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dear gossip girl, 
are u really even a girl? u seem like the type 2 pretend to be a girl when u’r really a 50-yrs-old bored journalist with nothing better 2 do than to harsh on kids like me. loser. 
—jdwack

Dearest Jdwack, 
I’m the girliest girl you’d ever want to meet. And I’m pre-college, pre-voting age, too. How do I know you’re not some fifty-year-old bitter dude with boils on your face taking his inner angst out on innocent girls like me?
—GG

Dear GG, 
I loooove your column so much I showed it to my Dad, who totally loved it!! He has friends who work at Paper and the Village Voice and other magazines. Don’t be surprised if your column gets much, much bigger!! I hope you don’t mind!!! Love always!!! 
—JNYHY

Mind? No way. I’m all about being big. I’m going to be huge. No more crappy one-line parts in interschool plays for me. You might even see me on the side of a bus sometime soon. 
Bring it on!

You know you love me,


dissed at recess

“Yum,” Serena said, eyeing the cookies laid out on a table in the Constance lunchroom. Peanut butter cream, chocolate chip, oatmeal. Next to the cookies were plastic cups full of orange juice or milk. A lunch lady was monitoring the cookies, making sure each girl took only two. This was recess, the daily twenty-minute break Constance gave its girls after second period, no matter what grade they were in.

When the lunch lady’s head was turned, Serena grabbed six peanut butter creams and glided away to stuff her face. It wasn’t exactly a healthy breakfast, but it would have to do. She’d stayed up late the night before trying to read her father’s leather-bound edition of War and Peace so she’d be better prepared for Vanessa’s film.

Whoa, War and Peace is like, two million pages long. Ever heard of CliffsNotes?

Serena saw Vanessa, wearing her usual black turtleneck and bored expression, coming out of the cafeteria kitchen with a cup of tea in her hand. Serena waved a cookie at her, and Vanessa came over.

“Hi,” Serena said cheerfully. “Made up your mind yet?”

Vanessa sipped her tea. She’d been up half the night trying to decide between Serena and Marjorie for the part. But she couldn’t get the look on Dan’s face when he read with Serena out of her head. And no matter how good Serena was, she never wanted to see that look on Dan’s face again. She certainly didn’t want to capture it on film.

“Actually, yes. I haven’t told Marjorie yet,” Vanessa said calmly, “but I’m giving her the part.”

Serena dropped the cookie she was eating on the floor, stunned. “Oh,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Vanessa, scrambling for a decent reason why she was using Marjorie when Serena was obviously perfect for the part. “Marjorie’s really rough and innocent. That’s what I’m looking for. Dan and I thought your performance was just a bit too . . . um . . . polished.”

“Oh,” Serena said again. She could hardly believe it. Even Dan had vetoed her? She had thought they were going to be friends.

“Sorry,” Vanessa said, feeling slightly bad. She knew she shouldn’t have brought Dan into it; he didn’t even know she was turning Serena down. But it sounded more professional that way. Like it wasn’t anything she had against Serena personally, not at all. It was strictly a business decision. “You’re a good actress though,” she added. “Don’t be discouraged.”

“Thanks,” Serena said. Now she wasn’t going to hang out with Dan and practice their lines like she’d imagined. And what was she going to tell Ms. Glos? She still didn’t have any extracurriculars, and no halfway decent college was going to want her.

Vanessa walked away, looking for Marjorie so she could tell her the good news. She was going to have to change the entire film now that Marjorie was her star. It would have to be a comedy. But at least she had saved herself from making Endless Love in the Park After Dark, starring Serena van der Woodsen and Daniel Humphrey. Blech.

Serena stood in the corner of the cafeteria, the remaining cookies crumbling in her hand. Gone With the Wind was a total cheese-fest, and she was too polished for War and Peace. What else could she do? She chewed on her thumbnail, deep in thought.

Maybe she could make a movie of her own. Blair took film—she could help. When they were younger they’d always talked about making movies. Blair was always going to be the star, wearing cool Givenchy outfits like Audrey Hepburn, except Blair preferred Fendi. And Serena always wanted to direct. She would wear floppy linen pants and shout through a bullhorn and sit in a chair with the word “director” on it.

This was their chance.

“Blair,” Serena nearly shouted when she saw Blair by the milk table. She rushed over to her, overcome by the brilliance of her idea. “I need your help,” Serena said, squeezing Blair’s arm.

Blair kept her body stiff until Serena let go.

“Sorry,” Serena said. “Listen, I want to make a movie, and I thought you could help me, you know, with the cameras and stuff, since you take film.”

Blair glanced at Kati and Isabel, who were quietly sipping milk behind her. Then she smiled up at Serena, and shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got activities every single day after school. I don’t have time.”

“Oh, come on, Blair,” Serena said, grabbing Blair’s hand. “Remember, we always wanted to do this. You wanted to be Audrey Hepburn.”

Blair removed her hand and folded her arms across her chest, glancing at Isabel and Kati again.

“Don’t worry, I’ll do all the work,” Serena added hastily. “All you have to do is show me how to use the camera and the lighting and stuff.”

“I can’t,” Blair insisted. “Sorry.”

Serena pursed her lips to keep them from trembling. Her eyes seemed to be growing larger and larger, and her face was turning splotchy.

Blair had seen this transformation in Serena many times as they grew up together. Once, when they were both eight, they had walked the three miles from Serena’s country house into the town of Ridgefield to buy ice cream cones. Serena stepped out of the ice cream shop with her triple strawberry cone with chocolate sprinkles and bent down to pet a dog tied up outside. All three scoops fell splat into the dirt. Serena’s eyes had grown huge and her face looked like she had the measles. The tears had just started to roll, and Blair was about to offer to share her cone with Serena, when the shop owner came out with a fresh cone for her.

Seeing Serena on the verge of tears once more touched something deep inside of Blair, like an involuntary impulse.

“Um. But we’re going out on Friday,” she told Serena. “Drinks around eight at the Tribeca Star, if you want to come.”

Serena took a deep breath and nodded. “Just like old times,” she said, staving off her tears and attempting a smile.

“Right,” Blair said.

She made a note in her mental PalmPilot to tell Nate not to come out on Friday now that Serena was coming. Blair’s new plan was to knock back a few drinks with Serena at the Tribeca Star, leave early, go home, fill her room with candles, take a bath, and wait for Nate to come. And then they’d have sex all night long to romantic music. She’d already burned a sexy CD to play while they did it.

Even the best-bred girls resort to cheesy things like burning CD mixes when they’re losing their virginity.

The bell rang and the girls went their separate ways to class; Blair to her AP Academic-Achievers afternoon, and Serena to her plain old Kraft-American-Slices classes.

Serena couldn’t believe she had just been rejected not once but twice in the last ten minutes. And as she gathered her books from her locker, she tried to come up with a new plan of action. She wasn’t going to give up.

Her picture wasn’t on the side of a bus for nothing.

westsider’s romantic dream up in smoke

Vanessa skipped the first five minutes of Calculus to call Daniel on his cell phone. She knew he had Study Hall fourth period on Thursdays, and he was probably hanging out outside, reading poetry and smoking cigarettes. A girl was using Constance’s pay phone in the hallway by the stairs, so Vanessa slipped outside to the pay phone on the corner of Ninety-third Street and Madison.

The lower-school boys were playing dodgeball in the Riverside Prep School courtyard, so when his cell phone rang, Dan was sitting on a park bench in the traffic island in the middle of Broadway. He’d just cracked open L’Etranger, by Albert Camus, which he was reading in French class that term. Dan was psyched. He’d already read the English translation, but it felt especially cool to read the French original, especially while sitting outside drinking bad coffee and smoking a cigarette in the middle of noisy, smelly Broadway. It was very hard-core. As people walked past in a hurry to get somewhere, Dan felt aloof and removed from the chaos of everyday life, just like the guy in the book.

Dan had dark circles under his eyes because he hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. All he could think about was Serena van der Woodsen. They were starring in a movie together. They were even going to kiss. It was too good to be true.

Poor dude, he had that right.

His cell phone was still ringing.

“Yeah?” Dan said, answering it.

“Hey. It’s Vanessa.”

“Hey.”

“Listen, I have to make it quick. I just wanted you to know that I told Marjorie she has the part,” Vanessa said quickly.

“You mean Serena,” Dan said, flicking his ash and taking another puff of his cigarette.

“No, I mean Marjorie.”

Dan exhaled and clenched the phone tightly. “Wait. What are you talking about? Marjorie, with the red hair and the gum?”

“Yes, that’s right. I haven’t got their names mixed up,” Vanessa said patiently.

“But Marjorie stank, you can’t use her!” Dan insisted.

“Yeah, well, I kind of like that she stank. She’s sort of rough around the edges. I think it will make it feel edgier, you know? Like, not what you’d expect,” said Vanessa.

“Yeah, definitely not,” Dan sneered. “Look, I really think this is a mistake. Serena totally ruled. I don’t know why you wouldn’t want her. She was awesome.”

“Yeah, well, I’m the director, so it’s my choice. And I chose Marjorie. Okay?” Vanessa really didn’t want to hear about how awesome Serena had been. “Besides, I keep hearing all these stories about Serena. I don’t think she’s all that reliable.”

Vanessa was pretty sure that everything she’d heard was completely bogus, but it couldn’t hurt to mention it to Dan.

“What do you mean?” Dan said. “What kind of stories?”

“Like she manufactures her own drug called S, and she has some pretty bad STDs,” Vanessa said. “I really don’t want to deal with that.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Dan said.

“I have my sources,” she said.

A bus roared up Madison on its way to the Cloisters. On the side of it was a massive photograph of a belly button. Or was it a gunshot wound? Scrawled in blue girly writing on the side of the poster was the name “Serena.”

Vanessa stared after the bus. Was she losing her mind? Or was Serena really and truly everywhere? Every last bit of her?

“I just don’t think she’s right for us,” Vanessa said, hoping Dan would come around if she used the word “us.” It was their movie, not hers.

“Fine,” Dan said coldly.

“So, are you coming out with me and Ruby in Brooklyn on Friday?” Vanessa asked, eager to change the subject.

“Nah. I don’t think so,” Dan said. “See ya.” He clicked off and tossed the phone angrily into his black courier bag.

That morning his sister Jenny had stumbled into his room, her eyes all bloodshot and her hands covered in black ink, and dropped an invitation to that stupid falcon party on the floor beside his bed. He’d actually dared to think that since he was going to be Serena’s costar, he might actually take her to the goddamned party. Now, that little dream was all shot to hell.

Dan couldn’t believe it. His one chance to get to know Serena was gone because Vanessa wanted to exercise her artistic license to make the worst film ever made. It was unbelievable. More unbelievable still was that Vanessa, queen of the alterna-rebel scene, had actually stooped to spreading rumors about a girl she barely knew. Maybe Constance was finally rubbing off on her.

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

A bus stopped at a light right in front of him. 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.

a fan meets her idol

Jenny was a zombie on Thursday from missing a whole night’s sleep, but she’d gotten the Kiss on the Lips invitations done, and now she and Dan each had an invitation of their very own.

She was starving, too, having consumed only a banana and an orange for dinner the night before. She’d even skipped her morning chocolate-chip scone. So, at lunch, Jenny wrangled two grilled cheese sandwiches and two coffee yogurts out of the Constance lunch ladies and carried her feast out into the cafeteria, hunting for a seat at a quiet table. While she ate, she had to make up the homework she’d skipped last night.

Jenny chose a table in front of the wall of mirrors on the far side of the cafeteria. None of the older girls liked to eat lunch by the mirrors because it made them feel fat, so that table was always empty. Jenny put her tray down, and was about to start stuffing her face when she noticed a sign-up sheet taped to the mirror.

Jenny lunged for her backpack to find a pen. She scribbled her name at the top of the list—she was the first one to sign up!—and then sat down in front of her heaping tray of food, her heart pounding. Life was full of miracles. It just got better and better.

More miraculous still, Serena van der Woodsen herself was coming out of the lunch line and making a beeline for Jenny, carrying her tray. Was Serena actually going to sit with her? In person?

Deep breath in, deep breath out.

“Hi,” Serena said, beaming at Jenny and setting her tray down.

God, she was beautiful. Her hair was the pale gold color some of the other Constance girls tried to achieve by spending four hours in the hair salon on the top floor of Bergdorf Goodman getting their highlights done. But Serena’s was natural, you could tell.

“Did I just see you sign up to help with my movie?” Serena asked.

Jenny nodded, speechless in the presence of such greatness.

“Well, you’re the only one so far,” Serena sighed, sitting down across from Jenny, facing the wall of mirrors. She didn’t have to worry about feeling fat when she ate. She didn’t have any fat. She raised her golden eyebrows at Jenny. “So, what can you do?”

Jenny poked at her grilled cheese. She couldn’t believe she’d gotten two sandwiches. Serena probably thought she was a disgusting pig.

“Well, I’m pretty artistic. I did the school hymnals, you know, in calligraphy? And I’ve got some photographs in Rancor this year, and a short story,” Jenny explained.

Rancor was Constance’s student-run arts magazine. Vanessa Abrams was the editor.

“Oh, and I just did the invitations for that big party next week that everyone’s going to,” Jenny said, eager to impress. “Blair Waldorf asked me to do them. Actually . . .” Jenny reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope with Serena’s name printed on it in ornate calligraphy. “The guest list Blair gave me still had your boarding school address. I was going to put it in your locker or something,” Jenny said, blushing. “But now that you’re here . . .” She handed the envelope to Serena.

Do I sound like a stalker? Jenny wondered.

“Thanks,” Serena said, taking the envelope. She opened it and read the invitation inside, her eyes dark, her forehead creased in a frown.

Oh, God. She thinks it’s ugly! Jenny thought, panicking.

Serena put the invitation in her bag and picked up her fork again, looking distracted. She took a bite of lettuce and chewed on it.

Jenny was 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.

“Wow,” Serena said finally, still munching her lettuce. “Okay, you’re hired.” She held out her hand and smiled sweetly at Jenny. “I’m Serena,” she said.

“I know,” Jenny said, blushing even redder. “I’m Jenny.”

Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.

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