Psycho Killer (22 page)

Oh, don’t be a spoilsport. Gossip is sexy. Gossip is good. Not everybody does it, but everybody should!

Dan headed back across Broadway toward school. Chuck Bass was standing outside the school doors with Jeffrey Prescott and Roger Paine, smoking Marlboros.

“Just wait ’til I get her up in my suite,” Chuck was saying. “She can slice me and dice me as many ways as she wants to.”

Dan paused to eavesdrop, pretending to check the messages on his phone.

“You think Serena could really off someone?” Jeffrey said. “Like, with her bare hands?”

“Bare hands. Bare everything!” Chuck crowed.

“Shit.” Roger shook his head. “You think she’s the one making all those Constance babes disappear?”

Chuck shrugged his shoulders. “Only chicks gone are the ugly ones, so it’s not like I’m heartbroken.”

“Survival of the fittest!” Jeffrey shouted, slapping palms with Chuck.

Dan lit another cigarette and then tossed it aside without smoking it. He felt a little sick. Not because he believed what Chuck and his friends were saying, but because for the first time in his life he truly felt angry enough to kill someone other than himself. Angry enough that he could taste Chuck’s rich, coppery blood as it streamed out of the stumps left by his severed tongue and amputated pigskin loafer–wearing feet.

Or maybe it was just instant coffee residue, all gunked up on his molars.

A bus stopped at a light right in front of the school. First Dan noticed Serena’s name. It was scrawled in blue, in messy girl’s handwriting on a giant black and white poster of what looked like a rosebud. It was beautiful.

He turned his attention back to Chuck.

Oh roses so red—

my blood is not blue
.

You fuck with me, and I’ll kill you
.

Jenny felt like a zombie on Thursday from missing a whole night’s sleep, but she was actually still alive, which was something to be proud of these days. She’d gotten all the
Kiss Me or Die
invitations done—calligraphied by hand, with a perfect little heart-shaped blood red ink spatter on each one—and now she and Dan each had an invitation of their very own. The rest of the invitations were all wrapped up in a plastic Gristedes bag in her backpack, ready to be hand delivered to Blair Waldorf the moment Jenny saw her.

It was already lunchtime and Jenny was ravenous. Last night, in a rare eating frenzy, her pig of a brother had devoured all her raw ground beef. The only meat left was a can of Marx’s vile-smelling Fancy Feast, but Marx had gobbled it right up the minute Jenny spooned it into a bowl.

Bypassing the grilled cheese sandwiches and Dannon yogurt, Jenny wrangled two raw hot dogs and three raw tuna sushi rolls out of the Constance lunch ladies, then stopped off at the salad bar to stock up on boiled eggs. She carried her feast to the far corner of the cafeteria, looking for a quiet table where she could make up the homework she’d skipped last night.

With only her backpack for company, she began pulling raw tuna strips out of their seaweed and cold rice casing, wrapping them around pieces of raw hot dog before stuffing the whole lot into her mouth. As she chewed she began to notice how eerily quiet the cafeteria was.

Every day it seemed to grow quieter and quieter. Some of the loudest girls were dead or missing. Some girls’ parents were keeping them home from school, just to be safe. In less than a week the noise inside the cafeteria had gone from loud hysterics to hushed information-infused whispers to a completely dead and stony silence.

It was totally creepy. But at least it meant Jenny could get a good table.

She whacked a boiled egg against her tray and began to peel it, scattering broken white eggshells all over her navy blue uniform and onto her plate. The egg was not quite hard-boiled, and she quickly sucked out the yellow yolk, reveling in the almost-raw taste of the soft, sulfuric gunk.

A cold draft ran through the cafeteria. Goosebumps stood out on her arms and legs. Did someone open a window?

Jenny shivered and glanced behind her, choking when she saw Serena van der Woodsen coming out of the lunch line and making a beeline for her table. Was Serena actually going to sit with her, live and in person?

More to the point: Would she live to tell the tale?

Jenny put down her mangled egg and tried to compose her face into a semi-cool expression. Deep breath in, deep breath out.

“Hi!” Serena beamed at Jenny and set down her tray. “You’re the girl from the bathroom.”
You’re lucky to be alive
, she almost added, but she didn’t want to be mean.

God, Serena was beautiful. Her hair was the pale gold color some of the other Constance girls tried to achieve by spending four hours at the hair salon. But hers was natural. Or maybe she was some kind of albino.

“Hungry?” Serena asked, pointing at Jenny’s messy tray.

Jenny nodded, speechless in the presence of such greatness.

“I can’t eat again ’til dinner,” Serena sighed, resting her beautiful head on her arms. “I ate six cookies this morning. I’m such a pig.”

Jenny poked at her hot dogs. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten two. Serena probably thought she was some sort of glutton. And she couldn’t believe they were talking. Like friends. Just hanging out.

“Oh!” Jenny exclaimed, remembering the invitations. She reached into her backpack and pulled out the Gristedes bag. “I just finished the invitations for that big party next week that everyone’s going to,” she gushed, eager to impress.

Serena lifted her head. “What party?”

Jenny opened the Gristedes bag and sorted through the stack of thick, cream-colored envelopes. “You know, the one Blair Waldorf’s running?” She came to an envelope with Serena’s name printed on it in ornate gold calligraphy. The red ink spatter heart on this one was particularly well executed. She handed the envelope to Serena. “The guest list Blair gave me still had your boarding school address. I was going to slip it into your locker or something,” she said, blushing. “But now that you’re here…”

Serena frowned down at the envelope in her hand. “Thanks.”

You sound like a stalker
, Jenny scolded herself.
Slip it into her locker? You didn’t have to say that!

Serena ripped open the envelope and read the invitation inside, her eyes dark, her forehead creased.

Oh, God. She thinks it’s ugly!
Jenny panicked, all the while taking mental notes on how to act as mysterious, poised, and cool as Serena was acting at that very moment.

If only she could have heard the livid thoughts in Serena’s head, railing against Blair.
She didn’t want me to come to the party. She didn’t even tell me there
was
a party. How selfish. How mean. She totally deserves to die
.

“Ginny? What are you doing?”

Both Jenny and Serena turned to look. Blair stood just a few feet away, her foxlike face flushed and angry-looking.

“Ginny, can I talk to you for a moment in private?” Blair called. “We can go in the darkroom.”

Serena grabbed Jenny’s arm protectively. “Don’t go anywhere with her,” she whispered. “You stay right here.”

“Ginny?” Blair intoned angrily. “I’m speaking to you.”

It was terrifying to disobey Blair Waldorf, but Jenny listened to Serena and stayed frozen in her spot. She held up the Gristedes bag. “I have the invitations,” she told Blair. “See? They’re all done.” She pointed at Serena’s. “I think they turned out great.”

Blair came over and snatched away the flimsy Gristedes bag. “I hope you’re not handing them out to just anyone,” she snapped.

Jenny’s face flushed. The cafeteria was even quieter than it had been before.

Serena wondered what would happen if she grabbed Jenny’s fork and stabbed Blair in the neck. It probably wouldn’t kill her. She could throw her through a window afterwards, but that might not kill her either.

“Serena was on the list,” Jenny said defensively.

Blair smirked. It was all she could do to restrain herself from wrapping the dinky plastic Gristedes bag around Ginny’s perky little face and suffocating her, but then the party invitations would get creased and that would never do.

“Jenny corrected my address,” Serena said coldly.

“I can see that,” Blair replied.

“It sounds like a great party,” Serena enthused fakely.

“It’s a really good cause,” Blair answered fakely back. She glared down at little Ginny, who seemed so thrilled to be caught in the middle of their conversation.
If only I had a pole
, Blair thought.
A long, sharp pole. I could ram it right through Ginny’s rib cage and then right through Serena’s too. Right into the wall, where I’d let them hang, like warning flags: Don’t mess with Blair Waldorf, or you’ll wind up stuck on a pole, hanging from the wall
.

“Guess I better get a new dress,” Serena observed, rising to her feet. She was taller than Blair, and she was wearing her boots. She could probably stomp Blair to death if she stomped for long enough.

“Me too!” Jenny clapped her hands together. Life was full of miracles. As long as she could stay alive, it would only get better and better. She grinned giddily up at Serena. “Blair let me make an invitation for myself.”

“You’re lucky,” Serena said, reaching for Jenny’s fork.

“Really lucky,” Blair agreed, stuffing the invitations into her red Longchamp tote. She’d wanted to strangle little Ginny in the darkroom to pay her back for intervening, but the invitations had to be stamped and mailed, and she was running out of time. She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at Serena and attempted a smile.

“See you tomorrow night?”

Serena stabbed the fork into one of Jenny’s hot dogs and attempted to smile back. “I can hardly wait.”

Tension like this might call for something sharper than a fork.

S
AND
B
HEAT UP THE HOT TUB!

This just in from an anonymous source: Apparently, back when they were still inseparable,
S
and
B
used to spend a lot of time together in the hot tub. I’m not talking about the wooden barrel hot tub Olga and Jurgen have out back behind the cottage in Sweden. I’m talking about the notoriously big and swanky marble hot tub in
C
’s suite at the Tribeca Star. Between soakings,
S
and
B
were known to beat each other’s naked bodies raw with green willow sticks. Two silly drunk girls practicing a sacred Eastern European spa treatment, or an expression of their true feelings? Maybe they’ve hated each other all along!

LADY GAGA,
S
, AND ME

In case you haven’t seen the poster plastered on all the buses, taxis, and subways all over town, the original photo of
S
can still be seen at the Whitehot Gallery in Chelsea, amidst portraits of other notorious scenesters, myself included. Bet your bottom, darling! The Remi brothers know a good one when they see it. And now you can see it too. Wink, wink. An icon knows a good icon when she sees it, and I can tell you, like Warhol before them, the Remis are icons-in-the-making. All they have to do now is die young, which isn’t such a challenge these days.

YOUR E-MAIL

SIGHTINGS

Little
J
buying twelve pounds of ground chuck at
Gristedes
. Fueling up for a big night,
J
?
N
hanging out with
C
at a bar over on First Avenue. Guess
N
wants to keep his eye on
C
so
C
doesn’t spill the beans, huh?
V
filming rats in the subway. No comment. And
B
, buying candles and body paint at
Ricky’s
on Seventy-eighth and Lex for her big night with
N
. Body paint? No comment.