Leo blushed. ?Yeah.? ?So what are you doing? Why don't you just walk over there?? Nate pointed to the circle of girls on the red blanket??and kiss her? That's what I'd do.? As soon as he'd said it, he realized that was what he needed to do with Blair?just walk up and kiss her. He'd been horny the whole time he'd been off pot, but when he was stoned he wasromantic . It was one of the things Blair loved about him. ?I don't know,? Leo said quietly. ?Maybe some other time.? ?Yeah,? Nate agreed. Now really wasn't such a good time. The five boys were still watching the group of knitting girls when Dan walked up, looking ragged and overcaffeinated as usual, a damp Camel dangling from his pale, trembling fingers. ?Hey, did you and my sister break up or something?? he asked Leo. Leo looked at him helplessly. ?I'm not sure.? Dan swiveled his scruffy head around to check out the scene. His classmate and Asshole Extraordinaire, Chuck Bass, was sitting on the ground with a white monkey on his shoulder. Chuck had even brought the monkey to school with him that morning, but the teachers had made him take it home. Then Dan saw something that made him drop his still-burning cigarette in the wet grass. Vanessa was kneeling on a red blanket ten feet behind Chuck, her face obscured by her camera. In front of her was the pink plastic UFO toy he'd sent her, whirling and blinking crazily on top of a little fold-up stool. Dan could just make out the crazed Japanese pop song emanating from the toy, and it made him want to dance a happy little jig. Not that he was about to go ahead and actuallydance . Nate sucked at the dregs of his joint and nodded at Vanessa. ?Think that's her?? ?No way,? Dan said. Although he secretly wondered if Vanessa might be the sexy Web mistress they'd all come to see. It would be just like her to do something totally out of character like that and freak everyone out. ?Maybe she's not coming.? Nate flicked the dead roach in Chuck's direction. ?Not unless she's already here.? The six boys contemplated Chuck for a moment, chuckling to themselves. Despite the fact that this seemed to be a boys-only nonevent, there sure were a lot of girls around. Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates had wandered up to pet Chuck's monkey and spy on Blair and Serena's little knitting group. ?What are they doing?? Kati whined. She scratched Sweetie behind the ears, and the monkey bared his teeth. ?He has sensitive ears!? Chuck warned. ?Maybe they're knitting things to hide drugs in. I've heard smugglers use babies to smuggle drugs into other countries,? Isabel suggested, wishing desperately that she could join the circle. ?Don't you love how everyone's looking at us like we're ?witches or something?? Serena whispered. The other girls giggled conspiratorially. Blair wiped her nose and reapplied her lip gloss. She hadn't missed the fact that Nate was among those watching. ?They have no idea,? she agreed, even though she and the rest of the girls in the group were absolutely eating up the attention. Her stepbrother, Aaron Rose, came over with his guitar and sat down on the corner of the girls' blanket. ?What should I play?? he asked them. ?Anything.? They were all just getting the hang of knit-purl-knit, but the music from Vanessa's crazy pink plastic toy was driving them insane. ?Stir it up, little darling, stir it up?? he began, singing his favorite reggae song. Aaron had only turned up to see if Blair was the girl everyone was making such a fuss over. For all he knew, it could have been any one of them. ?You never know,? more than one of the boys in the meadow observed. That's right. You never know. How not to talk to the person you're not talking to After theRancor editorial meeting, Vanessa Abrams raced out the door of Constance Billard and down the steps. Her hair didn't fly out behind her, bouncing prettily against her shoulders, because she kept her head shaved and basically had no hair. And she didn't have to worry about twisting her ankle in her heels, because she never wore heels. In fact, she never wore shoes, only boots. Big ones, with steel toes. The reason Vanessa was in such a hurry was because Ruby had given her a list of crap to buy at the health food store on the way home from school, and she really needed to get it done and get home before her parents arrived, just in case she'd forgotten to put away some evidence of her filmmaking and they found it and found her out. At the bottom of the steps, she nearly mowed down the very last person she'd expected to see. Dan, her former best friend and boyfriend. His light brown hair was neatly styled, with long sideburns framing his serious jaw, and he was wearing a gray suit that looked French and expensive. This from a guy who previously only cut his hair when he stopped being able to see, and who wore the same pair of brown corduroys until the bottoms were frayed and there were holes in the knees. Vanessa tugged on her black wool leg warmers and folded her arms across her chest. ?Hello.?Why the fuck are you here, anyway? ?Hey,? Dan responded. ?I'm just waiting for Jenny,? he explained. ?I got a job today. I wanted to tell her about it.? ?Good for you.? Vanessa waited for Dan to say something else. After all, he was the one who'd cheated on her with that Mystery bitch, and he was the one who'd completely sold out to become famous. He could at least apologize forthat. Dan remained speechless, his eyes shifting from her face to the school doors and back to her face again. Vanessa could tell he was dying to tell her about his new job, but she wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking about it. She pulled a tube of Vaseline out of her black bomber jacket pocket and smeared some on her lips. It was the closest thing to lip gloss she owned. ?I saw your sister inside, talking to her art teacher. She'll be out in a minute.? ?So what's up?? Dan asked, just as she was about to take off. Vanessa suspected he was only asking so she would askhim what was up, and then he could tell her all about how he'd been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize or some such shit. ?My parents are coming to town tonight,? she responded, caving in a little. ?You know how much fun that always is for me,? she added, and then wished she hadn't. It didn't do any good to remind them both that they knew everything about each other now that they no longer spoke. ?Anyway. Bye.? ?Yeah.? Dan held up his hand and gave her a big smile, the kind of fake, shit-eating smile he'd never even known how to give until he started going to fashion shows with air-kissing agents and famous weirdo-slut poetesses. ?Good to see you.? Good to see you too, asswipe,Vanessa responded silently as she strode toward Lexington Avenue to catch the subway to Williamsburg. Actually, itwas kind of good to see Dan, and she'd wanted to tell him more. She'd wanted to tell him how her parents' incessant ?We are artists, hear us roar? personas stifled every ounce of creativity in her. How her parents didn't even know she made films, even though it was basically the only thing she enjoyed doing. How they didn't even know she'd gotten in early to NYU, purely on the strength of her art. And how they wouldn't know, for the duration of their nearly two-week stay, that her bedroom closet was stuffed with film equipment and her favorite old videos. Ironic though it might seem, Ruby?the kid who never went to college, wore leather pants all the time even though she was a vegetarian, and played bass in a weird, loud, almost all-male garage band?was the creative child, the favorite. Yup. Dan would've gotten a kick out of that. That is, if they were still talking. Arriving in Williamsburg, she hurried out of the subway and into the natural food store only a few blocks away.Soy mozzarella, wheat-free lasagna noodles, tempeh ? , she read from the list Ruby had given her. Tonight Ruby was making her famous soy-tempeh lasagna in honor of their parents' arrival. There was another thing that set Vanessa apart. She was a carnivore, while Ruby and her parents were all vegetarians. She pulled a brick of tempeh out of the store's fridge. ?You don't even look like food,? she told it, tossing the tem-peh into her shopping basket. She shook her head and smiled bitterly as she walked down the aisle in search of the wheat-free section. Her father was always talking to inanimate objects. It was part of his whole ?kooky artist? mystique. But Vanessa wasn't really an artist?yet?and if she didn't find someone to talk to besides a brick of vegetarian meat replacement she didn't even like the taste of, she'd be worse than kooky: She'd just go plain insane. ?Why don't you go out and do something with your friends?? Ruby always asked whenever Vanessa looked particularly sad, bitter, and lonely. Vanessa always treated this question the same way she treated the question, Why don't you wear colors instead of only black? Because to her, blackwas a color?theonly color. Just like Dan was her only friend. It was going to be weird when her parents asked about him, and even weirder not having anyone to hang out with over break. Unless ? unless she found someone to hang out with. I appreciates a good fake fur There he ............