Psycho Killer (13 page)

That
is
special.

“They looked like maraschino cherries, they were so bloodshot. No—more like golf balls dipped in ketchup.”

If Blair had to watch Chuck Bass reenact Jeremy Scott Tompkinson’s exploding eyeballs incident one more time, she was going to personally strangle every single one of the eighty-seven partygoers in her living room and then explode her own eyeballs. What was the point of having a party when you hated everyone there? The music on her iPod was old and played out, her mother and Cyrus Rose had drunk all the good champagne and scotch, Kati and Isabel had completely disappeared, Nate still hadn’t shown up, the hired bartender had decided to feature Cosmo-flavored slushies and pickled onions, both of which made her gag, and she was bored, bored, bored.

She watched the hot gay man behind the bar stab at a frozen block of ice cubes with a metal ice pick before dropping the cubes into a blender full of gelatinous pink Cosmo mix. He blended the icy gunk, poured it into a pink plastic Cosmo glass, skewered a pickled onion with a blue plastic cocktail sword, and slung it into the slush.

Bloody eyeball, anyone?

“I’m getting
so drunk
,” squealed a girl Blair had never seen before. The girl seemed to be no older than twelve and she was flirting with the bartender, even though he was so obviously gay. She wore a hideously ’80s blue suede jacket and ugly ruched leggings with zippers on the ankles, and her blond chin-length hair looked like a wig made out of dirty straw. Blair had spent the last hour waiting for Nate to show up so she could kick everyone out of the party and finally have sex, but it occurred to her now that she could just kick everyone out anyway and have a nice mug of hot chocolate in bed with one of her box sets of Stephen King DVDs—
Cujo
,
The Stand
,
Firestarter
,
Thinner
. After all, it was a school night, and this twelve-year-old really ought to have been home in bed.

“Did you hear about the vultures in Central Park?” Chuck Bass intoned from behind her. “Freaking vultures are
breeding
. They’re not endangered. They’re eating the goddamned squirrels and pigeons right out of the fucking trees.”

The bartender worked at another lump of ice with his pick. Blair regarded him enviously. Oh, what she could do to Chuck’s face with that pick.

“My friend better get here quick before I drink too much and embarrass myself,” the twelve-year-old told the bartender. Then she looked up and covered her mouth in surprise. “Whoa. Oh my God. Blair Waldorf is
so not
happy right now.”

Blair followed the annoying girl’s gaze to see what it was she was supposed to be so upset about. Nate and Serena stood in the foyer, cheeks aglow beneath the Waldorfs’ ancient brass chandelier, smiling like assholes. Serena unbuttoned her coat and Nate helped her out of it like the gentleman he was.

Or used to be.

Surely it was only an accident that they had arrived together. But what was Serena doing here in the first place? She was supposed to be having her own lame party.

Serena grinned at Blair and waved. In her hand were Kati’s and Isabel’s cell phones, Kati’s in its tacky red patent leather Coach case and Isabel’s in its Tiffany blue leather sleeve. Blair had always secretly coveted that sleeve.

A warning chill ran up Blair’s spine.

“
I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair back and forth, I whip my hair…!
”

All of a sudden that ridiculous Willow Smith song came on and Serena and a bunch of other girls put their hands on their knees and began to whip their hair back and forth, over and over and over again, with embarrassing zeal.

Blair crossed her arms over her chest. Fucking idiots.

Nate walked over to the bar and ordered a Sam Adams and a Cosmo slushie, presumably for Serena.

Hello? Was she invisible? Blair lit a Parliament and blew smoke in his direction, knowing she would pay for it later when her mother grilled her on which of her so-called friends would dare smoke in the house.

The twelve-year-old girl was whipping her straw hair back and forth right next to Nate’s elbow. She stopped and grinned shyly up at him. “So, are you and Serena like, together now?” she asked loudly enough for Blair to hear. The bartender stabbed at another chunk of ice with his ice pick and then dropped the ice into the blender. Across the expansive living room, Serena was still whipping her gorgeous blond hair all over the place, like Lady Godiva at an orgy.

Blair took a deep breath and approached the bar. “Hello,
Nate,” she hissed, snatching the ice pick out of the ice tray. She turned to the twelve-year-old. “Hello, little blond girl I’ve never seen before. Can you help me with something?”

The girl’s blue eyes lit up. “Really?”

Clutching the ice pick, Blair led her into the kitchen. “I was just thinking,” she said, slowing down to wrap one arm around the girl’s shoulders, “how much I’d love to watch you”—she turned and rammed the ice pick into the girl’s chest, spattering the white tile of the kitchen island with droplets of red blood—“die.”

The girl slumped to the ground, her blue eyes wide and surprised-looking. Blair wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. The body was too big for the trash can, which was Swiss chrome and tubular, and if she dragged it all the way to the big trash can outside the back door, she’d smear blood all over the clean white floor tiles. Besides, the building’s superintendent would see the body and say something to her mom. Behind Blair loomed the wide, farm-style kitchen sink. And on the wall behind the faucet, the switch for the garbage disposal.

All of a sudden the girl groaned and threw up a vomitous mix of Cosmo slushie and blood. It oozed over the toes of Blair’s new black Ferragamo flats.

“Ew. I thought you were dead. Come on, let’s go.” Blair grabbed the girl angrily by the hair and yanked her to her feet.

She forced the girl’s blond head down the drain and flicked on the disposal. Its blades began to grind, sending up sparks as they met bone. Chunks of flesh and bits of hair spattered the white kitchen ceiling.

Just as Blair was feeding the girl’s ankles and feet down the drain, Myrtle, the cook, came in the back door to spy on the party for her employer.

“Blair, what a mess!” Myrtle exclaimed in her singsong Trinidadian accent. She retrieved the mop from the pantry. “Next time you want Bloody Marys, ask me to fix them for you.”

Downstairs in the lobby Dan and Jenny Humphrey were still alive and well, but a little down on their luck.

What else is new?

“Elise promised me she’d get us in,” Jenny insisted as she dialed her Constance Billard classmate once more. Earlier that day she and Elise had hatched a plan to get into Blair’s party, where everyone who was anyone was going to be. Elise would wear her mom’s blue suede jacket and pretend to be an actress. Jenny would wear a V-neck and pretend to be Dan’s date, or, better yet, she’d bump into some cute St. Jude’s boy in the elevator who would refuse to go to the party without her enormous cleavage by his side. Both girls had sworn that whoever got into the party first would help the other girl get in.

Dan was only going because his father would probably send him out later to pick up Jenny anyway. Plus he had nowhere else to be. Plus Serena might be there, even though Jenny had mentioned something about Serena maybe having her own party, although she had a feeling no one was going because oddly the senior girls at Constance were all being sort of mean about Serena coming back and—And that was when Dan had tuned Jenny out.

Dan had never been inside the lobby of such a fancy apartment building. The ceiling was twenty feet high, with elaborate gold moldings and a glittering crystal chandelier. One wall sported an enormous gilded mirror and the other a mural of a stag being chased by a mounted hunt. On a marble-topped table in front of the mirror stood a giant gold and cream china urn
decorated with black pug dog faces and filled with at least one hundred fresh white roses. The floors were a creamy marble that sounded beneath Jenny’s Nine West boots and squeaked under Dan’s Converse sneakers. A doorman wearing white gloves and a gold waistcoat with his hunter green doorman uniform stood by the building’s glass and cast iron front door, while another white-gloved doorman manned the intercom system behind an imposing dark wood and green leather-paneled station.

“I think my friend is up there,” Jenny squeaked timidly at this second doorman. He was seven feet tall, buck-toothed and shriveled, and totally terrifying. “She just called me. She’s like,
waiting
for me.”

“As I said before, you’re too late,” the doorman insisted. “I just received instructions from Miss Waldorf herself. No more guests. The mother will be home soon and Miss Waldorf is going to bed.”

“But it’s only ten o’clock!” Jenny protested. It had taken all her courage to come to the party and she wasn’t giving up easily.

“It is a school night,” Dan mumbled at the floor. He’d been working on a new haiku about his murderous feelings toward Chuck Bass, compounded with his murderous feelings toward himself, compounded with his sister’s taste for raw meat, and illuminated by his love of cigarettes.

Meat is murder
.

I love smoking—which

one of us is better off dead?

Dan still wasn’t sure about the first line. He’d be happy to go home and ponder it some more.

“Oh, be quiet,” Jenny snapped, as if reading his mind. She stabbed at the buttons on her cell phone. Stupid Elise. Jenny should have guessed she was lying. Elise was probably already tucked in bed with her teddy bears, like the immature baby that she was, dead to the world.

Oh, she’s dead all right.

The doorman glanced at his watch, which was gold and looked like it had been keeping perfect time for all of the four thousand years he’d been a doorman.

“It would probably be best for you to take it outside,” he told Dan politely but firmly.

“It”? Dan wanted to protest for Jenny’s sake, but feared the insults would only get worse. “Let’s just go,” he whispered, leading his sister toward the door. Chances were Serena wasn’t even at the party anyway, and she was the only reason he’d come.

If only they’d lingered in the lobby a moment longer.

After killing Elise, Blair asked Myrtle to remove the food and tell the bartender to stop serving. Then Blair called down to the doorman requesting that no additional guests be allowed up. Serena was still dancing, the center of a hub of gyrating boys and girls, while Nate watched from the bar. She was acutely aware that if she stopped dancing every boy in the room might stop looking at her. In addition, she might have to talk to Blair, who might be sort of mad at her for killing Kati and Isabel, Blair’s loyal followers.

She might.

Blair stepped in front of Nate, blocking his view. “Remember the last time you were over? When we were on my bed?” she asked. She stole a sip of Nate’s beer even though beer tasted like
moldy socks. All that activity in the kitchen had given her quite a thirst.

Nate nodded. He remembered.

“Didn’t we start something and sort of not finish it?” Blair elaborated.

Nate frowned and then shrugged his shoulders. He was so used to Blair almost having sex with him but never actually having it that he didn’t believe she ever intended to do it. “Maybe,” he said.

Blair stepped forward and put her hands on his chest. “Well, I want to do it now.” She frowned. “Actually, not now—my mom will be home in a minute and I really need to clean up and take a bath. This Friday. I want to do it on Friday.” She lifted her chin and gazed up into Nate’s pretty green eyes. Every time she got this close to him she could not stop smiling. “It’s going to be Friday the thirteenth,” she added kinkily.

Nate smiled back and kissed her smiling red mouth. He could never resist when Blair was being all coy and sweet and suggestive and smiley. It made him want to be all coy and sweet and suggestive and smiley right back. “Okay,” he agreed. “Sounds like fun.”

Across the living room Serena saw them kissing and stopped dancing. She stepped into the hall to retrieve her coat. Guests milled around, wondering whether to stay or go now that the bar had run dry. Serena buttoned her coat. The elevator was crowded. The lobby was bright. Sadness stabbed at her broken heart as she walked up the quiet, leaf-strewn sidewalks of Fifth Avenue toward home, alone.

“You’re so full of it, Dan,” Jenny told her brother. They were sitting at the kitchen table in their large and crumbling tenth-floor, four-bedroom West End Avenue apartment. It was a beautiful old place with twelve-foot ceilings, lots of sunny windows, big walk-in closets, and huge bathtubs with feet, but it hadn’t been renovated since the 1940s. The walls were water-stained and cracked, and the wood floors were scratched and dull. Ancient, mammoth dust bunnies had gathered in the corners and along the baseboards like moss. Once in a while Jenny and Dan’s father, Rufus, hired a cleaning service to scrub the place down, and their enormous cat, Marx, kept the cockroaches in order, but most of the time their home felt like a meandering, neglected attic. It was the kind of place where you’d expect to find lost treasures—ancient photographs, vintage shoes, or the skeleton of that chemistry teacher who took a sudden early retirement after giving you a D-minus on the final last year.

Jenny was eating raw hamburger meat with a grapefruit spoon and drinking a cup of cinnamon tea. Ever since she’d gotten her period last spring, she’d had the weirdest cravings. And everything
she ate went straight to her boobs. Dan was on his fourth cup of Folgers instant coffee made with lukewarm tap water and eight teaspoons of sugar. He worried about his little sister’s eating habits, but he never ate anything at all, so what did he know?

Vanessa Abrams’s short film script, the film he was supposed to star in, lay on the table in front of him. He wouldn’t actually have to speak in the movie—thank goodness—because Vanessa was narrating the whole thing herself, but she’d asked him to read it anyway. Over and over the same lines popped out at him:
“
Life is fragile and absurd. Murdering someone’s not so hard.”