Psycho Killer (30 page)

I thought
S
looked cute in her picture in the Sunday
Times
Styles section. Although her teachers probably weren’t thrilled to see her double-fisting martinis on a school night. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of over the whole thing. I mean, isn’t it enough that we have to see that picture of her every time we use public transportation? Obviously
you’re
not over it yet, though.

YOUR E-MAIL

SIGHTINGS

D
returning a gorgeous
Armani
tux at
Barneys
and renting a much less gorgeous one at a formal store. His sister
J
buying underwear at
La Petite Coquette
, although she chickened out on the thong.
N
buying a big bag of pot in Central Park. Tell me something new.
B
in the
J. Sisters
salon getting waxed, buffed, and shined. And
S
?
S
has gone missing. Not in school, not anywhere. There certainly were a lot of ambulances at the Met yesterday. Say it isn’t so…?

MUSEUM NEWS FLASH

First, a valuable seventeenth-century Indian dagger with a very sharp blade forged of watered steel and a hilt made of engraved gold encrusted with emeralds remains missing from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s recently ransacked Arms and Armor collection. Know anyone with a thing for emeralds or sharp knives?

Secondly, the Frick, that famously beautiful old home of industrialist Henry Clay Frick on Seventieth and Fifth, now a museum and home to so many of our best parties, has been renamed the Katherine Farkas and Isabel Coates Memorial House in honor of our slain sisters. Can’t wait to raise a toast to them on Friday!

TWO QUESTIONS

First: If you knew about a party that you weren’t invited to, wouldn’t you go, just to piss people off? I would.

Second: If you’d made up your mind to go to the party, wouldn’t you want
to really rub people’s noses in it by appearing out of nowhere looking completely gorgeous and stealing everyone’s boyfriends?
Definitely
.

But who knows what
S
will decide to do, if she’s even with us anymore. That girl is full of surprises….

At least I’ve given us all something to think about while we’re getting our pedicures, plucking our eyebrows, and concealing our blemishes and stab wounds.

See you at the party!

You know you love me,

“Ugly, ugly, ugly,” the tall blonde muttered, wadding her new black dress into a ball and tossing it onto her bed.

A gorgeous black crepe de chine Tocca dress? Come on, how ugly can it be?

All week long she’d been in an induced coma at Clinic Schloss Mammern in Switzerland, healing. The wound was sealed, but Serena still felt only half-there, a ghostly shadow of her former self, a girl people had known once, but couldn’t quite remember anymore. And for the first time in her entire life, she felt ugly and awkward. Her eyes and hair looked dull, and her beautiful smile and cool demeanor had been roped off until further notice.

Now it was Friday, the night of the
Kiss Me or Die
party. And the question she couldn’t answer: to go or not to go?

It used to be, before fancy parties like this, Serena and her friends would spend half the night getting dressed together—-swilling gin and tonics, dancing around in their underwear, trying on crazy outfits. But tonight she rummaged through her closet alone.

There was the pair of jeans with the rip in the leg where she’d snagged them on a barbed wire fence in Ridgefield. There was
the white satin dress she’d worn to the Christmas dance in ninth grade. Her brother’s old leather jacket. Her moldy tennis shoes that should have been thrown out two years ago. And what was this? A red wool sweater—Nate’s. Serena held it to her face and smelled it. It smelled like her, not him.

Toward the back of the closet was a black velvet flapper dress that Serena had bought with Blair at a vintage store. It was a dress to wear while drinking and dancing and lounging around decoratively in a huge house full of people having a good time. It reminded Serena of the good-time gal she’d been when she bought the dress—her old self, the girl she’d been up until two weeks ago. She let her robe drop to the floor and slipped the dress on over her head. Maybe it would give her back some of her power.

Barefoot, she padded into her parents’ dressing room, where they were getting ready for their own black tie affair.

“What do you think?” Serena asked, doing a little twirl in front of them.

“Oh, Serena, you’re not wearing
that
. Tell me you’re not,” her mother exclaimed, fastening a long rope of pearls around her neck.

“What’s wrong with it?” Serena demanded.

“It’s an old ratty thing,” Mrs. van der Woodsen said. “It’s just the sort of dress my grandmother was buried in. Besides, it droops in the back. Your scar shows.”

“What about one of those outfits you bought with your mother last weekend?” Mr. van der Woodsen suggested. “Didn’t you buy anything to wear to the party?”

“Of course she did,” Mrs. van der Woodsen said. “She bought a lovely black dress.”

“That makes me look like the Bride of Frankenstein,” Serena said grumpily. She put her hands on her hips and posed in front of her mother’s full-length mirror. “I like this dress. It’s got character.”

Her mother sighed disapprovingly. “Well, what’s Blair wearing?”

Serena stared at her mother and blinked. Under normal circumstances she would have known exactly what Blair was wearing, down to her underwear. And Blair would have insisted on going shoe shopping together, because if you bought a new dress, you had to have a pair of new shoes. Blair loved shoes.

But last weekend Blair had almost killed her.

“Blair told everyone to wear vintage,” she lied.

Her mother was about to respond when Serena heard her phone ring in her bedroom. Was it Nate calling to apologize? Blair? She raced down the hall in her bare feet, scrambling to pick it up.

“Hello?” she said breathlessly.

“Yo, bitch. Sorry I haven’t called in a while.”

Serena took a deep breath and sat down on her bed.

“Hey,” she said. Erik didn’t know about Switzerland. About her almost dying. Her mother wanted as few people to know as possible.

“Saw you in the Styles section last Sunday. You are crazy, aren’t you?” her brother laughed. “What did Mom say?”

“Nothing. It’s like I can do whatever I want now. Everyone thinks I’m like,
ruined
or something,” Serena fumbled for the right words.

“That’s not true. Hey, what’s up? You sound sad.”

“Yeah.” Serena’s lower lip started to tremble. It wasn’t a tantrum brewing this time, but actual tears. “I sort of am.”

“How come? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. There’s this party I’m supposed to go to that everyone’s going to. You know how it is,” she began.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Erik said gently.

Serena propped her pillows against the headboard of her bed and wriggled under her comforter.

“It’s just that no one’s talking to me anymore. I don’t even know why, but ever since I’ve been back it’s been like I have Mad Cow disease or something.” One by one, the tears began to fall.

“What about Blair and Nate? Those guys must be talking to you,” Erik said. “They’re your best friends.”

“Not anymore,” Serena said quietly. Tears were streaming freely down her face now. She picked up a pillow and dabbed it against her cheeks to stem the flow.

“Well, you know what I say?” Erik asked.

Serena swallowed and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. “What?”

“Fuck ’em. Totally. You don’t need them. You’re like, the coolest chick in the Western Hemisphere. Fuck ’em, fuck ’em, fuck ’em.”

“Yeah,” Serena responded doubtfully. “But they’re my friends.”

“Not anymore. You just said so yourself. You can get new friends. I’m serious,” Erik said. “You can’t let assholes turn you into an asshole. You just have to fuck ’em.”

It was a perfect Erikism. Serena laughed, wiped her runny nose on a pillow, and threw it across the room. “Okay,” she said, sitting up. “You’re right.”

“I’m always right. That’s why I’m so hard to get ahold of. There’s a huge demand for people like me.”

“I miss you,” Serena told him, chewing on her pinky nail. Her knuckles were still sore and bruised from last weekend.

“Miss you too,” Erik said.

“Serena? We’re leaving!” she heard her mother call from out in the hall.

“Okay, I better go,” Serena said. “Love you.”

“Bye.”

Serena clicked off. On the end of her bed was the invitation to the
Kiss Me or Die
party that Jenny had made for her. She snatched it up and tossed it in her wastepaper basket.

Erik was right. She didn’t have to go to some stupid benefit just because everyone else was going. They didn’t even want her there. Fuck ’em. She was free to do what she pleased. Besides, if she went to the party she and Blair would just try to kill each other again, and she was sort of tired of that game. Enough was enough. It was time to move on.

She carried her phone over to her desk and shuffled through a pile of papers until she found the Constance Billard School student directory, which had arrived in the mail on Monday. Serena read through the names. She wasn’t the only one skipping the party. She could find a new friend.

Serena dialed a number and the phone began to ring. She ducked down beneath her bed and pulled out the violin case. Snapping it open, she withdrew the bloody hunting knife.

“Hello?” Vanessa said, picking up the phone. She was getting ready to go out with her sister. Right now she was wearing a black bra, black jeans, and her Doc Martens. She didn’t have any clean black shirts left. Her sister was trying to convince her to wear a red one.

“Hi. Is this Vanessa Abrams?” a girl’s voice said on the other end of the phone.

“Yes. Who’s this?” Vanessa stood in front of her bedroom mirror and held the red shirt up to her chest. She hadn’t worn anything but black in two years. Why should she start now?

Please?

“It’s Serena van der Woodsen.”

Vanessa stopped looking at herself and threw the shirt on her bed. “Hey. I thought you were dead. Where the fuck’s my knife, bitch?”

“That’s why I’m calling. I’d like to return it.”

“Uh-huh,” Vanessa said, trying to figure out why Serena van der Woodsen of all people would be calling her up on a Friday night. Didn’t she have a ball to go to or something? Some fête?

“I could bring it over now. Tonight. If that’s okay.”

“Sounds good.” Vanessa frowned down at the pale roll of flab above her waistband. She sucked her stomach in. “Although I’m going out pretty soon.”

“Okay.” Serena paused. She didn’t seem very eager to hang up the phone.

“Hey, isn’t tonight that big party at the Frick or whatever the fuck they’re calling that place now?” Vanessa said. “Aren’t you going?”