Nothing Can Keep Us Together
Cecily von Ziegesar
Copyright © 2005 by Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group, USA
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at hachettebookgroupusa.com
First Edition: May 2005
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-04199-7
Contents
Be sure to read all the novels in the #1
Gossip Girl novels by Cecily von Ziegesar
Epigraph
Gossipgirl.net
where the girls all go
he’s come undone
V’s first love note of the day
D is mr. popularity
S has rendered party school totally useless
D and V have déjà vu … all over again
you can take the girl out of 212, but you can’t take the 212 out of the girl
S demonstrates how to be naughty and nice
N’s new drug of choice
a funny thing happened at the yale club
what boarding schoolers do when they’re bored
V experiments with double happiness
D chooses real sex over sex poems
who’s that boy?
guess who’s bonking in bergdorf’s?
see B die and go to heaven
objects reflected in mirror are closer than they appear
be still her cheating heart
guess who’s coming to breakfast at fred’s?
S gets to say her lines twice
boys will be boys and girls will be girls
D writes another ode
who can resist an artistic page six girl?
cheating for old times’ sake
too many boys, too many choices, too little time
pomp and circumstance
oh, the places you’ll go!—not
D could use a little more love
A reads V like a book
who’s that girl?
some would argue that her last name begins with w
her heart is on some other boy’s sleeve
will J resort to homeschooling?
it was the best of times, it was the worst of times
nothing can keep us together
remind me how much i love you
N’s trail of tears
J considers losing it before boarding school
what you choose not to hear can’t hurt you
D rethinks his summer plans
sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll
nothing like a little mystery
you know you love me
A Preview of The It Girl Series
Be sure to read all the novels in the #1
New York Times bestselling GOSSIP GIRL series
Gossip Girl
You Know You Love Me
All I Want Is Everything
Because I’m Worth It
I Like It Like That
You’re The One That I Want
Nobody Does It Better
Nothing Can Keep Us Together
Only In Your Dreams
Would I Lie To You
And keep your eye out for Don’t You Forget About Me, coming May 2007.
EVERY GIRL DREAMS ABOUT IT.
SOME JUST HAVE IT.
HOW FAR WILL ONE GIRL GO TO BECOME…
the it girl
Be sure to read both novels in the New York Times bestselling it girl series, created by Cecily von Ziegesar, author of the #1 bestselling GOSSIP GIRL series.
And keep your eye out for Reckless, coming November 2006.
gossip girl novels by Cecily von Ziegesar:
Gossip Girl
You Know You Love Me
All I Want Is Everything
Because I’m Worth It
I Like It Like That
You’re The One That I Want
Nobody Does It Better
Nothing Can Keep Us Together
Only In Your Dreams
Would I Lie To You
If you like gossip girl, you may also enjoy:
Bass Ackwards and Belly Up by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Secrets of My Hollywood Life by Jen Calonita
Haters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
When caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried.
—Mae West
Gossipgirl.net
Disclaimer: All the real names of places, people, and events have been altered or abbreviated to protect the innocent. Namely, me.
hey people!
June is right around the corner and New York City is like a burning Diptyque candle: hot and smelly, beautiful and bright. It’s getting dark so late now, we can’t tell the difference between night and day. Not that we care. At this time of year our turf—also known as the Upper East Side—is virtually parent-free. They’re far too busy with polo matches and garden parties, tennis matches and golf games up at our country houses in Ridgefield, Connecticut; Bridgehampton, Long Island; Newport, Rhode Island; or Mt. Desert Isle, Maine, leaving us to rule the town. Not that we ever stopped ruling the town. Our names have been at the top of the guest list at every exclusive restaurant, club, and hotel in Manhattan since the day we were born. We move in clusters, dominating the scene uptown and downtown, east and west. The entire island is and always has been ours, but with June comes graduation, and for us seniors that means saying good-bye. But let’s not get all sappy and dreary. Now’s the time to really make our mark. If we get what we want for graduation, pretty soon we’ll all have cars. It’s our turn to be louder and more obnoxious and more beautiful than ever—honk, honk!! And with no one around to disapprove (as if we care), it’s time to seriously misbehave.
Five reasons to party harder than we ever have in our lives:
1) Studying for finals is deathly boring.
2) It’s almost summer!
3) We deserve it!!
4) The AC is cranked so high, we have to find some way to keep warm—nudge, nudge.
5) It’s our last chance. Most of us will be going away for the summer, and after that, it’s off to college. This is it.
Before you get too crazy and do something you might regret, you’ll need to decide whether you and your boyfriend are devoted enough to have a long-distance relationship throughout the summer and on into college. Imagine yourself surrounded by tan hunks in Billabong surf shorts, with sandy bare feet, offering you rides in their vintage Cabriolets. Imagine hot campus prepsters in only their cute mint-green-and-white polka-dotted J.Crew boxers, on their way to the showers in your coed dorm. Will you honestly be able to resist? Why not save yourself the pain of a torturous, drawn-out breakup by breaking up now? Then treat yourself to a meaningless fling with that shy, adorable geek you went to ballroom dancing school with in fifth grade who’s not such a geek anymore. You’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. And while you’re at it, why not at least pretend to be nice to the stringy-haired, bucktoothed girl you forgot to invite to your birthday party in seventh grade and every birthday party you’ve had since. That way she can point to your picture in the yearbook and brag to all her new pals at Mt. Hollyhock or whatever dorky college she’s going to next year, “See this cool chick here? She was one of my best friends!” But never mind trying to rekindle old romances and repair messed-up friendships.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a major fashion crisis on my hands. Most of the private girls’ schools take their graduation ceremonies extremely seriously. The girls must wear long white dresses, white gloves, and white shoes. It’s like a
wedding, except we’re being set free instead of tied down—yippee! Still, the question looms: to Oscar or not to Oscar. Oscar de la Renta, that is. If you go for Oscar, you’re likely to wind up wearing the same dress as six of your other classmates, although you know you’re going to look far better in him than they do. And the nice thing about having to stick to white is that you can always dye it and wear it again. Yeah, right—like you’re ever going to want to wear that dress again!
While I’ve got your attention, let’s check in on a few of our favorite people.…
The odd couple
There has been some speculation that the relationship between those two totally opposite Williamsburg apartment sharers is not just a simple, convenient roommate situation but something more—how shall we put it?—romantic. B does seem to be wearing a lot of black lately, and her shoes are getting chunkier. And what was with that silver Tiffany barrette in V’s supershort hair the other day? Can’t you just picture them, cuddling on the sofa, combing each other’s hair, trading Manolos and Doc Martens? … Who needs boys?!
Speaking of boys
B may have given them up entirely—who wouldn’t, after N’s latest stunt?—but V seems to be enjoying the company of the opposite sex more and more. She and B’s shaven-headed vegan stepbrother, A, have been romping unfettered and partially clothed in coffee shops and on park benches all over Williamsburg. Nothing like a little PDA to light V’s fire!
As for N, you’d think he’d be on top of the world after scoring the city’s most desirable blond bombshell—right in front of B, in the pool house bathtub during the girls’ senior cut day party out in Southampton, no less. But no. Have you seen him lately? Red-rimmed eyes, dirty tissues streaming from his pockets, lackluster disposition. Our golden boy appears to be in a terrible funk. Or maybe he caught a sexually transmitted disease from one of those French tramps he’s always rumored to be hooking up with. See? It doesn’t pay to be too greedy. Not that that ever stopped us.
Your e-mail
Q: Dear GG,
I’m going to Vassar next year and I’ve been in love with this boy since I was like three, and I just found out he’s going to Vassar too! I’m so excited, but I’m worried I’m going to spend so much time trying to get him to talk to me, I won’t even realize I’m at college, you know?
—Ivstrk
A: Dear Ivstrk,
Forgive me for being blunt, but I have a feeling you’ve already spent a lot of time trying to get this guy to talk to you. Wait till you get to Vassar—there’s going to be a whole new group of adorable boys you’ve never seen before, and some of them might be even more loveworthy. And since most dorms are coed these days, you can’t avoid talking to them!
—GG
Sightings
B and V buying potted basil plants at a Williamsburg farmer’s market. Maybe the gay rumors about them are true!? C entering a Greenwich Village barbershop to have his head shaved and exiting with his hair longer than before and with platinum highlights. No way will he last even a month at military school. N standing on the roof of the Met, mournfully surveying Central Park. Looks like our favorite stoner playboy has been struck with a bad case of ennui. D checking out bashed-up Buicks at some seedy used car lot in Harlem. Not that he even knows how to operate a gearshift. J taking a solo SSAT—the boarding school admissions exam—on a Saturday in the headmistress’s office at Constance Billard. She’s determined to go, and her school is even more determined to get rid of her!
All you have to do is pass
My advice: Don’t miss a Zac Posen sample sale or a Stella McCartney trunk show for one of those silly everything-we-ever-learned pre–final exam cram sessions the teachers “recommend” you attend after school. Do pour yourself a goblet of well-chilled pinot grigio and casually read through your notebooks. All you have to do is pass, and believe me, you’re a lot smarter than you think. Good luck, my darlings. Can’t wait to see you at graduation!
You know you love me.
gossip girl
Where the girls all go
“Are you going to try that on?” a weirdly underdeveloped senior named Alison Baker asked Blair Waldorf timidly. Blair pushed the silver hanger down the rail toward Alison. A white, cardboard-stiff linen tunic by some random Scandinavian designer? No, thanks.
“Take it,” she responded generously.
Alison had thin, waist-length brown hair, a gap between her front teeth, and was bone thin. She wore a white button-down oxford shirt every day and the type of navy blue lace-up shoes that Constance Billard required in kindergarten but which were phased out of the uniform in first grade. Once, in fourth grade, Alison had peed in her pants in the library because she wouldn’t go to the bathroom before finishing Anne of Green Gables, and she’d had to spend the rest of the day wearing a pair of too-small mustard yellow cable-knit Hanna Andersson wool tights from the lost and found with no underwear.
Scratch, scratch.
In sixth grade, Alison had unsuccessfully invited Blair to her country house in Osterville on Cape Cod two weekends in a row before finally giving up. She’d then proceeded to spread a nasty rumor that Blair’s father wouldn’t let her go away on weekends because he and Blair were having an incestuous relationship and that was the only time they had together.
Blair’s totally gay dad? Hello, stupidness?
“That dress would look fantastic on you. My shoulders are way too narrow for it,” Blair lied.
Alison pulled the tunic dress on over her oxford shirt and let her Constance Billard uniform fall to the floor. The dress hung from her stick-figure body like a soggy potato sack. With her mousy brown hair in a limp middle part, she looked like the girl who gets possessed by a demon in that sick horror film The Exorcist. “Do you think it’s too big?” she asked Blair.
Even Blair didn’t have the heart to pretend that Alison actually looked good. “Maybe,” she replied, too preoccupied with the pile of brightly colored, slinky silk jersey Diane von Furstenberg cami-dresses to care anymore.
“Hey, I was about to try that one on!” Isabel Coates whipped a frothy white Stella McCartney frock out of Rain Hoffstetter’s hands and held it up to her ladder-tall, waistless frame. She was growing out her bangs and her sleek, dark hair was bobby-pinned down to her forehead in seven different places in a sort of intentional disarray that looked semi-cool and semiretarded.
“Hello? That’s a size two. No way are you a size two,” Rain countered, gripping the hem of the dress and threatening to rip it out of Isabel’s hands. “I’m shorter than you,” she insisted determinedly, even though, like Isabel, Rain was a lot closer to a size six than a size two.
“I don’t know why you guys are being such bitches about that stupid dress,” Blair yawned over at them as she moved on to a rack of beaded lilac-and-pink Sea Island cotton Nicole Farhi sweetheart sweaters. “It’s off-white, and look.” She pointed a pearly manicured finger at the white satin padded hanger the frock hung from. “The belt that goes with it is pink. Our graduation dresses have to be totally white.”
Even though it was two sizes too small, Isabel still clung to the dress as if her life depended on it. “Well, maybe I don’t want it for graduation. Maybe I have a party to go to or something.”
As if she got invited to secret parties that Blair didn’t know about.
Today was opening day for the Browns of London trunk show in the main ballroom at the St. Clair Hotel, and this particular group of Constance Billard senior girls had all cut homeroom to be there. What better way to find the dress that had been sampled in England but never sold in New York—the perfect, coveted, one-of-a-kind graduation dress. The only problem was that their graduation dresses had to be all white, and most designers shy away from all-white dresses so as not to invoke unsexy images of baby christenings and Little Bo Peep.
Not to mention wedding gowns.
“Too bad this one has a train,” Kati Farkas mused, holding up a snowy, puffy-sleeved satin number by Alexander McQueen that looked
like the dress Sleeping Beauty had worn to bed when she slept for a hundred years.
“Ew,” Isabel sniffed. “The train is definitely not the only thing wrong with it.”
The trunk show consisted of fifty-eight racks of dresses—including ball gowns, cocktail dresses, wedding and brides-maid dresses, skirts, blouses, cardigans, and capri pants, two hat racks, and even a rack full of tiaras, veils, and scarves. The clothes were gorgeous and exquisitely made, but the girls were not being gentle with them. Clothes were strewn all over the claret-colored carpet, and the usually glamorous, gilt-accented ballroom looked like the walk-in closet of a fashion-crazed Upper East Side–dwelling Manhattan society hostess in a pre-getting-dressed-for-a-benefit alcoholic frenzy.
The throng of graduation-dress-hunting girls fell silent for a moment as a tall blond girl with enormous dark blue eyes pushed open the door to the ballroom and handed her white-and-green leather Louis Vuitton Calla Lily stuff sack over to security. Behind her stood a tanned boy with wavy golden brown hair and glittering green eyes.
“I bet they’re late because they had to get a room first,” Rain giggled, nudging Nicki Button in the ribs. Over the weekend, Rain and Nicki had gotten Japanese hair straightening treatments together, and their dark brown hair looked unnaturally straight and glossy, like it had been glued on by specialists from Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in London.
“Look. Blair is totally pretending she didn’t see them come in. Oh my God, and Serena is, like, walking right up to her!” Laura Salmon whispered shrilly.
Their arms full of dresses, the other girls followed Serena van der Woodsen with their eyes as she floated toward a rack of elegant-but-still-a-little-dorky straw sun hats two feet away from Blair and began to try them on.
“Nice,” Nate Archibald commented unenthusiastically from where he slouched against the wall, looking more brooding and introspective than usual. This was the sort of trunk show where, instead of waiting in line forever for the two private changing rooms, most girls stripped down in between the racks to try things on. But Nate was the most desirable boy on the Upper East Side. Girls got naked at the snap of his stoned fingers, and it was still he who got ogled, not them. It was no surprise that he seemed unimpressed. It was also obvious from the way he kept his eyes trained on his limited edition Stan Smith tennis shoes that he was doing his best to pretend he hadn’t noticed that Blair—the girl he was supposed spend the rest of his life with but had fucked over only last week by fooling around with Serena on senior cut day—was standing only twenty feet away, glaring at him.
