Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Rapunzel, rapunzel, let down your hair

Blair knew it was slightly immature, but she'd spent the last month at her dad's Newport, Rhode Island, estate watching the sailboats go by in the bay, daydreaming about having sex with Nate, and playing dress-up. Every item in her mother's wardrobe that had been worn more than twice or was too small was stored in a cedar closet outside Blair's bedroom, so the dress-up costumes were limitless. Her father was supposed to have the clothes shipped back to the city as part of the divorce settlement, since he would be keeping the Newport house, but they were a long way from settling, so the clothes remained for Blair to play with.

There was Eleanor's wedding dress, a beaded ivory strapless Carolina Herrera gown sealed in a giant clear cellophane bag. The purple velvet suit Eleanor had tailored just for her at the Yves Saint Laurent boutique in Paris when she was still a size 2. And the shoes—rows and rows of shoes from every designer imaginable, especially Prada, which had always been Eleanor's favorite. Stilettos, wedges, sandals, and slides—they were all a size and a half too large for Blair, but still fine for dress-up.

This sweltering July afternoon Blair's father and his flaming French hunk, Jacques or Jean or whatever the fuck his name was, were out playing doubles with another gay couple they'd met at a club in town the night before. Blair carried the nail scissors she used to trim Kitty Minky's claws into her mom's closet and began to slice open the cellophane bag containing her mom's Carolina Herrera wedding gown. She knew she really shouldn't, but her mom wouldn't know it was her. She'd just assume that Harold and his gay friends had dressed up in her clothes and had a gay old Paris Is Burning time.

And then her lawyers could ask for yet another million.

"Keep your head out of the bag, silly," Blair warned Kitty Minky, gently shoving the tiny gray kitten away so he wouldn't asphyxiate himself. The pretty half-grown Russian Blue cat amused himself by jumping into one of Eleanor's Gucci bamboo-handled handbags and playing peekaboo.

Blair slipped the gown off its padded white satin hanger and let her lime green seersucker J.Crew sundress fall to the floor. Then she stepped into the wedding gown and zipped it up. Amazingly, it was an almost perfect fit. Impossible as it was for her to imagine, seventeen years ago her lumpy, freaky mom had nearly the same figure she did.

Incredible what nearly two decades on antidepressants can do to a person.

A pair of gold Prada evening sandals with four-inch heels beckoned. Blair slipped her bare feet into them and clip-clopped back down the hall to her enormous bedroom. She examined her reflection in the mirror. Was this the dress she would wear when she married Nate? She'd have diamonds, of course, and a big elaborate hairstyle like Marie Antoinette. She wrinkled her nose critically and turned away from the mirror. Strapless had never been her thing, and how could she resist shopping for a new dress for her very own wedding?

Her four-story Victorian dollhouse stood on its wooden dais in front of a series of dormer windows with deep window seats, their cushions upholstered in pink pinstripes. The dollhouse had been made especially for Blair, modeled after the Newport house itself. The largest bedroom on the fourth floor of the dollhouse was an exact replica of her own bedroom, down to the rose-colored satin lampshades and the large circular wool rug adorned with pink peonies in full bloom. Instead of people, mice made of gray rabbit fur and dressed in exquisite satin clothes inhabited the dollhouse. On a recent antiquing expedition her father had even found a little gray rabbit-fur cat. It slept on the tiny dollhouse version of Blair's brass bed, a rabbit-fur miniature of Kitty Minky.

Blair picked up the mother mouse, dressed in a dorky floral-patterned Laura Ashley dress and a white lace apron, and sat her on the toilet in the bathroom downstairs. Then she put the father mouse, who was wearing a red velvet smoking jacket and tuxedo pants, in the claw-foot bathtub in the master bathroom. Next, she set the butler mouse, who was fat and bloated and had a huge red nose, on top of the father mouse. Finally, she chucked the little-brother mouse, a white midget sporting denim overalls and a red wool cap, onto her real live bed for Kitty Minky to bat around and chew on. Torturing her dollhouse mice was one of Blair's favorite pastimes.