Novels by Cecily von Ziegesar: Gossip Girl You Know You ... - Weebly

e a school free of cliques and prejudice of any sort. Her favorite
saying was, “When you assume, you make an ass out of u and me.”
The slightest slander of one girl by another was punished with a day
in isolation and a seriously difficult essay assignment. But those
punishments were a rare necessity. Mrs. M was blissfully ignorant of
what really went on in the school. She certainly couldn’t hear the
whispering going on in the very back of the auditorium, where the
seniors sat.
“I thought you said Serena was coming back today,” Rain
Hoffstetter whispered to Isabel Coates.
That morning, Blair and Kati and Isabel and Rain had all met on
their usual stoop around the corner for cigarettes and coffee before
school started. They had been doing the same thing every morning
for two years, and they half expected Serena to join them. But
school had started ten minutes ago, and Serena still hadn’t shown
up.
Blair couldn’t help feeling annoyed at Serena for creating even
more mystery around her return than there already was. Her friends
were practically squirming in their seats, eager to catch their first
glimpse of Serena, as if she were some kind of celebrity.
“She’s probably too drugged up to come to school today,” Isabel
whispered back. “I swear, she spent like, an hour in the bathroom
last night at Blair’s house. Who knows what she was doing in there.”
“I heard she’s selling these pills with the letter S stamped on them.
She’s completely addicted to them,” Kati told Rain.
“Wait till you see her,” Isabel said. “She’s a total mess.”
“Yeah,” Rain whispered back. “I heard she’d started some kind of
voodoo cult up in New Hampshire.”
Kati giggled. “I wonder if she’ll ask us to join.”
“Hello?” said Isabel. “She can dance around naked with chickens all
she wants, but I don’t want to be there. No way.”
“Where can you get live chickens in the city, anyway?” Kati asked.
“Gross,” Rain said.
“Now, I’d like to begin by singing a hymn. If you would please rise
and open up your hymnals to page forty-three,” Mrs. M instructed.
Mrs. Weeds, the frizzy-haired hippie music teacher, began banging
out the first few chords of the familiar hymn on the piano in the
corner; then all seven hundred girls stood up and began to sing.
Their voices floated down Ninety-third Street, where Serena van der
Woodsen was just turning the corner, cursing herself for being late.
She hadn’t woken up this early since her eleventh-grade final
exams at Hanover last June, and she’d forgotten how badly it
sucked.