Psycho Killer (19 page)

Dan closed his eyes. He could get through this without laughing if he kept his eyes closed. “I will. I will.”

Marjorie fumbled for the knife. Her gum fell out of her mouth and onto Dan’s new Red Wing boots. “Ew!” she shrieked. “The knife—it’s got blood on it!”

“Cut!” Vanessa yelled, grateful that they hadn’t made it to the kiss. “Marjorie, it’s Knox, not Fox. And you’re not supposed to be chewing gum or even talking. You’re just supposed to be acting.”

Someone nudged Vanessa’s arm and whispered into her ear. “Can I try?”

Vanessa turned around to find the glorious Serena van der Woodsen standing behind her, windblown and breathless from running halfway across the bridge. Her cheeks were flushed, her golden hair was wild, and her blue eyes gleamed like the darkening sky. Serena was the girl to play Mallory Knox, if ever there was one.

Dan stared at Serena. A Paragon Sports tag sprang out of the waistband of his cargo pants. He wiped the bloody knife on the white rash guard and sheathed the knife, wishing he didn’t look like a walking circus act. Instantly a new haiku sprang into his head.

Beautiful stranger
,

why are you here? Breathing—

on this bridge tonight?

“Marjorie, I think that’s a wrap,” Vanessa called over. “Would you mind loaning Serena your script?”

“ ’Kay.”

Serena and Marjorie traded places. Dan had his eyes open
now. He didn’t dare blink. Vanessa decided not to give Serena any direction and just see what happened.

“Action!”

They began to read.

“Life is fragile and absurd,” Dan felt like shouting, he was so excited. “Murdering someone’s not so hard.” He’d murder a hundred people if it meant he could be with Serena.

Serena withdrew the knife from its sheath with expert precision. Dan’s chest trembled at her almost-touch.

She drew the knife blade against her palm and raised it up to show Dan the cut. Her blood was redder than any he’d ever seen. He wanted to lick it. He wanted to eat her whole hand. Or at least suck on it for a while.

Is that juice your blood?

Seasonless fruit—pink, ripe, red
.

I thought I was dead
.

“Mickey Knox, will you marry me?” Serena asked with the perfect blend of excitement, expectation, and girlish embarrassment.

Dan took the knife eagerly and hacked at his hand. “I will,” he said, meaning every word. Blood dripped on his new pants. “I
will
.”

Serena clasped her bleeding hand around his. Dan gasped. He could actually feel their blood mingling and exchanging cells. He felt faint. In fact, he thought he might faint.

Like a loose tooth, my

heart dangles. Take it. Keep it—

under your pillow
.

“We’re Mickey and Mallory Knox now,” Serena was saying. God she was good. “And we’ll stay together until we die and die and die again.”

Time for the kiss. Dan lurched toward her, stumbling over the laces of his new boots and losing his balance as the crowbar and baseball bat swung from his back in the opposite direction.

“I love you, Mallory,” he gasped, falling.

Maybe he should have eaten a muffin or something before play practice.

“Whoa,” Serena giggled, catching him.

Dan lay in her arms feeling like he’d died an exquisite death and was now in heaven. Serena was enjoying herself too. Dan was cute and the script was a hoot.

I could get into this
. She had never really thought about what she wanted to do with her life, but maybe acting was her thing.

“Cut!” Vanessa shouted. And not too soon either. The chemistry between Dan and Serena was totally nauseating. If there weren’t so many people around she would have grabbed that bowie knife and cut Serena’s perfect face and body in two and thrown each half off of opposite sides of the bridge.

Boys are so predictable
, she thought, angrily snapping the lens protector back onto her camera.

“Thanks, guys.” She pretended to scribble comments in a little notebook. “I’ll let you know tomorrow, Serena. Okay?”
Fuck off and die
, she scrawled jealously.

“That was fun!” Serena said, taking the knife as she helped the trembling Dan to his feet.

Still hungover from the moment, Dan removed the cumbersome harness and wiped his bloody hands in his hair. It stuck up
pinkly, like some kind of messed-up punk do. “You were great,” he told Serena earnestly, finding his voice. “Really great.”

Vanessa scowled and fiddled with her camera. “Marjorie, I’ll let you know tomorrow, too. Okay?” she told the redhead.

“ ’Kay,” Marjorie said, still chomping. “Thanks.”

Dan just stood there, swaying weakly in the breeze, his cut hand oozing blood, his hair sticking up, and a goofy smile plastered on his face.

“Thanks so much for letting me try out,” Serena told Vanessa sweetly, still holding the knife. She turned to go.

“See you later,” Dan said, feeling drugged.

“I live in Brooklyn Heights. So I’m gonna walk home now. Bye,” Marjorie called, waving as she continued on across the bridge.

Vanessa looked up from her camera. “Put the harness back on,” she told Dan. “We’re not done yet. I want to try shooting your monologue.”

Dan bent down and put his arms through the straps of the weapon-laden harness once more. The hand-stitched leather sheath dangled emptily from its strap. He whirled around and searched the ground.

“Hey,” he said. “Where’s the knife?”

But the knife was already headed uptown in a taxi with a certain blonde so used to carrying expensive knives she’d thought nothing of taking it.

“Iz dat peppers-oni?”

Nate looked up from his pizza slice. He and his friends had spent the entire afternoon in the park, skipping school, ignoring their cell phones, and basically wasting away the day because it was Wednesday, and Wednesdays sucked.

Nate was supposed to be eating dinner with his parents but had been so overcome by his craving for pizza that he’d made a detour on his way home.

A gorgeous dark-haired L’Ecole girl wearing a minuscule gray flannel uniform skirt and black knee-high high-heeled boots was standing directly in front of him on the sidewalk.

“Iz good?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” he said as the ground lurched beneath him.

Too much sunshine, Sunshine?

“I’s been seeing you at diz pizzeria all zee time,” the girl said, opening her big, mascaraed, olive green eyes wide. “I’s been watching for you!”

Nate chuckled. L’Ecole girls were famous for pretending to barely speak English while, more often than not, they and their
parents were born and raised in the U.S. of A. Their parents thought it would make their daughters more desirable if they were bilingual. The girls thought boys would like them better if they forgot English altogether and just spoke bedroom Franglish. L’Ecole was the only school in the city that allowed their female students to wear high heels, red lipstick, push-up bras, and barely buttoned shirts, which they started to do in sixth grade. By the time they were seniors they were seasoned adulterers. Almost every boy in Nate’s St. Jude’s class who had lost his virginity had done it with a girl from L’Ecole.

“Pizza is my favorite food,” Nate explained, chewing.

It was sort of a relief, talking to a girl who didn’t make him work very hard. Blair needed so much attention. And Serena was so… dangerous, and demanding in her own way. It was nice to just talk to an easy girl for once.

He held out his slice. “You want a bite?”

Down boy. Down.

Only a few blocks away, Blair marched down Madison toward home, knocking over small children, bumping into parking meters, and nearly besmirching her Chanel flats with German shepherd poo as she checked and rechecked the voicemails, e-mails, and text messages on her phone. She’d sent Nate an e-mail and two texts, and left three voicemails today, and he still hadn’t responded to any of them. Not that she needed to see him right now. That would be too distracting. In ten minutes she had to meet her SAT prep tutor at home. Then there was the AP French test to study for, followed by a late dinner with her mom and that nitwit boyfriend of hers. Then she had about three hundred pages of AP English reading to do. Then sleep, followed by tennis early tomorrow morning before
school. She just wanted to confirm that Nate was on for Friday night. They were going to have sex and he would spend the night. She liked to know the plan. She hated surprises or deviations of any kind. And they always talked on Wednesdays. So, where the fuck was he?

So close, yet so far away.

Nate took another bite of his pizza. The L’Ecole girl pulled the rubber band holding up her ponytail out of her hair and swung her head from side to side. Her long, nearly black hair cascaded over her shoulders and skimmed her pushed-up breasts.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Nadège,” she said, pursing her full, red-lipsticked lips. “Maman et Papa calls me Nadège after ma grandmére. She was supercool supermodel en France in zee sixties.” She arched her thick dark eyebrows sexily and waggled her shoulders so that her milky-white cleavage seemed to be personally introducing itself to Nate. “Nadège meanz ‘Hope’ en français.”

Nate took another bite of pizza, trying to suppress a giggling fit. He
hoped
Nadège might take her clothes off for him, right there on the sidewalk.

“Want another a bite of my pizza, Nadège?” he offered, pointing the slice in the direction of her full red lips.

Blair tucked her phone back into the pocket of her gray cashmere blazer. Nate was with Serena, she was sure of it. There was no other logical explanation. Of course he was with her. Whenever Nate disappeared it was always because of Serena. Blair gritted her teeth. Nate had no idea who he was dealing with. Serena was insane. And she had no feelings for Nate. All she wanted was
to take away what was rightfully Blair’s—her friends, her boyfriends, her seat at Fashion Week, her spot at Yale, the last pair of size eight silver snakeskin demi boots at Christian Louboutin.

Blair hoped with all her heart that Nate was still alive. After all, she loved him—even if he was a jerk for not calling her back. But whether Serena was kissing him right now or torturing him before she stabbed him to death with a curling iron, Blair was going to rip Serena’s head off, boil it in salt water, and serve it with fries the next chance she got.

The sign said DON’T WALK. Blair made a run for it and a cabbie had to slam on his brakes to avoid her. She glanced across the avenue, at a pizzeria where students from various schools in the neighborhood always gathered. Sure enough, there was Nate, flirting with the sluttiest looking L’Ecole girl Blair had ever seen.

Nate was actually feeding the girl pizza, as if she couldn’t feed herself. Knowing the girls from that school, she probably couldn’t speak English either. She spoke only the language of slut, with a French accent.

Blair should have been relieved. Nate wasn’t with Serena after all. He was alive and eating pizza. But thoughts of Serena had ignited her rage, and somehow seeing Nate with a dark and beautiful French girl only served to fuel it.

Crossing Madison on the far corner, Blair darted inside the pizzeria behind Nate’s back. She ordered a slice with everything on it, and while the pizza guy was busy with his bins of anchovies, onions, and olives, she snatched his circular pizza knife off the counter and stuffed it into her purse with the deft “you never saw that” motion of an experienced assassin.

Out on the street again with her steaming hot slice of over-decorated pizza, Blair discovered the L’Ecole girl hugging and
kissing Nate’s face all over as he attempted to peel himself away and say goodbye. Blair slipped around the side of the building to wait.

The French girl had a big appetite. She’d eaten half his slice, and now Nate was still hungry. He headed back inside to order more while Nadège turned down the side street, presumably toward the brothel where she lived.

Blair was waiting for her when she rounded the corner.

“How dare you?” she seethed. The girl’s short gray skirt barely covered her underwear.

“Excusez-moi?” The girl paused and gave Blair a quizzical look. “Sorry, my Engleesh not verry—”

“Bullshit,” Blair spat. “I know you can understand me. Your parents are probably from Long Island. They probably don’t even speak French.”

The girl just stood there, staring at Blair. “New Jersey,” she admitted, her accent gone. “I was born in Mahwah. My real name is Nancy.”

“Shut up!” Blair cried. She dangled the greasy pizza slice in front of the girl’s face. “I got you some pizza,” she taunted. “You looked like you were pretty hungry, eating
my boyfriend’s
pizza.” She grabbed the girl by the back of the head and rammed the entire slice into her lipsticked mouth. “Here, have a bite.”

The girl gagged and stumbled backwards, but not before Blair slit her throat with the round metal pizza slicer.

Zing!

Blood gushed from her neck, red and thick as tomato sauce.

Ooh la la!

For good measure Blair cut a big slash through the girl’s slutty gray uniform skirt, too.

Zing!

The girl teetered on her heels and fell backward into a pile of broken pizza boxes that had been put out to be recycled.

Nate stood in the window of the pizzeria, facing the side street while his second slice with extra cheese was in the oven heating up. The window was lined with shiny chrome, and in the reflection cast by the streetlights he thought he saw his girlfriend Blair use a metal pizza cutter to slit sexy French Nadège’s throat from one earlobe to the other. Then she slashed her skirt. Blood was everywhere, and Blair looked like she enjoyed it.

“Dude.” Nate pressed his fingertips to his eyes. They felt okay, but surely there was something wrong with the pot in the last joint he’d smoked.

“Dude!” he screamed again, as Nadège fell down dead on the sidewalk. Blair sprinted away, tossing the pizza cutter into the trash can on the corner.