Authors: Cecily von Ziegesar
Tags: #Young Adult Fiction, #Girls & Women, #Lifestyles, #City & Town Life, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Thrillers & Suspense, #JUV001000
Psycho Killer (34 page)
“Don’t,” Chuck pleaded once more, his hands and feet scrambling on the slick tile. Half kneeling and half standing, he slipped and fell forward onto the outthrust knife. Jenny let go of the knife’s blue steel hilt. It stuck out of Chuck’s torso like a dart in a bull’s-eye.
Serena lunged forward and grabbed the knife’s hilt. She twisted it right and then left, gutting and disemboweling him. Chuck collapsed on the blood-spattered marble tile, smashing his skull. His guts were on the floor. His eye patch had fallen askew, revealing a lidless rolling eyeball. Serena raised her foot and crushed the good eye with the pointy red stiletto heel of her gold Louboutins.
“Asshole,” she said.
Desperate to participate in the downfall of his most hated classmate, Dan lit a match and reached for an aerosol can of hairspray.
“I’m gonna burn you!” he bellowed, spraying hairspray directly into Chuck’s face and holding the burning match in front of the spray.
Chuck’s top half was momentarily bathed in fire. His black silk bow tie flared and shriveled. The mother-of-pearl buttons of
his charred white tuxedo shirt blackened and turned to ash. Like melting wax, Chuck’s cheeks and chin seemed to soften and slide away from the bone.
Pale nostrils flared, Dan stood over him, exultant. Doing it was way better than writing about it.
Hair smoking, guts pooling, lidless eyeballs rolling blindly back in his head, Chuck writhed on the floor in pain. His pigskin loafers kicked out with a final, valiant thrust. “But I’m Chuck Bass,” he gasped, dying.
The stench of burnt flesh and hair, torched silk and leather, and fried hairspray was almost unbearable. “You know we love you,” Serena said, spritzing the fallen body with the girl-shaped bottle of perfume. Chuck didn’t respond. He seemed pretty dead. She spun around to open a bathroom window—to let the smoke out and the vultures in.
Jenny picked up the knife from the floor and ran her finger over the bloody blade. She’d skipped dinner. A little solid food would help soak up the champagne sloshing around in her stomach. Chuck’s tongue lolled, pink and meaty, out of his mouth. She could cut it out, bring it home with her, slice it up, and eat it.
Dan lit another cigarette, enjoying the moment. He was the most suave and handsome man in the room. That line from Vanessa’s screenplay echoed in his head:
Life is fragile and absurd. Murdering someone’s not so hard
. In fact, it was ridiculously easy—even
fun
.
He wrapped a comforting arm around his sister’s shoulders. “You all right?”
Jenny clutched the bloody knife, swaying unsteadily on her size-five feet. “I can’t tell whether I’m still really drunk, or just tired and really hungry.”
“Here, I’ll take that.” Serena removed the hunting knife from Jenny’s hands and dropped it in her purse. She looked up at Dan and held out her hand. “Ready?”
Dan kept his arm around his sister and took Serena’s hand. Together, they exited the bathroom and wound their way through the crowd and toward the door.
“Wait! Your gift bags!” Rain Hoffstetter squealed. She handed Serena and Jenny each a black Kate Spade tote bag. “There are glow-in-the-dark condoms. And knives!”
Dan pushed open the doors to the old mansion and ran out onto Fifth Avenue to hail a cab. They slid into the backseat with Jenny in the middle. She put her feet up on the hump in the floor and hugged her blood-spattered knees. Serena reached down and stroked her curly brown hair.
“You guys go home first,” she offered.
Dan glanced at Jenny. She needed to wash off all that blood, drink a cup of warm milk, and go to bed. He gave the driver his address.
Serena leaned back, still stroking Jenny’s hair. “Wow,” she breathed. “I’m glad I didn’t stay home tonight.”
Dan stared at her. “So, those stories…” he said, and then he blushed. “I mean, did any of that happen, for real?”
Serena frowned. She fished in her bag for a cigarette, and then thought better of it. The blood from the knife had probably ruined them anyway. “Well, what do you think?”
Dan shrugged his shoulders. “I think it’s a bunch of bullshit.”
Serena raised her eyebrows playfully. “But how do you know for sure?”
Her mouth was open, the corners of it quavering up and then down. Her dark blue eyes glowed in the light of a passing car.
He’d just seen her disembowel the guy he most hated. She was carrying a very large, expensive knife. She could have been an angel or a killer, or both.
“You don’t scare me.”
The corners of Serena’s mouth spread wide. “Good.” She took a deep breath and let her head fall back against the seat.
Dan let his head fall back too, still wondering whether or not he ought to be scared.
As they sped down Central Park South and through Columbus Circle, Serena kept her eyes open. She’d always thought the rest of Manhattan was ugly and depressing compared to the quiet, manicured streets of the Upper East Side. But now the brilliant lights and loud noises, the steam rising from the grates on the corners of Broadway, were beautifully chaotic. The taxi rumbled over a bump. Her purse fell on the floor. The knife spilled out. In the darkness of the taxi, Serena, Dan, and Jenny all reached for it at the same time.
They couldn’t wait to see what would happen next.
Well, I had a great time at
Kiss Me or Die
. I must have lost fifteen pounds dancing—or maybe someone’s chopped off my legs and I just haven’t noticed.
Needless to say, I’m feeling good. I mean, I survived.
SIGHTINGS
B
and
N
going into his townhouse together late Friday night. Hopefully she’ll put her weapon away before he frisks her thigh.
C
, or what remains of
C
, getting wheeled into an ambulance—again.
D
and
J
and their scruffy dad eating a family breakfast on Saturday morning at that diner where they used to film
Seinfeld
.
V
snapping photos of her new boyfriend, modeling beside the decomposing bodies of a family of dead rats in a trash heap in Brooklyn.
S
handing a black Kate Spade tote bag to a homeless man feeding the vultures on the steps of the Met. One of the birds had what looked like a tan leather eye patch dangling like a medallion from its neck. And
V
at
Paragon Sports
on Broadway, returning a bunch of stuff and handing over a check for $4,500, engraved in gold with a long, vaguely Dutch name. Guess
S
wants to keep that pretty knife after all. Sure she’ll put it to good use!
YOUR E-MAIL
Hey GG,
Just wanted to tell you that I’m writing my college thesis on you. You rock!
—Studyboy
Dear Studyboy,
I’m flattered. So… what do you look like?
—GG
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Why worry about college? I’m having way too much fun right now. And there are so many questions to be answered:
Will
S
and
D
fall in love? Will
S
grow tired of his corduroys and cut them into strips along with his pale, skinny legs? Or is
D
already dead?
Will
J
swear off high society and fancy dresses and make new friends her age? Is she our new murderous heroine? Or is she dead too?
Will
V
ever actually blow up the school?
Will
B
stay with
N
? Will he live to tell the tale? Will he become a vegetable from smoking so much dope to calm his frayed nerves?
Will
C
come back from the dead with glass eyes, a prosthetic face, and a solid platinum cane, and haunt us like he always used to?
Will the mayor’s office introduce some sort of predator to eat all the vultures? What’s next—wolves?
Will Constance Billard’s Phys Ed department update its curriculum to include knife-throwing, hand-to-hand combat, fencing, and jousting in order to keep up with its killer schoolgirls?
Will
S
and
B
maintain their truce?
Over my dead body.
Best keep a safe distance. Unless you’re skilled with a knife. And—like me—you just can’t stay away.
You know you love me,
Cecily von Ziegesar (author) and Cindy Eagan (editorial director, Poppy)
No one else was injured or maimed during the writing of this book, except Joelle Hobeika (editor, Alloy), Sara Shandler (editorial director, Alloy), Liz Dresner (designer, Alloy), Aiah Wieder (managing editor, Alloy), Josh Bank (president, East Coast, Alloy), Leslie Morgenstein (CEO, Alloy), Jeanne Detallante (illustrator), Andrew Smith (associate publisher, Poppy), Suzanne Gluck (WME), and the author's entire family. The author would like to thank them and Cindy from the darkest depths of her heart.
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i know what you did last winter
at the heart of every socially alienated cynic is a hopeless romantic
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