Because I'm Worth it (6 page)
“So, are we going to the Empire State Building?” Serena asked, stopping at the next corner and turning to peer back up Fifth Avenue. A fleet of buses roared by. “If we are, we should grab a cab.”
Aaron looked at his watch. It was ten after four. “I was kind of thinking I’d like to stop by my house to check the mail.” He grinned bashfully, embarrassed by how nerdy he sounded. “Early acceptance letters were mailed this week.”
Serena’s long-lashed dark blue eyes opened wide. “Why didn’t you say so?” She tossed her paper cup in a nearby trash can and took off at a run. “Come on, Mook!” she shouted as the boxer bounded happily after her. “Let’s go home and see if your smarty-pants daddy got into Harvard!”
Jenny had always been shy and had trouble making friends, but she had managed to make one in peer group that day.
“You know, I never really noticed your, um . . . bra size,” Elise murmured shyly as they were packing up their book bags to go home. On either side of them girls slammed their metal locker doors closed and shouted to each other as they ran downstairs and out the school doors.
“Yeah, right,” Jenny responded sarcastically, trying to wedge her geometry notebook into her red-and-black-striped Le Sportsac bag in between her French textbook and
Anna Karenina
.
Elise giggled as she wound a fuzzy pink scarf around her neck and buttoned the black velvet buttons on her nerdy tweed coat. She definitely looked like her mother still dressed her in the mornings. “Okay, I noticed. But I never thought it bothered you.”
Jenny tucked her curly dark brown hair behind her ears and squinted at Elise. “It
doesn’t
bother me.”
Elise pulled her fuzzy pink hat down over her blond bob and hitched her backpack up on her shoulder. She was nearly a foot taller than Jenny. “Um, are you busy now? Do you want to, like, do something?”
“Like what?” Jenny zipped up her puffy black parka. Now that she no longer hung out with Nate or her older brother, Dan, she really needed some new friends, and it might be kind of nice to hang out with a girl for once, even though Elise seemed kind of prissy and immature.
“I don’t know. Like go buy some new makeup at Bendel’s or something?” Elise suggested.
Jenny cocked her head, pleasantly surprised. For a minute there she’d thought Elise was going to suggest buying an ice cream cone or visiting the zoo. “I’d love to,” she agreed, slamming her locker door closed and starting to walk toward the stairs. “Come on.”
Blair couldn’t believe how a simple haircut could change everything so drastically. She’d already tried on every flirty empire-waisted top and A-line skirt Bendel’s had in stock— exactly the same types of pieces she’d always worn and looked good in, but now they were all wrong. Her new crop was preppy and sophisticated and gamine. It was going to require a whole new wardrobe.
“From now on I’ll wear only solid colors,” Blair whispered as she buttoned up her uniform and hung the last unwanted dress on its hanger. “And everything must have a collar.” She pulled open the red velvet curtain and dumped six wildly printed Diane von Furstenberg tops into the sales clerk’s arms. “I changed my mind. I’m looking for simple suits in navy blue and black. And plain white shirts with collars.” She wanted to look sexy in a chic Parisian-woman-wearing-a-simple-black-dress-while-riding-a-bicycle-and-carrying-a-baguette-under-her-arm sort of way. Nate had always had a thing about French girls. He would go out of his way to walk by L’École Française just to gape at the girls in their short gray skirts, high heels, and tight black V-neck sweaters. Those tramps.
Soon Blair had found the first item in her new wardrobe and the perfect thing to wear for her interview Thursday night: a navy blue knit shirtdress by Les Best with a beaded belt and a cute little white lace collar at the neck. It was prim yet intriguing—just what Blair was looking for. She paid for the dress and then headed downstairs to cosmetics to outfit herself with navy blue mascara and a subtle shade of lip gloss that wasn’t as girly or come-hither as her usual shade of light pink or dark red.
“Look who’s here,” Jenny whispered to Elise in front of the Stila counter. “Hi, Blair.”
“Great haircut!” added Elise perkily.
Blair turned around to find two of the freshmen from her peer group: she-really-
should
-have-a-breast-reduction Ginny, and in-desperate-need-of-a-makeover Eliza, or whatever their names were, staring at her admiringly. She was horrified to see that they were trying on some of the same eye shadows and lip glosses that she wore all the time. Couldn’t they just stick with Maybelline from Rite Aid or something?
Elise frowned down at the vial of glittery black eye dust in her hand. “Is this stuff any good?”
Yes, it’s good. But you’re really not ready for it yet.
Blair couldn’t help but give them a little big-sisterly advice. She slung her brown-and-white-striped Bendel’s shopping bag over her wrist and got to work. “With your coloring, I’d go for something lighter.” She reached for a sample tube of pale silvery green gel shadow. “This would really bring out the aqua tones in your eyes,” she instructed, marveling at how
nice
she sounded.
Elise took the tube and dabbed a little on her eyelids. It was barely visible, but it caught the light and miraculously made her small, close-together blue eyes look brighter and prettier. “Wow,” she trilled, mesmerized.
Jenny reached for the tube. “Can I try?”
Blair snatched it away. “Absolutely not. You need something in beige or peach.” Blair couldn’t believe herself. The weird thing was, she was enjoying it. “Here.” She handed Jenny a fat, rust-colored eye pencil. “It goes on softer than it looks.”
Jenny drew a careful line along the edge of one eyelid and blinked at the result. She looked instantly older, and the color gave her big brown eyes a nice amber glow. She leaned forward to do the left one but something in the mirror’s reflection caught her eye.
Or some
one
, to be precise.
The store was bustling with shoppers stocking up on winter sale items, but Bendel’s only caters to women, so all of the shoppers were female. All but one.
He looked about sixteen, tall and thin, with shaggy blond hair and wearing a chocolate brown corduroy jacket and jeans that hung loose from his gaunt body. Sort of like the guy in the Calvin Klein Eternity for Men ad, except less hunky.
“Wow,” Jenny said softly.
“Isn’t it great?” Blair chimed in. “Smudge it in a little with your finger. You should use brown mascara, too. It will make your eyes look even bigger.”
“No, I mean wow, look at
him
,” Jenny clarified. “Behind me.”
Blair glanced over her shoulder to see a geeky, too-young-for-her blond boy perusing the Bendel’s signature cosmetics bags. She turned back to Jenny. “What? You think he’s cute?”
Elise giggled. “He’s kind of goofy looking.”
Blair’s little Help the Hopeless campaign was starting to wear thin. “If he’s shopping in Bendel’s, he’s probably gay. Why don’t you just go up and talk to him if you think he’s so cute?”
Jenny was mortified. Just go up and start talking to him like some sort of desperate, stalking freak?
No way.
“Come on,” Elise prodded. “You know you want to.”
Jenny could barely breathe. Every time she thought she was getting more confident, something like this happened to prove that she was just as insecure as ever. “Maybe we should just leave,” she muttered nervously, as if Blair and Elise were about to rope her into participating in some shady drug deal. She picked her book bag up from off the floor. “Thanks for you help,” she told Blair quickly. Then she grabbed Elise’s hand and dragged her out of the store, keeping her eyes straight ahead as she passed the blond boy.
Pathetic
. Blair sighed as she watched them go. But she’d been in such a good mood ever since Owen Wells’ call, it wouldn’t kill her to give Jenny a little more help when she so obviously needed it. She pulled the receipt for her dress out of her shopping bag and, using the rust-colored eye pencil, drew a big heart on the back of it and wrote Jenny’s Constance Billard e-mail address inside it. Everyone’s school e-mail addresses were the same, just the first initial and the last name, so it wasn’t hard to figure out. Then she crumpled the receipt into a tight little ball and walked past the skinny blond boy, tossing the balled-up receipt hard at his back and spinning through the revolving doors before he had a chance to see who she was.
Blair Waldorf making an effort to do something nice for someone else? Talk about a makeover! This was more than just a Jiffy Lube change of hairstyle. Like a true diva, she was going for the entire weekend spa package, including the spiritual overhaul.
as if he didn’t have it good enough already
Just as Aaron had suspected, there was a cream-colored envelope from Harvard waiting for him beside the Spode china milk jug of white roses on the side table in the foyer of his father and stepmother’s East Seventy-second Street penthouse apartment. Aaron let an extremely thirsty Mookie tear down the hall to the kitchen with his leash still on and picked up the letter with rigid fingers. Serena was waiting expectantly behind him, but he would really rather have opened it alone.
What if he didn’t get in?
Serena slipped out of her coat and tossed it on the blue toile–upholstered chair in the corner. “I’ll still love you no matter what,” she said breathlessly.
Aaron stared down at the envelope, annoyed at himself for feeling so tense. He was usually pretty mellow about this kind of thing. “Fuck it,” he declared under his breath and tore open the sealed envelope. He unfolded the neatly creased cream-colored piece of paper and read the short paragraph typed on it, twice. Then he looked up at Serena. “Uh-oh.”
Her face fell. What a horrible thing for her sweet love to go through! “Oh, poor baby. I’m so sorry.”
Aaron handed her the letter and she glanced at it reluctantly.
Dear Mr. Rose, We have reviewed your application and we are very pleased to inform you of your acceptance to Harvard University’s class of—
Serena’s blue eyes were suddenly enormous. “You got in! Oh baby, you got in!”
Behind them, Myrtle, the cook, walked briskly down the hall with a drooling, panting Mookie trailing after her. Her light yellow maid’s uniform was spattered with something orangey-red and she looked pissed.
“Myrtle, Aaron got into
Harvard
,” Serena announced proudly. She put her arms around her boyfriend and gave him a squeeze. “Isn’t that amazing?”
Myrtle was unimpressed. She thrust Mookie’s leash at Aaron, her fleshy wrists jangling with gold bracelets and her work-weary hands smelling of onions. “Better take that dog with you where you’re going,” she chided before stomping back to the kitchen in her new white Nike tennis shoes.
Serena and Aaron grinned mischievously at each other. “I think this calls for a little celebration, don’t you?” Aaron asked, his relief mutating instantaneously into cockiness.
Serena tweaked his adorable freckled nose with a slender forefinger. “I know where they keep the champagne.”
Blair rode the elevator up to her family’s penthouse overlooking Central Park at Seventy-second Street. When the elevator doors rolled open she instantly recognized Serena’s new navy blue cashmere pea coat flung carelessly on top of the toile Louis XVI chaise in the foyer. It was still hard to get used to the idea of Serena hanging out at her house when she wasn’t even home.
“Blair?” Serena’s voice echoed out of the former guest room, which now belonged to Aaron. “Get in here. Where have you been?”
“Hold on,” Blair called. She pulled off her light blue duffle coat and hung it up in the coat closet. She didn’t really feel like explaining her drastic new look to Serena and Aaron while they were sitting around in their underwear or something equally nauseating, but she didn’t see how she could get out of it. If she ignored them, they’d soon be banging her door down, bouncing up and down on her bed, and demanding her attention like immature imbeciles.
The smell of herbal cigarette smoke wafted out into the hall. “Hey,” she called, standing outside the half-opened door.
“Come on in,” Aaron slurred. After two glasses of Dom Perignon he was already tipsy. “We’re having a party.”
Blair pushed open the door. The room had been redecorated for Aaron in shades of aubergine and cerulean, with funky fifties gray metal shutters in the windows instead of curtains and giant vinyl beanbag chairs on the floor to lounge around on. The woven organic hemp mat covering the hardwood floor was littered with CD cases, computer games, DVDs, music magazines, and library books about Jamaican Rasta culture and the evils of the meat industry. Serena and Aaron were sitting on the disheveled Edwardian four-poster bed, drinking champagne out of her mother’s best crystal flutes,
in their underwear
, just as Blair had predicted. Actually, Serena was wearing one of Aaron’s oversized hunter green B
RONXDALE
A
THLETIC
T-shirts, with her white satin La Perla panties peeking out from underneath it.
Well, at least it was
nice
underwear.
Blair was about to ask what the big occasion was when Serena blurted out, “Aaron got in! He got into Harvard!”
Blair stared at them, bile rising in her throat. It was hard enough to look at Serena’s gorgeous abundance of long, pale blond hair now that her own hair was sitting in a trash can back on Fifty-seventh Street, but the smug smile on Aaron’s annoying dreadlocked face was enough to make her want to projectile vomit all over his stupid cruelty-free rug.
“Pull up a beanbag,” Aaron offered. He pointed to the Harvard mug sitting on his desk. “That mug’s pretty clean if you want some champagne.”
Serena waved a sheet of cream-colored paper in the air. “Listen to this. ‘Dear Mr. Rose,’” she read aloud. “‘We have reviewed your application and we are very pleased to inform you of your acceptance to Harvard University’s class of—’”
