You're the One That I Want (18 page)

The front door was still open. Out in the hall stood a boy-ish blond boy followed by nine other guys, all wearing navy blue suits and Yale ties, with red roses in their buttonholes.

"Is Serena here yet?" the blond boy asked. Actually, he didn't ask the question so much as sing it.

"Noooot yeeeet" Tiphany sang back. "But cooommmme oonnn innnnn!" She handed each boy a bottle of Grey Goose. "Do you guys dance, too, or just sing?"

Dan stood in the kitchen, chain-smoking and gulping coffee. The party was turning into something out of West Side Story--the construction workers versus the singers. Maybe there'd even be a rumble.

Vanessa perched on the windowsill, filming people. The party was already so random, she couldn't imagine what would happen next.

Then the front door edged open a crack and a white mon-key wearing a little red monogrammed S T-shirt scampered in. "Sweetie!" Tiphany cried, scooping the monkey up in her arms. "Tooter's asleep in the closet. But if he knew you were here, I bet he'd come out and play."

"Anyone want a cigar?" Chuck Bass asked, brandishing a handful of them. "My dad's footman just brought back a whole suitcaseful from Cuba."

His footman?

The Whiffenpoofs and Tiphany's construction team helped themselves to cigars. Tiphany carried Chuck's monkey over to the closet where Tooter was sleeping on the floor, curled up on top of Dan's favorite gray sweater. "No monkey business in there, okay, kids?" she said, closing the door partway to give them some pri-vacy. She turned to Vanessa. "Now how 'bout that piercing?"

Vanessa smiled nervously. "I always kind of wanted one on my lip."

"Done!" Tiphany grabbed one of .her burly construction guys by the shirt. "Ice, needles, vodka, matches. In the bath-room. Go," she ordered, pushing him away again.

Suddenly four blond girls wearing gray Georgetown sweatshirts appeared at the door, holding hands. "Is Blair Waldorf here yet?" one of them asked.

"Not yet," Tiphany replied, as if she'd known Blair all her life. She doled a bottle of vodka out to each girl. "But I'm giving piercings in the bathroom if you want to come."

The four girls glanced giddily at one another, their shining. They'd always wanted matching tattoos. Matching navel pierces would be even better.

"Let's do it!" they cried in unison.

Vanessa put down her camera and followed them down the hall to the bathroom. After all, it was her birthday. Why shouldn't she?

Because it was going to hurt like hell?

b&n

Yale had a full-time baby-nurse who was sharing Myrtle's room, but whenever Blair heard the baby fuss, she'd dash into the room before the baby-nurse even got there and stroke Yale's bald head until she settled down again. She'd been doing it so regularly, the baby-nurse didn't even bother to get up when she heard Yale cry through the baby monitor, for soon enough she'd hear Blair croon, "Who's my little princess?" in a voice no one knew Blair was capable of.

Tonight, though, the baby-nurse would actually have to do her job, because Blair was going out.

"I'll be back in two hours," she promised her tiny sister. The cab let her off on a scrap of Broadway in Williamsburg that could only be described as miserable. Garbage was strewn all over the sidewalk and every doorway was scrawled with graffiti. She supposed that shaven-headed freak Vanessa and her sister thought it was urban and tough and cool to live in a place like this, but Blair could live without urban and tough and cool, thank you very much. Fifth Avenue suited her just fine.

She mounted the pigeon-shit-spattered cement slab that served as a step and buzzed up to Vanessa's apartment. No answer. She buzzed again. Again, no answer. Now what wan she supposed to do?

"I think they left it open," said a familiar voice.

Blair whipped around to find Nate standing below her on the sidewalk. There they were, together, in Brooklyn. It was most unexpected.

As if he wasn't the reason she'd come to the party in the first place.

"I only came by to see who was here. I can't stay for long," she told him hastily. Nate looked kind of tired and unkempt, but in a cute way. Like he'd taken a nap in his clothes. Actually, he looked exactly the way she felt.

"Me too," he said, shyly checking her out with those glit-tering green eyes of his. "You look pretty. I--I like your hair."

Blair touched her hair. He was the only person in the entire universe who'd noticed that it was slightly darker than before. "Thanks."

"So how's everything at home with the baby and all?" Nate asked. He shoved his hands in his pockets as though he wasn't sure what to do with them.

Someone threw a bottle of vodka out of an upstairs win-dow and it splintered on the sidewalk only twenty feet away. Blair stepped down off the cement slab. She wasn't going upstairs, not now.

"Yale is . . ." Her voice trailed off as she struggled to find the right words to describe her little sister. "Perfect," she said finally.

There was a happy sheen in Blair's eyes that hadn't been there before. "I'd really like to meet her sometime," Nate added.

Blair reached for his arm. What were they doing at a party in Brooklyn that neither of them wanted to go to? "Let's go now."

Just then a taxi pulled up and Serena, Jenny, Elisc, and tow guys dressed in matching banana yellow Dolce & Gabbana suits stepped out. Then another cab pulled up and out came four models in Carmen Miranda outfits complete with fruit bowl headdresses. Then another cabload of models, and then the Raves--yes, the entire band, minus the lead singer, who had just quit--pulled up in yet another cab.

"Our Hummer limo broke down so we had to get cabs," Jenny explained to Blair and Nate with a happy giggle.

Blair tightened her grip on Nate's arm and pulled him toward the first empty taxi. "Come on."

Serena winked as they climbed into the backseat. "Be good, you two!"

Blair smiled and let her head fall back against the cab's fake-leather upholstery. Nate's leg was touching hers and her whole body was burning with the warmth of it. She felt kind of like Sandy at the end of the original Grease movie, when she and Danny ride off into the sky in that souped-up car, leaving everyone else at the school carnival. It was always pretty obvious to Blair what Sandy and Danny were about to do next, what with Sandy wearing those black vinyl hot pants and everything. He couldn't keep his hands off her.

"You're the one that I want--ooh, ooh, ooh, honey!"

Nate slipped his hand between Blair's knees and left it there.

Oh, she'd be good all right.

jtravelswithanentourage

Dan hardly recognized his sister. She and Serena burst into the party looking like movie stars in matching turquoise-and-black-striped leggings, white pointy ankle boots, and turquoise leather vests. Their hair was blown out, they had on fake eye-lashes, and their lips were smeared with hot pink lipstick.

Very eighties biker bitch meets the Mod Squad.

.Better still, they were followed by a whole crew of models and fashion people from their photo shoot, and the members of a very hot new band called the Raves. Elise was there, too, wearing the bright orange jumpsuit that Jonathan Joyce had given her as a gift for being such a doll on the shoot.

Jenny sashayed up to Dan and kissed him on the cheek. "Happy birthday!" she squealed, even though she knew per-fectly well it wasn't his birthday. She'd had the time of her life today and she was brimming with adrenaline. "Where's Vanessa?"

Dan tucked his ninetieth cigarette of the evening between his lips and lit it quickly. "In the bathroom, getting pierced," he answered bitterly.

"Wow!" Jenny kissed him on the cheek again. "What a great party!"

The band began to set up their equipment in the mom. Elise came over to drag Jenny away. "If you'll excuse us, Daniel, there's something I'd like to show Jennifer." She grabbed Jenny's elbow. "You've got to see this. It's in the closet."

Would that be two little animals making fuzzy whoopee, perhaps?

Dan didn't know what he'd been so worried about. Jenny was fine. Maybe that was the difference between fourteen and eighteen. When you were fourteen, something that seemed like the end of the world today could be completely forgotten tomorrow. When you were eighteen, your life was that much closer to being over.

Oh, please. He's not even eighteen yet!

The band began to play and immediately people started throwing their bodies around. In the last hour a steady stream of people had trickled in and the apartment was packed with kids from every private school in Manhattan. Now that they were second-semester seniors, it didn't matter whether they knew Vanessa or not. Give them a reason to get crazy and people would turn up.

Dan didn't much feel like dancing or getting crazy. Instead he decided to get drunk. Wandering into the living room, he grabbed a bottle of Grey Goose from Tiphany's half-empty sack and then hunkered by the wall to drink and watch the band play. Chuck Bass was dancing with one of the girls from Georgetown. The girl's newly pierced navel was covered with a Band-Aid and the metal whistle hanging from a chain around her neck kept bobbing up and slapping her in her seriously pugged nose.

Considering her dance partner, that whistle just might come in handy.

A girl in army fatigues, complete with helmet and dog tags, walked up to Dan and saluted. "Have you seen Blair Waldorf?" she asked.

Dan shook his head and took a giant swig of vodka. He wasn't exactly sure how it would manifest itself, but his own brand of craziness was not far off.

s can't keep her boys straight

Serena danced with the two gay stylists from the shoot, their banana yellow suits clashing with her turquoise-and-black leggings in a garish eighties way she just couldn't get enough of.

"Serena?" A tall boy with silver-rimmed spectacles bobbed into her line of vision and took her hand. Serena stopped dancing, her heart all aflutter. It was Drew, from Harvard. Or was it Brown?

"Hi," she said slowly, batting her fake eyelashes at him. She pointed at her crazy striped leggings and pointy white boots. "You see, this is the way I normally dress." She was struggling now to place Drew. Already the boys had blurred together. Was he the xylophone player or the painter?

Drew smiled tightly. He looked sort of uncomfortable in his neatly pressed J. Crew ensemble and brown suede shoes. It was as if he couldn't wait for her to say, Let's blow this joint and go have an intimate cup of coffee someplace nice and quiet.

Serena hesitated. She wanted to be that girl, she really did. The girl who drank coffee with her boyfriend. A couple. But she didn't want it badly enough to miss the party. All of a sudden someone grabbed her around the waist and lowered her into an exaggerated dip. Serena's breath caught in her throat as she gazed up into the square-jawed-jock face of Drew's meathead roommate. "Whoa!" she exclaimed, her eyes wide.

"You remember Wade," Drew said, looking even more uncomfortable than he had before. "He insisted on coming."

Wade pulled her close and kissed her on the lips. Smack! "Aren't you glad?" he demanded.

Serena didn't want to appear easy, but she had to admit that she was glad. The more the merrier, as far as she was concerned. A petite strawberry blond woman with a tidy black Kate Spade purse tapped her on the shoulder. "Do you know Nate Archibald?" the woman asked.

Serena nodded. "He already left." Drew was still standing next to her, hands in his pockets, looking as if he needed something to do. "This is my friend Drew," Serena told the strawberry blond woman. "He goes to--

"Harvard," Drew said, holding out his hand in that geekily charming way of his.

On the other side of the room the Whiffenpoofs began singing backup for the Raves. They sounded fantastic. Serena stood on tiptoe to wave at them and all ten boys blew her a kiss. But wasn't there somebody missing? The artist from Brown. Didn't he love her as much as the others?

Oh, did he ever.

People were huddled by the windows, looking out at something happening down on the street. "Put me on your shoulders?" she asked Wade sweetly.

Wade carried Serena over to the windows and she gazed over the tops of the onlookers' heads to see what all the fuss was about. Down on the street, someone was spray-painting a mural in shades of green and gold. It was Christian. His dark head bent seriously over his work. As the mural took shape it became apparent that it was a portrait of Serena, with fluorescent green butterflies in her hair and gold wings sprouting out of her shoulders, like some sort of glorious angel.

Serena giggled, embarrassed by Christian's gaudy adora-tion, but reveling in it just the same. Maybe it wasn't true love she wanted after all. Maybe it was just . . . love. And that was all around her.

b's teething rattle turns n on

"Walk on this side of the room," Blair whispered. "The floor-boards creak over there."

Nate followed her across the nursery, lit only by a paper moon nightlight, to where Yale lay sleeping in her white lace-covered bassinet. In the corner by the window, the life-size dappled gray pony he'd had sent over from FAO Schwarz stood watching them like a sentry.

The baby was swaddled in a pink blanket and was lying on her back, her face puckered and red and new-looking. "See how her eyes are moving underneath the lids," Blair whis-pered. "She's dreaming."

Nate couldn't imagine what somebody so new to the world could be dreaming about, but he supposed it must be kind of like one of those dreams he had when he was severely stoned. Nothing happened, he just felt stuff. And he always woke up hungry.

Blair reached into the bassinet and retrieved a little silver rattle. It looked like a tiny barbell. "This was mine when I was a baby." She turned it over. "See all the little bite marks?"

She handed the rattle to Nate. At first glance it appeared smooth, but when he looked closely he could see hundreds of indentations. It was no surprise that Blair had been a various teether, obsessive and aggressive right from the start. But there was something calm about her now, as if through soothing the baby she'd learned to soothe herself.