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

Blair pulled another cigarette out of the pack and stuck it in her
mouth. She reached for a match, pausing before she struck it to see
if the bartender would leap across the room with a lighter. He didn’t.
Blair lit the cigarette herself and blew a big cloud of smoke directly
into Serena’s face.
So Serena knew about the party. She had an invitation. Well, she
was bound to find out anyway.
“The calligrapher,” Blair said, smiling sweetly. “She’s good, isn’t
she?”
“Yeah, she did a great job,” Serena said. “And it was really nice of
her to notice that mine had the wrong address on it. She said the
address you gave her was my dorm room at Hanover.”
Blair tucked her hair behind her ears and shrugged her shoulders.
“Oops,” she said, feigning cluelessness. “Sorry about that.”
“So tell me about the party,” Serena said. “What’s it for again?”
Blair couldn’t talk about the cause without smiling self-consciously
because it sounded so lame and unsexy. That’s why she’d named
the party Kiss on the Lips. To give it some allure. “It’s for those two
peregrine falcons that live in Central Park. They’re an endangered
species, and everyone’s worried that they’re going to die or starve
or the squirrels will raid their nests or whatever. So they set up a
foundation for them,” she explained. “Don’t laugh. I know it’s kind
of stupid.”
Serena blew out a puff of smoke and giggled. “Well, it’s not like
there aren’t people that need saving. I mean, what about the
homeless?”
“Well, it’s as good a cause as any. We wanted something that
wasn’t too heavy to start the season off,” Blair huffed, annoyed. It
was fine for her to laugh at the cause she’d chosen for the party,
but Serena had no right.
Serena steered the conversation back on course. “So is the party
like, just for us, or is it for parents, too?” she asked.
Blair hesitated. “Just . . . us,” she said finally. She downed the rest of
her drink and looked at her watch. “Um, I kind of have to take off,”
she said. She slid her bag over her arm and picked her pack of
cigarettes up off the table.
Serena frowned. She had taken her time getting dressed, psyching
herself up for a wild night out with her friends. She’d expected a big
group—Blair and the other girls, Nate and his gang, Chuck and his
boys—all the people they always used to hang out with.
“But I thought we would stay here for a while. Wait for everyone
else,” Serena said. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“I have a practice SAT tomorrow morning,” Blair said, feeling
extremely superior, even though she was lying her ass off. “I need