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

and nibbled at it thoughtfully. “Kate Spade is still doing the gift
bags, but I don’t know—do you think Kate Spade is too boring?”
“I think Kate Spade is perfect,” Isabel said, winding her dark hair
into a knot on top of her head. “I mean, think how cool it is to have
a plain black handbag now instead of all those animal prints and
military shit everyone has. It’s all such . . . bad taste, don’t you
think?”
Blair nodded. “Completely,” she agreed.
“Hey, what about my leopard skin coat?” Kati said, looking hurt.
“Yes, but that’s real leopard skin,” Blair argued. “That’s different.”
The three girls were sitting in the Constance cafeteria, discussing
the upcoming Kiss on the Lips benefit to raise money for the Central
Park Peregrine Falcon Foundation. Blair was chair of the organizing
committee, of course.
“Those poor birds,” Blair sighed.
As if she could give two shits about the damned birds.
“I really want this party to be good,” she said. “You guys are coming
to my meeting tomorrow, right?”
“Of course we’re coming,” Isabel said. “What about Serena—did you
tell her about the party? Is she going to help?”
Blair stared blankly back at her.
Kati wrinkled her pert little ski-jump nose and nudged Isabel with
her elbow. “I bet Serena is too busy, you know, dealing with
everything. All her problems. She probably doesn’t have time to
help us, anyway,” she said, smirking.
Blair shrugged. Across the cafeteria, Serena herself was just joining
the lunch line. She noticed Blair right away and smiled, waving
cheerfully as if to say, “I’ll be there in a minute!” Blair blinked,
pretending she’d forgotten to put in her contacts.
Serena slid her tray along the metal counter, choosing a lemon
yogurt and skipping all the hot lunch selections until she came to
the hot-water dispenser, where she filled up a cup with hot water
and placed a Lipton tea bag, a slice of lemon, and a packet of sugar
on the saucer. Then she carried her tray over to the salad bar,
where she filled up a plate with a pile of romaine lettuce and poured
a small puddle of bleu cheese dressing beside it. She would have
preferred a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich in the Gare du Nord
in Paris, eaten in a hurry before leaping onto her London train, but
this was almost as good. It was the same lunch she’d eaten at
Constance every day since sixth grade. Blair always got the same
thing too. They called it the “diet plate.”
Blair watched as Serena got her salad, dreading the moment when
Serena would sit down next to her in all her glory and start trying to
be friends again. Ugh.