Jenny slid off the bed and hitched up her extra wide supportive bra straps, guessing she was about to be dismissed. "You know my brother Dan is singing for the Raves now," she announced. "His fist gig with them is tomorrow night. I can put you on the special guest list if you want to come." Jenny wasn't even sure if there was a special guest list. All she knew she was getting free because she was Dan's sister. Dan thought he was so famous now that he was a member of a band with the number one album on the East Coast, but if she showed up to the gig with Serena- two gorgeous models out on the town in matching Les Best dresses- she'd completely out famous him. Serena wrinkled her nose. She wanted to go to the Raves gig, she really did, but she and her parents had already RSVPed yes to some Yale prospective students' get-to-know-you party tomorrow night. She couldn't exactly make her parents go by themselves. "I don't think I can," she explained apologetically. "There's this Yale thing I have to go to. But I'll try to get down there if it finishes early." Jenny nodded and stuffed the issue of W into her Gap tote bag, disappointed. She'd envisioned making an entrance at the Lower East Side club with Serena. Never mind the Raves- they were rock stars, big deal. She and Serena were supermodels- at least Serena was. Heads were guaranteed to turn, Guess she'll have to satisfy herself with being the lead singer's little sister. Like that would ever be enough. TALK ABOUT AN IDENTITY CRISIS "Crack me like an egg!" Daniel Humphrey glared at himself in his bedroom mirror and took a long drag on a half smoked camel. A lame-voiced wimp in worn khaki-colored corduroys and maroon Gap T-shirt. Not exactly rock'n'roll. "Crack me like an egg!" he wailed again, trying to look angst-ridden, rebellious, and sickly cool all at the same time. The problem was, his voice always broke when he went into the higher ranged, coming out in a breathy whisper, and his face looked soft and young and totally unthreatening. Dan rubbed at his bony chin and thought about growing a goatee. Vanessa had always had a strong aversion to facial hair, but what she thought was no longer relevant since they were no longer a couple. Almost two weeks ago at Vanessa's eighteenth birthday party at her apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Dan had been discovered by the megapopular indie band the Raves. Or rather, his poems had been. Thinking they'd both go to NYU next year and live happily ever after, Dan had moved in with Vanessa only a few days before. Butt heir relationship had quickly deteriorated. More depressed than usual, Dan had been sitting in a corner during the party, chugging Grey Goose vodka straight out of the bottle. Meanwhile, the Raves showed up at the party and their lead guitarist, Damian Polk, stumbled upon a stack of black notebooks filled with Dan's poetry. Damian and his band members had gone crazy over the poems, insisting they would work perfectly as lyrics. Their lead singer had just mysteriously quit- rehab anyone? - and so they decided to ask Dan to be their front man. By then Dan was just piss drunk and thought the whole thing was totally hilarious. Throwing himself into the task with drunken fervor, he'd stolen the show, electrifying drunken partiers with his brazen performance. He thought his was a one time deal, a way of distracting himself from the fact that he'd just broken up with the only girl who'd ever loved him. The next day he discovered he was card-carrying member of the band, and completely in over his head. During rehearsals Dan found that his normally sober self was physically incapable of putting out the same reckless energy that he'd had at the party, and, compared to the other band members, who were all in their twenties and wore clothes tailor-made for them by avant-garde designers like Pisolcock and Better Than Naked, he felt like a geeky, squeaky little kid. He'd even asked Damian Polk why in the hell the Raves wanted him to be their lead singer in the first place. Damian had replied simple, "It's all about the words, man." Dude, just because he could write them didn't mean he could sing. But maybe if he looked more like he could sing, he might actually convince people that he deserved to be in the band. Dan shuffled through his messy desk drawers searching for the battery-operated beard trimmer he'd bought last year during a week of experimenting with the length of his side-burns. He moved on to his little sister Jenny's room, and finally found it under her bed, inexplicably rolled up inside and old pink bath towel. Little sister lesson number one: If you want to keep your shit, put a padlock on your door. Not bothering to return to his own room, he went over to the mirror on the back of Jenny's closet door and tugged at the outgrown Mr. Trendy Artiste haircut he'd gotten soon after he'd made his switch from bohemian poet to gritty rock star, it was time for a change. Eek! Doesn't everyone know not to try a new look the day before a big event? The trimmer buzzed to life and Dan began shaving the back of his neck, watching the light brown strands gather on the faded chocolate-colored carpet in mousy clumps. Then he stopped, worried all of a sudden that a beard trimmer didn't have exactly the right sort of blades the shave one's entire head with. It might leave weird red track marks all over his skull, or shave his head unevenly so that it looked like his hair had been eaten rather than cut. Sure he wanted to look hard-core, but not chewed-head hard-core. He debated whether or not to continue. If he stopped now, the shaved parts could be completely concealed by the rest of his hair until he bent over, and then, voila- a shaved neck. It was kinda cool knowing the shaved part was there without being able to see it. Then again, an unnoticeable hair-cut wasn't exactly the look he was going for. He put the beard trimmer down, propped a Camel between his lips, and reached for Jenny's phone. If there was one person who knew anything about shaving heads, it was Vanessa. She'd kept her own head shaved sine the ninth grade, and, shunning the expensive salons like Frederic Fekkai and Elizabeth Arden's Red Door that her coiffed classmates frequented, insisted on shaving it herself. Secretly he's always thought she looked prettier with a little more hair, but she obviously thought she looked great bald, he wasn't about to say anything. "If this is about the apartment-share, I will be calling you once I've reviewed your online application," Vanessa said robotically when she picked up. "Hey, it's me, Dan," Dan responded brightly. "What's up?" Vanessa didn't answer right away. She wanted to give Dan space to grow and blossom into the next Kurt Cobain or John Keats or whatever the fuck he weanted to be, but breaking up with her and kicking him out of her apartment hadn't been exactly been easy for her. The casual lets-be-friends tone in Dan's voice made her heart feel like a deflated balloon. "I'm kind of busy actually." She typed a bunch of nonsense into her computer to make it sound like she was drastically preoccupied. "I have a lot of applications to go through- for the new roommate- you know?" "Oh." Dan hadn't been aware that Vanessa was looking for a roommate. Then again, with her older sister Ruby gone on tour with her band, it would be kind of lonely and boring living all alone in the apartment, especially without him to keep her company. For a fleeting moment Dan was so overcome with regret he felt like grabbing a pen and writing a tragic breakup poem using the words cut or shaved, but then his newly shorn neck began to burn and prickle, and he remembered why he'd called Vanessa in the first place. "I just had a quick question." He took several quick puffs of his cigarette and then absentmindedly dropped it into a vase of daisies wilting on Jenny's desk. "You know when you shave your head? Is there like, a certain kind of razor you use? Like a certain blade?" Vanessa's first impulse was to warn him that with a shaved head he'd look like a skinny seven-year-old leukemia patient who'd just been through chemo, but she was tired of protecting him from his own mistakes, especially now that they were "just friends." "Wahl blade number ten. Look, I gotta go." Dan picked up his beard trimmer. It was from CVS and didn't have a blade size. Maybe he'd be better going to a barber. "Okay. See you at my gig tomorrow night though, right?" "Maybe," Vanessa replied breezily. "If I get this roommate thing figured out. Gotta go. 'Bye!" Dan hung up and picked up the beard trimmer once more. "Crack me like an egg!" he shouted, holding it in front of his chin like a microphone. He whipped off his t-shirt and struck out his pale, skinny gut, trying to look saucily bored and rebellious, like a shorter, thinner, less-fucked-up Jim Morrison. "Crack me like an egg!" he wailed, falling on his knees. His dad, Rufus, suddenly appeared in the doorway, wearing a cigarette burned gray Old Navy sweatshirt and the pink terrycloth headband that Jenny used to keep her hair back hen she washed her face. "Good thing your sister's too busy to hang out with us after school anymore. She might not be too thrilled to find you stripping in her room," he commented. "I'm rehearsing." Dan rose to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster. "Do you mind?" "Go right ahead." Rufus stood in the doorway, scratching his chest fingering the unfiltered Camel tucked behind his left ear. He was a work-at-home single dad, the editor of lesser-known Beat poets and esoteric writers no one had ever heard of. "I think if you put the emphasis on every other word, it might be more effective/" Dan cocked his head and handed Rufus the beard trimmer. "Show me." Rufus Grinned. "Okay but I'm not taking my shirt off." Thank the Lord. He held the beard trimmer away from his face as if worried that it might turn on by itself and buzz off his famously unkempt beard. "Crack Me like an Egg!" he howled, his brown eyes gleaming. He handed the trimmer. "Try it." Of course Dan's dad had sounded just exactly the way Dan wanted to sound. He tossed the trimmer on to Jenny's bed and pulled his shirt back on. "I have homework to do," he grumbled. Rufus shrugged his shoulders. "Okay, I'll leave you alone." He winked at his son. "Decide where you want to go next year yet?" "No," Dan answered hollowly, then shuffled out of Jenny's roomand back into his own. His dad was so gung-ho about the whole college thing, it was seriously annoying. "Columbia's close!" Rufus called after him. "You could live at home!" As if he hadn't already mentioned that a thousand times. Alone in his room, Dan found a rubber band in his desk drawer and tied his hair up into a stubbly ponytail, leaving the shaved part exposed. He picked up the beard trimmer again. "Crack Me like and Egg!" he whispered, imitating his father as best as he could. He grimaced. There just wasn't ebough gristle in his voice to sound convincing. Trading the trimmer for the pile of college catalogs he'd been thumbing through for the past three months, he flopped don on his bed. Only one more week to choose between NYU, Brown, Colby or Evergreen. He flipped to a picture of a tweedy, intellectual-looking Brown student, his back propped against the trunk of agiant elm tree, scribbling away in a notebook like a young Keats. He looked exactly as Dan had envisioned he'd look himself next year- before he'd been discovered by the Raves and before he'd just shaved the back of his head. He ran his finger over the shaved part of his head and glanced down at his outfit. He'd have to go shopping, because none of his clothes went with his hair anymore. And you thought that was something only girls worry about. If only Jenny were there to help out, Dan thought grimly. But his little sister was too busy being a supermodel to go through his closet with him and tell him what was lame and what was acceptable. Dan picked up a cup of Folgers instant coffee that had been cooling on the floor since that morning and took a sip. He grimaced at his reflection in the mirror, and for an instant he could almost envision himself up on stage, giving the audience the same annoyed, pissed-off grimace. Maybe, just maybe he could pull this off, without his sister's help. Or maybe not.