals looked like something a belly dancer would wear, but she'd gotten them for free at the W photo shoot, and they were the nicest pair of shoes she owned.

How strange that she'd had that little moment of superstardom- that photo shoot with Serena- and now she was back to being plain old her, a fourteen-going-on fifteen-year-old girl with big ambitions and an even bigger chest. It wasn't like her life's ambition was to quit school at the age of fourteen and become a super model, but it would have been kind of nice if someone asked her to.

Jenny stood up and brushed off the knees of her jeans. They were completely, disappointedly unfaded and, except for the wonky placement of the distressed part of the denim, completely uninteresting-just like everything else in her closet. Serena's clothes were always so perfectly frayed, faded and worn, belying the colorful and mysterious history of their wearer. Jenny couldn't help but wonder whether her own clothes would fade and develop character too if she got kicked out of Constance and sent to boarding school.

“Ever thought about going to boarding school?” Jenny wondered out loud.

Elise made a face. “Eat school food three meals a day and live with your teachers? No way.”

Jenny frowned. That wasn't how she pictured boarding school at all. In her mind boarding school meant freedom: from her manic-depressive Mr. Poet Rock God brother, from her manically overprotective and embarrassingly unkempt dad, from Constance Billard's horrendous school uniforms, from her dusty old bedroom, and from the everyday boringness of doing the same old same old now and for the next three years. It also meant opportunity: to live and go to school with boys, boys, boys and to be- the girl no one could stop talking about.

Rufus poked his head in the door, not even thinking about the fact that Jenny was no longer five years old and might be completely naked or something. His unruly hair was tied in a ponytail with a piece of the bright blue plastic bag the New york Times was delivered in every morning. “You girls want me to help you get a cab?” he asked with cheerful concern.

Jenny could tell her dad was dying to go to Dan's gig with them, but tonight was his monthly anarchist writers' workshop- the only thing he took as seriously as raising his children, even though none of his writing had ever been published.

“That's okay, Dad.” Jenny smiled sweetly, daring him to say something rude about her sexy gold sandals. “Ready?” she asked Elise.

Elise smeared an extra layer of Jenny's favorite MAC Ice lip gloss on her already shinny lips. “Ready,” she responded.

“You two look so...” Rufus tugged on his straggly beard, struggling for the right adjective. “Grown-up,” he said at last.

Yeah, but we're not exactly models-who-date-rock-stars material, Jenny thought as the two girls contemplated their reflections in mirror. Elise had on way too much lip gloss, and Jenny kinda wished that her Kors sandals weren't totally flat, so she'd at least appear taller. After all, she wasn't going to the gig to see Dan. She wanted to meet Damian Polk and the rest of the band, and she wanted to make an impression.

Jenny stood on tiptoe and then eased her heels back into her shoes again. “Lucky we're on the guest list,” she sighed, “or they'd never let us in.”

Actually with a chest like that she could probably get in anywhere. But let her find out for herself.

“What the fuck?” Vanessa demanded. How had she missed them after all these years she had no idea. She twisted her head around and checked her reflection in the bathroom mirror once again. They were, four big brown moles, all lined up on her neck behind her ear like some kind of fucked-up constellation. She felt like a girl in a Clearasil commercial, panicking because she'd gotten a zit right before going out on a date. Zits were temporary, though. The moles were there to stay. Who in her right mind would keep her head shaved with moles like that on her neck?

She yanked open a drawer beneath the bathroom sink, looking for some of that skin-colored cover-up crap her sister Ruby put under her eyes when she'd been up all night. She found a stick of something called Peekaboo that was a little pinker than her natural skin tone but good enough. She dabbed some over the moles, rubbed it in, and examined the results. Now she looked like she had poison ivy, or poison neck. She considered pasting a Band-Aid across the whole area, but she didn't have one big enough to cover all four of the moles, and a Band-Aid would only draw attention to the problem. She washed off the cover-up and then dug around in the drawer, looking for something that might distract Beverly
from the hideous deformities on her neck.

As if the still-healing lip piercing on her upper lip wasn't distracting enough. Beverly
had been polite enough not to mention it before, but now that they were getting to know each other, he might ask if the crusty sore beneath that silver D-ring actually hurt.

And why would Beverly
even want to check out her neck? They were only going to the Raves gig together- just hanging out to see if they'd mind cohabitating, as in roommates, not lovers who looked at each other's necks. Besides, Beverly
was an artist. He might think her moles were cool.

A sample vial of perfume called Certainty was rolling around in the bottom of the messy vanity drawer. It sounded like a name of a tampon or a pregnancy test, but Vanessa eased the little black cap off the vial and dabbed some perfume on her wrists and temples anyway. Certainty smelled musky and powerful and might be so distracting to Beverly
that he wouldn't even notice her disgusting configuration of neck moles. Maybe it would even work some sort of magic. She would walk into the club where Dan and the Raves were playing; Dan would turn purple with a mixture of desire, regret, and mad jealousy; and Beverly
would feel immediately certain about wanting to live with her. As a friend, of course.

Of course.