You're the One That I Want (7 page)

"I can't believe this is happening," Vanessa breathed for the thirtieth time that night. She and Dan hadn't stopped kissing since he'd walked up to her in the bar and kissed her neck, and now they were tearing each other's clothes off in one of the Pier Hotel suites downstairs. She wanted to tell him how much she'd missed him and how stupid it was that they'd stopped talking. And even though sex in a hotel suite this close to graduation was tacky and cliched, it felt like the best way.

The rooms in the Pier had round windows looking out onto the Hudson, wrought-iron anchors hanging from the walls, and sea green carpeting. The complimentary soap, shampoo, and body lotion in the bathroom were all seaweed-based, and the bed linens were a light, oceanic blue. Brushed-steel ceiling fans spun round and round from the ceilings, cooling off what was turning out to be a very hot night.

Dan yanked his belt out of his jeans and sent it snaking across the room. He was drunk with happiness and horny as hell. Bounding onto the bed, he jumped up and down on it a few times. "Whoo!" he shouted. "Whoo-hoo!"

Vanessa grabbed him around the knees and he fell down on top of her, grappling with her shirt and yanking it off over her head.

"Dude! I survived!" some drunken doofus shouted. Next door, a bunch of guys in Bowdoin and Bates T-shirts were playing stupid drinking games while they watched the Nets game on TV.

"If we lived together, we could do this every day," Dan realized out loud as he watched Vanessa unhook her black lace bra.

Vanessa tossed the bra on the floor and crossed her arms over her bare chest. "Did you ask your dad?"

"Yup," Dan replied happily. "He said okay. But if my grades slip and if I don't have dinner with him and Jenny at least twice a week, I have to move back home." He pulled Vanessa's arms away and dove headfirst into her chest. Vanessa hugged his shaggy head and closed her eyes. She'd only drunk a Coke that night, but the bed was still spinning. She and Dan were in love again. They were moving in together. They might even go to NYU together. It was almost too perfect to believe.

And how often does anything ever stay that perfect? gossipgirl.co.uk

topics previous next post a question reply Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

HEY, PEOPLE!

Love how half the senior class is absent from school today. I also wanted to point out something you may have missed during last night's debauchery. Someone--actually a known-him-since-kindergarten friend of ours--was conspicuously absent from last night's proceed-ings. Here's why.

The dude who got in NOWHERE

He's always been so cocky about everything, no one had the slight-est doubt he'd get in wherever he wanted to go. It never occurred to any of us that his cockiness might offend his teachers so much that they refused to give him recommendations; that his over-the-top I'm-a-male-runway-model style of dressing and suggestions that his fam-ily buy the school he decided to attend outright might turn interview-ers off; that he was too cocky or too lazy or both to take the SAT more than once; or that he'd send with his applications a videotape of him-self overacting in an interschool musical that he didn't even star in, instead of an application essay.

And so he was rejected. Not four or five times, but nine. Nine rejections. Ouch! Even the worst scumbag deserves some sympathy for that. But I'm sure he'll find a way to wheedle his way in somewhere. He always does.

Your e-mail

Dear GG,

I'm an administrator at a prestigious East Coast university and i'm traveling to New York this weekend to meet a prospective student. Our university wants him to attend next fall, so it's mandatory that I make a good impression. I hope you don't mind my asking, but what do you value most in a school? More impor-tant, what should I wear this weekend?

--adminchik

Dear adminchik,

I did enough college interviewing not to want to take your ques-tions seriously if I don't have to. What are the fries like in your school's dining halls? If you ask me, that's pretty important. As for what to wear while you're wooing this highly desirable appli-cant? Orange is the new black.

--GG

Sightings N escorting B home from True West, while the rest of us were only just getting the party started. S dancing by herself at the aforemen-tioned party--although I'm pretty sure that group of guys behind her wanted to think they were dancing with her. J loading up on nail pol-ish, hair-removal kits, and henna at the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade on Broadway. V and D stumbling out of the Pier Hotel this morning, just in time for school. C, with his monkey, drinking alone on the ter-race of his Sutton Place apartment. We might even feel sorry for him if he weren't so impossible to feel sorry for.

Oops, that's the bell. More later!

You know you love me,

gossip girl see j bounce

Jenny had always been lauded for her excellent calligraphy and detailed, accurate copies of the major works of classic artists. The handy thing about being artistic and a good copier was that she could forge notes, like this morning's note from her dad about a supposed "allergist appointment" downtown. She sniffled grotesquely as she handed it to her math teacher, Ms. Hinckle. In the back of the room, Elise tucked her straw-thick blond hair behind her ears and pre-tended not to eavesdrop.

"Next time, try to schedule your appointments after school," Ms. Hinckle instructed, dropping the note on her desk. She waved Jenny away. "Now shoo."

"Thanks," Jenny responded sheepishly. Ms. Hinckle was old and treated all of the girls like her grandchildren, bak-ing them oatmeal cookies and making them Christmas cards and caramel apples. Jenny felt kind of bad taking advantage of the kindly teacher, but her career was at stake. This was important!

The go-see Serena had e-mailed her about was in a photog-rapher's studio on West Sixteenth Street. A bunch of tall skinny girls with pouty lips and blond hair were smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk downstairs. Models, Jenny thought, trying not to feel intimidated.

She rang the buzzer for the third-floor studio and was buzzed into a dark space that looked like some sort of loading dock with a corrugated-steel-lined freight elevator. Jenny stepped onto the elevator and pressed 3, trying not to feel as terrified as she actually did.

"Hello?" A tall, pointy-chinned woman wearing a white patent leather beret, black leather short shorts, and white knee-high suede boots greeted Jenny as she stepped off the elevator. "Are you lost?"

Jenny realized she probably should have changed out of her Constance uniform, but it was too late now. "I'm here for the go-see?" She still wasn't even sure what a go-see was exactly, but it certainly sounded cool.

"Oh." The woman looked her up and down. "May I see your book?"

Jenny glanced down at her book bag. "My book?"

The woman gave her the once-over again, and pointed to an empty chair between two bored-looking blond models. "Sit down. I'll call you when he's ready." Then she stepped behind a white screen where Jenny could see a camera flash flashing and the shadows of bodies moving around the room. Suddenly a cacophony of hysterical laughter bounced off the studio's pounded tin ceilings, giving Jenny the shivers.

She glanced at the girl next to her. The girl was chewing gum, her eyelids drooping heavily like she'd been up all night. Jenny looked away and tried to make her eyelids droop in the same cool, affected way, but her eyeballs kept rolling back in her head. More Night of the Living Dead than cool, bored model.

The woman in the beret came out from behind the screen. "You." She pointed at Jenny.

Jenny blushed and glanced apologetically at the other girls who'd gotten there before her. Then she followed the woman behind the screen.

The screened-off part of the studio had brick walls painted white and a wood floor. In the center of the room was an antique-looking red velvet chaise lounge, and around the chaise lounge spotlights on tripods and silver reflective screens were set up.

"Take off your sweater and lie down," a stocky man with a blond goatee ordered, already squinting at her through a huge Polaroid camera.

Her heart pounding, Jenny put down her bag and folded her cardigan on top of it. Then she sat down on the edge of the red velvet chaise lounge, ashamed of how pale and knobbly her bare knees looked in the harsh light. "Lie down?"

"On your back," the photographer directed, kneeling in front of her only a few feet away.

Lie on her back? She couldn't possibly, not in the only moderately supportive cotton bra she was wearing. What if that horrible thing happened with her boobs, where each enormous breast oozed over her ribcage and into her armpits, causing her to look completely deformed? She scooted back on the chaise and propped herself up on her elbows in a position she decided was comparable to lying down.

It also made her boobs stick out even farther than they already did.

"Good enough," the photographer muttered, slapping the Polaroids he'd already taken down on the floor and crawling toward her to take some more.

Jenny squeezed her legs together so he wouldn't be able to ncc her underwear. "What kind of expression should I make?" she asked timidly.

"Doesn't matter," the man answered as he slapped down more film. "Just keep your shoulders back and your chin up."

Jenny's arms were beginning to tremble with strain, but she didn't care. The photographer seemed to like her. He was i rearing her like a real model.

"All right. We're done," he said finally, standing up. "What's your name anyway?"

"Jennifer," Jenny answered. "Jennifer Humphrey."

The man nodded at the woman in the beret and she jotted something down on her clipboard.

"May I see the pictures?" Jenny asked, pointing at the Polaroids lined up on the wood floor. Each one was covered with a black piece of film paper that had to be peeled away to see the image.

"Sorry, honey, those are mine," the photographer told her with an amused smile. "I want to see you here next Sunday. Ten a.m. Got it?"

Jenny nodded eagerly and slipped on her sweater. She wasn't completely sure, but it sounded like she'd just been hired as a model for a photo shoot!

Or at least some part of her had been hired.

"So what was the go-see for?" Serena asked when Jenny saw her at peer group during lunch later that day. "I'm sorry I couldn't find out more info. My model friends are pretty lame that way."

Jenny put her hand over her mouth. "I totally forgot to ask. But it was so great. Everyone was really nice to me, like I was a real model and everything."

"Okay, but you should find out at the shoot what it's for," Serena advised. "One girl I know thought she was doing a gum commercial and it turned out it was for maxipads. I guess she was confused between Carefree and Stayfree."

Jenny frowned. Maxipads? No one had said anything about maxipads.

"And don't let the stylist dress you in anything you're not comfortable with. I know that Les Best ad is good, but come on, a sundress in February? I was sick for like three weeks afterwards," Serena added.

The rest of the ninth-grade girls in peer group giggled politely. They loved hearing Serena's modeling stories, but they were superjealous of Jenny and didn't want to encourage her. How come the shortest girl in the class, the one with curly, boring brown hair and those ridiculously huge breasts, was now, like, a model'? It made no sense.

"I bet it's for a plus-size bra catalog and she's too stupid to know," Vicky Reinerson whispered to Mary Goldberg and Cassie Inwirth.

"I'm sure it's just for something basic, like orange juice," Cassie assured Jenny, trying to keep a straight face.

Elise was jealous, too, but she was trying hard not to show it. "Where's Blair?" she asked Serena in an effort to change the subject.

Blair was Serena's peer group co-leader. Serena shrugged. "I don't know. She's kind of mad at me right now."

Mary, Cassie, and Vicky nudged one another under the table. They loved being the first to find out about Serena and Blair's fights.

"I heard Blair didn't get into any of the colleges she applied to. Her dad's sending her to France right after gradu-ation so she can work for him," Mary announced.

Serena shrugged again. She knew from experience how stories got distorted and how quickly rumors spread. The less she said, the better. "Who knows what she'll do." Jenny was still mulling over the maxipad issue. Did she really mind if the photo shoot next weekend was for something uncool, like frozen fat-free TV dinners or zit cream? At least it was a start. How else was she going to get discovered?

"Stop being so paranoid," Elise hissed at her, even though I hey weren't even supposed to be talking to each other. Ever since they'd become friends two months ago, Elise had had the uncanny ability to read Jenny's mind.

Talk about annoying.

Jenny glanced at Serena. The ethereally pretty senior had once had an unmentionable part of her body photographed by a pair of famous photographers, and the picture had wound up on the sides of buses and on top of taxis all over the city. It was one of the things that made Serena the coolest girl in the entire city, or maybe even the universe! A maxipad ad was the same kind of thing.

Sort of.

the stuff no one needs to know

"Forget your tender breasts, your swollen ankles, your stretch marks. Imagine your buttocks are balloons that are being deflated. Let go. Breathe ouuut."

Blair refused to imagine any such thing. It was bad enough lying on the floor with a bunch of pregnant women in their stinky stocking feet, all moaning like overfed cows-- there was no need to degrade the situation even further by involving her buttocks.

On the floor to her right, Blair's mother giggled. "Isn't this Jin?"

A blast.

Blair felt like hitting her. She'd taken a "personal day" and stayed home from school, too upset about being wait-listed at Yale to face her classmates, especially Serena. But after six hours of Newlyweds reruns, an entire carton of Haagen-Dazs fat-free chocolate sorbet, and now this, she wished she'd gone to school.