Gossip Girl: A Novel

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."

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—and she was very good at what she did. She had no patience for losers, and if she caught one of her girls acting like a loser—persistently calling in sick or doing poorly on the SATs—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, 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 prejudice 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 in isolation and a seriously difficult essay assignment. But those punishments were a rare necessity. 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.

"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 all met on their usual stoop around the corner for cigarettes and coffee before school started. They had 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.

"She's probably too drugged up to come to school today," Isabel whispered back. "I 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.

"Gross," 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 being late. She hadn't woken up this early since her eleventh-grade final exams at Hanover last June, and she'd forgotten how badly it sucked.