“What’s this one called?” the Transit Authority woman asked eagerly. “Serena,” the Remi boys said in unison. “I found a printer who will do it by tomorrow afternoon and hand deliver each of the invitations so they get there by Friday morning,” Isabel said, looking pleased with herself for being so efficient. “But look how expensive it is. If we use them, then we’re going to have to cut costs on other things. See how much Takashimaya is charging us for the flowers?” As soon as they were finished with their Wednesday after-school activities, the Kiss on the Lips organizing committee had convened over French fries and hot chocolate in a booth at the 3 Guys Coffee Shop—Blair, Isabel, Kati, and Tina Ford, from the Seaton Arms School—to deal with the last-minute preparations for the party. The crisis at hand was the fact that the party was only nine days away, and no one had received an invitation yet. The invitations had been ordered weeks ago, but due to a mix-up the location of the party had to be changed from The Park—a hot new restaurant in lower Chelsea—to the old Barneys building on Seventeenth Street and Seventh Avenue, rendering the invitations useless. The girls were in a tight spot. They had to get a new set of invitations out, and fast, or there wasn’t going to be a party at all. “But Takashimaya is the only place to get flowers. And it really doesn’t cost much. Oh, come on, Blair, think how cool they’ll be,” Tina whined. “Yes, it does,” Blair insisted. “And there are plenty of other places to get flowers.” “Well, maybe we can ask the peregrine falcon people to pitch in,” Isabel suggested. She reached for a French fry, dunked it in ketchup, and popped it into her mouth. “They’ve barely done anything.” Blair rolled her eyes, and blew into her hot chocolate. “That’s the whole point. We’re raising money for them. It’s a cause.” Kati wound a lock of her frizzy blond hair around her finger. “What is a peregrine falcon anyway?” she said. “Is it like a woodpecker?” “No, I think they’re bigger,” Tina said. “And they eat other animals, you know, like rabbits and mice and stuff.” “Gross,” Kati said. “I just read a definition of what one was the other day,” Isabel mused. “I can’t remember where I saw it.” GossipGirl.net, perhaps? “They’re almost extinct,” Blair added. She thumbed through the list of people they were inviting to the party. There were three hundred and sixteen all together. All young people—no parents, thank God. Blair’s eyes were automatically drawn to a name toward the bottom of the list: Serena van der Woodsen. The address given was her dorm room at Hanover Academy, in New Hampshire. Blair put the list back down on the table without correcting Serena’s address. “We’re going to have to spend the extra money on the printer and cut corners where we can,” she said quickly. “I can tell Takashimaya to use lilies instead of orchids and forget about the peacock feathers around the rims of the vases.” “I can do the invitations,” a small, clear voice said from behind them. “For free.” The four girls turned around to see who it was. Oh look, it’s that little Ginny girl, Blair thought. The ninth grader who did the calligraphy in our school hymnals. “I can do them all by hand tonight and put them in the mail. The materials are the only cost, but I know where to get good quality paper cheap,” Jenny Humphrey said. “She did all our hymnals at school,” Kati whispered to Tina. “They look really good.” “Yeah,” Isabel agreed. “They’re pretty cool.” Jenny blushed and stared at the shiny linoleum floor of the coffee shop, waiting for Blair to make up her mind. She knew Blair was the one who mattered. “And you’ll do it all for free?” Blair said, suspiciously. Jenny raised her eyes. “I was kind of hoping that if I did the invites, maybe I could come to the party?” she said. Blair weighed the pros and cons in her mind. Pros: The invitations would be unique and best of all, free, so they wouldn’t have to skimp on the flowers. Cons: There really weren’t any. Blair looked the Ginny girl up and down. Their cute little ninth-grade helper with the huge chest. She was a total glutton for punishment, and she’d be totally out of place at the party . . . but who cared? “Sure, you can make yourself an invitation. Make one for one of your friends, too,” Blair said, handing the guest list over to Jenny. How generous. Blair gave Jenny all the necessary information, and Jenny dashed out of the coffee shop breathlessly. The stores would be closing soon, and she didn’t have much time. The guest list was longer than she’d anticipated, and she’d have to stay up all night working on the invitations, but she was going to the party; that was all that mattered. Just wait until she told Dan. He was going to freak. And she was going to make him come with her to the party, whether he liked it or not. Two martinis and three rolls of Remi brothers’ film later, Serena jumped out of a cab in front of Constance and ran up the stairs to the auditorium, where the interschool play rehearsal had already begun. As always, she was half an hour late. The sound of a Talking Heads song being played jauntily on the piano drifted down the hallway. Serena pushed open the auditorium door to find her old friend, Ralph Bottoms III, singing Burning Down the South, to the tune of Burning Down the House, with a completely straight face. He was dressed as Rhett Butler, complete with fake mustache and brass buttons. Ralph had gained weight in the last two years, and his face was ruddy, as if he’d been eating too much rare steak. He was holding hands with a stocky girl with curly brown hair and a heart-shaped face—Scarlett O’Hara. She was singing too, belting out the words in a thick Brooklyn accent. Serena leaned against the wall to watch, with a mixture of horror and fascination. The scene at the art gallery hadn’t fazed her, but this—this was scary. When the song ended, the rest of the Interschool Drama Club clapped and cheered, and then the drama teacher, an aged English woman, began to direct the next scene. “Put your hands on your hi............