Gossip Girl: It Had To Be You

Sixteen candles

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, Serena, mon—Jah rule!—happy birthday to you!"

Serena awoke to the tinny plink-plink-plink sound of steel drums and the rumble of planes flying low overhead. She pulled her goose-down pillow over her head and giggled into it. There. Erik had made her smile first thing on her birthday, July 14, Bastille Day, which was most likely what he'd set out to achieve. She rolled out of bed and stuck her head out the open window, giving the steel-drum-playing Rasta dudes a little thrill because she was wearing only a sheer pink tank top and matching underpants. Erik was standing by the pool with some of his boarding school friends wearing a red, green, and yellow tie-dyed bandana on his head. Why her birthday had become some big reggae festival, especially on Bastille Day, she wasn't sure. Erik waved a three-foot-long baguette at her and beckoned her downstairs.

"Get up, lazybones! There's something you have to see!"

Serena pulled on a pair of denim cutoffs and her favorite T-shirt, which happened to be a faded gray St. Jude's T-shirt that she'd borrowed from Nate in seventh grade and never returned. She padded downstairs and picked up a Granny Smith apple in the kitchen, carrying it out with her to the pool. It was hot and bright. The sensitive skin on her regal nose was already burning.

"Look up!" Erik shouted at her.

Serena took a bite of her apple and tipped her head back. A small plane roared noisily by, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. Then the smoke began to take shape and Serena realized it was skywriting, like in The Wizard of Oz. S-W-E-E-T S-I-X- T-E-E-N! the writing read.

"Mom and Dad felt guilty for being away on such a big day, so they gave me their credit card to spend it on you however I wanted," Erik explained, handing her a frozen royal blue drink with a red cocktail umbrella sticking out of it. "I started riffing on Bastille Day and got kind of into the whole French-Jamaican thing. Then I saw some skywriting down at the polo club the other day and had a total lightbulb moment."

Serena had no idea what he meant by "French Jamaican thing." Erik was wearing yesterday's shorts and nothing else and looked like he'd been up all night, partying. She tipped her head back and looked up at the skywriting again. The letters had swelled and faded so that they were nearly illegible. She tossed her half-eaten apple into the grass and flexed the straw in her drink, gulping half of it in one go. Whatever was in it was very strong and very tasty.

Just the way we like it.

"Your cards and shit are on the table." Erik indicated the glass-topped outdoor table with its festive red sun umbrella. A few of his friends were seated around the table. Corky, Dorian, and Chase? Serena could never remember their names. With their long hair and frayed Brooks Brothers clothes, they were all so interchangeably boarding school.

"Happy birthday." One of the boys stood up and kissed her on the cheek. He wore only a pair of shredded white Adidas soccer shorts and smelled like beer.

"Thanks," Serena muttered, sorting through her birthday mail. Two cards from her parents with checks. Cards from her conscientious aunts and uncles. A card from Blair's mom of all people. And one from Maine. Serena ripped open the plain white envelope and removed a white index card. A tiny green leaf was Scotch-taped to the card. Happy Birthday was scrawled beneath the leaf in Nate's surprisingly neat, boyish writing, with a big exclamation point drawn next to the leaf. Serena studied the card. It wasn't just an ordinary leaf, she realized. It was marijuana.

"Hello! Is that what I think it is?" Erik peered over her shoulder at the card. He leaned in and sniffed it. "Nice." He turned to his friends. "My little sister's all grown up," he told them in a mock-weepy voice. Then he swiped the card out of her hands and held up for them to see. "Look at this!"

"Hey." Serena grabbed the card back. "That's mine." She held the card against her chest. "It's not like you could smoke such a tiny leaf anyway," she told him, sounding more pissed off than she'd intended. Erik could be such a dork sometimes. Except for her rehearsals for a small part in the local summer workshop production of The Age of Innocence, Serena had spent most of vacation in the company of these idiotic boarding school boys. She missed girls. She missed Blair. But it wasn't like she could just call her up. Or maybe she could, but she wasn't sure what she would say. The reason I've been acting so strange is that I'm madly in love with your boyfriend?

Maybe not.

She carried the card into the house and upstairs, tucking it safely into her underwear drawer. Then she put on her red J.Crew halter-top one-piece and went back downstairs. The guys from the steel band had started up again. They were smiling at her as they played, dreadlocks bouncing in time to the music.

"Good, I see you're ready," Erik observed putting down his frozen blue concoction.

"Ready for what?" Serena sighed a little wearily.

He sprinted up to her with his arms outstretched, snatched her up, and heaved her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, and kept on running toward the pool. "For a swim!" he shouted, jumping into the water and pulling her in with him.

Serena came up laughing and pinched the chlorine out of her nose. God, was he a dork. But it was kind of hard to stay mad at him when he was so determined to make her laugh. After all, it was her goddamned freaking sixteenth birthday and she'd been in the absolute doldrums all summer. This was the first day of the rest of her life. It was time to snap out of it.

"You're in so much trouble," she cried and dove down beneath the surface like a porpoise. She yanked up on Erik's dorky yellow-and-black surfboard-print board shorts, giving him the worst wedgie ever. Then she broke the surface again. "Everybody in the pool!" she ordered, like some sort of birthday girl drill sergeant. Corky, Dorian, and Chase stood up and began to tear off their clothes.

That's one way to celebrate.