Yasi Reads Gossip Girl: S is Back!

Reblogged from Yasi Reads Gossip Girl

Welcome to another edition of I’m So Glad I Got My Master’s Degree, AKA Yasi Reads Gossip Girl.

In this, the third chapter of White Kids Can’t Jump, Serena crashes the dinner party (in a “vintage Burberry coat” EW OLD) and we are treated to Ceecily’s special brand of character portaiture:

• When Serena smiled, she used her eyes – those dark, almost navy blue eyes. It was the kind of smile you might try to imitate, posing in the bathroom mirror like an idiot. The magnetic, delicious, “you can’t stop looking at me, can you?” smile supermodels spend years perfecting. Well, Serena smiled that way without even trying…(Her mom) was the middle-aged version of utter coolness. The whole van der Woodsen family was like that. They were all tall, blond, thin, and super-poised, and they never did anything – play tennis, hail a cab, eat spaghetti, go to the toilet – without maintaining their cool. Serena especially. She was gifted with the kind of coolness that you can’t acquire by buying the right handbag or the right pair of jeans. She was the girl every boy wants and every girl wants to be.

It’s this sort of cliche-blasting changing of the game that makes Cicely such a compelling writer. Also sentences like this:

• “Well, Serena. You look lovely, dear. Blair will be thrilled to see you,” Blair’s mother trilled.

Then she milled over and filled her glass then swilled some vodka while I killed myself. Rhyming is FUN.

So Serena’s all “what’s up yo” to everybody but she really just wants to find her bestie Blair, who is apparently hiding from her in a giant pile of Ralph Lauren v-neck sweaters. While she’s hunting, Serena reminisces over their BFF-y times:

• She could hardly wait for life to return to the way it used to be. She and Blair would walk to school together, spend Double Photography in Sheep Meadow in Central Park, lying on their backs, taking pictures of pigeons and clouds, smoking and drinking Coke and feeling like hard-core artistes.

Note: HARD-CORE ? That’s it? Why not EXXXTREME RED-BULL FUELED PHOTO NINJAS? End Note.

• They would have cocktails at the Star Lounge in the Tribeca Star Hotel again, which always turned into sleepover parties because they would get too drunk to go home so they’d spend the night in the suite Chuck Bass’s family kept there. They would sit on Blair’s four-poster bed and watch Audrey Hepburn movies, wearing vintage lingerie and drinking gin and lime juice…They’d pee in the downstairs entrances to their classmates’ brownstones and then ring the doorbells and run away.

Ok, so we’re having cocktails and sleepovers and wearing vintage lingerie and watching Breakfast At Tiffany’s and then we’re peeing in lobbies? Oh how terribly avant-garde of you two, how cutting-edge, and afterwards the two ARTISTES just take shits on each other’s chests outside the Ritz and then stab themselves with dirty needles found in a dumpster in Tompkins Square Park because they’re JUST THAT WILD, MOTHERFUCKERS.

Anyway after this trip down memory lane Serena traipses around the room on the gazelle-like legs (or whatever terrible overused metaphor Cecily used) until she finds Nate, he of the pretty face and Bieber hair (I can’t help it, I picture the TV characters).

• Her heart sped up as Nate began walking toward her. He looked better than she remembered, much better. Nate’s heart was beating even faster than hers.
• “Hey, you,” Serena breathed when Nate hugged her. He smelled just like he always smelled. Like the cleanest, most delicious boy alive. Tears came into Serena’s eyes and she pressed her face into Nate’s chest. Now she was really home.
• Nate’s cheeks turned pink. Calm down, he told himself. But he couldn’t calm down. He felt like picking her up and twirling her around and kissing her face over and over. “I love you!” he wanted to shout, but he didn’t. He couldn’t.

Now wait just a minute here. Are you trying to subtly tell the reader that Nate is actually not into Blair at all, but in fact likes…perhaps is even IN LOVE with, Serena? You don’t fucking say. Anyway apparently Nate’s dad didn’t hug him enough and his mom hugged him too much so now he’s emotionally stunted or something:

• Poor Nate was always on the verge of saying how he really felt, but he didn’t want to make a scene or say something he might regret later. Instead, he kept quiet and let other people steer the boat, while he laid back and enjoyed the steady rocking of the waves.

Did I mention Nate’s dad is a navy captain? Hence all the fun nautical metaphors! Oh Cecily, you wizard of wordplay! So to recap: Nate-ifer is a pussy, Serena is perfect, and Blair has cellulite. (That last bit has not been confirmed but I just FEEL it).

This is around the point I get too incredibly overwhelmed by the sheer weight and emotion of the storyline to relate the events specifically, so here’s a quick rundown:

While Serena was off being “bad, so bad!” (her words not mine) at the Academy for Naughty Naughty Girls she didn’t really keep in touch with her BFF Blair, and Blair was SAD. But then Blair realized since she was the second most prettiest girl in all the land, with Serena gone every one paid attention to her and followed her around and adored her and stuff so then was all “oh ok this is pretty cool.” But then she came back and now she’s about to RUIN EVERTHING:

• Serena was back…and everything would go back to the way it was before she left. As always, it would be Serena and Blair, Blair and Serena, with Blair playing the smaller, fatter, mousier, less witty best friend of the blond uber-girl, Serena van der Woodsen. Or not. Not if Blair could help it.

HOLY FORESHADOWING BATMAN. Shit is about to hit the fan, people. But not in this chapter. All that happens here is we learn that everyone is either jealous of Serena or wants to eff her, and that Blair essentially wants her former bestie to die a bloody painful death. And we end on this ominous note from Touchy Chucky:

• “Careful, Blair,” Chuck warned, nodding at Serena and Nate, who were still talking in low voices over by the wet bar, their eyes never straying from each other’s faces. “Looks like Serena’s already found her next victim.”