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

even a chance of going to. Dan didn’t inhabit the same world as
Serena and Blair and Nate and Chuck. He wasn’t anybody. He was
just a regular kid.
For two years Dan followed Serena, yearningly, from a distance. He
never spoke to her. When she went away to boarding school, he
tried to forget about her, sure that he would never see her again,
unless by some act of magic they wound up at the same college.
And now she was back.
Dan walked halfway down the block, then turned around and walked
back again. His mind was racing. He could have another party. He
could make invitations and get Jenny to slip one into Serena’s locker
at school. When Serena came to his apartment, Dan would walk
right up to her and take her coat, and welcome her back to New
York.
It rained every day you were gone, he’d say, poetically.
Then they would sneak into his father’s library and take each
other’s clothes off and kiss on the leather couch in front of the fire.
And when everyone left the party, they would share a bowl of
Breyers coffee ice cream, Dan’s favorite. From then on they would
spend every minute together. They would even transfer to a coed
high school like Trinity for the rest of senior year because they
couldn’t stand to be apart. Then they would go to Columbia and live
in a studio apartment nearby with nothing in it but a huge bed.
Serena’s friends would try to lure her back to her old life, but no
charity ball, no exclusive black-tie dinner, no expensive party favor
could tempt her. She wouldn’t care if she had to give up her trust
fund and her great-grandmother’s diamonds. Serena would be
willing to live in squalor if it meant she could be with Dan.
“Fucking hell, we’ve only got five minutes until the bell rings,” Dan
heard someone say in an obnoxious voice.
Dan turned around, and sure enough, it was Chuck Bass, or “Scarf
Boy,” as Dan liked to call him, since Chuck was always wearing that
ridiculous monogrammed cashmere scarf. Chuck was standing only
twenty feet away with two of his senior Riverside Prep pals, Roger
Paine and Jeffrey Prescott. They didn’t speak to Dan or even nod to
acknowledge his presence. Why should they? These boys took the
Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus through Central Park each
morning to school from the swanky Upper East Side, only venturing
to the West Side for school or to attend the odd party. They were in
Dan’s class at Riverside Prep, but they were certainly not in his
class. He was nothing to them. They didn’t even notice him.
“Dude,” Chuck said to his friends. He lit a cigarette. Chuck smoked
his cigarettes like they were joints, holding them between his index
finger and thumb and sucking hard on the inhale.