You're the One That I Want (19 page)

Nate handed the rattle back and it shook noisily. Instantly, Yale began to fuss and whimper, her arms and legs lucking out in all directions and her face puckering like a dried apricot.

Blair leaned over the bassinet and picked her sister up. "Shhh," she whispered. "It was nothing. Go back to sleep." She rocked back and forth until Yale stopped fussing. Then she put the baby down and tucked the blanket up around her. "There. Go to sleep," she said again, and then looked up at Nate.

"She's beautiful," he told her, his voice cracking. Silently he reached for Blair's hand and pulled her out into the hall-way. She closed the nursery door and he hugged her fiercely, pressing his lips against hers. "My parents are out," he whis-pered into her hair.

The penthouse was so hushed, Blair could practically hear her own heart beating. Tyler and Aaron were watching movies in the library, and her mom and Cyrus were out. But she couldn't exactly have sex with Nate while Yale lay sleeping innocently in the next room. She closed her eyes and kissed him again before whispering, "Okay, I'm ready."

Finally.

J looks forward to a scandalous Mure

Jenny had never been a big dancer, but how could she not dance in those crazy white pointy boots? And the amazing thing about her turquoise leather vest was it held everything in place. No boob whiplash. No accidental groping. No wiggly-wobbly. Even without the vest, though, she would have been okay. Better than okay.

The Raves stopped playing and announced that they were taking a short break. The Whiffenpoofs, however, were just getting going.

"One, two, a one, two, three--"they began to sing in their tra-ditional a cappella harmony. " Jenny, oh, Jennifer," they began to serenade her. "Serena's little sister, Jennifer. They don't look alike. One's tall, one's short, but they're the craziest gals in any pan."

Serena came and draped her arm around Jenny's shoul-ders, swaying back and forth to the song. The other party-goers drifted back and forth across the room, not paying much attention now that the real music had cut out.

"Jennifer, she's got big huge bazongas!" Chuck Bass sang loudly as he staggered past the two girls, shaking his ass drunkenly with his monkey on his shoulders and his military school beret on his head. A few titters echoed throughout the room.

Uh-oh.

"You know they did it once, right?" a girl from Seaton Arms whispered to her friend. "Got caught at a party in October, in the bathroom. She was, like, totally naked and Chuck was giving it to her on the toilet."

"I thought he was gay," said a girl wearing a brand-new Vassar T-shirt.

"Everyone wants to squeeze Jenny's great big boobeez!" Chuck carried on obnoxiously.

"Chuck Bass has a hairy ass!" Serena countered loudly. "Just ignore him," she told Jenny.

But instead of turning purple with outrage and utter shame, Jenny couldn't stop giggling. Two weeks ago Chuck's little performance would have been devastating. Now every-one was laughing at him, not with him. And now that she'd been through a scandal--or two or three--and come out ahead, she was more resilient. She had a past, a history. She was the girl no one would be able to stop talking about. Big bazongas and all, she, Jennifer, was destined for success.

And if life took a crappy turn and things went irreparably wrong, she could always get sent to boarding school like her father had threatened. There she could reinvent herself. Maybe she'd even come back from boarding school and rein-vent herself again, just like Serena had done.

She might even have as many boyfriends as Serena. One day.

d explores a new talent

"Could I borrow a smoke, bro?" Damian Polk, the lead gui-tarist of the Raves and one of Dan's musical favorites, asked him. Dan was too drunk to be starstruck. He held up the rumpled half-empty pack of Camels he'd opened only a half hour ago, then Damian lit his cigarette with Dan's yellow plastic Bic. Damian was wearing a sort of brown canvas mili-tary, coat with words in Finnish or some other random lan-guage painted on it in black. It was the type of coat only a famous person could get away with. "Don't happen to know who lives here, do you?" he asked.

"I do," Dan responded drunkenly. "Sort of. With my girl-friend. It's her older sister's place, but she's away." He decided not to mention Tiphany. He preferred to think that Tiphany didn't exist. And now that he thought about it, he hadn't seen Tiphany or Vanessa all night. How long could a piercing take, he wondered, his head murky with vodka.

Damian nodded thoughtfully. "Any idea who wrote all those songs in those black leather books in the other room?"

Dan wondered suddenly if he hadn't passed out and was dreaming this entire conversation. "Poems," he corrected, blink-ing away the happy melodic notes of the Whiffenpoofs, who were still serenading his sister. A tall guy with wire-rimmed glasses and a short woman with strawberry blond hair tangoed across the floor. "Those are my poems." He tried to stand up but his ankles buckled and he slumped against the wall again. If he didn't move soon, he was going to piss himself.

Damian tucked his coat behind him and squatted down in front of Dan. "I'm telling you, man, they're songs."

Dan stared woodenly at the famous five-inch-long scar that cut across Damian's famous forehead. It was supposedly from a BMX bike accident. Was he brain damaged or something? "Dude," he insisted. "I wrote them. They're poems."

"Songs. Songs, songs, songs." Damian held out his hand and coaxed Dan into a standing position. "Come on, I'll show you."

Dan stumbled along after Damian, bumping into people and slurring his sorrys.

"When you guys gonna start playing again?" someone yelled.

"Soon, asshole," Damian muttered, giving them the finger.

Vanessa's room was just as crowded as the living room. The other members of the Raves were gathered on her bed, sorting through Dan's notebooks.

"Did you see this one? It's called 'Sluts,'" the bass player told Damian, holding up the poem. "It'd be the perfect, like, pissed-off love ballad, you know? Like the perfect middle song for a show. Especially after this funny one, 'Killing Tooter.'"

Dan stared at them. There was still a very good chance he was dreaming or had died after being stepped on by one of Tiphany's huge construction-worker friends.

Damian nudged him forward. "I found the guy who wrote them. He's good-looking enough to be a front man."

Dan swayed in front of the others. Front man?

"But can he sing?" the drummer asked, giving Dan the once-over and pulling on his weird, scary mustache. The Raves had a mixed-bag kind of style. Part cool older brother, part serial killer.

Sing?

Damian clapped Dan on the back. "You'll give it a try, won't you? They're your songs, after all. Sing 'em however you want to. We play pretty loud, so you'll feel like you're shouting." He patted Dan's back again. "Just make it sound good, yeah?"

"Yeah."

As he followed the band into the living room, Dan felt like his body was in the hands of some maniacal puppeteer with a very twisted sense of humor. Next thing he knew, he'd be tak-ing his shirt off.

Well, he is the front man, after all.

The drummer whacked his drums a few times and a hush of anticipation fell over the room. "We'll do 'Killing Tooter' first, yeah?" he asked Dan.

Dan nodded. He barely knew the words, but he was so drunk anyway, it wasn't like he'd be enunciating.

The band broke into a frenetic, rhythmic, slamming beat with an undulating bass line. It was perfect for the poem, or song, or whatever the fuck anyone wanted to call it.

'"You hungry? I made you something! Die, Tooter, die!'" Dan screamed into the microphone. " 'You tired? I'll put you to sleep! Die, Tooter, die!'"

"'Die, Tooter!'" The Whiffenpoofs crooned in support.

The room was packed and immediately people picked up on the craziness of the moment, slam dancing and taking their clothes off.

Dan ripped off his shirt. What the hell? He gave everyone the finger. '"You want some more? Come and get it! Die, Tooter, die!'"

Okay, so maybe he was completely shit-faced, but this was still better than wallowing in self-pity and dust bunnies back in the corner.

And at least he knew now, after all these years, that he'd been writing twisted, morbid songs, not poems.

v gets a kick in the ass

"Yo, is there somebody named Vanessa in there?" a guy yelled from outside the bathroom.

"Yeah?" Vanessa called back, and opened the door a crack. For the last half hour she'd been bent over the bath-room sink, running her lip under cold water, but it was still bleeding.

The guy shoved the phone into her hand. He was shirt-less, and had a tattoo of a snake on his chest. "Same bitch called like five hundred times. Doesn't she get we're trying to listen to music out here?"

Vanessa took the phone and cradled it between her chin and shoulder while Tiphany applied ice to her lip. "Hello?"

"Hey, it's your sister, remember me?" Ruby shouted on the other end of the line. "What the fuck is going on over there?"

"I'm having a party," Vanessa explained, although it hardly explained anything. Ruby knew perfectly well that, other than Dan, Vanessa had exactly zero friends.

"Oh, yes, Miss Birthday Girl? And who might be attend-ing this party?"

Vanessa glanced at Tiphany. "Is that your sister?" Tiphany mouthed. Vanessa nodded, and Tiphany pressed a fistful of Ice into her hand. "Catch you later." She kicked away the blood-soaked towels littering the bathroom floor, leaving the door open behind her as she left. The cacophony of music and shouting and the smell of smoke and vodka almost knocked Vanessa over.

"Is that the Raves--live? What, did MTV like hire you to film their video or something?" Ruby demanded.

"I'm not sure," Vanessa answered honestly. She knew the party had swelled tremendously since she'd disappeared into the bathroom, but she hadn't realized to what extent. "So anyway, Tiphany has been staying here."

"Tiphany who?"

"Tiphany. You gave her the key. She said you told her she could crash here for as long as she wanted. She's been sleeping on your bed."

Ruby was silent for a moment. "Wait, I think I know who you're talking about. She has a ferret, right? And she comes with this whole story about how she's traveled the world and done all these things and she just needs a place to crash for a while?"

Check.

"I can't believe she still has the key. Don't you remember the story about the girl who was, like, squatting in the apart-ment when I moved in? I finally got the landlord to get rid of her, and the whole time she acted like we were best friends."

That did kind of sound like Tiphany. "But she's not even from here," Vanessa faltered. "She's from all over. She's got wanderlust." It was one of Tiphany's favorite words, but boy did it sound idiotic when Vanessa said it.

"She's a fuckup," Ruby corrected. "And a user. I bet she hasn't paid for any food or anything since she's been there. Except maybe alcohol."

Vanessa didn't know what to say. It was true. She and Dan had basically been feeding Tiphany for over a week.

"Besides, we're not allowed to have pets in our build-ing. That ferret could get us evicted. Kick her out, babe. Okay?"

Vanessa was on the verge of tears. How could she have been so stupid and let this girl she didn't even know take-over her life? It was like Poison Ivy, that awful Drew Barrymore movie Vanessa was embarrassed to admit she'd rented, where bad girl Drew moves in with a nice innocent girl and totally ruins her life.

"I'll call you tomorrow, okay?" Ruby promised.

"Okay." Vanessa hung up. Her hands were shaking. She tossed the phone into the sink and stormed into the living room, forgetting all about her bleeding lip.

Christ.

The apartment was mobbed. Girls from Constance Billard and Seaton Arms and all the other schools Vanessa wished she had nothing to do with were slam dancing and gyrating their asses against the pelvises of boys from St. Jude's and Riverside Prep. The members of Tiphany's "con-struction team," who Vanessa now suspected were probably professional burglars or worse, were attacking the living room wall with Tiphany's pick-axe; Tiphany's ferret and Chuck Bass's monkey were chasing each other and humping on Ruby's futon; and Tiphany herself was parked in front of the TV, playing one of the films Vanessa had made a few months back for all to see. But where was Dan? Had she been ignoring him or was he ignoring her?

Pushing through the crowd, Vanessa lunged at Tiphany and yanked the remote out of her hand. "That's private!" she yelled, snapping the TV off. Little by little she could feel her old outraged, pissed-off self coming back . . . and it felt great. What made her even more angry was that Tiphany had stolen it away from her.

Atta girl.

Tiphany laughed her goofy, loud, ain't-we-just-the-bestest-friends laugh. "Dan's a boring poet, and a really bad actor." She pointed across the living room. "But mix them together and look what you get!"

Vanessa glared at her, and then turned to see what she was pointing at. She didn't know how she could have missed it. There was Dan, standing on top of an overturned milk crate, shirtless and sweaty, biting the microphone as he spat out the words to his poems, pretending they were songs. She turned away again. She'd deal with him later.

"That's my sister's shirt," she told Tiphany levelly. "Put it back."

Tiphany's mouth opened slightly. "You're wearing her pants."

"She's my sister. Give it back," Vanessa ordered. "And then find your friends and your goddamned ferret and get the fuck out of here."

The rage that had been building since her conversation with Ruby in the bathroom suddenly consumed her. It was her birthday and no one seemed to give a flying fuck that they were trashing her house. She didn't even know most of these people. "Fuck everybody!" she shouted. "I want you all fucking out!!"

Of course no one could hear her, not over the din of Dan's drunken howl.

Vanessa had one thing going for her, though. It was her apartment and she knew where the fuse box was. Shoving her way past a half-naked sweaty boy and his teetering- drunk girlfriend, she tore into the kitchen, climbed up on the counter, and opened the metal box above the stove. With a flick of a few switches, the music went dead and the only light left on was the one above her head.