Nothing Can Keep Us Together (14 page)

“And that is why I’m standing here today in a pair of limited-edition Manolo Blahnik dancing shoes and an Oscar de la Renta suit that was tailored just for me,” Blair told her audience with an indulgent smile as she wound up her speech. “Don’t ever let anyone tell you should be happy with what you have. There’s always more, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it all.”

Everyone in the church remained politely silent, as if they weren’t quite sure whether she’d finished her speech or not.

Not that anyone was actually paying attention.

“Hey, is that who I think it is?” Kati Farkas whispered to Isabel Coates. The two girls craned their necks to see over their classmates’ heads as Vanessa appeared in one of the church’s side entrances. Her face was a happy pink and her dress a stunning white. Her wedge-heeled shoes were awesome, and her little white fishnet gloves were outstanding. She looked so different from her normally black-clad, frowning self, she was barely recognizable.

“Yeah, and she actually looks kind of … good,” Isabel remarked reluctantly. “Of course, Blair picked out her dress. Otherwise she probably would’ve come wrapped in a white sheet or something.”

Actually, Vanessa had flirted with the sheet idea, but the Morgane Le Fay dress was so much more flattering.

“Um, that’s all,” Blair announced from her place at the podium. She looked around for Mrs. M, and that’s when she noticed Vanessa. First Blair narrowed her eyes to show that she was pissed as hell at Vanessa for being so late. Then she gave her friend and former roommate a thumbs-up for looking so completely amazing. The audience broke out into weak applause as she made her way back to her seat.

“Thank you, Blair.” Mrs. M said, taking her place at the podium. “And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It is my pleasure to hand out the diplomas to the graduating class. Vanessa Marigold Abrams, don’t bother finding a seat. You’re first.” She flashed Vanessa one of her rare and famous warm smiles, forgiving her most alternative graduating senior for missing half the ceremony.

Marigold?! That’s what you get when you have hippie artist parents.

Vanessa strutted to the front of the room in her awesome shoes, ears burning at the sound of her ridiculous middle name and eyes shiny with tears, full of love for everyone there, including Mrs. M. She couldn’t believe she’d almost missed this. Clasping the burgundy-leather-bound diploma case in her hand, her big brown eyes shiny with happy tears, she hugged the headmistress like she was her long-lost grandma.

“I’m also extremely proud to bestow on you, Vanessa Marigold, the Georgia O’Keeffe Award for creative excellence,” Mrs. M announced. She placed a light blue satin ribbon around Vanessa’s neck. From it hung a gold-plated medal embossed with one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s vaginalike poppies. “Congratulations.”

Vanessa hopped offstage and walked down the center aisle of the church to Blair’s third-row pew. “Can I sit here?”

“Move over,” Blair told Rain. Rain was wearing a white tulle dress that looked like an oversized tutu from Swan Lake. “Your dress doesn’t need that much room.”

“Isabel Siobhan Coates,” Mrs. M called, holding up Isabel’s diploma.

Vanessa wedged herself in beside Blair and grabbed the graduation program out of her hands. “Shit. Sorry I missed your speech.”

No she’s not.

“That’s okay.” Blair tugged on Vanessa’s dress. “Tell me you don’t love this and I’ll totally kill you. You should wear white, like, every day.”

Vanessa blotted her tears with her thumbs and flipped open the burgundy leather case holding her diploma. “Check it out,” she breathed. Both girls studied the gold-embossed piece of parchment paper upon which was printed Vanessa’s name, followed by the date and the name of their school, and then a whole bunch of stuff in Latin. It was totally official looking and totally worthless looking at the same time. All those years of uniforms and too much homework for this?

Vanessa flipped the case closed and held it tight to her chest. She didn’t care—she’d made it! And her whole future lay ahead of her. After taking every film course NYU offered, she’d become a famous indie filmmaker, except she’d stick to true indies—unlike her former mentor, Ken Mogul, who was totally selling out with that teen movie he was making at Barneys. It was a good thing Aaron had broken up with her today, because now she was free to meet all sorts of interesting people from around the globe, and she could experiment with different relationships. After all, wasn’t that what college was all about?

Yeah, maybe. But again, isn’t she kind of forgetting about someone??

Nothing Can Keep us Together

“Serena Caroline van der Woodsen,” Mrs. M called out.

“Shit,” Blair muttered under her breath. Where the fuck was Serena, anyway? She glanced back at the other van der Woodsens. They looked perky and excited. Unbelievably, they still hadn’t quite grasped the fact that Serena was missing.

“Serena? Are you present?” asked the headmistress, scanning the church with her glassy brown eyes. “Has anyone seen Serena?” The pretty, never-quite-reaching-her-potential blonde was forever late for morning assemblies, but one would have thought she could pull it together to be on time for this particular event.

The other girls twittered. No one offered the headmistress an answer. Blair glanced back at Serena’s family once more. Now they looked confused, although the van der Woodsens never lost their cool. Erik jutted his chin at Blair, silently suggesting that she go up to accept Serena’s diploma for her.

“Blair Cornelia Waldorf,” Mrs. M announced sternly. No Constance girl had ever missed graduation before, and she was cross now, very cross. She’d allowed Serena to come back to Constance after she’d been thrown out of boarding school, and now Serena couldn’t even be bothered to turn up for commencement?

Thank goodness Blair’s W came right after Serena’s V. In fact, some would argue Serena’s last name began with W and therefore came after Blair’s. Not that it mattered or that anyone really cared at this point.

Blair went up to the podium to receive her diploma. “I’ll take Serena’s for her,” she whispered, hoping her voice wouldn’t carry over the microphone.

Mrs. M smiled tersely and shook her hand. “That won’t be necessary,” she replied, nodding at something over Blair’s shoulder.

Blair spun around to find Serena sprinting up the aisle in her suit—exactly the same white satin Oscar de la Renta suit with the swishy pleated knee-length skirt that she herself was wearing. And because Serena was practically a foot taller than Blair and they both weighed the same, it looked even better on Serena, despite the fact that she was barefoot, her hair was all over the place, and she’d forgotten her gloves.

“Sorry, Mrs. M!” Serena panted, flashing their headmistress the famously charming smile that had won over everyone from avant-garde artists to the admissions offices at Yale, Brown, Harvard, and everywhere else she’d applied. “Just think—this is the last time I’ll ever be late!”

Blair wanted to slap her for being so charming when she should have been in serious trouble. In fact, Serena probably would’ve failed chemistry and not graduated if it hadn’t been for her. She hated they way they must look standing side by side in their matching suits. People probably thought they’d bought them together or something. One thing was for sure—Blair was definitely making Serena change her outfit before her big party at the Yale Club tonight. No fucking way was she allowing Marcus to see how much better Serena looked in that damned suit.

Mrs. M had had enough. Half an hour of shaking parents’ hands and offering a few lame anecdotes about their sweet, intelligent daughters, and she was off to Woodstock for the summer to watch Vonda weed their heirloom tomato collection wearing only the red embroidered halter top Mrs. M had bought for her at a craft fair last weekend.

“Take your seats, girls,” she ordered, dismissing Blair and Serena.

They walked back to the pews. There was no room for Serena, so she perched on Vanessa’s knee.

“You have my blessings.” Mrs. M blew the seniors a kiss. “And now, class is dismissed!”

Whooopppeeee!

Nothing Can Keep us Together

After the ceremony, Nate did a few bong hits with the other boys in the billiard room over at Jeremy’s, but his heart wasn’t in it. They were all high school graduates, while he was still “diploma pending.” Whatever the fuck that meant.

Leaving them to celebrate without him, he meandered slowly west on Eighty-sixth Street toward home, thankful that his parents had been so pissed off at him for that goddamned asterisk that they’d gone straight up to Mt. Desert Island for the week, leaving him in peace. Up in his room, he began to sort through his cedar walk-in closet. On the shelf above the clothes rail, behind that ridiculous Darth Vader head he’d worn for Halloween two years in a row back in fourth and fifth grade, was the little mahogany pirate’s treasure chest with the brass lock that his uncle Gerard had given him when he was eight, where Nate stowed all his old photographs. He grabbed the clothes rail with one hand and used it to steady himself as he scaled the closet wall with his bare feet, trying to get the fucker down.

The chest spilled open on the floor. There he was on a fishing boat in Prince William Sound up in Alaska two Augusts ago with his arm around his dad, both smiling like losers and wearing dirty yellow foul-weather gear. That was the best time he and his dad had ever had together. Fishing in the weird eleven o’clock twilight, surrounded by ghostly glaciers, and sharing a flask of Scotch on their way back into port. Then there were the pictures of him and Blair. He looking bored and sleepy and embarrassed, with his head on her rose-colored pillows, and she looking crazily ecstatic, with her cheek pressed violently into his ear as she held her camera in front of their faces and snapped the pictures herself.

Then there was the picture of Serena’s elegant, tanned foot with the words Miss you written on it in purple marker that she’d sent him last year while she was still up at boarding school. Nate had kept it, loving her sexy silver toe ring, and loving how he knew it was from her, even though she hadn’t sent it with a note or used a return address or anything. He held the photograph in his hands, trying to invoke that tingly, turned-on feeling he’d felt when he’d gotten it in the mail, but now it was just a silly old photograph that didn’t really invoke anything.

He glanced at the photo of him and Blair again, missing the way they used to kick around together doing stupid things, like drinking way too many vodka tonics before a movie and then running out during the previews because they couldn’t stop laughing. Her new-shoe-and-Kiehl’s-cucumber-skin-cream smell. The way she was so sexy when she was throwing a fit. He wanted her to sit on his lap. He wanted her hands in his pockets. He wanted her to call him at seven o’clock in the morning on a Sunday because she was hyper and couldn’t wait for him to wake up.

He tossed the photos back in the pirate’s chest and closed the lid. Hanging on the clothes rail inside a clear plastic bag was the moss green cashmere sweater Blair had given him last spring. The maid had sent it to the dry cleaners so it would be ready for Nate to wear at Yale in the fall. Nate ripped open the bag and felt inside the sweater’s right sleeve. No, maybe it was the left. Yes, there it was. The tiny gold heart pendant Blair had sewn inside it so that he would always be wearing her heart on his sleeve. Blair probably thought he hadn’t noticed the heart, but he wore the sweater so much, how could he not have? He loved that sweater.

Sounds like the love went beyond knitwear.

Tears began to seep out of the corners of Nate’s green eyes as he grasped the gold heart pendant between his thumb and forefinger and ripped it out of the sweater’s sleeve. His phone rang before he could decide what to do next.

Hopefully nothing too rash.

“Hello?”

“It’s been a rocky year for you, son,” Coach Michaels barked on the other end of the line. “I thought you were over all that drug nonsense. Then you have to go and steal my damned Viagra? What’s wrong with you, boy?”

“I’m sorry,” Nate mumbled almost inaudibly. He was already crying. Coach couldn’t make him feel much worse.

“I had a long talk with Dr. Nesbitt and your dad after the ceremony,” Coach continued, “and you’re one lucky kid.”

Lucky? It wasn’t exactly the first word that came to Nate’s mind.

“Withholding your diploma was just a little slap on the wrist to let you know you can’t get away with stealing my stuff, especially my medication. Your real punishment comes this summer. I’ve got a place out in the Hamptons that could use some fixing up. So if you want to play lacrosse for Yale next year, you gotta be my boy this summer. Live over the garage, work for me, and in your spare time, you’ll be going to the local church for AA meetings.”

Nate swallowed hard. He’d imagined a lazy summer up in Maine getting tan and helping his dad with the boats, but he had no choice. He had to be the coach’s Hamptons bitch for the summer. “Sorry for being such a dick, Coach,” he said earnestly. “I promise to make it up to you.”

Coach Michaels chuckled. “Then at least you’ll be a dick with a diploma!”

Nate forced himself to chuckle along with the old man. Things were going to be okay, he told himself. He’d have his diploma by the end of the summer.

“Thanks, Coach.” He hung up and opened his damp hand to look at the gold heart pendant.

Well, some things were going to be okay.

He sighed the sort of shuddering, exhausted sigh that comes after a long cry and tossed the heart onto his neatly made bed. Then he went back to rummaging through his closet. He was supposed to meet Serena at Blair’s Yale Club party at seven o’clock. Maybe she’d come up with a way to make everything okay.

Without any Viagra.

Nothing Can Keep us Together