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

“Whatever,” Blair said, tucking her dark hair behind her ears. “I
guess I really don’t have time.”
And she didn’t.
Blair was chair of the Social Services Board and ran the French Club;
she tutored third graders in reading; she worked in a soup kitchen
one night a week, had SAT prep on Tuesdays, and on Thursday
afternoons she took a fashion design course with Oscar de la Renta.
On weekends she played tennis so she could keep up her national
ranking. Besides all that, she was on the planning committee of
every social function anyone would be bothered to go to, and the
fall/winter calendar was busy, busy, busy. Her PalmPilot was always
running out of memory.
Vanessa flicked on the lights and walked back to her seat at the
front of the room.
“It’s okay, Blair, I wanted a blond girl for Natasha anyway,” she
said. Vanessa smoothed her uniform around her thighs and sat
down daintily, in an almost perfect imitation of Blair.
Blair smirked at Vanessa’s prickly shaved head and glanced at Mr.
Beckham, who cleared his throat and stood up. He was hungry, and
the bell was going to ring in five minutes.
“Well, that’s it, girls. You can leave a little early today. Vanessa, why
don’t you put up a sign-up sheet in the hall for your casting
tomorrow?”
The girls began to pack up their bags and file out of the room.
Vanessa ripped a blank sheet of paper out of her notebook and
wrote the necessary details at the top of it. War and Peace. Short
film. Try out for Natasha. Wednesday P.M., sunset. Madison Square
Park. Park bench, Northeast corner. She resisted writing an exact
description of the girl she was looking for, because she didn’t want
to scare anyone away. But she had a clear picture in her mind, and
it wasn’t going to be easy to find the right girl.
Her perfect Natasha would be pale and blond, a natural dirty blond.
She wouldn’t be too obviously pretty, but she’d have the kind of
face that made you want to look at it. She would be the kind of girl
to make Dan glow—full of movement and laughter—exactly the
opposite of Dan’s quiet energy, which burned deep inside him and
made his hands shake sometimes.
Vanessa hugged herself. Just thinking about Dan made her feel like
she had to pee. Under that shaved head and that impossible black
turtleneck, she was just a girl.
Face it: we’re all the same.
“The invitations, the gift bags, and the champagne. That’s all we
have left to do,” Blair said. She lifted a cucumber slice off her plate