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

swear, she spent like, an hour in the bathroom last night at Blair’s house. Who knows what she was doing in there.”
    “I heard she’s selling these pills with the letter
S
stamped on them. She’s completely addicted to them,” Kati told Rain.
    “Wait till you see her,” Isabel said. “She’s a total mess.”
    “Yeah,” Rain whispered back. “I heard she’d started some kind of voodoo cult up in New Hampshire.”
    Kati giggled. “I wonder if she’ll ask us to join.”
    “Hello?” said Isabel. “She can dance around naked with chickens all she wants, but I don’t want to be there. No way.”
    “Where can you get live chickens in the city, anyway?” Kati asked.
    “I don’t know, Brooklyn? Ew,” Rain said.
    “Now, I’d like to begin by singing a hymn. If you would please rise and open up your hymnals to page forty-three,” Mrs. M instructed.
    Mrs. Weeds, the frizzy-haired hippie music teacher, began banging out the first few chords of the familiar hymn on the piano in the corner; then all seven hundred girls stood up and began to sing.
    Their voices floated down Ninety-third Street, where Serena van der Woodsen was just turning the corner, cursing herself for sleeping late.
    Never mind the little hold-up in the elevator.
“
Hark the herald angels si-ing!
    Glory to the newborn king!
    Peace on Earth and mercy mi-ild
,
    God and sinners reconciled
.”
    Constance ninth grader Jenny Humphrey silently mouthed the words, sharing with her neighbor the hymnal that Jenny herself had been commissioned to pen in her exceptional calligraphy. It had taken all summer, and the hymnals were beautiful. In three years the Pratt Institute of Art and Design would be knocking down her door. Still, Jenny felt sick with embarrassment every time they used the hymnals, which was why she couldn’t sing out loud. To sing aloud seemed like an act of bravado, as if she were saying, “Look at me, I made these hymnals. Aren’t I cool?”
    Bossy and defiant at home with her father and brother, Jenny rarely spoke at all in school. She had only one friend in her class, a pushy, awkwardly overconfident girl named Elise. Mostly Jenny watched the popular and beautiful older girls, like Blair Waldorf, Kati Farkas, Isabel Coates, and Rain Hoffstetter, studying them with hungry intensity, hating them and loving them, mimicking them and dreading them. She wanted desperately to be a part of their special world, but at the same time they terrified her into a sort of rigor mortis. To them she was smaller than a pimple. She was practically invisible. A curly-haired, tiny freshman with boobs so unfortunately gigantic they were her only noticeable feature besides her big brown baby seal eyes. She was like the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, except instead of a sponge with feet and arms she was a walking pair of boobs.
    JennyBetty BoobyPants?
“
Hark the heavenly host proclaims
,
    Christ i-is born in Beth-le-hem!
”
    Jenny stood at the end of a row of folding chairs, next to the big auditorium windows overlooking Ninety-third Street. Suddenly a movement out on the street caught her eye. Blond hair flying. Plastic Burberry coat. Scuffed brown paddock boots. New maroon uniform—odd choice, but she made it work. It looked like… it couldn’t be… could it possibly… No!… Was it?
    Yes. It was.
    A moment later Serena van der Woodsen pushed open the heavy wooden door of the auditorium and stood in the doorway, looking for her class. She was out of breath and her hair was windblown. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes were bright from murdering that poor redhead and running the ten blocks up Fifth Avenue to school. She looked even more perfect than Jenny had remembered. When it came down to sublime beauty and absolute coolness, Serena van der Woodsen blew every last one of the other senior girls away.
    Literally. Just watch.
    “Oh. My. God,” Rain whispered to Kati in the back of the room. “Did she like, pick up her clothes at a