Psycho Killer (17 page)

“No extracurriculars? But what are you doing to improve yourself?”

Serena gave Ms. Glos a polite, blank look. Who said she needed improving?

“I see. Well, we’ll have to get you involved in
something
, won’t we?” Ms. Glos said. “I’m afraid the colleges aren’t going to even look at you without any extracurriculars.” She bent over and pulled a big loose-leaf binder out of a drawer in her desk and began flipping through pages and pages of flyers printed on colored paper. “Here’s something that starts this week. ‘Feng Shui Flowers, the Art of Floral Design.’ ”

She looked up at Serena, who was frowning doubtfully. “No, you’re right. That’s not going to get you into Harvard, is it?” She pushed up the sleeves of her blouse and flipped briskly through the binder’s pages. She wasn’t about to give up after only one try. She was very good at her job.

Serena gnawed on her thumbnail. She hadn’t thought about this. That colleges would actually need her to be anything more than she already was. And she definitely wanted to go to college.
A good one. Her parents certainly expected her to go to one of the best schools. Not that they put any pressure on her—but it went without saying. And the more Serena thought about it, the more she realized she really didn’t have anything going for her. She’d been kicked out of boarding school, her grades had fallen, she had no idea what was going on in any of her classes, and she had no legal hobbies or cool after-school activities except browsing exotic weaponry websites, giving herself Dead Sea mud facials, taking catnaps, and hooking up with Nate. Her SAT scores sucked because her mind always wandered during those stupid fill-in-the-bubble tests, and when
she took them again, they would probably suck even worse. Basically, she was screwed.

What about her death toll? Surely that would stand out on an application.

“What about drama? Your English grades are quite good; you’d like drama,” Ms. Glos suggested. “They’ve only been rehearsing this one for a little over a week. It’s the Interschool Drama Club doing a modern version of
Sweeney Todd
.” She looked up again. “How ’bout it?”

Serena jiggled her foot up and down and chewed on her pinky nail. She tried to imagine herself onstage, singing in a musical. She would have to dance too, wear a corset and a hoopskirt. Maybe even a wig. She’d seen
Sweeney Todd
. It was all about a barber who cut his customers’ throats and then pulled a lever in the barber’s chair, dumping the poor customer into the basement where his accomplice, Mrs. Lovett, would dispose of them by making them into mince pies, which she sold at her bakery next door. The drama club at Hanover had staged the musical last winter, providing Serena with much inspiration.

She took the flyer from Ms. Glos’s hand, careful not to touch the paper where the diseased woman had touched it. “Maybe,” she said doubtfully.

Ms. Glos closed the binder. “Your friend Blair Waldorf might be able to help,” she suggested. “Blair has always participated in so many marvelous extracurricular activities. Sometimes I wonder how she does it.” She smiled fondly. “Blair’s applying early admission to Yale, you know.”

Blair
. Serena’s heart rate quickened. Her hackles rose.
Blair
.

Blair was so smart, so perfect, so Ivy League–bound. Blair had Nate. Blair had friends and a sweet little brother who still lived at home. Blair had a pretty pedigreed cat and an amazing selection of Christian Louboutin shoes. Blair was going to Yale, and she was going nowhere.

Hot white anger coursed into Serena’s blood, energizing her body like sugar. She ground her molars together. “Good for Blair,” she said bitterly.

Ms. Glos squeezed her red-tinged nostrils between her thumb and forefinger. “Oh dear, I think I might be having one of my spells.”

Serena tossed aside the perky drama flyer and rose to her feet.

“Here, have a tissue,” she offered and plunged her hand inside the Kleenex box on Ms. Glos’s desk. She yanked out the entire wad of tissues. Folders and papers slid to the floor as she lunged across the desk and began to shove the tissues up the surprised college admissions advisor’s nostrils, into her open mouth, and down her throat. One by one, Serena balled up the tissues and stuffed them in, finishing off with the crumpled
Sweeney Todd
flyer and suffocating the white-haired, jaundiced woman completely.

Winded, Serena clambered off the desk, straightened her skirt, and pulled up her knee socks, feeling slightly aghast at her own behavior. Killing a teacher for suggesting that she try out for a musical was so rash, something Blair would do, not her.

Alas, S. Peer pressure preys on even the best of us.

The final classes of the day were just letting out. The
Sweeney Todd
rehearsal was in the auditorium but didn’t start until six, so that girls who participated in after-school sports could also be in the play. Serena walked up Constance’s wide central stairwell to the fourth floor to retrieve her coat from her locker and see if anyone wanted to hang out. All around her, girls were flying past, a blur of end of the day energy, rushing to their next meeting, practice, rehearsal, or club. Out of habit, the younger girls paused for half a second to say hello to Serena, because ever since they could remember, to be seen talking to Serena van der Woodsen was to be
seen
.

“Hey, Serena,” Elizabeth Young, a junior, sang out before diving down the stairs for Glee Club in the basement music room.
Please don’t follow me
, she prayed silently, crossing her fingers as she went.

“Later, Serena,” muttered Anna Quintana, the sophomore sports prodigy, speed-walking by in her gym shorts and cleats.
Why didn’t I take kickboxing instead of soccer?
she scolded herself.
Then I could take you on
.

“See you tomorrow, Serena,” Lily Reed, a freshman, chirped softly, blushing down at her riding breeches.
Sometimes I have dreams that I’m a knight on horseback and I gallop up to you on my horse and loan you my lance
.

“Bye,” snarled tough Carmen Fortier, one of the few scholarship
girls in the junior class. Carmen was headed to the Art of Floral Design Club, although she told her friends in her Bronx neighborhood that she took karate.
Wow. Her hair is so not extensions. It’s totally real
.

Suddenly the hallway was empty. Serena opened her locker, pulled her plastic Burberry raincoat off the hook, and put it on. Then she slammed her locker shut and trotted downstairs and out the school doors, turning left down Ninety-third Street toward Central Park.

There was a box of orange Tic Tacs in her pocket with only one Tic Tac left. Serena fished the Tic Tac out and put it on her tongue, but Ms. Glos had made her feel so anxious about her future that she could barely taste it.

She crossed Fifth Avenue, walking along the sidewalk that bordered the park. Fallen leaves scattered the pavement. Down the block, two little Sacred Heart girls in their cute red and white–checked pinafores were walking an enormous black rottweiler.

Guard dogs seem to be getting more and more popular these days.

A cluster of vultures flapped up from the treetops and soared over Fifth Avenue toward Constance Billard. Serena thought about entering the park at Eighty-ninth Street and sitting down for a while to kill time before doing her homework.

Better to kill time than people.

But alone? What would she do, bird-watch? Instead, she went home.

Nine ninety-four Fifth Avenue was a stark, white-glove building next to the Stanhope Hotel and directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The van der Woodsens owned
half of the top floor. Their apartment had fourteen rooms, including five bedrooms with private bathrooms, a maid’s apartment, a ballroom-sized living room, and two seriously cool lounges with wet bars and huge entertainment systems.

When Serena got home the enormous apartment was empty. Her parents were rarely home. Her father ran the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather had founded in the 1700s, and both her parents were on the boards of all the big charities and arts organizations in the city. They were out all day and every night, attending meetings and lunches, art openings and cocktail parties, fundraising auctions and dinner dances. Right now Deidre the housekeeper was out shopping, but the place was spotless, and there were vases of fresh cut flowers in every room, including the bathrooms.

An enormous butcher block table stood in the center of the kitchen—oh, what she could do to Blair’s straight-A, extracurricular activity–toned body on that table. First she’d cleave the meat from the bone and then she’d tenderize it into pan-sized fat free filets. The Yale-bound brain she’d pound into a supersized mincemeat pie and deliver to Constance Billard’s headmistress in a pretty blue and white china pie dish….

On the butcher block table was today’s pile of mail. Serena sifted through it. Mostly there were benefit invitations for her parents—white square envelopes printed with old-fashioned typefaces. Then there were the art openings—postcards with a picture of the artist’s work on one side and the details of the opening on the back. One of these caught Serena’s attention. It had obviously been lost in the mail for a little while, because it looked beaten up, and the opening it announced was beginning at 5 P.M. on Wednesday, which was…
right now
.

Serena flipped the card over and looked at the picture of the artist’s work. It looked like a close-up black and white photograph of an eye, tinted pink. The title of the work was
Stefani
, and the name of the show was “Behind the Scene.” Serena squinted at the picture. There was something innocent and beautiful about it, and at the same time it was a little gross, like the bloody hole a ski pole made when she used it to stab someone. Maybe it wasn’t an eye. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was definitely cool. No question about it, Serena knew what she was doing for the next couple of hours.

Within minutes she was stepping out of a taxi in front of the Whitehot Gallery downtown in Chelsea. The gallery was full of twenty-something hipsters in cool clothes, drinking free martinis and admiring the photographs hanging on the walls. Each picture was similar to the one on the postcard, that same close-up black and white eye, blown up, all in different shapes and sizes and tinted with different colors. Under each one was a label, and on every label was the first name of its subject: Mary-Kate, Justin, Arizona, Taylor, Miranda, James, Emma, Lindsay, Stefani, Ed, Kristen.

French pop music bubbled out of invisible speakers. The photo-artists themselves, the Remi brothers, identical twin sons of a French model and an English duke, were being interviewed and photographed for
Artforum
,
Vogue
,
W
,
New York
, and the
New York Times
.

Serena studied each photograph carefully. They weren’t eyes, she decided, now that she was looking at them blown up. But what were they? Belly buttons?

Suddenly Serena felt an arm around her waist.

“Hello, ma chèrie. Beautiful girl. What is your name?”

It was one of the Remi brothers. He was twenty-six years old and five foot nine, the same height as Serena. He had curly black hair and brilliant blue eyes. He spoke with a French and British accent. He was dressed head to toe in navy blue, and his lips were dark red and curved foxily up at the corners. He was absolutely gorgeous, and so was his twin brother.

Lucky girl.

She was still wearing her Constance uniform but Serena didn’t resist when he pulled her into a photograph with him and his brother for the
New York Times
’ Sunday Styles section. One brother stood behind Serena and kissed her neck while the other knelt in front of her and hugged her knees. Around them, people watched greedily, eager to catch a glimpse of the new “it” girl.

Everyone in New York wants to be famous. Or at least see someone who is so they can brag about it later.

The
New York Times
society reporter recognized Serena from parties a year or so back, but he had to be sure it was her. “Serena van der Woodsen, right?” he said, looking up from his notepad.

Serena blushed and nodded. She was used to being recognized. “You
must
model for us,” one of the Remi brothers gasped, kissing Serena’s hand.

“You must,” the other one agreed, feeding her an olive.

Serena laughed. “Sure. Why not?” Although she had no idea what she was agreeing to.

One of the Remi brothers pointed to a door marked PRIVATE across the gallery. “We’ll meet you in there,” he said. “Don’t be nervous. We’re both gay.”

Serena giggled and took a big gulp of her drink. Were they kidding?
They
should have been nervous. She had her switchblade with her.

The other brother patted her on the bottom. “It’s all right, darling. You’re absolutely stunning, so you’ve got nothing to worry about. Go on. We’ll be there in a minute.”

Serena hesitated, but only for a second. She could keep up with the likes of Lady Gaga and Emma Watson, no problem. Chin up, she headed for the door marked PRIVATE.

Just then, a guy from the Public Arts League and a woman from the New York Transit Authority came over to talk to the Remi brothers about a new avant-garde public art program. They wanted to put a Remi brothers photograph on the sides of buses, in subways, and in the advertising boxes on top of taxis all over town.

“Yes, of course,” the Remis agreed. “If you can wait a moment, we’ll have a brand new one. We can give it to you exclusively!”

“What’s this one called?” the Transit Authority woman asked eagerly.

“
Serena
,” the Remi boys said in unison.

“I found a printer who will do it by tomorrow afternoon and hand-deliver each of the invitations so they get there by Friday morning,” Laura said, looking pleased with herself for being so efficient.

“But look how expensive it is. If we use them, then we’re going to have to cut costs on other things,” Blair pointed out. “See how much Alaric is charging us for the flowers?”