Read Online Psycho Killer by Cecily von Ziegesar - Free Book Online Page A

would have to be replaced.
    Ping
. The elevator doors opened onto the lobby and Serena stepped out, her cheeks rosy from all that exercise.
    A dapper uniformed doorman swung open the building’s heavy glass and cast iron door. “Have a grand day, dear,” he greeted her in an Irish accent, tipping his hat. “ ’Tis a pleasure to have you back.”
    Just wait until he sees the mess she left in the elevator.
    Serena smiled winningly in reply and hurried up Fifth Avenue toward school. Across the street in Central Park the Hamptons-tanned moms were already out jogging around the reservoir while their attentive nannies pushed their charges toward the playground. Autumn leaves rustled on the bridle path as yellow taxis and loud buses roared past. Serena inhaled deeply, the sights and sounds and smells of the city a tonic to her tormented soul. Oh, it was so good to be back!
    And with a bit of Irish luck she’d make the ten blocks to Constance without shedding any more blood.

hark the herald angels sing
    “Welcome back, girls,” Mrs. McLean said, standing behind the podium at the front of the school auditorium. “I hope you all had a terrific long weekend. I spent the weekend in Vermont, and it was absolutely heavenly.”
    All seven hundred students at the Constance Billard School for Girls, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and its fifty faculty and staff members tittered discreetly. Everyone knew Mrs. McLean had a girlfriend up in Vermont. Her name was Vonda and she drove a tractor. Mrs. McLean had a tattoo on her inner thigh that said “Ride Me, Vonda,” with a picture of two naked women with snakes for hair and wolf heads, long riding whips grasped in their talonlike hands, straddling a John Deere.
    It’s true, swear to God.
    Mrs. McLean, or Mrs. M, as the girls called her, was their headmistress. It was her job to put forth the cream of the crop—send the girls off to the best colleges, the best marriages, the best lives, despite their uncontrollable tempers and mental instabilities—and she was very good at what she did. She had no patience for losers, and if she caught one of her girls acting likea loser—persistently calling in sick, doing poorly on the SATs, or trying to cut off one her classmates’ fingers—she would call in the shrinks, counselors, and tutors and make sure the girl got the personal attention she needed to get good grades, high scores, no criminal record, and a warm welcome to the college of her choice.
    Mrs. M also didn’t tolerate meanness. Constance was supposed to be a school free of cliques and prejudices of any sort. Her favorite saying was, “When you assume, you make an
ass
out of
u
and
me
.” The slightest slander of one girl by another was punished with a day of isolation in a dark basement chamber and a letter of apology, written in blood. But those punishments were rare. Mrs. M was blissfully ignorant of what really went on in the school. She certainly couldn’t hear the whispering going on in the very back of the auditorium, where the seniors sat, dissecting the social dramas of the day.
    “I thought you said Serena was coming back today,” Rain Hoffstetter whispered to Isabel Coates.
    That morning, Blair and Kati and Isabel and Rain had met on their usual stoop around the corner for cigarettes and coffee before school began. They’d been doing the same thing every morning for two years, and they half expected Serena to join them. But school had started ten minutes ago, and Serena still hadn’t shown up.
    Blair couldn’t help feeling annoyed at Serena for creating even more mystery around her return than there already was. Her friends were practically squirming in their seats, eager to catch their first glimpse of Serena, as if she were some kind of celebrity. If Serena wound up killing them, they totally deserved it. Or maybe she’d do it herself.
    That’ll teach ’em.
    “She’s probably too drugged up to come to school today,” Isabel whispered back. “I